Court life under the Plantagenets (Reign of Henry the Second) ... With five coloured plates in facsimile, etc

Front matter

PLANTAGENET KING HUNTING Scrnn ens cli *iii 1 C?T.anJan Imp t*mer««r fc C" Pirns HENRY II DISPUTING WITH BECKET Frontispiece COURT LIFE UNDER THE PLANTAGENETS (REIGN OF HENRY THE SECOND) BY HUBERT HALL F. S. A. OF H.M. PUT.LIC RECORD OFFICE Autlior of " Society in the Elizabethan Age " etc WITH FIVE COLOURED PLATES IN FACSIMILE BY RALPH NEVILL F.S.A. AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS Ifmtboiv SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1890. UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. Third Edition, %vo, \os. 6d. SOCIETY IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. By Hubert Hall, of H.M. Public Record Office. With numerous Coloured and other Plates derived from contemporary Drawings, and a large folding Coloured Map of London in the Six teenth Century. Contents. — Chap. I. The Landlord. II. The Steward. III. The Tenant. IV. The Burgess. V. The Merchant.

VI. The Host. VII. The Courtier. VIII. The Churchman. IX. The Official. X. The Lawyer. Appendix I. Notes and References to Chapters I.-X. Appendix II. The Darrell Papers. " People who wish to understand the manners and customs of our ancestors of the sixteenth century as they really were, and not as they ought to have been, cannot do better than read it." — Truth. " Students of the Elizabethan period may well rejoice in the recent addition to their libraries of Mr. Hubert Hall's highly interesting and most useful work." — John W. Hales in the Academy. " Most curious and suggestive." — Saturday Review. LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & Co.

Preface

. THIS little work commemorates many happy leisure hours spent amongst the Exchequer Records and in the Hertford shire fields where was the favourite residence, seven hundred years ago, as it is to-day, of an English minister sprung from a line of great statesmen. But although I had at first intended to follow the story of Richard Fitz Nigel in connection with his times, the want of historical material constrained me to choose another Hert fordshire worthy, a humbler Richard, as my hero, through whose adventures I have attempted to make the Reader familiar with Court Life in England at the close of the twelfth century. It may be that at the outset many will take exception to a title of this sort applied to a work which contains no men tion of some of the principal features of Court Life as it is now understood by us.

The truth is, that to the mediæval student, and to the general reader, the title Liber Curialis conveys two wholly opposite meanings. To the one it will recall the politic and scholarly entourage of a court Preface. IV whose acts have been recorded by historians like Richard Fitz Nigel, and whose table-talk was deemed worthy of preservation by philosophers like John of Salisbury ; while to the other it will suggest infinite possibilities in the way of tournaments and feasting, of love-making and dark cabals. I must admit that the Reader will find no scenes either of love or chivalry depicted in these pages, and that two leading characters, the knight errant and the jester, are wholly ex cluded ; but these omissions are due to the exigencies of original research, which has not in this case been rewarded by any information upon those subjects.

It is true that the domestic life of courts appears very much the same, on paper, in every period of history, and given such historical personages as Queen Eleanor, Fair Rosamond, and Hugo Earl of Chester, it might be thought that a reconstruction of these favourite passages was possible. I will own that I was tempted by the prospects of this enterprise, and thanks to an intimate acquaintance with " Amadis de Gaul," and the "Arcadia," I might even have ventured far in such a cause ; but whereas those immortal works are endeared to us by their very impossibility, and I was conscientiously bent on repro ducing for the benefit of the general reader such features of Court Life under the greatest of the Plantagenets as were actually recorded by contemporary chroniclers and essayists, I was reluctantly compelled to abandon this project.

Indeed, the Court of Henry II. would seem to have been almost Oriental in its complete exclusion of female influences ; and Preface. V yet its Queen was one of the most remarkable women of any age, and had once probably been well seconded by the French princess who presided over the rival court of the reigning heir to the throne. There were other able women besides these, of lesser rank, but their presence and mode of life at Court is wholly problematical ; and though it would have been possible to give an authentic inventory of the fabric, colour, and price of their garments, from contemporary accounts, with certain epigrams at their expense by contemporary satirists, and even their portraitures when equipped for peaceful slumber, and the like, it must be admitted that these are scarcely sufficient materials for a purely historical reconstruction.

