by Ian Mortimer
Ecclesiastical Courts
After reading about Richard Folville, you might well ask what right a clergyman has to lecture you on matters of law. Such opinions are shared by a number of people. How come bishops and archdeacons can enforce the law on moral behavior? Some high-ranking clergymen even publicly acknowledge their own illegitimate children.37 Nevertheless, no discussion of the law would be complete without reference to the church courts. One particular aspect—the benefit of clergy—means that you, as a literate person, should never have to face the death penalty for a felony.
There are various sorts of church courts in England. The most important are the consistory courts, with jurisdiction over the whole diocese, and the archdeaconry courts. Many sorts of cases can be brought. Where one person wishes to take action against another in a moral issue—for example, slander or wife beating—and both individuals live within the same archdeaconry, then it is to the archdeaconry court they will go. It is not a cheap business, however. To raise a suit costs 3d. The libel (the document requiring the defendant to turn up and defend himself or herself) 2s Id. The examination costs a further Is. Securing a sentence could cost 7s 8d in the diocese of Canterbury so you will only find this sort of action being taken in the most extreme circumstances.38
Just as important are indictments for moral offenses reported to the church courts. These include defamation of character, drunkenness, swearing, trading on a Sunday (especially butchers and barbers), not attending church on a Sunday, heresy, perjury, false alms taking, eating meat on a nonmeat day, attacks on clergymen, failure to pay tithes, usury, ill treatment of wives, divorce (on grounds of consanguinity or nonconsummation), and legal cases against clergymen. By far the largest category of cases are those concerned with sexual offenses. Between a third and two-thirds of all moral disputes arise from sexual behavior, mostly fornication, bigamy, and adultery but also including prostitution, bastardy, homosexuality, and incest. These are all dealt with in the consistorial court. In such cases, the bishop’s commissary may order the offending parties to be fined, to be whipped, to carry candles in procession in the church on a Sunday, to make offerings at the altar before everyone else in the church, or to stand in a white sheet at the door of the church on three successive Sundays, confessing his or her crime. Failure to attend court results in suspension (so one cannot enter a church until making good with the court) and, in the worst cases, excommunication.
Just as any nobleman has the right to be tried by his peers in Parliament, so too any clergyman has the right to be judged by the church courts. The right is called “the benefit of clergy,” and it is vigorously upheld in an Act of 1315. The “benefit” element is obvious: even if found guilty of a felony by Convocation (the highest church court, the ecclesiastical equivalent of Parliament), a clergyman will not face the death penalty. Interestingly, the test for whether you are a clergyman is very low: can you read a passage from the Bible? If you are accused of a felony, and find yourself in court, you should claim benefit of clergy and read the text you are given. In theory you will be tried again by the church courts—even if already found guilty by the king’s courts—but normally the clergyman who takes responsibility for you will simply let you go.
Sanctuary
For those who are guilty of a serious felony, and in fear of retribution, there exists one last resort. If you can get to a church before you are arrested, you can claim sanctuary. With the slamming of that consecrated oak door behind you, you are safe—in theory—for up to forty days. Sanctuary is confirmed by your confession, while in the said church, to a witness. Those pursuing you at that point must place a guard over the door to prevent you escaping—and they can be fined if you escape. According to the Act of 1315, anyone claiming sanctuary cannot be forced from the church by hunger—the guards should feed you. Furthermore, you may freely leave the church to urinate and defecate outside. The coroner should turn up within the forty days and confiscate your goods. He will then assign you a sea port from which you will abjure the realm. You will make your way to it along the king’s highway, bareheaded and barefoot, and take the next ship leaving the kingdom.
That is, at least, how sanctuary should operate. In reality, you will be lucky to reach exile, especially if you are a murderer. Sometimes the community is “unable” to persuade the coroner to attend and will stop feeding you after forty days. Sometimes they will not feed you at all. When a thief is set to abjure the realm, a large crowd normally gathers to pursue him on the highway, making his life a misery as far as they wish. Personal circumstances often complicate the exercising of the right. On one occasion a man charged with the murder of a priest escapes from the custody of the priest’s servants and seeks sanctuary in a church. As the man is a fugitive from justice—the priest’s servants were trying to arrest him when he fled—he is denied the right to abjure the realm. After forty days he is given the choice of starving to death in the church or giving himself up. He chooses the latter—and is promptly hanged.39 In 1320 Isabella de Bury kills the parish clerk of Allhallows on the Wall, London, and takes refuge in the same church. The bishop of London himself sends word that the Church refuses to shelter such a woman, and she is dragged out and hanged.40
Finally, it is worth noting that the right of sanctuary is often ignored. As the case of Richard Folville shows, a priest taking shelter in his own church can hardly claim sanctuary when he is a notorious criminal. When Chief Justice Tresilian is found hiding in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey during the Merciless Parliament, he is not allowed to abjure the realm but is dragged out by the king’s uncle and hanged. Many people during the Peasants’ Revolt take sanctuary in churches: large numbers are forcibly removed and beheaded as if they are fugitives from justice, regardless of the law. Everything depends on the level of feeling against the culprit. A Breton, taken in by a much-loved old widow in London, murders her in her bed and steals her goods. When caught, he flees to sanctuary. It is a brief respite. As soon as the coroner has assigned him a port, the murderer sets out on the road. But the widow’s grief-stricken friends wait for him and stone him to death.41 In medieval England, popular justice is no more forgiving than the royal judges and the hangman’s noose.
