by Linda Simon
Richard was more and more obsessed with the threat of insurrection and grew to believe that Henry Tudor was sure to succeed. He became publicly concerned with the usurper, attainted both him and his uncle Jasper, and warned the populace against the traitor:
The … rebelles and traitours have chosyn to be there capetyne one Henry Tydder, whiche of his ambicioness and insaviable covertise encrocheth and usurpid upon hym the name and title of royall estate of this Realme of Englond, where unto he hath no maner interest, right, title, or colour, as every man ele knoweth; for his is discended of bastard blood bothe of ffather side and of mother side … And if he shulde atcheve his fals entent and pirpose, every man is lif, livelod, and goodes shulde be in his hands, liberte, and disposicion, whereby sholde ensue the disheretyng and distruccion of all the noble and worshipfull blode of this Reame for ever …
Richard asked that all his supporters rally to defend the throne against the usurper, and promised that
our said soveraign Lord, as a wele willed, diligent, and coragious Prynce, wel put his moost roiall persone to all labour and payne necessary in this behalve for the resistence and subduyng of his seid enemys, rebells, and traitours to the moost comforte, wele and suerte of all his true and feithfull liege men and subgetts.[90]
Many surrounding the king were struck by his depression, which seemed to have begun in November 1483, after he had visited Exeter and was taken to a castle called Rugemont. He had once been told by a seer that when he came to Richmond, he would not have long to live. “Well, I see my daies be not long,” he remarked on his return.
Richard III acted like a defeated man, and many of his subjects looked forward to a new king who would bring vigor, strength, and a renaissance of spirit to England. In Wales, the prophet and poet Robert of the Dale was already singing:
Full well I wend,
That in the end,
Richmond sprung from Brittish race
From out this land the Boare shall chace …[91]
VIII - Bosworth
True hope is swift and flies with swallow’s wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
RICHARD III, Act 5, Scene 2
IN 1485, the population of England numbered some four and a half million. Of these, only twenty families made up the higher nobility. A merchant class was rising, but poverty was endemic. Wandering beggars roamed the roads and swarmed into London across the only span that crossed the Thames, London Bridge. The nine-hundred-fifteen-foot expanse of wood and stone was lined with four-and five-story buildings, some arcading the roadway. Beneath the bridge, oblivious of the turmoil of London life, thousands of swans floated peacefully.
Beggars made travel perilous, and many who journeyed recited a litany of rhymes: “A Charm Against Robbers,” “A Charm Against Thieves,” “A Charm for Travellers.” Some of the aggressive beggars were poor students who found solicitation in fine English or Latin a way of acquiring a small subsistence. Begging became so popular that restrictions had to be enacted, and no scholar was allowed to beg on the highways until the chancellor of the university duly determined his poverty and provided him with a certificate. The student-beggars, often armed with the swords they considered indispensable, were aggressive adolescents and were no less a threat to the innocent traveler than were less educated vagrants.
Life was characterized by risk and danger, but also by gaiety, exuberance, and a love of display. Those who could, tried to keep up with the latest fashions, which by the late fifteenth century were extremely stylized. Padding was used to create wide shoulders for men’s abbreviated tunics, which reached only a few inches below the waist. Women’s gowns were long, high-waisted, and often bore a flowing train. Most intriguing were the women’s elaborate headdresses, so heavy that a small cap of wire netting beneath was necessary to lessen the discomfort and strain on the head. Shoes reached an absurdity in width and had broad, blunt toes, where only decades before they had had pointed toes curling so far up the leg that attachments were needed to prevent the wearer from tripping on his own feet.
Dress delineated class, and sumptuary laws were passed at intervals to prevent the lesser classes from assuming noble postures. In 1464, for example, no one below a lord or knight of the Garter — or his wife — could wear purple, cloth of gold, velvet, or sable; the fine for infraction was twenty marks. The wearing of satin or ermine by those of low estate was fined ten marks. An income of forty shillings a year was necessary to permit the wearer to sport scarlet cloth and any fur except lamb. The lower classes were doomed to cloth that cost less than eleven pence per yard, and girdles fastened with anything but silver.
The well-dressed man wore a shirt, breeches, short jacket, long coat, stomacher (similar to a jeweled cumberbund), hose, socks, and shoes. Shirts were edged with lace embroidered with silk, especially at the collar and cuffs. Women’s cloaks were lined with exotic furs, and their gowns were fashioned of luxurious fabrics in jewellike colors: purple velvet, amber satin, crimson silk.
Under Edward IV foreign trade had become healthy, and cities were growing as the merchant class enjoyed a new prosperity. Castles throughout the countryside were allowed to deteriorate and fall into ruin, as affluent families moved to newly built manors nearer to the centers of trade. Soldiers behind cannon, replacing the famed English archers, had speeded the obsolescence of castle fortifications.