For I have attempted in this book nothing less than the delineation of living characters and the description of existing institutions at a given period of a typical reign. Every personage acted and spoke almost precisely as represented in this narrative, and every event took place at the exact time and in the exact manner described here, as far as a conscientious process, un sparing of research, has enabled me to discover the historical truth. Indeed, it is scarcely too much to say that two-thirds of this book might be re-translated into the original Latin or Norman-French of the contemporary historian, or elsewhere that chapter and verse could be supplied for every statement or allusion from still more authentic records. That I have made many mistakes, no one is more conscious than myself, and I may even venture to assert that this was inevitable without the co-operation of several great writers who have made the study of the life of the Manor, the Church, the Preface.

VI Schools, and the Law-courts their own. All that I claim for myself is credit for an honest attempt to present for the first time to the Reader who is unable or unwilling to view it in any other form, a truthful picture of a certain phase of the national life in the past through the much-abused medium of an historical novel. H. H. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface iii Chapter I. Anesti.— The Manor i Chapter II. London.— The City 26 Chapter III. London. — The Guilds 39 Chapter IV. London. — The Games 47 Chapter V. Westminster.— The King's House . . 57 Chapter VI. Westminster. — The King's Council . . 81 Chapter VII. Westminster.— The King's Court . . 98 Chapter VIII. Westminster. — At the Receipt . . . 114 Chapter IX. Westminster.— At the Exchequer . .129 Chapter X. Windsor. — With the King .... 143 Chapter XI. Waltham. — Seculars and Regulars . . 163 Chapter XII. St. Alban's.— The Schoolmen . . .177 Chapter XIII. St. Alban's. — A Martyrology . . .191

Appendix

. Notes to the Illustrations 203 Notes and References to Chapters 1-XIII. . . .

Chapter I. Anesti

— THE MANOR. On a warm afternoon of March, in the year of grace 1177, being the 23rd year of the reign of the great King of Eng land, Henry, son of the Empress, a small party of travellers might have been seen riding slowly and painfully, as though both man and beast were exhausted by a far and toilsome journey, along the broad, white High Street, where a few miles above the Buntingford road the Quin river hurries to meet the gentle Rib. Halting upon the summit of a slight eminence, the travellers anxiously scanned the road in front of them, as though in search of some long-expected land mark. The leader of this party was a middle-aged clerk, whose alert air and intellectual features bespoke the official rather than the spiritual Churchman. He wore a loose cas sock and hood over a close-fitting tunic, and rode a well-bred palfrey with easy grace.

He was attended by three or four serjeants, mounted on the inferior hackneys of the period, and clad in sober liveries of parti-coloured cloth. These followed at a short distance, leading between them a sumpter horse laden with the modest baggage of their master. " Behold, this is Quinbury, if I mistake not," exclaimed the Churchman, after a short pause ; " and hereabouts, as they told us at Ware, we should be able to see the Castle of Anesti from the High Street. And, lo, yonder it stands very proudly, somewhat to the right of us, and six miles distant, B z so that another hour should bring us well to our journey's end." Hereupon the party once more pursued their slow march, passing through the vill of Darsell, and following the course of the river, which presently brought them into the pleasant valley of Hormead, with its water-mill and broad mill-pond, and its church and manor house rising above a tiny vill away to their right.

This fertile manor marched, as they knew, with the south-western boundary of Anesti and indeed a mile or two farther on a cross-road appeared, bending sharply to the right, which evidently gave access to the castle, now conspicuous within a mile of them. Along a broad lane leading to a windmill, and thence by a narrow and winding cart track, lined by wych elms, through a wide expanse of corn land as far as the eye could reach, the travellers proceeded slowly to the vill of the manor. This comprised only a dozen or more of rude cottages or hovels, picturesque enough in their outward aspect from the herbs and mosses with which their mud walls and thatched roofs were covered, but affording few indications of interior comfort or cleanliness. These were ranged in an irregular street, but with a considerable interval between each, as, in addition to a garden and, in some cases, an orchard adjacent, every cottage possessed a tiny farmstead in its rear, consisting of a byrh, or fold, and a few covered sheds, serving equally as stables and barn-lofts.