11
What to Do
It is a challenge, when confronted by the extreme adversities of life, to remember that fourteenth-century England has a strong element of joy running through it. It is a calamitous century, no doubt about it, but people cope. Indeed, they are exuberant about life, whether it be caroling and dancing that gives them pleasure, or fighting jousts and hunting with hawks. Lords and kings have their jesters and minstrels to tell them jokes and stories and to play music, dance, and sing. Laughter is an integral part of daily life. When no one can bear to tell the king of France about the defeat of his navy at Sluys in 1340, it is his jester who breaks the news to him, exclaiming, “How brave the Frenchmen are, throwing themselves into the sea, unlike those cowardly English, who cling to their ships.” Edward II is thoroughly entertained in 1313 by Bernard the Fool and fifty-four nude dancers.1 You might speculate as to what this says about Edward II, but there can be few people whose curiosity is not aroused by such an event, whatever era they come from.
Music and Dancing
Listen.
It is very quiet.
Out on the open road, you can hear nothing but the wind in the trees, the streams trickling, occasional calls of voices, and birdsong. The French knight of La Tour Landry, wandering in a garden, remarks on the wild birds singing in their different languages, “full of mirth and joy”2 The poet William Langland, lying by the side of a brook, leaning over to look in the water, remarks that the ripples in the stream sound so sweetly.
Indoors, there is practically no noise but the crackle of the fire, the thud as a wooden vessel is set down heavily on the stone floor, the clatter as a pewter plate is dropped. People speak to one another and sometimes sing to themselves. The loudest noises you will ever hear are thunder, trumpets being sound
ed; bells ringing across a city; the rumble of warhorses’ hooves (in a cavalry charge, for example, or during a tournament); and very, very occasionally, the sound of a cannon being fired. But, apart from musical instruments and bells, these loud noises are unusual. Sitting at a table in the great hall of a castle, the loudest noises will be the chatter from the lower tables.
As a result of this comparative quiet, people listen differently. They hear with greater clarity. When a dog barks, they can recognize whose dog it is. They are more sensitive to voices. And, above all else, they listen intently to music.
Medieval people love music. It is—along with a love of good food, good jokes, and good stories—one of those aspects of life which unites everyone, from the most powerful nobleman to the most miserable villein. Even monks have been known to enjoy minstrelsy, especially the plucked notes of the harp. Music is part of the largesse of a great lord, offered to all those in his hall. Without it, his hospitality is considered inferior. Musicians are highly valued. In February 1312 Edward II makes a gift of forty marks (£26 13s 4d) to his herald-cum-minstrel, “King Robert,” and his fellow performers at a feast.3 In 1335 Edward III cheerfully gives fifty marks (£33 6s 8d) to another herald-cum-minstrel, Master Andrew Claroncel, and his companions, for “making their minstrelsy” for the king and his companions at court.4 These are huge sums for a few hours of entertainment. Roger Bennyng and his minstrels receive only twenty marks (£13 6s 8d) when performing for the king and queen at King’s Langley in July 1341, but that is certainly not a sum to be sniffed at.5 Nor is the personal payment of just half a mark (6s 8d) to Hanekino in return for playing his fiddle in front of the king before the statue of the Virgin at Christchurch, Canterbury, in 1369.6 Most people have to work for at least three weeks to earn as much.
The instruments played by these musicians vary and are constantly evolving. There is no one pattern for a harp, or a trumpet, or even a fiddle. No two instruments are exactly the same, being handmade and thus rather of a type than an exact design. The numbers of strings on a harp may vary, so too may the length of a trumpet. The arrangements of instruments in a band vary considerably too. Those depicted on the Exeter Cathedral minstrels’ gallery (built about 1350) include a set of bagpipes, a recorder, a fiddle, a harp, a trumpet (without any valves), a portable organ, a tambourine, and three other instruments which you might not immediately recognize: a gittern, a citole, and a shawm.
As music is one of the few ways of making a loud noise, it has other purposes besides delighting audiences. “High” minstrelsy is the description of loud instrumentation—using trumpets, sackbuts, bagpipes, clarions, shawms, and nakers—while “low” minstrelsy is the more melodic variety. The cooperation between heralds and trumpeters is obvious; many heralds are in charge of troupes of musicians, for making loud, proclamatory sounds. Lords when traveling or setting out for war take minstrels who are experienced in high minstrelsy. Edward Ill’s household in France in 1345-47 includes a department of minstrels, with five trumpeters, a citoler, five pipers, one tabor player, two clarion players, a nakerer, and a fiddler.7 Henry IV as earl of Derby, sets out on his journey across Europe in 1392 with two trumpeters, three pipers, and a nakerer.8 Town “waits” or bands of watchmen also use musical instruments, in case they need to sound the alarm. As brass trumpets and clarions are very expensive, and thus rare outside noblemen’s households, shawms are the next best thing, carried by those guarding city gates. If no shawm is available, a good old hunting horn is used.
