by Ian Mortimer
One tripod [for lighting]
2d
One iron headpiece
2d
One iron spit
3d
One frying pan
1d
One funnel
1d
One small canvas bag
1d
Seven savenaps [table napkins]
5d
One old linen sheet
1d
Two pillows
3d
One cap
1d
One counter
4s
Two coffers [chests]
8d
Two curtains
8d
Two remnants of cloth
1d
Six chests
10s 10d
One folding table
12d
Two chairs
8d
One aumbry
6d
Two “anceres” [tubs?]
2s
Six casks of wine
£4
One mazer
6s
One cup made out of a coconut with a silver foot and cover of silver
£1 10s
Six silver spoons
6s
Firewood
3s
Household Goods of William Harecourt of
Boston, Lincolnshire, 13836
Item
Value
Eight mazers bound with gilt-silver
£5
Three silver cups with lids
£4
Six plates of silver
£2 10s
Two beds
£1 6s 8d
Four more beds of worsted
£3
Eight blankets and six quilts
£2
Eight pairs of sheets
£2
Ten more pairs of sheets
£2
Four pairs of worsted curtains and two half-tester beds
£1 6s 8d
Three brass pots
40s
Eight more brass pots
13s 4d
Three great brass pans
10s
Five small pans
10s
Three basins and three water jugs
13s 4d
One great basin
6s 8d
Thirty pewter vessels
£1
Four pewter bottles, six quart pots, two gallon pots, and four pint pots of pewter
10s
One backplate for a fireplace, four andirons, two spits, an iron candlestick
£1
A great leaden pan and five small leads
£2 10s
Two great arks [wooden coffers]
£1
Five small arks
16s
Three tables and three pairs of trestles
3s
Three dossers [ornamental cloths behind a chair], six bankers [embroidered covering for a bench or chair], and eighteen cushions
£1 10s
Three feather beds
15s
A screen
6s 8d
Two hawks and a “gentle” falcon
£10
Monasteries and Other Religious Establishments
If you travel any distance, then at some point you will stay overnight in a religious house. Whether this be an abbey, priory, or hospital, they all offer hospitality as part of their Christian duty. It is particularly important for monks and nuns to do so on account of the exhortation in the Rule of St. Benedict: “Let all guests that come be received like Christ, for He will say: I was a stranger and you took me in.” However, it has to be said that this is a duty more eagerly observed by some monks than others. Those near remote ferry crossings see far too many travelers and pilgrims—more than they can afford to keep. Birkenhead Priory has an inn specifically for coping with the travelers hoping to stay a night before catching the morning ferry across the Mersey.7
The sort of accommodation you can expect to find at a monastery depends upon your social standing as well as the wealth of the establishment. Noblemen and higher clergy are normally invited to share the abbot’s lodgings. It is unlikely that you will be allowed into the cloister or permitted to see much of the monastery apart from the nave of the church, the outer courtyard, and your place of accommodation. Even a place in the guesthouse should not be taken for granted. At the busier monasteries, only those arriving on horseback or carried in a litter will be offered a place here; anyone arriving on foot is likely to be directed to the dormitory above the stables to share the accommodation of pilgrims, monastic laborers, and the itinerant poor.
The guesthouse of a reasonably prosperous monastery generally consists of a plastered, aisled hall of two or three bays open to the roof and heated by a central hearth. Some are larger: the hall of the guesthouse at Kirkstall has five bays, with a central hearth and chambers for the most important guests. There is normally little in the way of decoration, the purpose of the building being the fulfillment of a spiritual duty rather than the comfort of visitors. If there is a kitchen adjacent, it will be supervised by two of the brethren of the monastery; if not (as in most small priories), food will be fetched for you from a serving hatch in the outer wall of the monks’ kitchen and brought to the guesthouse to be served on cloth-covered trestle tables by the monastery’s servants. After dusk the windows are shuttered and tallow candles lit to supplement the light of the fire. If the building is of stone it is possible that cresset lamps will be lit. These are scooped-out stones protruding from the wall, filled with oil and containing a burning wick. As for sleeping arrangements, you will need to make yourself as comfortable as possible on one of the straw mattresses. At least you can be grateful that the straw inside them is replaced every year.8
It is with regard to sanitation that monastic guesthouses come into their own. Many monasteries have efficient systems of providing water for washing, drinking, and cooking. Many also have highly developed drainage systems, even having the facility to flush drains. Generally a monastic house takes water from a spring into a stone or lead-lined conduit and transfers it along stone drains or through lead pipes underground (sometimes controlled by brass taps) to the various parts of the monastery. The drains taking water away are lined and covered with flagstones. They run beneath all the latrines, including those of the monks’ dormitory and the guesthouse. With regard to the latter, these are very “public” conveniences. The usual sort of arrangement is three or four wooden seats in a row—sometimes more—with no partitions between them. Sitting down and chatting with your fellow traveler while trying to pass a meat-diet-engorged stool is something you might have difficulty getting used to.