The church, an imposing Norman structure, stood close at hand, and not far from it the ancient Saxon manor-house, whose place was now usurped by the modern castle which towered in the background, and beneath whose shadow the whole village seemed to nestle. The Castle of Anesti, so called, was in reality a fortified manor house of the type so common in a later age on the northern Anesti. — The Manor. 3 borders. Advantage had been taken of a natural knoll or eminence for the erection of a castellated mansion, protected by a palisade and deep moat. On the lowest edge of the declivity the outer walls rose sheer above the winding track, which led to a massive gateway flanked by bastions, pierced so as to admit of a raking fire being directed against any attacking force. The approach being too steep to admit of the barbican being carried by a sudden assault, the castle was practically impregnable, for on all other sides it was protected by the steepness of the mound, and, moreover, was fortified at the base by a stockade and moat, accessible only at the postern door by a few stone steps, which one man could have defended against an army unprovided with re gular appliances for a siege.

The building itself was of rough stone from the neighbouring quarry, thick rubble walls, with angles or quoins and window and door-dressings of worked blocks. The principal windows were round-headed, divided externally by shafted mullions, and strongly latticed with iron. The rest were simple eyelets in the masonry. The high-pitched roofs of the outbuildings were topped with shingles, those of the hall and chapel being tiled, and also guttered with lead. Our travellers might easily perceive that the castle was occupied rather as a residence than as a garrison, for the battlements were ruinous in the extreme, the lattices of the windows eaten with rust, and even the great oak gate, cased and studded with iron, had a ricketty look, while all traces of the portcullis had entirely disappeared.

However, there was at least a warder, posted at the wicket, who, on receiving the visitor's name and business, cast open the gate upon its creaking hinges, and conducting the party through the gate way, announced them in a loud voice to the notice of the serving-men who loitered about the courtyard. Several of these now hastened forward, and, after assisting the Church man to dismount, conducted him within an inner gate or barrier. The ground-plan of the castle was exceedingly simple. The interior gateway opened on to a small courtyard, the sides of which were formed by the hall and adjoining chambers, the chapel, kitchen, bakehouse and dairy. These buildings formed, as it were, the inner circle of fortifications, being surrounded by the circuit of the walls inclosing an outer space. The dwelling-house consisted of a hall about fifty feet in length and thirty-five in breadth, open to the roof, the arches of which were carried on two rows of columns, the apartment being thus divided into two aisles with a central nave.

The entrance was by a porch opening on to a vestibule, screened off from the lower end of the hall, with doors to the buttery and pantry. On a lower level, beneath this vestibule, was an under-croft with a vaulted roof, which served as a cellar. There was no interior staircase, and access was only obtained to the upper part of the build ing by a broad flight of stone steps which led from the courtyard to the chamber above the cellar. There was also a parlour adjoining the hall, which, like the upper chamber, was hung with canvas dyed scarlet, and was moreover decorated with a painted ceiling, these two chambers being used as the private apartments of the family. On to this parlour the chapel abutted, completing one angle of the courtyard, the other being formed by the domestic offices before mentioned, which, unlike the chapel, were entirely disconnected with the dwelling-house itself, and were all open to the roof, with the exception of a few small lofts, con structed by means of boards laid across the ceiling joists.

Anesti. — The Manor. 5 In the great hall the lord of the castle, already apprized of the guest's arrival, advanced to embrace him, with many inquiries as to his welfare. Richard de Anesti, although now past middle life, was still in outward appearance a young man. In figure he was short and somewhat slight, but firmly knit, and with limbs beauti fully proportioned. His features were of the best Norman type, expressing both courage and intelligence. His beard was closely trimmed to the fashion of the day ; his dress consisted of a short green mantle, much weather-stained, fastened by a jewelled clasp upon his right shoulder; and beneath this was worn a long tunic, and close-fitting hose of fine red cloth. A peaked hunting cap and high boots com pleted his attire. His only arms were a long hunting knife, which hung in its sheath from a girdle worked with silver broidery.

