Chapter iii is particularly interesting. It shows “how a man who is

going far out of his own country, riding or walking, should behave himself and talk upon the way.” The servant sent forward to engage the room utters the fond hope “‘that there are no fleas, nor bugs, nor other vermin.’ ‘No, sir, please God,’ replies the host, ‘for I make bold that you shall be well and comfortably lodged here—save that there is a great peck of rats and mice.’”

The provisions are passed in review, the fire lighted, supper prepared: the traveller arrives, and it is curious to note in what unceremonious fashion he assures himself before dismounting that he will find at the inn “good supper, good lodging, and the rest.”[144]

Further on (chap. xiii) another hostelry is described, and the conversation between two travellers who have just slept in the same bed shows what a trouble the fleas were: “William, undress and wash your legs, and then dry them with a cloth, and rub them well for love of the fleas, that they may not leap on your legs, for {133} there is a peck of them lying in the dust under the rushes. . . . Hi! the fleas bite me so! and do me great harm, for I have scratched my shoulders till the blood flows.”

Beer was drunk along the way, and was found in other places besides the inn where travellers slept at night. At the cross-roads, in the more frequented parts of the country, alehouses, with a long projecting pole above the door and a bush at the end of it, invited the traveller to have a rest and a drink. Chaucer’s pilgrims, riding on the way to Canterbury, dismounted at a house of this kind. The pardoner, who had his habits, would not begin his tale without a little comfort:

“But first, quod he, her at this ale-stake I wil bothe drynke and byten on a cake.”

A miniature of the fourteenth century, of which we give a reproduction, represents the alehouse with its long horizontal pole holding its bush well out in front above the road. The house consists but of one storey, a woman stands before the door with a large beer-jug, and a hermit is drinking from a large cup. It was the fashion to have extremely long poles, which offered no inconvenience in the country, but in town they had to be regulated, and a maximum length fixed. According to the wording of the Act, poles so long were used, that they “did tend to the great deterioration of the houses in which they {134} were placed,” and they reached so far and had signs so low, that they were in the way of the riders’ heads. The Act of 1375 relating these grievances orders that in future poles shall not extend more than seven feet over the public way,[145] which was enough to give picturesqueness to streets not so wide as ours.

There were taverns of ill-fame, especially in towns, so bad some of them, that they might almost have gone by another name. In one of the Latin dramas of Hrotsvitha,[146] tenth century, is shown the holy hermit Abraham, who, learning that the girl Mary, whom he had reared in virtue, lived as a courtesan in a hostelry, goes to her, pretending love, and converts her. In most mediæval story books telling of the prodigal son, he is usually represented sowing his very wild oats at the inn or tavern. Musicians of the meanest order would entertain the sitters at the table with their pipings, and then pass the hat.[147] Having to answer before Archbishop Arundel for his disparaging statements concerning pilgrimages, the Lollard William Thorpe declares in 1407 that pilgrims are frequenters of ill-famed hostelries, “spending their goods upon vitious hostelars, which are oft uncleane women of their bodies.”[148] In some such inn, the “Cheker of the Hope” (hoop) in Canterbury, the continuator of Chaucer leads his pilgrims, and shows how the pardoner’s advances to Kit the tapster had the edifying result of getting for him many more blows than caresses.[149]

In London it was forbidden by the king to keep open {135} house after curfew, and for very sufficient reasons, “because such offenders as aforesaid, going about by night, do commonly resort and have their meetings and hold their evil talk in taverns more than elsewhere, and there do seek for shelter, lying in wait and watching their time to do mischief.”[150]

It was for fear of such dangers that when the sheriffs and bailiffs held their Views of Frankpledge, they asked the juries of their hundreds to say upon oath what they knew “of such as continually haunt taverns, and no man knoweth whence they come; of such as sleep by day and watch by night, eat well and drink well, and possess nothing.”[151]