One form of religious house exists largely for the purpose of entertaining travelers. This is the hospital. You may associate hospitals with sickness and medicine—and some are exclusively concerned with ill people, especially lepers—but many are for the provision of hospitality (hence the name). In particular, those which are called Maison Dieu or Domus Dei—”God’s House”—fall into this category. Normally they take the form of a hall, with beds placed around it, their head ends against the walls. There is always a chapel where you will be expected to say prayers on arrival and to attend Mass before you leave. Sometimes the hall is exceptionally long; that of the Newarke hospital at Leicester is seventeen bays—about two hundred feet—in length. This is run for the benefit of one hundred poor and infirm people, attended by a warden, four chaplains, and ten women.9 Obviously it is a very large establishment, and it caters for itinerant poor as well as the long-term sick, who are permanently resident. The small Maison Dieu at Ospringe is perhaps more typical of the sort of hospital at which you might stay. Situated on the main road from London to Canterbury, it is expressly for the benefit of pilgrims and lepers. It is run by a master, three brethren, and two clerks. As you may gather from the idea of lepers and travelers staying together and sharing the same bed linen, their priority is not the c
omfort of the guests. A large hospital might have its own kitchen and refectory in which one of the brethren will read a lesson aloud during the meal. If not, rye bread and a thin vegetable soup or pottage is likely to be your repast. Unless you have a particular craving for straw mattresses with torn sheets, rye bread, watery ale, and a pungent leper in the next bed, it is worth considering staying elsewhere.
Castles and Fortified Manor Houses
Often modern historians declare that the great age of castle building is over by 1300. If you stand in front of Windsor Castle in the 1350s, or Bodiam Castle in the 1380s, and watch the dozens of carts and wagons carrying stones and timbers daily across the muddy approach roads, you might disagree. Castles and fortified manor houses continue to be built and rebuilt on a massive scale. One reason for this is security. Dozens of new licenses to crenellate are issued by the king, especially in the reign of Richard II, when there are renewed fears of invasion from both France and Scotland. But there is another reason for all the rebuilding. Older castles are increasingly proving to be uncomfortable, with their small chambers and gloomy halls. All over the country you will find noblemen rebuilding their homes in pursuit of greater luxury. The earl of Devon almost entirely rebuilds his castle at Okehampton. The earl of March rebuilds his family seat at Wigmore and develops Ludlow Castle on a truly palatial scale. The earl of Warwick rebuilds Warwick Castle in a similarly extravagant fashion, with a new great hall, new gatehouse, and two of the finest residential towers in the kingdom (Guy’s Tower and Caesar’s Tower). Lord Neville rebuilds his castles at Bamburgh and Raby. Lord Berkeley rebuilds most of the domestic ranges at Berkeley Castle. John of Gaunt rebuilds the domestic ranges within his great castles at Kenilworth and Hertford. His younger brothers, Edmund and Thomas, rebuild Fotheringay Castle and Caldicott Castle, respectively. Most of all, their father, Edward III, repairs or extends a huge number of royal castles. He also builds the last completely new royal castle at Queenborough, at a cost of £25,000. His works at Windsor Castle, where he rebuilds practically everything within the outer walls, cost more than £50,000, making it the most expensive building project in medieval England. If the fourteenth century is not the great age of castle building, then it is certainly the great age of castle rebuilding.
Where new fortified residences are constructed, they are designed to overawe and entertain, as well as to defend. The dozen most important new castles from the late fourteenth century are all well-defended buildings, with high towers, drawbridges, and portcullises. 10 But they are all symbolic of lordly power as well. Life within them is comfortable, with large halls, well-lit solars, substantial kitchens and bakehouses, and enough chambers to allow every visiting esquire to have a room of his own. If anything distinguishes these new castles from their twelfth-and thirteenth-century predecessors, it is the number of chambers they have. By 1350 noblemen have shifted their priorities from communal defense to incorporate individual privacy. Bodiam Castle, for example, has more than thirty rooms which can be used as private bedchambers.
When you come to a castle or fortified manor house and have crossed the drawbridge, you will catch sight of the courtyard. This is typically square in a fourteenth-century residence, with the whitewashed walls and glazed windows of the hall, solar, and chapel facing it. If the lord is in residence, liveried servants will be scampering about, carrying food from the storerooms to the kitchen, fetching water from the well to fill the dozens of pots for heating bathwater, and carrying firewood to stack inside the hall. A groom will proceed to show you around: this door leads through to the ale-cellar, this door to the general kitchen, this door to the meat stores, that door over there to the chapel, and this set of stone steps to a staff dormitory above the storerooms. If you look up you will see the hall and solar are roofed with lead. Above the whole building flies the armorial banner of the lord.
