by Ian Mortimer
Plays
Traveling from town to town you are likely at some point to come across a performance of a play. The most common sorts are the miracle plays and mystery plays which are performed on feast days in the larger towns. The sequences of plays performed at York, Chester, and Wakefield are very famous, but you will also find mystery plays put on at Coventry, Newcastle, Norwich, Northampton, Brome (in Suffolk), Bath, Beverley Bristol, Canterbury, Ipswich, Leicester, Worcester, Lincoln, London (at Clerkenwell), and Exeter.11 Worcester’s five plays or pageants are enshrined in the town ordinances (see chapter 10).
The York mystery plays are held on the movable feast of Corpus Christi (the Thursday after Trinity Sunday). Each of the city guilds (otherwise known as “mysteries”—hence the name) takes responsibility for putting on one play. The Guild of Goldsmiths stages the “Coming of the Three Kings” and the Guild of Shipwrights performs the “Building of the Ark.” How apt, you might think, until you realize that the “Death of Christ” is performed by the Guild of Butchers. Each play is staged on a two-storey wagon, with a stage on the upper floor and the changing room and props area below. These wagons are pulled between the twelve watching places around the city So all you have to do is turn up at one of these places and see each play brought to you, over the course of several days.
Just as people in the modern world rush to see a star performer, so medieval people flock to see a familiar religious play. In medieval drama it is God, or Jesus, or the martyred saints who are the stars.
Members of the audience can become passionately involved. Watch the fascination on their faces as they see Christ suffering, in agony, giving his life on the cross/or them. When the crowd watches Eve tempting Adam with an apple in the Garden of Eden, they see the Fall of Man for themselves. Similarly, the reenactment of Noah and the Flood symbolizes the destruction of evil people and their desire to escape damnation. They can see with their own eyes a representation of what might happen to them if they do not repent of their sins. In a century which has seen God smite nearly half the population with plague, these scenes have huge resonance.
Another variety of religious play you might come across is the morality play. As performed by clerks, in Latin, these have a long history, dating back centuries. In English they are only just beginning to take off. The great morality plays, such as The Somonynge of Everyman, will not be written until the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, if you come across a drama which takes the form of a battle between the vices and the virtues, then you are probably watching an early morality play. Characters will include the likes of “Ignorance,” “Humility,” “Covetousness,” “Good Deeds,” “Riot,” and so on. They are nowhere near as sensational as the sufferings of the saints and less meaningful to most people than the Bible-history plays. But you might find the characters of the Devil and Old Vice entertaining, even if for the wrong reasons.
Akin to the morality plays are some of the mummers’ performances and other “disguising games” put on at Christmas and other feasts. In these the emphasis is not so much on words and scripts as on roles, exemplified by the masks (”mumming” is another word for “disguising”). Heroes are pitted against “evils” such as the Cardinals of Rome or the legendary giants Gog and Magog. Hence men must dress up like these “evils.” Edward III is very keen on such disguising games, and he makes them into spectacular events. For Christmas 1338 he places an order for “eighty-six plain masks, fourteen masks with long beards, fifteen baboons’ heads of linen . . . and twelve ells of canvas to make a forest, with a wooden pillory and a cucking stool.”12 Nine years later (Christmas 1347), for the games held at Guildford, the king orders “fourteen masks with women’s faces, fourteen with the faces of bearded men, fourteen with the silver faces of angels, fourteen painted cloaks, fourteen dragons’ heads . . . fourteen pheasant heads, fourteen pairs of wings for these heads, fourteen tunics painted with the eyes of pheasants’ wings, fourteen swans’ heads, fourteen pairs of wings for the swans, fourteen painted linen tunics, and fourteen tunics painted with stars.”13 In 1348, you can even see the king himself take part in one of these mummings, dressed as a giant bird.14