As for “low” music, the more melodic variety, where might you hear it? The answer is, almost anywhere. You will always hear musicians at a nobleman’s feast—no fewer than 1 75 of them are employed at the knighting of the prince of Wales (the future Edward II) in May 1306. But you will also hear shepherds playing their flutes and whistles in the hills. Nicholas, the Cambridge student in Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale,” plays a psaltery. Absolon in “The Reeve’s Tale,” plays the bagpipes, and so does the “Miller,” who tells “The Miller’s Tale.” The esquire serving the narrator of “The Knight’s Tale” plays the flute. Wander across the Lincolnshire manor of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell in 1340 and you might see a peasant playing bagpipes while a female acrobat dances before him. You might see other peasants there playing a hurdy-gurdy, nakers, bagpipes, bells, and even a portable organ.
Fourteenth-Century Musical Instruments (excluding those still in common use)
Name
Description
Gittern
A small round-backed instrument, like a lute, but without a neck (its neck being merely an extension of its teardrop-shaped body). It has four or five pairs of strings and is plucked with a quill plectrum.
Citole
A stringed instrument peculiar to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It has a holly-leaf-shaped body, a short neck, a flat back, and three or four pairs of strings which are plucked with the fingers.
Shawm
A long wooden pipe with a double reed at the top (like a modern bassoon) and a bell shape at the bottom. It resembles the main pipe in a set of bagpipes but is much larger.
Nakers
Metal drums, like kettledrums, played in pairs suspended from the waist or, in much larger versions, set on the ground.
Tabor
A handheld drum which includes skins stretched across a frame (often played in conjunction with a pipe or whistle).
Rebec
A fiddle with three strings, played with a bow.
Psaltery
A metal-stringed medieval harp in a square box, plucked with a quill.
Clarion
A curved trumpet.
Sackbut
An extended and curved trumpet, like a trombone.
Crumhorn
A curved shawm with a mouthpiece over the reed, allowing it to be used by men on horseback (otherwise they would break the reed with every jolt).
Hurdy-gurdy
A stringed instrument played by the rotation of a hand-driven wheel passing over the strings (often played in conjunction with bagpipes).
Come the time when ale is brewed at the church house—a scotale as it is called—then all the working instruments in the village will be put to good use for the enjoyment of all.
Where there is music, there is dancing. As minstrelsy includes acrobats and jugglers, often dancers and musicians will travel together, as a troupe. Sometimes their performances are extraordinary: doing a handstand on the points of two swords while being accompanied by a man playing two recorders at once is a trick you ought to see.9 Acrobats doing tumbling acts to the beating of a drum, or young women dancing the erotic dance of Salome are hardly less eye-catching. Alternatively, the spectacle of a dancing bear or a performing dog might be built into a musical act. At a local event, like a scotale, you are likely to find the common folk taking to their feet. Most amateur dancing takes the form of “caroling” in which everyone holds hands or links arms in a big circle and skips to the left or right around the leader, who stands in the middle singing the verses of the song. Everyone taking part in the dance then sings the chorus. Unlike modern carols, which tend to be exclusively religious, many medieval ones are bawdy songs, and some are downright lascivious. As caroling sometimes takes place in a churchyard (dancing outdoors is as common as indoors), a number of priests are offended. Some will wag a finger at you and remind you of the story told by William of Malmesbury—how, on a Christmas night, twelve dancers went caroling around the church and persuaded the priest’s daughter to join them. The priest forbade the dancers from dancing and swore that, if they did not desist, he would see to it that they would carry on dancing for the next twelve months. And so it occurred: his curse worked, their hands became inseparably joined, and they could not stop dancing. When the priest’s son ran out to try to save his sister, he seized her hand and her arm broke off like a rotten stick.10
Pay no attention to William of Malmesbury or finger-wagging priests. Everyone dances. Everyone sings. In the churches and mo
nasteries the clergy sing Mass. English descants (three-part polyphony) and motets are written in the last decades of the century. By 1400 England is on the brink of becoming the preeminent musical kingdom in Christendom. Even the royal family write and play music (the recorder and the harp). In his youth, Henry IV and his first wife, Mary de Bohun, sing and play music together. Chaucer writes of how Henry’s mother, Lady Lancaster, used to “dance so comely, carol and sing so sweetly . . . that never has Heaven seen so blissful a treasure.” Even his Wife of Bath declares that “I could dance to a small harp, and sing like any nightingale, when I had downed a draught of mellow wine.” Similarly Chaucer says of the carpenter’s newly wedded wife in “The Miller’s Tale” that her voice is “as brisk and clear as any swallow perching on a barn.” At the start of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, a whole crowd of people come over the hill making music. Everyone sings and dances. In a century of plague, war and suffering, you have to.