London itself was a vibrant metropolis. The banks of the Thames were lined with enormous warehouses for all manner of imported goods. There were three main merchant streets: Thames Street, with its fishmongers, ironmongers, vintners; Candlewick Street, famous for its cloth shops; and West Cheap, the finest street in the city, where the goldsmiths and jewelers were lodged. Many buildings were of wood, sometimes combined with stone. Only the newer structures used brick, made according to a technique learned from the Flemish. Churches and larger houses used glass imported from Burgundy or Lorraine, Flanders or Normandy. Often, plain white glass was decorated with flowers or birds; for churches, figures of prophets were usual in glass ornamentation.
Streets were badly paved. Any rainstorm, however brief, flooded them, and rain was frequent. The mud became stagnant, and the stench was often overpowering. Some of the nobility, demonstrating their heightened sensibility, did not leave their homes without a fragrant pomander to carry before their noses.
Londoners, for all their commerce with Europeans, were fiercely English. Even Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were netherlands in their imaginations, and the inhabitants of those territories were nearly barbarians. The English despised Italians, wrote one sensitive visitor from Italy, treated them contemptuously, and often followed insults with assaults.[92] The highest compliment to a foreigner was that “he looks like an Englishman.”[93] Antipathy to foreigners was caused by arrogance combined with fear. The English believed anything at home was necessarily better than anything continental; at the same time, they feared that all foreigners came to England plotting domination. “The English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them,” observed a Venetian visitor; “they think that there are no other men than themselves, and no other world but England.”[94]
For all their haughtiness, however, the English inspired admiration. The anonymous Venetian found them handsome, well dressed, well built, and intelligent. They were polite, but the men, at least, seemed somewhat cold. The women had a reputation for being passionate, which caused intense jealousy among their husbands. “Although their dispositions are somewhat licentious,” the visitor wrote, “I never have noticed any one, either at court or amongst the lower orders, to be in love; whence one must necessarily conclude, either that the English are the most discreet lovers in the world, or that they are incapable of love.”[95]
The Venetian was especially struck by the lack of affection shown by English parents toward their children. Beyond the age of nine, most children were sent to be trained in another family’s household, breaking ties with their parents at that t
ender age and being forced to render service to strangers. This seemed, to the visitor, an abomination. When he asked why the custom was perpetuated, he was told that the children might learn better manners away from their parents. But the Venetian thought privately that the English continued the practice out of their own greed. First, they would be served better by strangers’ children than by their own, to whom they might show parental kindness. Moreover, he noticed that the English were “great epicures, and very avaricious by nature.” They always saved the finest food for themselves, allowing their servants brown bread, beer, and on Sunday a ration of meat, which was to last the whole week. If children lived at home, they would have to share in the fine-milled white bread and spiced stews in which their parents so happily indulged.
The English were intensely concerned with the learning of manners and the placement of their sons and daughters in society, seeing their children as the most valuable of their possessions. From the time of birth, the child was swaddled, first physically and then psychologically, in an effort to ensure that there would be no balking against the strictures of custom. Childhood was not a time of idyll or reverie, but years of preparation for the serious enterprise of living as an adult. A youth was a man-child, dressed as a miniature version of his father and expected to try to emulate adults in all things. Both in his parents’ home and later, when he became an apprentice in another household, the child was expected to conform and be docile.
Reverence thy parents dear, so duty doth thee bind:
Such children as virtue delight be gentle, meek and kind.
The parting of siblings and the estrangement from parents may have produced better soldiers and more stalwart widows. Sentimental loyalties were discouraged, and early devotion often was solely to one’s nurse, rather than to one’s blood relative.
Children learned early, by rote and by example, that few people could be trusted forever. Friends had constantly to prove themselves. Love, celebrated in poetry and song, was not prerequisite to the arranged marriages, which sent pubescent children to bed in order to join their fortunes.
If there were any one English obsession, it was money.
Man upon mold [earth], whatsoever thou be,
I warn utterly thou gettest no degree,
Ne no worship abid with thee,
But thou have the peny redy to tak to.
If thou be a yeman, a gentleman wold be,
Into sum lordes cort than put thou thee:
Lok thou have spending, larg and plente,
And always the peny redy to tak to …
If thou be a squire and wold be a knight,
And darest not in armur put thee in fight,
Then to the kinges cort by thee full tight,
And lok thou have the peny redy to tak to …[96]
Money was always on the mind of the merchant class. By late in the century the merchants of London were living in multistory dwellings with a ground-floor shop and warehouse and residence quarters above. The first floor usually consisted of a hall, kitchen, larder, and butlery. Additional stories contained bedchambers and parlors. Where the castles of nobility consisted of large chambers used for various purposes, the houses of the merchants were notable for their many small rooms: several bedrooms, parlor, wardrobes, servants’ rooms, attic garrets, and the obligatory chapel.
The houses were heated by large fireplaces and lighted by candles. Furnishings were few. A bedroom would contain a featherbed, blankets, sheets, curtains, and perhaps a chest. If furnished elaborately, down pillows might be added, or a chair to supplement the bed for seating. In a “chamber for Straungers” the bed would always be made with a decorative coverlet. Wall hangings provided color and texture. Tapestries, woolen weavings, and skins adorned almost every whitewashed wall and covered tables and chests. Beds were surrounded by heavy draperies in brilliant patterns of scarlet, violet, azure, and gold. Floors were often strewn with rushes. If these were not frequently changed, all manner of debris accumulated beneath, sending up a troublesome stench.
