396 DOMESTICS AND LABOURERS. (1289-1290. only females of whom we catch a glimpse in the bishop's establishment. things had been set in order previous to the arrival of the lord of the household. The kitchen and the ovens had been repaired, and a penthouse with a dresser had been built from the kitchen to the hall-door. Charcoal had been burned, and brought in from the woods. Loads of thorns had been drawn from the coppices to heat the ovens, and to crackle under the pots. Canvas had been given out for the kitchen strainers. The spice-box had been filled with cloves, mace, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cummin, aniseed, and coriander. Amongst the spices we find given out a pound or two of that valuable article, sugar, with which the crusades had familiarised western Europe. Sugar was, however, so commonly used at this period, that on one occasion 100 lbs. are purchased in London by the bishop's factor; and in the provincial town of Ross, a single pound is bought for eightpence. That indispensable article of ancient cookery, saffron, has a tub for its especial reception. Large stores of crockery-ware are laid in. This luxury seems to have been peculiar to the bishop's establishment; for certainly the use of dishes, plates, saucers, and jugs of earthenware was not common in England, when wooden trenchers and leathern jacks appeared at every board. Jugs and dishes were expensive articles of domestic use; for we find constant entries of new purchases. The fragile utensils were moved about from place to place, in company with the iron and brass vessels of the kitchen; and in rutty roads, where the cart was sometimes overturned, the breakage was constant and considerable. All things then being in order, the Christmas feast begins. The Eve is a strict fast. Christmas-day was on a Sunday. On the great festival there were served up, two carcases and three quarters of beef, with calves, does, pigs, fowls, bread, and cheese, ten sectaries of red wine and one of white. There appear to have been guests, from the additional number of horses in the stable. The judicious editor of the bishop's Roll reasonably conjectures that much of this enormous feast was given to the poor. The total expenditure of that Christmas-day amounted to 47. 16s. 31d.-a reckoning of about 1007. of present money.* John de Kemeseye, the house-steward, enters in his roll everything which comes from the farms; and he affixes a price, as of money paid to the bailiff. We see how this principle ensures correctness of accounts between the producers and consumers. From the farm comes into the hall, corn, hay, oxen, sheep, pigs, milk. We have very imperfect notices of agricultural proceedings; yet there must have been constant labour required to meet such large consumption. We find incidentally, that wheat, oats, and barley were sown in Lent. We have an item of the cost of gloves given to reapers in the harvest time of 1289, and of board-wages paid to servants of the household, who went out to assist in gathering-in the hay and corn. It is clear that some of the domestics lived in the farm-house attached to each hall; and some of these were women, who were house-cleaners, sempstresses, and breweresses. John, the carter, and Roger, the thresher, were probably farm inmates. The two farriers of the establishment, who seem to have been very busy with sick horses, and with making new horse-shoes out of old ones, Others say We take an intermediate multiplier of twenty to ascertain present value. Mr. Hallam considers twenty-four or twenty-five times the price named to represent such value. fifteen times. There can be no exact scale. 1289-1290.] SERFS. 397 and the horse-trainer (ambulator) lived happily, we may conjecture, with their equine friends. Harpin, the falconer, and John, the huntsman, seem to have been privileged and confidential domestics. But amidst the entries of wages paid, we miss the numerous farm-labourers that must have been employed, in an age when hand-labour derived little assistance from the tools and machines of modern times. These, no doubt, were the serfs-the born thralls-the bondsmen of one manor, with no choice but that of abiding from the cradle to the grave in that one spot-the mere labourers, carefully provided for, as regarded their sustenance,—perhaps not overworked; having their hours of recreation; not destitute of the family affections. Their condition is as little noticed by the chroniclers as that of the cattle which they tended. But they were gradually passing into the state of free labourers. One record connected with bishop Swinfield has an interest for us, and for those who come after us, which the good prelate and his most learned chaplains could never have anticipated. Robert Crul was a bailiff upon one of the farms of the bishop's manor of Ross. He was a villein regardant, with a mother, wife, and children living with him. In 1302, by a solemn deed he was manumitted by the bishop; and "Robert Crul, of Hamme, and Matilda his wife, with all his offspring begotten and to be begotten, together with all his goods holden and to be holden," was rendered "for ever free and quit from all yoke of servitude." Robert, the churl of