The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

by Ian Mortimer

  What will impress you about life in a castle is not so much the gold and silver but the scale of everything. A man who drinks out of an enameled gilt-silver cup is rich, but a man whose steward drinks out of such a cup is powerful. Most barons have about forty-five men in their household. The earl of Devon has 135 in 1384, the bishop of Ely eighty-three.14 John of Gaunt—the richest Englishman of the century (excluding the kings)—has 115, but this does not include a further 150 armed retainers contracted to serve him whenever he wants them. Edward II has about 450 to 500 men in his household in 1318.15 Edward III has considerably more than eight hundred in the period 1344–47, during much of which time he is fighting abroad.16 In the more peaceful 1360s he has between 350 and 450. The largest household of all in peacetime is not that of a king. It is that of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, cousin to Edward II, who at the start of the century has no fewer than 708 men. Imagine traveling along the highways of northern England with that small army buzzing around: people come out of their houses just to see him pass by.

  As you wander around the castle, you may be surprised to see that there are hardly any females present. Of the 135 people in the earl of Devon’s household, only three are women. This is normal—even in those households which are headed by a woman.17 A washerwoman might be employed (cleaning clothes is strictly a woman’s job in medieval England) but she will not live within the household. The only resident females will be the lord’s wife and daughters and their personal companions. kitchen staff, grooms, valets, pantlers, butlers, even the dishwashers—all of these positions are filled by men and boys. If the men choose to marry, then they must leave the lord’s household and set up their own.

  The Royal Household in 1392–93118

  Office or Rank

  Number

  Officers (a steward, chamberlain, controller of the household, keeper of the wardrobe, cofferer, keeper of the privy seal, secretary, almoner, physician, surgeon, and dean of the royal chapel)

  11

  Chamber knights

  8

  Clerks

  25

  Sergeants-at-arms

  3

  Sergeants of offices

  17

  Esquires

  101

  Huntsmen

  10

  Valets of the chamber

  20

  Valets of the stables

  89

  Other valets (including messengers)

  80

  Grooms

  53

  Carters

  14

  Cleaners

  2

  Total

  433

  When processing into the hall, say, before a great feast, the marshal of the hall will direct a couple of grooms to make sure that everyone enters and is seated according to their status. Even the lower ranks—the gentlemen, valets and grooms of the household, and lesser servants—are seated hierarchically. The most senior officers sit next to the dais, on the right-hand side of the lord. This table is called the “reward.” Opposite is the “second mess.” At this more privileged end of the hall are seated important men, such as the lord’s chief retainers, his chaplain and steward, and any other important guests. Farther down are the chief household servants: the almoner, the keeper of the wardrobe, the clerk of the kitchen, the receivers of the lords’ manors, the marshal of the stables, the cofferer, and the lord’s secretary. Farther down still are the more menial members of the household: the gardener, the slaughterer, the baker, the brewer, the candle-maker, the farrier, the blacksmith, the poulterer, messengers, and other servants (although some households have a separate hall for these men).

  In winter, when it is dark outside after the evening meal, the candlelight hardly allows you to see the full length of the hall. The servants faces appear rosy cheeked as they sit at the long tables, talking and laughing—your own servant among them. When the hall is full of people, it becomes warm quickly, on account of the movement and clamor of many bodies and voices. The mood is also warmer. Monastries might have better drains, inns might be geographically convenient to city centers, private houses are certainly the most comfortable to sleep in—but you are unlikely to find better entertainment and conversation than around a nobleman’s fireside. Many lords like to have verse romances read to them by the fire of an evening. Otherwise it is conversation, storytelling, and wit which will keep you amused, or dancing if it is a special occasion. Most great lords maintain their own minstrels, who play during and after supper. Traveling musicians regularly stay at manor houses, paying for their lodging and food with their music and hoping for a bonus if they perform well. Late into the night, the senior household servants sit on benches around the fire in the hall, talking, ordering the boys to fetch firewood while playing dice or chess in the light of the fat-dripping candles of the chandeliers.

  If you are considered of sufficient rank to be allocated a chamber, you and your servant will be led to a room in a solar wing or castle tower. The staircase will be steep and dark, normally spiraling clockwise upwards (a traditional layout, originally to prevent right-handed attackers from using their swords). The servant leading you will no doubt carry a lantern or lamp in order to light your way. In the chamber itself he will light the candle affixed to the bed frame. The window will be shuttered from inside. A small fire might be burning in a fireplace in the wall. In the dim light you might also be able to make out a chest for linen, a doorway leading to the garderobe, a low bed for your servant, and a cupboard in the wall for small possessions.

  The bed in an aristocratic residence is distinguished by the enclosing curtains and feather mattress.19 Linen sheets, feather pillows, woollen blankets, and a bright bedspread make you feel comfortable (until the bedbugs bite). A rail on which to hang your clothing is attached to the bed or to a bracket on the wall. There too is a rail or perch where you may set your favorite falcon, feeding it choice cuttings of meat supplied from the kitchens. In case you are wondering about the candle affixed to the frame of the bed, the idea is that this is either left burning through the night or extinguished before you go to sleep. Some men feel it is acceptable to put this candle out by throwing their tunic over it.20 As you might realize, this is unwise.