Langland’s life-like picture of a tavern in the fourteenth century is well known. With a vivid realism worthy of Rabelais he makes us hear and see the tumultuous scenes at the alehouse, the discussions, the quarrels, the big bumpers, the drunkenness which ensues; every face is plainly visible, coarse words, laughter and attitudes strike the on-looker in that strange assembly, where the hermit meets the cobbler and “the clerk of the churche,” a band of cut-purses and bald-headed tooth-drawers:

“Thomme the tynkere · and tweye of hus knaves, Hicke the hakeneyman · and Howe the neldere,[152] Claryce of Cockeslane · the clerk of the churche, Syre Peeres of Prydie · and Purnel of Flanders, An haywarde and an heremyte · the hangeman of Tyborne, Dauwe the dykere · with a dosen harlotes, Of portours and of pyke-porses · and pylede toth-drawers. . . . Ther was lauhyng and lakeryng and ‘let go the coppe!’ Bargeynes and bevereges · by-gunne to aryse, And seten so til evesong rang.”[153]

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Peasants, too, are found there. Christine de Pisan, that poetess whose writings and character so often recall steady John Gower, shows them drinking, fighting, gambling; they have to appear before the provost, and fines accrue to augment their losses:

“At these taverns each day will you find them established, and enjoying long potations. As soon as their work is over, many agree to go there and drink, and they spend, you may be sure, more than they have earned all day. Do not ask if they fight when they are tipsy, the provost has several pounds in fines from it during the year. . . . And there also are to be seen some of those idle gallants who haunt taverns, handsome and gay.”[154]

Art, literature, the trend of thought were changed at the time of the Renaissance, but taverns remained the same; witness Skelton’s description of an alehouse on the highroad, quite similar to those which Langland had known a century and a half earlier. The ale-wife, who brews, God knows how, her beer herself, is a withered old crony, not unlike the “weird sisters” who were to welcome {137} Macbeth on the heath. She keeps her tavern near Leatherhead, in Surrey, on a declivity by the highroad, and there gathers as motley a crowd as that in the “Visions,”

“Her nose somdele hoked, And camously croked. . . . Her skynne lose and slacke, Grained like a sacke, With a croked backe. . . . She breweth noppy ale, And maketh therof port sale To travellars, to tynkers, To sweters, to swynkers, And all good ale drinkers.”

Passers-by and dwellers in the neighbourhood flock to her house:

“Some go streyght thyder, Be it slaty or slyder; They holde the hye waye, They care not what men say, Be that as be may; Some, lothe to be espyde, Start in at the back syde, Over the hedge and pale, And all for the good ale.”

The reputation of the houses with a long pole and bush had not improved, and many of those who frequented them had, as we see, little wish to be “espyde.” As for paying the score, there was the rub! Devotees of drink whose purse was empty would not deprive themselves, however, and they paid in kind:

“Instede of coyne and monny, Some brynge her a conny, And some a pot with honny, Some a salt, and some a spone, Some their hose, some theyr shone.” {138}

As to the women, one brings:

“her weddynge-rynge To pay for her scot, As cometh to her lot. Som bryngeth her husbandes hood, Because the ale is good.”[155]

The worst-famed of these houses began a little later to receive the visits of the most illustrious of their customers, one who held his court under their smoky rafters and came there to his earthly end, “babbling of green fields,” immortal Sir John Falstaff.

IV

Other isolated houses along the roads, by the fords or the bridges, on sacred spots, on the cliffs by the sea, had also much to do with travellers, those of the hermits. Such holy men would tell the way, help to cross a river, sometimes give shelter, sometimes absolution.[156] One shrives passers-by in that gem of mediæval French stories, “Le chevalier au barisel”; another, in the “Roman de Renard,” being favoured with a visit from no less a person than the hero of the romance. Led by a peasant through the pathless wood, Master Reynard reaches the secluded spot; the mallet was hanging before the door, and the peasant having given with it a loud knock the hermit hastened to draw the bolt: {141}

Tant ont erré par le bocage Qu’ils sont venu à l’ermitage. Le maillet trovèrent pendant A la porte par de devant. Li vileins hurte durement Et l’ermite vint erraument (promptly), Li fermai oste de la roille (bolt).[157]