As in every other medieval building, the center of life is the hall. Noble halls vary in size primarily according to the function of the building as a whole—more so than to the status of the lord. The hall of the earl of Devon’s castle at Okehampton, which is little more than an administrative center and a hunting retreat, is forty-four feet long, twenty-four feet wide and about forty feet high—the usual size for the hall of a manor house or a rich merchant’s town house. That of a wealthy knight’s country seat may be far larger. Sir John Pulteney’s great hall at Penshurst (a fortified manor house) is sixty-two feet long, thirty-nine feet wide, and no less than sixty feet high. The chief castles or fortified manor houses of the nobility have halls on a similar scale, with exposed wooden roof beams of architectural complexity, albeit darkened with smoke.11 For example: the earl of Huntingdon’s hall at Dartington is sixty feet long, thirty-eight feet wide, and forty-eight feet high.12 The floors of such halls are often covered with patterned tiles. In the middle is a fire raised on flagstones. All the interior walls are plastered and painted, either with red lines imitating courses of stonework or more elaborate designs, such as heraldry, moons, and stars, or bees, butterflies, and flowers. At the upper end of the hall, raised on a dais, are the lord’s table, his chair, and several benches. Projecting out above the principal seat in the center is a rich canopy, known as a baldaquin, the red silk of which hangs down like a curtain behind the seat.
* * *
Items at Dartington Hall, Devon, in the Lord’s Absence, 140013
One bed of silk embroidered with bulls and divers other arms with three curtains of tartarin [a rich Eastern silk fabric imported from Tartary] covered with gold foil with bulls, with two rugs of tapestry with bulls, and eight cushions of silk embroidered with bulls
One bed with a baldaquin embroidered with the arms of England and Hainault, with three curtains of red sendal
One bed of red tartarin embroidered with letters with a curtain of red tartarin belonging to the same bed
Nineteen white Arras tapestries showing parrots
Fourteen rugs of red tapestry with the arms of the late earl of Huntingdon and of the lady his wife, and with the wheat-ear livery badge of the same earl
Twelve rugs of blue tapestry with the arms of the late earl of Huntingdon
Two long cushions of red cloth of gold
Two long cushions of red velvet and eight short cushions of the same cloth
Eight short cushions of red cloth of gold and twelve cushions of white cloth of gold
Four long white cushions of white damask cloth embroidered with M’s with golden crowns and two short cushions of the same material
Two long cushions of green damask cloth
One cushion of black damask cloth
Three golden Arras rugs One long cushion of old damask One hanging tapestry for the hall Four green rugs of tapestry Seven rugs of white worsted embroidered with black ragged staves Three curtains [for a bed] with one valance of white tartarin of the same ragged staves design
One bed with a baldaquin with three curtains of red tartarin Eleven old rugs of white and blue linsey-woolsey
One bed with a green baldaquin and three curtains of green tartarin
Eight carpets
One old bed with a torn baldaquin and three curtains of blue tartarin
One other old Norfolk bed with three curtains of card [a form of linen]
An old bed of red embroidered worsted with three matching curtains
An old bed of red worsted embroidered with oak leaves, with three curtains of tartarin and seven worsted rugs to match
One dosser and two costers [sidehangings] with the same oak-leaves pattern
One cover for a silk bed of red and white
One missal, one antiphonal with a psalter contained within it and one gradual
Altar coverings, vestments, surplices, and curtains in the chapel
Eight tablecloths, six hand towels, and five other cloths for the table
Two silver bowls and a silver washbasin
One silver pot and one covered salt of silver
Three silver cups, one with a cover of g
ilt-silver
Six silver spoons, six silver plates, and four silver saucers
Five chests bound with iron
In the kitchen, four great standard pots of bronze
Five smaller pots of bronze
Six small bronze pots
Five very small bronze pots
Two great cooking vessels
Two small cooking vessels
Four great ladles of copper
Four small ladles of bronze
Four frying pans
Three great iron griddles, and one old iron griddle
Six iron rakes
Five great mortars
156 tin plates
* * *
Before each meal the serving lads put up trestle tables along each side of the hall. They bring brightly glazed green and gold ceramic wine jugs and ale flagons to set out in readiness. Others place candles on the spikes protruding from the walls, and light the candles on the chandeliers. These are iron or silver hoops, about six feet in diameter, raised on pulleys. On the lord’s table, a plain white linen tablecloth is placed, reaching to the floor. Then a second cloth with a colored strip down the center is placed over it; this is the sanap, on which the choicest dishes will be placed for the delectation of the lord and his guests. Brightly colored cushions are placed on the benches on the dais. Good-quality wax candles are impaled on the spikes of the three-legged candlesticks on the lord’s table, along with other precious luxuries, such as his gilt-silver saltcellar and enameled gilt-silver drinking cups.