  You may have been led to believe that the latrines in a castle are very smelly. This is not necessarily the case. The new latrine blocks are highly refined. The boards of the garderobe seat are covered with green cloth and the opening plugged with a cushion, to prevent any odors or drafts.21 In some castles there is a long drop beneath the seat—the ordure falling down the side of the castle mound into the ditch. In other places it drops down a chute into a strategically positioned barrel, which will be emptied by the castle gongfermor (latrine pit cleaner). Most advanced of all are the close-stools invented for members of the aristocracy at the end of the century. These are made of iron with removable brass basins beneath velvet-covered seats.22 Wherever you go, a neat pile of wool or linen will be provided for you to “wipe your nether end.”23 some great lords insist on cotton but it is not always available. A basin and jug of water will be ready for you to wash your hands when you have finished.

  Much more could be said about staying in a lordly residence but space prevents it. There is perhaps just one other important thing to say. If you arrive when the lord is not in residence, you will have a very different experience. If you are of sufficient rank you may still be given accommodation in a chamber, but the hall will be cold. No saucerers will be stirring pots over the great fires in the kitchens, no boys will be turning joints of meat on spits, no liveried grooms bustling around the courtyard with firewood and water for the ewers. Most castles are almost empty when the lord is not in residence, and this applies also to royal residences when the constable is away. Just a castellan and three or four valets are present, together with a couple of menial servants. The vast hall will be cold and dark, the fine linen absent, the chandeliers unlit, and the aumbry bare. There is normally no need for large numbers of men to garrison an
empty castle. Unless it is situated in a particularly dangerous area, it is unlikely to be attacked. The fact that a medieval building is fortified is enough to deter most robbers from attempting to enter it.

  Peasant Houses

  There are as many different sorts of peasant houses as there are peasant families, and there are huge variations across the regions. But perhaps you are wondering about staying in the house of a moderately prosperous Midlands yeoman, with thirty acres to his name. His house is likely to be a wooden structure of three bays (about forty-five feet by fifteen or so) built on a stone foundation plinth. The hall extends to two bays; the third bay at one end is a storeroom at ground-floor level and the family bedchamber above, reached by a ladder. Normally the frame of the house is made up of two curved oak timbers (crucks), joined by a heavy ridge pole across the top of the house, with oak or elm purlins forming the frame of the walls. The whole structure has a slightly warped look since it is built with unseasoned timbers that twist into their own shape as they harden over the first few years. The walls themselves are made of ash struts encased in cob. The roof is framed with ash struts across oak beams and thatched with osiers, or rye or wheat straw. A few slates or tiles cover the parts likely to be affected by sparks from the fire. One problem with this organic design is that, while it holds heat well, it attracts vermin which burrow into the walls and roof of the house.

  You enter by way of an oak door set on iron hinges. This fits into a frame which is strong enough to warrant the door having a lock. Immediately inside is the hall, which is quite dark, being lit only by a central fire and shuttered unglazed windows which are small enough to keep the heat in and the winter weather out. The furniture includes a chair, a pair of benches, several chests, and little else. The walls are not painted but might be plastered. Looking up, you will see that the beams and upper parts of the room are blackened with smoke. Some of the householder’s possessions are hung on the walls or suspended from the beams: some tools, joints of salted meat kept over the winter, tubs, tripods, hoops, and buckets. The floor is strewn with rushes and herbs. Beneath the rushes is bare earth which is swept with a broom of clustered twigs when the rushes are replaced.

  The fire rests in a clay-lined pit in the center of the hall and is kept alight day and night from late autumn through to spring. If it is used for cooking it may be kept alight all year round—although cooking tends to be done outside in summer. Utensils, such as a spit or gridirons, are stored here beside the hearth. Here too is a brass cauldron in which much of the food is boiled. Pans of riveted copper plates, a mortar and pestle and bakestones (for oatcakes) are hung on the wall or kept in a chest. Some peasants even keep their grain and vegetables in wooden chests in the hall.

  Once your host has made you welcome he will offer you a bench beside the fire so you may warm yourself as the family bustles about, preparing for the meal. You will not be expected to assist in any way—you are an honored guest. The householder or his servant (most yeomen have a servant or two) will set up the table board on a couple of trestles and arrange its furnishings of wooden bowls, ceramic jugs, and drinking vessels. If he thinks highly of his social position, then he will have invested in a couple of silver spoons. The tablecloth is linen or canvas and hangs down to the floor. The householder sits at the head of the table. He takes charge of cutting the bread and meat—if there is any—and distributing it. The rest of the family sit at the table beside you on the benches. A boy, carrying a ewer, ensures that everyone has the opportunity to wash their hands thoroughly before the meal.