Most holy in early times, living examples of renouncement, teaching virtue and piety by their words and deeds, hermits became, some of them, canonized saints, like St. Robert of Knaresborough,[158] or devotional writers of fame like Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole; pilgrims flocked to their cells in order to be sanctified by their advice and presence. An “officium de Sancto Ricardo eremita” was composed after Richard Rolle’s death, in the thought that he would surely be canonized some day:

Letetur felix Anglorum patria . . . Pange lingua graciosi Ricardi preconium, Pii, puri, preciosi, Fugientis vitium.[159]

These men fasted, had ecstasies, were tempted by the devil, who in the case of Richard, instead of clumsily taking some hideous shape (see further, p. 290) took the much more enticing one of “a faire yonge womane, the whilke,” wrote the hermit, “I had sene be-fore and the whilke luffed (loved) me noght a little in gude lufe.”[160]

The cave or hermitage in which Saint Robert spent {142} most of his life still exists at Knaresborough, entirely hollowed out of the rock, with a later-date perpendicular window.[161]

Persuaded, rightly or wrongly, that they had much to atone for, the kings included among the redeeming good works to be performed by them aid to holy hermits. One of the pilgrims who visited St. Robert was King John, who came unheralded and who, according to the metrical life of the saint, had some trouble in making him notice his presence:

Roberd he fand knelan prayand, Hys orysons contynuand, That for nai noyse that thai couth maike Nay mare he mowed than dose ane ake (oak).[162]

Edward III gives to “three hermits and eight anchorite recluse persons within the city of London and in the suburbs thereof, to wit to each of them, 13s. 4d. in aid of their support.”[163] Welcomed on his landing, in 1399, by a seaside hermit called Matthew Danthorp, “in quodam loco called Ravenserespourne” (Ravenspur), Bolingbroke, {143} soon to be King Henry IV, grants him and all the hermits his successors a variety of favours, including the right to any waif or wreck cast by the sea on the sand for two leagues about his hermitage: “Cum wrecco maris, et wayfs et omnibus aliis proficuis et commoditatibus super sabulum per duas leucas circa eundem locum contingentibus imperpetuum,” in spite of any statute to the contrary.[164]

Less brilliant fortunes and less holy a fame usually fell to the lot of English hermits of the fourteenth century. Those like Rolle of Hampole, doing ceaseless penance, consumed by divine love, were rare exceptions; they lived by preference in cottages, built at the most frequented parts of the highway, or at the entrance to bridges.[165] They throve there, like Godfrey Pratt,[166] on the charity of the passers-by; the bridge with its chapel was in itself almost a sacred building; the presence of the hermit sanctified it still further. He attended to the keeping in order of the building, or was supposed to do so, and was willingly given a farthing.[167] A strange race of men, which in that century of disorganization and reform, when everything seemed either to die or undergo a new birth, multiplied in spite of rules and regulations. They swelled the number of parasites of the religious edifice, cloaking under a dignified habit a life that was less so. These evil growths {144} clung, like moss in the damp of the cathedral, to the fissures of the stones, and by the slow work of centuries threatened the noble structure with ruin. What remedy was there? To mow down the ever-growing weeds was scarcely possible; a patient hand, guided by a vigilant eye, was needed to pluck them out one by one, and to fill up the interstices: saints can do this, but saints are rare. Episcopal prescriptions might often seem to do great work; a mere seeming. Though the heads were beaten down, the roots remained, and the lively parasite struck yet deeper into the heart of the wall.