Sanitation, in general, was primitive. There was only one municipal water system serving West Cheap, and although conduits were slowly added, most residents relied on well water for their needs. Only the wealthiest merchants had their own wells. Most of the houses had cesspits to accommodate solid sewage; liquid waste was emptied from buckets into gutters along the streets. Horse manure, accumulated in the stables behind the house, was carted away by a commissioned service and shipped to outlying areas to be used as fertilizer.
Outhouses were standard, with some families sharing a privy. Indoor facilities were considered shockingly unsanitary. Bathtubs were uncommon; the usual method of washing was in basins, a little at a time. But bathhouses, or “stews,” were popular and were often confused with brothels, whose services they sometimes duplicated. There were several legitimate bathing centers scattered throughout London, a few exclusively for women.
Despite poor facilities, the English aspired to high standards of personal hygiene and paid a great deal of attention to their hair, skin, and teeth. Regimen sanitatis salernitanum, a Latin poem first translated into English in the fifteenth century, offered some rules for personal care.
Rise early in the morne, and straight remember,
With water cold to wash your hands and eyes,
In gentle fashion retching every member,
And to refresh your braine when as you rise,
In heat, in cold, in July and December.
Both comb your head, and rub your teeth likewise …[97]
Teeth were cleansed with powders that might contain burned hartshorn or pulverized marble, myrrh, honey, and ground sage. Fragrant leaves were chewed as an antidote to halitosis, or the mouth would be rinsed with wine in which herbs had been steeped.
Hair was often dyed, and shining, curly tresses were the envy of most women. Steam baths were used to soften the skin, with emollients liberally applied. A lotion of Brazil-wood chips soaked in rose water was rubbed into pale cheeks to give them a rosy glow. If the complexion seemed too ruddy, root of cyclamen, ground into a powder, would be applied. Both men and women were concerned about freckles, moles, wrinkles, and warts, trying various mixtures of herbs, tinctures, or lotions to rid their skin of any blemishes. They were especially attentive to their feet, rubbing them with salt and vinegar to remove calluses, then applying a lotion of nettle juice and mutton fat or garlic, soap, and oil.[98]
Their concern with their bodies did not stop at the superficial. The Regimen was pithy in its advice:
Use three Physicians still; first Doctor Quiet,
Next Doctor Merry-man, and Doctor Dyet.[99]
All classes seemed prey to digestive upsets, and much of the Regimen consists of counsel on diets. In a word, the counsel was “temperance.”
Drinke not much wine, sup light, and soone arise,
When meate is gone, long sitting breedeth smart:
And after-noone still waking keepe your eyes.
When mov’d you find your self to Natures Needs,
Forbeare them not, for that much danger breeds …
Great harmes have growne, & maladies exceeding,
By keeping in a little blast of wind:
So Cramps & Dropsies, Collickes have their breeding,
And Mazed Braines for want of vent behind …
Great suppers do the stomacke much offend,
Sup light if quiet you to sleepe intend.
To keepe good dyet, you should never feed
Until you finde your stomacke cleane and void
Of former eaten meate …[100]
For indigestion and other ailments, garlic was thought to have multiple benefits. One could drink too much, eat too much, walk through the stench of the butchers’ quarters in London, and be saved from dire consequences by eating garlic.
Beare with it though it make unsavory breath:
And scorne not Garlicke, like to some that thinke
It onely makes men winke, and drinke, an
d stinke.[101]
But even with garlic, certain precautions had to be taken against disease. Houses were to be situated away from stagnant water and sewage. Rooms should be light and airy, with as much ventilation as possible. Restful settings should be visited often: in the evening, grassy slopes and peaceful fountains; in the morning, the crisp air of mountains.
For the diseases that, despite all good counsel, worried every family, physicians had a meager offering of treatment. “Diet, drinke, hot baths, whence sweat is growing, / With purging, vomiting, and letting blood …” It hardly mattered what the symptoms might be; the treatment was the same. And it hardly mattered where the ailment might be lodged; the letting of blood was determined not by the condition of the patient, but by the season of the year.
Three speciall Months (September, April, May)
There are, in which ’tis good to ope a veine;
In these 3 months the Moone beares greatest sway,
Then old or yong that store of bloud containe,
May bleed now, though some elder wizards say
Some dayse are ill in these, I hold it vaine:
September, April, May, have dayes a peece,
That bleeding do forbid, and eating Geese,
And those are they forsooth of May the first,
Of other two, the last of each are worst.[102]
Though advice like that given in the Regimen was well known to the nobility and to the middle class, neither group wanted to give up their liberal dinners and abundant draughts of ale. The merchant class savored fine foods and liquors, copying the aristocracy in their food preferences, just as they copied the styles, colors, coiffures, and headdresses as far as they could, still complying with the strict sumptuary laws.