The history of his family was a common one at that time. Richard the Clerk, his grandfather, was by birth a Norman, educated for the Church, but devoting himself by preference to a literary and official career. After filling with credit a clerical post under the Seneschal of Normandy, at Caen, where, as at English Winchester, a central department of financial administration was already formed for the Duchy, and having further enlarged his mind by an experience of the elaborate civilization of Norman Sicily, and of the recondite processes of the Roman Curia, he had sought a larger sphere of ambition at the English Court. There, with quick insight and perhaps a true sympathy, he attached himself to the clerical leader, Roger le Poer, during the sharp struggle that took place in the first decade of the 12th century between the forces of national progress and feudal anarchy.

This patron's promotion to the post of English Seneschal, now no longer a mere viceroy, but a skilled justiciary, and the development of the old tribunal of household thegns in conjunction with the treasurer's clerks at Winchester to form a great central court of justice and finance, with its headquarters henceforth at Westminster, furnished congenial work for the ex-scribe of Caen. Like many others of his clerical contemporaries, in spite of the sneers of baronial courtiers at the expense of "new men," he had in fact founded a greater family, ennobled by genius and endowed further by the regard and gratitude of the Crown and nation with more substantial honours. The Manor of Anesti may have been originally a military station on the great Roman road which led from London to Cambridge. Next, an agricultural villa growing up on the lot of some provincial veteran.

Next, an Anglian " ham " or " stead," with merely a change of lord and of name to its present title of the Manor by the Highway ; later still, a West Saxon thane's bocland through the evanescence of the Anglian sub-kingdom. At the close of the 9th century part of the territory ceded to Danish colonists, and then, when the territorial distinction of the Danelaga had become as meaningless as the Danegeld itself, we find Anesti apparently falling to the share of Earl Harold in the practical division of England amongst the sons of Godwin ; thus once more becoming the bocland of an English thegn, for Harold granted it with other lands to Alward, his hench man. Alward's fate is unknown. Perhaps, like many another stout Eastern thegn, he followed his lord to Hastings, and fell amongst the hus-carls round the dragon standard, or being taken in arms was degraded or exiled.

In any case he was dispossessed, for Eustace the Frenchman held Anesti at Domesday survey. This Count, following the feudal license Anesti. — The Manor. 7 permitted at the crisis of the conquest, built the Castle, of which a tradition only survives, adding thus a final con firmation of the strategic importance of the road-side settle ment. During the Norman period Anesti continued to form part of the great honour of Boulogne, and thus it came to be granted, like many other manors of that titular peerage, to a useful servant of the king. Under Henry II. the honour passed finally into the hands of the Crown and the old tenants with it, to the great advantage of them all, and of none more than the family and kindred of Richard the Clerk. The latter, we have said, founded a new official family, or more truly a clan — brothers, sons, nephews, drawing salaries small indeed, but most acceptable in an age of short currency at the issue of the Exchequer, while they were far more richly paid by grants of lands out of the ancient demesne of the Crown.

Before two generations had elapsed, off shoots of this vigorous stock might be found in half a dozen counties of England. As for the founder's lineal descen dants, his grandson Richard, who has here been introduced to us, stepped into the hereditary manor, and settled down to the life of a country baron ; while his younger brother, John, held a lucrative post at the Exchequer, and was fast founding a new county family, from gifts of Crown lands in Hampshire. In his boyhood, the younger Richard had been the companion of William, the son of Nigel, like his brother the King's treasurer one of that remarkable body of clerks who were in turn justices and barons of the Exchequer, sheriffs, ambassadors, captains, and financial agents, or merely churchmen, courtiers, philosophers, historians and poets, sportsmen and wits, according to the varying demands of their royal master.