Solemn interdictions and rigorous rules were not wanting, bowing down heads which ever rose again. To become a hermit a man must be resolved on an exemplary life of poverty and privations, and, that imposture should be impossible, he must have episcopal sanction, that is, possess “testimonial letters from the ordinary.”[168] These {145} rules were broken, however, without scruple. Inside his dwelling the not very devout creature in hermit’s garb could lead a quiet, easy life, and it was so hard elsewhere! The charity of passers-by was enough for him to live upon, especially if he was not harassed by an over-exacting conscience and knew how to beg; no labour, no pressing obligation, the bishop was distant and the alehouse near. All these reasons caused a never-ending growth of the mischievous species of false hermits who only took the habit to live by it, without asking any permit from any one. In the statutes they were bracketed with beggars, wandering labourers, and vagabonds of all kinds, pell mell, to be imprisoned awaiting judgment. There was exception only for “approved” hermits: “Except men of religion and approved hermits having letters testimonial from the ordinary.” A statute like this is enough to show that Langland did not exaggerate; his verse is but a commentary on the law. The author of the “Visions” is impartial and does justice to sincere anchorites: true Christians resemble them.[169] But what are these false saints who have pitched their tent by the side of the highroads or even in the towns, at the door of the alehouse, who beg under the church porches, who eat and drink plentifully, and leisurely pass the evenings warming themselves?

“Ac eremites that en-habiten · by the heye weyes, And in borwes a-mong brewesters · and beggen in churches.”[170]

What is that man who rests and roasts himself by the hot coals, and when he has drunk his fill has nothing to do but go to bed? {146}

“lewede eremytes, That loken ful louheliche · to lacchen[171] mennes almesse, In hope to sitten at even · by the hote coles, Unlouke hus legges abrod · other lygge at hus ese, Reste hym and roste hym · and his ryg (back) turne, Drynke drue and deepe · and drawe hym thanne to bedde; And when hym lyketh and lust · hus leve ys to aryse; When he ys rysen, rometh out · and ryght wel aspieth Whar he may rathest have a repast · other a rounde of bacon, Sulver other sode mete · and som tyme bothe, A loof other half a loof · other a lompe of chese; And carieth it hom to hus cote · and cast hym to lyve In ydelnesse and in ese.”[172]

All these are unworthy of pity, and, adds Langland, with that aristocratic touch which now and then recurs in his lines, all these hermits were common artisans, “workmen, webbes and taillours, and carters’ knaves”; formerly they had “long labour and lyte wynnynge,” but they noticed one day that these deceitful friars swarming everywhere, “hadde fatte chekus” (cheeks); they thereupon abandoned their labour and took lying garments, as though they were clerks:

. . . “Other of som ordre, other elles a prophete.”

They are seldom seen at church, these false hermits, but they are found seated at great men’s tables because of their cloth. Look at them eating and drinking of the best! they who formerly were of the lowest rank, at the side tables, never tasting wine, never eating white bread, without a blanket for their bed:

“Ac while he wrought in thys worlde · and wan hus mete with treuthe, He sat atte sydbenche · and secounde table; Cam no wyn in hus wombe · thorw the weke longe, Nother blankett in hus bed · ne white bred by-fore hym. The cause of al thys caitifte · cometh of meny bisshopes That suffren suche sottes.”[173]

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These rascals escape the bishops, who ought to have their eyes wider open. “Alas!” said, in charming language, a French poet of the thirteenth century, Rutebeuf, “the coat does not make the hermit; if a man dwell in a hermitage and be clothed in hermit’s dress, I don’t care two straws for his habit nor his vesture if he does not lead a life as pure as his frock betokens. But many folk make a fine show and marvellous seeming of worth; they resemble those over-blossoming trees that fail to bring forth fruit.”[174]

Under the eyes of the placid hermit, comfortably established by the roadside, calmly preparing himself by a carefree life for a blissful eternity, moved the variegated flow of travellers, vagabonds, wayfarers, and wanderers. His benediction rewarded the generous passer-by; the stern look of the austere man did not disturb his sanctimonious indifference. The life of others might rapidly consume itself, burnt by the sun, gnawed by care; his own endured in the shade of the trees, and continued without hurt, lulled by the murmur of human passions—

Et je dirai, songeant aux hommes, que font-ils? Et le ressouvenir des amours et des haines Me bercera pareil au bruit des mers lointaines. (Sully Prudhomme.)

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Good or bad, the whole race (still surviving in the East) disappeared in England at the Reformation, leaving but a memory, and surviving only in poetry:

It is the Hermit good! He singeth loud his godly hymns That he makes in the wood. He’ll shrive my soul, he’ll wash away The Albatross’s blood.

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