Hamme, was the ancestor of John Kyrle, the Man of Ross. If the poet who immortalised the benefactor of his fellow-creatures, at a time when slavery had died out, had known this fact, he might have added a couplet to show how the manumission of a slave in the 13th century had ameliorated the lot of the wretched in the 18th. Robert Crul, by his industry in the service of the bishop, was enabled to buy his freedom for forty marks, and he became the founder of two honourable families. This power of rising, however slowly and painfully, out of the condition in which they were born,--a condition to which the Saxon peasant had long been subjected by the Norman lord,-was, no doubt, the sustaining hope of many of the more frugal, diligent, and intelligent villans of that age. But from the large sum which the bishop exacted from Robert Crul we may judge that there was no wide sympathy for that class by whose labour the bishop's household was maintained, and himself upheld in the rough splendour which befitted his rank. We cannot affirm that there was no general disposition to raise the great body of labourers in the scale of comfort and independencethere is some evidence to the contrary. But this, and all succeeding indications of the position of the people, in relation to their born masters, will show that the numberless producers were held, as a class, to be only fulfilling their natural destiny when they toiled without hope for the privileged consumers of the produce of their toil. In our own immediate times, in which the degrees of station are, in some particulars, as rigidly preserved as in the feudal ages, there has been the awakening of a spirit, which, in advocating the common claims to regard for the whole brotherhood of man, is gradually averting some of the dangers which must result from the spectacle of helpless misery existing by the side of callous indulgence. A reconstruction of society, such as would banish poverty from the earth, is one This is first given, amongst many other interesting and novel facts, in the "Household Roll of Bishop Swinfield." 398 TENANTS-RENTS. (1288. of the idle dreams of impracticable enthusiasm. But an amelioration of the condition of the poor, through raising them in the scale of self-respect by kindly intercourse; and by summoning all the powers of scientific administration to sweep away the habits of economical ignorance that we have inherited-this is the lesson which we must draw from the contemplation of that state of low civilisation of which the public and private records tell of slavery as the fate of the many, and of unseemly discomfort even in the condition of the more favoured few. It is not easy to form an estimate of the state of ancient serfdom in its varying degrees. The manumitted bailiff of bishop Swinfield had progenitors who were slaves in the most wretched and degraded condition. He was born in slavery, but had gradually acquired property which he was permitted to accumulate whilst rendering certain services to his lord. But he held that property upon sufferance. The general condition of the villans was probably inferior to that of Robert Crul. They were oppressed in many ways. There is a "Song of the Husbandman" of this period, who complains of the persecutions of the hayward, the woodward, and the bailiff; of the beadle who comes for a tax, and says, "prepare me silver for the green wax;" and to seek silyer for the king, he sold his seed, and his cattle were taken from the field. The consistory courts, too, did for the rough peasants of the thirteenth century what misjudging overseers did in later times-they drove them to church with "Meg or Mal," and "a priest as proud as a peacock weds us both." The tenants who leased lands were subject to many exactions. The lord's bull and boar were free, under the conditions of the tenures, to range at night through their standing corn and grass; and the tenants' sheep were always to be folded on the lords' land. There were large farmers and cottier tenants in those days. From a survey of the village of Hawsted, in Suffolk, in 1288, we find that seven farmers held nine hundred and sixtyeight acres of arable land; which, with a little meadow, averaged a hundred and forty acres each; whilst thirty-six held only eleven acres each, upon an average. That the land was indifferently farmed we may well believe, by learning that the highest rent was sevenpence an acre, and that some land was let as low as a farthing an acre. No doubt these small tenants did services as villeins regardants. There were fifty houses in the Hawsted village. Small allotments were given at a nominal rent, or were held without rent, in lieu of money payments for labour; and the labourers were fed in addition, chiefly upon porridge. The domestic servants of the Swinfield establishments were fed, clothed, and lodged. They received, in addition, half-yearly wages. The confidential members of the household, who were of gentle blood, with names derived from places, received ten shillings half-yearly. There were two clerks, probably lay, at half-a-crown. The highest paid servant was John the farrier, at six shillings and eightpence. There was another farrier at half these wages. John the carter, Robert the carter, Harpin the falconer, and William the porter, had each three shillings and fourpence. Ywon (Evan) the launder, Thomas the palfreyman, and Roberlard the butler, had each half-a-crown; and so had John the messenger. In other families, amongst "Political Songs," p. 129. Ibid. p. 159. 