  After supper the householder will have his children sent to bed in the family bedchamber and spend the evening talking with you beside the fire. You see his face in the small golden glow of a tallow candle. Even in this poor light you may find his wife darning or stitching clothes for the family, squinting at her needlework. When the time comes to go to bed, you and your servant will be offered a made-up bed in the bedchamber upstairs. This is a mattress, stuffed with straw or oats, placed on wooden planks, and covered with linen sheets, woollen blankets, and a pillow, together with a bedspread. In Chaucer’s “Reeve’s Tale,” the two students staying overnight are given a made-up bed to share in the bedchamber; there too sleep the miller and his wife (who share a bed), their daughter (who has her own berth), and their baby (in a cot). At night the room is totally dark—no candle is left burning through the night in a peasant’s house. If you should need to answer a call of nature, you will have to get up, feel your way to the door, descend the ladder, and go outside: you will not find a chamber pot.24

  Household Goods of Robert Oldham of Cuxham, Oxfordshire, c.135025

  Item

  Value

  Three brass pots

  2s each

  Two pans and a tripod for cooking

  1s

  Hoops for wooden vessels

  1s

  Two metal ewers

  6d each

  One basin and ewer

  8d

  Another basin and ewer

  2s 8d

  Canvas cloth

  9d

  A tapet

  3d

  A tapet with sheets

  3s 4d

  A tapet with two sheets and four blankets

  5s 4d

  A tablecloth

  2s 6d

  A towel

  6d

  Two cloths

  8d

  A coffer

  2s

  Two stools

  8d

  One bench

  1½d

  Most peasant houses are sparsely furnished, like those of their social superiors. In Robert Oldham’s house the only items of furniture mentioned are a chest, two stools, and a bench. The appraiser has apparently regarded the value of his bed and table as nil. But Robert’s clothes are valued at 34s, setting him far above most peasants. The poorest villeins live in cottages which are little more than hovels. They consist of a single room of one bay only, perhaps just thirteen feet square. The roof is of thatch or turf, which leaks after a few years if not repaired. In winter it is quite likely that you will have to step over a puddle of water which has collected in the rut worn in the doorway. The door itself swivels on a stone at its base and is tied to the frame of the house at the top; therefore it does not swing easily. There is no lock, only a latch. The shutters are hinged with pieces of hide on their upper edge and propped open at the bottom with a stick. The floor is bare earth, covered with straw. The whole house is damp. It is smoky: “full sooty was her bower,” as Chaucer would say. The arrangement of the shutters means that the house is often dark, even in the daytime. Eating facilities might include a trestle table, an earthenware jug, wooden bowls, a bench, and a stool. The sleeping area is tucked behind a wattle screen along one side of the room: a bed made of three planks, a mattress of dried heather or fern, a single sheet, and an old blanket on top. Other possessions might include a brass cooking pot, an old cauldron, a basket, and a tub outside for storing water brought back from the well. It might be someone’s home but “homely” is not a word you would use to describe it.

  8

  What to Eat and Drink

  The modern traveler, coming from an age of good food guides and supermarkets, is liable to forget that people in medieval England still starve to death. Bad years for wheat are 1315–17 (the Great Famine), 1321–23, 1331–32, 1350–52, 1363–64, 1367–68, 1369–71, and 1390–91.1 And these are just the bad years for wheat; there are just as many paltry harvests for all the other cereal crops, and when any one of them fails, people suffer. If a season’s storms leave all the crops under water and rotting in the fields, and the cattle, sheep, and pigs drown in the swollen rivers and mud, and catch waterborne diseases, there is simply nothing for the poor man and his family to eat except the fruit from the trees (if there is any) and the preserved remains of last year’s harvest. When two years’ crops fail in succession, families die. The undernourished children perish first, susceptible to diseases in their weake
ned state, but it is not long before the adults follow. Men and women will eat anything—herbs, grass, drawk and darnel (forms of weed), vetches, acorns, and even bark—in their efforts to stay alive. They turn to crime—stealing food and livestock wherever they can.2 Sometimes the king and his council try to relieve the situation but there is little they can do except lower the duties on imported grain. This has no effect outside the major towns, for the rural peasantry cannot physically transport themselves to buy the grain. Even if they could make the journey they could not afford to pay the inflated prices being charged.

  The pangs of starvation are felt just as severely by those caught in a siege. When you find yourself in a castle or town, with overwhelming force beyond the gates, you may well have to decide between two terrible fates: surrender and death by hanging on the one hand, or resistance and the likelihood of a slow death through starvation on the other. Those who choose the latter may suffer the most unimaginable tortures from lack of food. If you visit Calais in the summer of 1347, you will see just how bad things can get. At the outset of the siege, in September 1346, the French captain of the town expels most of the women, the children, the old, and the unfit, so there are only able-bodied men left. Over the next eleven months those men use up all their supplies. They eat every animal in the town: every dog, cat, and horse. By July they are catching rats and eating those. When they finally give in (on August 4, 1347) it is because, as the captain states in a letter to the French king, they have nothing left to eat but one another, and they would rather die on the battlefield than consume the flesh of their friends and relatives.