Mumming does not always involve a play. Witness the procession that takes place before the ten-year-old Prince Richard at Kennington in late January 1377. One hundred and thirty London citizens “disguised and well horsed in a mummery” ride out of the city via Newgate, with trumpets, sackbuts, cornets, shawms, and other instruments and “innumerable torches of wax.” They pass over London Bridge and ride through Southwark to Kennington, where the young prince is staying with his mother, his uncles, and many other lords. They all ride two by two, in red coats and gowns, with masks on their faces. Forty-eight of them come as esquires, and forty-eight as knights. Then follows one “richly arrayed like an emperor” and another man “attired like a pope.” After these follow twenty-four cardinals and “eight or ten men with black masks, as if they are legates from foreign princes.” When they have all entered the courtyard, they alight from their horses and enter the hall. The prince and his mother and the lords come out of the chamber into the hall, and the mummers salute them. The leading mummers place a pair of dice on the table before the prince and wager him a golden bowl. There is quiet.. . The prince rolls the dice . . . He wins! Next the mummers wager a golden cup. Young Richard rolls . . . He wins again! Thirdly they bet a golden ring. And yes, you’ve guessed. The dice are loaded in the prince’s favor. The mummers give gold rings to everyone present, and so begins a feast, and music sounds, and the prince and the lords dance with the mummers.15
No account of playacting would be complete without mentioning satire. Just as sarcasm is an essential element of everyday humor, so too reversing the order of things is considered a worthwhile and telling joke. In many great households satirical games are played at Christmas. Household roles are reversed. Chief officers are forced to act as menial servants for a short while, and a kitchen servant might be set up as a steward or lord. What is interesting is that underlying all this mockery is an acute awareness that at any moment the order of things really might be reversed. The Wheel of Fortune—which lifts men up only to set them down in their pride—is a familiar image to all medieval people. And it is this understanding of vainglory that powers medieval satire.
One of the best and most entertaining examples you will see of this is a street show mocking the Church in general, and the Premonstratensian Order in particular—its chief monastery being that of Sempringham. The Premonstratensians are most famous for having both male and female canons in one double monastery, under one roof. Sniggering in some secular quarters is inevitable. In 1348 a group of players pull up their wagon in the streets of Exeter and set about performing their play about the “Order of Brothelyngham.” The authorities’ reaction is shock. The bishop writes immediately to his archdeacon:
We have heard, not without grave disquietude, that a certain abominable sect of evil-minded men, named the Order of Brothelyngham, has lately arisen by inspiration of him who sows all evil deeds. These men . . . have chosen for their head a certain crazy lunatic, of temper most suitable to their evil purpose. This man they call their abbot; they dress him in monastic garb, set him up upon a stage, and adore him as their idol. Then, at the sound of a horn, which they have chosen instead of a bell, they lead him through the streets and lanes of the city of Exeter with a great throng of horse and foot at their heels. In this procession they lay hold of any clergymen or laymen whom they find in their way—even taking some from their own houses—and hold them with rash, headlong and sometimes sacrilegious spirit until they have extorted from them sums of money by way of sacrifice . . . And though they seem to do this under colour and cloak of buffoonery, it is without doubt nothing but theft . . . 16
In medieval theater, it is not so much bad reviews which you need to fear but excommunication.
Jousting
If any spectacle from the fourteenth century can be said to be essential viewing, it has to be t
he joust. Where else, in all history, can you see the richest, most powerful, and most privileged members of society risk injury and death for the sake of your entertainment? Where else in all history can you find rich and powerful men paying for the privilege of breaking their necks and goring one another in public? One cannot imagine Roman emperors and senators fighting publicly. Nor Elizabethan seadogs, nor Jacobean courtiers. As for our modern political leaders, business leaders, and aristocrats, forget it. There is something intrinsically medieval about the practice of the great and the good risking injury and death for no other reason but to prove themselves worthy of their status through public demonstrations of their courage, strength, and skill.
In case you have any doubt about the level of danger, let it be stated unequivocally. Jousting is dangerous. A late-fourteenth-century knight will be wearing armor weighing eighty to one hundred pounds. He himself weighs perhaps two hundred pounds. He will be seated on a high saddle, charging toward you with a closing speed of about forty miles an hour on a destrier weighing more than a thousand pounds, and carrying a lance in which all the force is concentrated on a steel tip. Even if the tip is capped or blunt, the point of impact will be no more than a few square inches. The force exerted through that small area is enormous. If your opponent makes contact with your helmet, the blow may be likened to being knocked about the head with a hammer weighing half a ton, wielded at a speed of forty miles an hour. If you could not fall off your horse under such circumstances, you would not survive. Of course, falling off still means crashing to the ground from a galloping horse, in heavy armor, which is sometimes fatal in itself.