This friendship he had not failed to cultivate during his rare visits to Court, until something like a close intimacy sprung up between the two men, who were so dissimilar in their modes of life. Perhaps the old clerical blood revealed itself in this instinctive yearning of the feudal vassal for the intellectual companionship of the highly trained statesman to whose subtle disquisitions upon the origin of political and social institutions he was never weary of listening. Thus it was, in response to repeated invitations, that the son of Nigel had at length visited his friend's mansion for a few days during the leisure of the Hilary vacation, having also business of his brother's to transact within the county, in connection with the recent grant received by him from the Crown, of the rich manor of Essendon.

After the first greetings had been exchanged, Richard de Anesti committed his friend to the care of the seneschal, in order that he might remove the traces of his long journey. Then supper was served in the great hall, and the whole household retired to rest shortly after sundown. The following morning the son of Nigel rose early, and after hearing matins in the chapel, and breaking his fast in his own chamber, he received the visit of his host, who ex pressed a readiness to attend him, if he should wish to take the air in the fields of the demesne. Gladly consenting to this proposal, he was first conducted by the lord through the principal apartments of the castle. In all of these, and throughout the whole building, tthe greatest simplicity of furniture was observable. Decorations there were none, and the walls, except when rarely draped with coarse unfulled cloth or dyed canvas, showed the bare stone-work, unconcealed even by plaster.

Several stools, curiously carved, a single sideboard in the recess of the dais, filled, however, with rich plate ; wooden bedsteads in the great chamber, and truckle-beds in the hall ; a few cushions, introduced by the Anesti. — The Manor. 9 deceased lady of the castle, and great plenty of joined stools and forms, with table-boards on trestles for the hall, formed the movable furniture of the castle. Again, the evidences of an agricultural rather than a military regime were evident both within and without the building. Here a newly-flayed ox-hide hung on a spike in the great hall below the trophies of antlered heads and gleaming tusks. Mattocks and reap ing-hooks kept company with iron caps and sheaths of arrows on the walls, while rusty plough-shares, horse-shoes, and empty grain measures were piled in distant corners, so that the Churchman playfully observed that here at least the prophecy seemed like to be fulfilled, that swords should be beaten into plough-shares, and spears into pruning-hooks.

Within the courtyard was a smaller inclosure, which they visited, and which contained a curious assortment of birds and animals; namely, poultry of all kinds, together with peacocks, a parrot, and a pair of magpies, besides which there was a bear chained to a stake, and seemingly on the best of terms with an ape, and several large stoats, which latter, like the dogs (of which almost all breeds were represented), were free of every chamber in the castle. Passing into the larger inclosure, formed by the principal buildings above-mentioned, they inspected the dairy of the manor, which contained, besides a number of shallow earthen milk-pans placed on trestles against the walls, a few vats, a salt-jar, a vessel con taining rennet, and a quantity of pressingcloths hanging upon the rafters of the low roof.

Within the outer circle of the walls of the castle were situated the garden, or plesaunce, and the orchard, in which the profusion of flowers, and shrubs, and herbs of all kinds contrasted strangely with the meagre crops of onions and other edible roots. On the other hand, there were many pear-trees and cherry-trees, while several stunted apple-trees were allowed to exist for the purpose apparently, of supplying crabs for tankards and verjuice for festival sauces. Beyond the outer walls, as far as the eye could reach, was one unbroken carpet of springing corn ; yet however dense the expanse of crops viewed at a distance, Richard de Anesti and his guest found no difficulty in making their way by means of the cross-roads which led from the vill of Anesti to neigh bouring towns or hamlets ; being, as it were, the arteries of the body politic of the Hun dred ; while the paths formed Fig. i. by the headlands might be considered as capillaries of veins, giving access at all times for every peasant farmer to his scattered plots.