1289.] A JOURNEY TO LONDON. 399 which was that of the countess of Leicester, the messengers were distinguished by their qualities,-as Slingaway, Bolett (bullett), Truebodie, and Gobithistie (go a bit hasty). Henry de Beckford, of the bishop's chamber, had half-a-crown. There were twenty-two younger domestics,-garciones (gossoons) and pages, at stipends varying from two shillings to eighteenpence, a shilling, and sixpence. There were forty-one members of this household. In the stables there were generally upwards of forty horses, for the use of the establishment. On the 20th of December, the bishop and his retinue set out from Prestbury, on a journey to London. The cavalcade is composed of the bishop, on his new palfrey, bought at Hereford; his chaplain, and house-steward, John de Kemeseye; various household officers well armed; the cook, the farrier, and other retainers of the kitchen and the stable; sumpter-horses, bearing changes of raiment and other valuables; carts laden with meat and wine, and with pots and pans, and drinking-cups. There are fifty-one horses in this troop. Harbingers precede them to look out for quarters. They lodge the first night at a vacant manor-house belonging to the abbot of Glocester, near Fairford, where they eat the food they have providently brought, and the servants of the house furnish them with brushwood for their fires, oats for their horses, and litter for their own lodging on the floor. These servants have money "to drink," a time-honoured custom. The next day they move on to Farringdon. There is no welcome here from knight or monk ;-the editor of the Roll thinks they put up at an inn. Mr. Hudson Turner holds that, although there were drinking-houses for wine, and ale-wives sold beer, there was "no establishment, at this period, which supplied, besides drink, food and beds. It was not until the middle of the fourteenth century that the hostel or tavern had its origin." * At Farringdon, then, we see the bishop's party putting up at a house with very small accommodation. Five men were hired to fetch in brushwood and litter. The cook unpacked his hampers; but he could not prepare his supper without hiring additional kitchen utensils. The provident bishop carried some. of his own Bosbury venison with him, to supply the deficiencies of road-side fare. He probably had his Mazerine cup at hand, or one of richly chased silver, out of which he Cup found in the Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. quaffed his Bordeaux wine,-as his worthy steward says, "de quo bibit frequenter." Spoons of silver he would have, and each of his household would "Domestic Architecture," p. 122. 400 PROVISION ON THE ROAD. [1289 carry his own knife. Forks of silver, whatever has been believed to the contrary, were known at this period; though the natural finger and thumb long kept out the foreign luxury. In the hall of one of bishop Swinfield's houses we find a lavatory, where the hands of the company might be washed before and after the meal. At Farringdon, the house which gave the party shelter might have its one pot and hanger, and its gridiron; but the cook was unused to such poor arrangements and to the inconvenience of borrowing, and he took care, when the troop returned from London, that five new brass cauldrons should accompany the luggage. It may be doubtful whether the bishop himself found a bed, if he had a separate bed-room. In any one of his own manor-houses he would lie in great state, with his tester over him, such as modern usage reluctantly abandons at the bidding of sanitary reformers. Certainly at Farringdon he would have no glass window Early English Bed. (From Ancient MS.) Fireplace, Boothby Pagnel Manor-house, in his private room, such as he had constructed at the cost of six shillings and eightpence for his luxurious chamber at Bosbury. Perhaps there was a fireplace, where a blaze of brushwood might chase away the dampness of this wet December. On the 30th they arrive at Wantage. It is a fast-day, and they have their conger-eels and their stock-fish cooked, having bought the needful charcoal. The quantity of beer they consume is enormous, sixty-four gallons, costing four shillings and sevenpence farthing. From Wantage they travel on to Reading, over the downs where Alfred hunted and fought. But the ways are difficult; the open country is soaked with the constant rain; the fords are not to be blindly trusted,--and so a guide must be engaged. He was probably a drover or shepherd. The countess of Leicester hired "Dobbe" the shepherd to escort her from Odiham to Porchester. But the dangerous journey was terminated by a happy welcome. The great abbot of Reading was the host of the good bishop; and here, on the 31st, Swinfield entered this noble establishment, the hospitality of which was the theme of William of Malmesbury's warmest praise. In these excellent quarters the |