This form of joust—knights tilting at each other—is a refinement of a much older form of tournament, the behourd or mêlée, which is even more dangerous. It reflects the origins of tournaments—a means of training knights to charge together, in formation, to sweep an enemy off the battlefield. When introduced in the late eleventh century it stuns Christendom: a Byzantine princess, seeing a massed charge of Frankish knights for the first time, exclaims that they could punch a hole in the walls of Constantinople. The massed charge of knights continues to dominate warfare throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But in 1314, at Bannockburn, the Scots come up with a solution. They use an arrangement called a “schiltrom.” This is a group of a few dozen men with very long pikes—sixteen feet long—all radiating outward. Those in the schiltrom all dig one end of their pikes into the ground and let the horses run towards them, holding the pikes steady while the horses impale themselves. In the same battle the Scots king, Robert Bruce, uses caltrops: small spheres of metal with four sharpened points emanating, so one point is always directed upwards. These make it harder for horses to charge along roads and stay in formation, as the caltrops stick in their hooves and cause them to stumble. With these developments, the massed charge is nearing the end of its useful life. When the English perfect the use of massed longbows in formation in the 1330s, the massed charge can no longer be seen as a significant strategic advantage, and the behourd is no longer a useful training exercise.
Even if you do witness a behourd in the fourteenth century, it will be unlike those of old. In the thirteenth century they are little more than battles without a cause. Men are frequently killed: in 1241 eighty knights are killed in a single tournament. But you need to remember that in those days it is said that a man “is not fit for battle unless he has seen his own blood flow, and heard his teeth crunch under the blow of an opponent.”17 A fourteenth-century behourd is gentle by comparison—undertaken for the benefit of the spectators rather than actual military training. One takes place at the tournament to celebrate the marriage of Edward III and Queen Philippa in 1328 at York. This is one of the last. After 1330, tilting, with all its chivalric rules, takes over.
In the mid-1330s, in the Marches of Scotland, the English and the Scots develop the joust of war. These are solo jousts—tilting with sharpened steel lances—not just for the sake of sport but also to kill the opponent. At one such joust held in front of Edward III at Roxburgh in 1341, Henry, earl of Derby, takes part in a joust of war against William Douglas and mortally wounds him. At a similar joust held shortly afterwards at Berwick to celebrate Christmas, the same earl leads a team of twenty English knights in a series of jousts of war against twenty Scottish knights. Only three men are killed, although many more are badly injured, including some who cheat by wearing armor underneath their clothes. What, you say—surely one wears armor on top of one’s clothes? Not in this case. Astonishingly, both sides agreed before the joust not to wear any protective clothing.18
The jousts of war held in Scotland differ from a proper battle in one important respect. Killing your opponent is part of the sport. Prizes are given out by heralds afterwards to those survivors who have performed well, so it clearly has the character of a sporting event. One cannot say the same for the jousts of war held on March 27, 1351. On this occasion thirty English and Breton knights and esquires meet thirty French and Breton knights and esquires in a great behourd. Nine of the thirty on the English side are killed. On this basis, jousts of war might be considered the only sport in history with odds worse than Russian roulette. However, an armed struggle in which men are trying to kill one another is normally called war. This behourd comes to be known as the Battle of the Thirty. There is a very thin line between staging a joust of war for sport and the prosecution of an international armed conflict. Basically it comes down to handing out prizes for style.