As they pursued their walk through the cornfields, Richard directed his guest's attention to the fact that the whole of the arable land was divided into three great fields. On the north east of the manor, surrounding the castle, was winter corn, that is to say, the several varieties of wheat sown in the preceding autumn, with some patches of peas and vetch. On the west FlG- 2- side was the seedland prepared for the spring corn, oats and barley, and drage, and towards the south an almost equal extent of fallow. Outside these three great fields was Anesti. — The Manor. 11 a belt of pasture, some common to the cattle of the lord and villagers, with richer fields of pasture and meadow carefully fenced in and lying chiefly towards the south. The son of Nigel, who knew that the crops under his view belonged some to the lord and some to the tenants, was somewhat at a loss to comprehend the means of distinction between the plots of the several cultivators ; but when they reached the plough lands, Richard made him observe the mounds of turf by which the several strips were divided, those of the tenants in villein age into half-virgates, and the demesne land into separate en closures by a larger bank, together with a ditch, or occasion ally by a low, quickset hedge, so closely cut as to form an Fig. 3. almost transparent barrier.

Several plough-teams of oxen were at work here, four in each, and all double-yoked. The ploughmen in their long smocks, bare-legged, save for their high boots, leaned heavily on the left hale of the plough, so that they seemed to lurch in their walk, whilst they shouted continually to urge on their teams or to direct the drivers, one of whom walked in front of each team armed with a long goad, by a liberal use of which he contrived that each beast should keep his proper place and bear his share of the draught. But every fifty yards or so the oxen, as if moved by common impulse, would lower their heads to the ground and stop resolutely, whereat the ploughman leaned against the spindle, and the driver threw himself upon the ground be side the team ; while the wearied animals, themselves blowing hard with distended nostrils and heaving flanks, sought to allay the smarting of their wounds with blows of their long tails and impatient stamping of their feet.

Thus they would remain, Richard assured his guest, for half an hour at a time, were not the bailiff always at hand, whereas all who have driven oxen know that they must stop just three minutes to fetch their breath, and no longer, lest they should grow stiff; but none of these villeins and hinds, said he sadly, has any care at all for the lord's interests — each seeking instead only his own ease or profit, that one may save his labour, and an other his team, when he is compelled to perform plough-work upon the demesne. When the two friends had passed beyond the spring field where, besides the teams now engaged upon the second ploughing, many rustics were at work breaking up the clods with wooden mallets to lighten the labour of the harrow, they entered upon the enclosed meadows and pastures of the demesne.

Here the freshness of the ground and of the bud ding thorn-trees was most grateful after the glare and dust of the open fields. Richard now described the work of hay making, which, he said, was performed in the season by the cus tomary service for the most part of the cottiers of the manor, who were assisted by their wives and elder children, receiving twice a day plentiful rations of bread and meat, or salt-fish and cheese, washed down with large draughts of small ale thickened with meal. In the pastures a small flock of milch ewes were now feeding, and the son of Nigel was not a little astonished at this sight. " I marvel much," he said, " that you should prefer the thin and acid milk of these animals to the rich and fragrant milk Anesti. — The Manor. 13 of cows, since you must have abundance of pasture here for both."

" Not so," replied his host, " for, unless you fatten at least half the herd at Michaelmas, and slaughter them for winter beef before Martinmas, there is small profit from them and great risks of loss from disease, though I grant you that if we were near some large town the case would be different. But as it is, some lambs die and others are weaned and fattened for the table, and it were evil husbandry not to use the milk of the dams for cheeses, which the labourers eat readily, and the remainder can be sold with a good profit at the fairs. So Fig. 4. much I learned from my brother and your fellow, John the Clerk, who hath, as you know, lands in Hampshire of the King's gift, and there they will have nought to do with kine, but breed or fatten only sheep, which can live on little com pared with other beasts."

After questioning the shepherd as to the state of the flock, Richard led the way home across the pastures by a path or track which led directly to the folds beneath the castle wall. It was half-way noon before they entered the castle, and dinner was served in the great hall soon after, at which meal the whole household was assembled. After this was over the lord and his guest sat together over their wine cups, and conversed upon the state of the country in respect of agriculture. The Churchman had many questions to ask on this score, and particularly as to his friend's own experiences, who replied with the following description of the cultivation of his demesne. "The manor of Anesti contains about 1,000 acres of arable, pasture, meadow, and wood. It is divided into two almost equal parts — one held and cultivated by the lord, and the other by his free and customary tenants.