Jousts of peace—jousts with capped lances—are normally only occasionally fatal. Sometimes a knight breaks his neck falling from his horse, or the strap on his helmet breaks, or a lance finds a chink between two pieces of his armor, but most injuries amount to no more than serious bruising, loss of teeth, and broken bones. Hence they are joyous occasions. Huge crowds attend them. People flirt, eat lavishly, and drink copiously, and they watch their aristocratic champions fight one another. When the great tournament of St. Inglevert takes place in spring 1390, very large numbers of Englishmen cross the Channel just to watch. For forty days, three French knights try to hold their own against all comers—from England, Spain, Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia—and the three of them manage it, despite having to fight more than a hundred visiting knights, some of them with uncapped lances. Of course all three Frenchmen are repeatedly injured in this extraordinarily uneven contest and have to have days off to recover, but all three survive. The kingdom of France is overjoyed at their success, which must be considered the greatest international sporting fixture of the century.
Hunting and Hawking
If the aristocracy are keen for the common folk to attend their jousts, then the opposite applies to their hunting parties. Hunting is one of the favorite occupations of the rich, and it is a carefully guarded privilege. All the designated forests are reserved as the hunting grounds of the king. Although the Charter of the Forest allows for lords to hunt a deer or two if they are passing through, this does not apply to anyone else. Very heavy fines are levied on any commoner who kills the king’s deer. The same applies to lordly chases. If the king makes a grant of a chase to one of his lords, then this is tantamount to allowing him to have a private forest, where he and his friends can hunt roe deer, fallow deer, and red deer. If he grants him only “free warren,” then he may keep a pack of hounds but only hunt foxes, hares, coneys, and pheasants with them, not deer or boar.
A huge amount of money is spent on hunting. In the 1360s, Edward III spends about £80 per year on keeping a pack of dogs and maintaining the huntsmen to look after them and train them.19 His pack numbers between fifty and seventy dogs, and while lordly hunting packs are normally between a quarter and half this size, keeping them is nonetheless expensive. This is especially the case as aristocratic ladies also like to hunt, and they often do so together, so their packs of hounds need to be transported around the country20 Costs include food, huntsmen and fewterers (those in charge of the pack), and transportation. And of course the purchase price o
f the dogs themselves: greyhounds, mastiffs, alaunts (the heaviest and most vicious), spaniels (so called because they are believed to come from Spain), setters, and lymers (scenting hounds). Of course you need to add the cost of such trinkets as silver collars for the favorite dogs and silver-rimmed hunting horns. Even the costume in which to go hunting is expensive. In 1343 the king pays for green Turkish cloth to make the tunics and courtpieces for eleven earls and knights to accompany him on a hunt, plus mulberry Turkish cloth for his mother, his wife, and four other ladies for the same hunt, and more Turkish cloth for tunics for the fifteen esquires accompanying them.21
What people choose to hunt depends on personal taste as well as the law. The acknowledged expert, Edward, eldest son of the duke of York, will assure you that, while the hart (red deer) is the best to hunt, the buck (fallow deer) is the best to eat. He also praises the wild boar as a quarry, on the grounds of danger; according to him a boar can rip a man in half with its tusks. Sadly, it is unlikely you will be able to chase after wild boar. They have been hunted nearly to extinction in Britain: to see them you really have to be with the king, as his royal cousins on the continent send them as occasional presents. So, if you would take Edward of York’s advice, hunt the hare instead. Although he is the son of a duke, he actually prefers hunting hares to deer, wild boar, and everything else. The reason, he explains, is that you can hunt them all year round, in the morning as well as in the evening. The hare is a clever, watchful, and swift quarry. It can run for miles and so can give the hounds a good long chase before being caught. Rabbits and coneys by comparison are good for nothing but trapping in nets, so they can be skinned, eaten, and turned into fur-trimmed hoods.
If you think hunting with dogs is an expensive business—and it most certainly is—then you will be astonished to realize how much money is spent on falconry. In 1368 Edward Ill’s falconry expenses exceed £600—more than most lords’ annual incomes. Although this is exceptional, even in a normal year he spends more than £200. He employs forty falconers, each at 2d per day, and spends up to 1 Via feeding each of his fifty to sixty birds.22 In 1373 he orders all the bridges in Oxfordshire to be repaired, simply because he wishes to go hawking. His fanaticism for the sport leads him to introduce legislation protecting trained birds of prey. From 1363, if you find a falcon, tiercel, lanner, or any other lost hawk, you must hand it over to the sheriff so it may be reclaimed by its owner.