Part 17

Fosbroke remembered when no other but wooden dishes of this kind were used in farm-houses in Shropshire. The general form of the trencher was round; yet the _trencher-cap_ of our Universities has a square top.

VEGETABLES.

Very few esculent plants are mentioned in the Accounts of the Middle Ages. Dried peas and beans, parsley, fennel, onions, green peas, and new beans, are the only species named. Pot-herbs, of which the names are not specified, but which served eleven days, cost 6_d_. There is much uncertainty upon the subject of the cultivation of vegetables, in this country, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Cresses, endive, lettuces, beets, parsnips, carrots, cabbages, leeks, radishes, and cardoons, were grown in France during the reign of Charlemagne; but it is doubtful whether many of these varieties had penetrated into England at that early period. The most skilful horticulturists of the Middle Ages were ecclesiastics, and it is possible that in the gardens of monasteries many vegetables were reared which were not in common use among the laity. Even in the fifteenth century, the general produce of the English kitchen garden was contemptible when compared with that of the Low Countries, France, and Italy. Gilbert Kymer can enumerate only, besides a few wild and forgotten sorts, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, beetroot, trefoil, bugloss, borage, celery, purslane, fennel, smallage, thyme, hyssop, parsley, mint, a species of turnip, and small white onions. According to him, all these plants were boiled with meat. He observes also that some were eaten raw, in spring and summer, with olive-oil and spices, but questions the propriety of the custom. This is, perhaps, the earliest notice extant of the use of salads in England.

The subject of the supplies of the table with food is a very large one; and leaves us but space to remark that the condition of food, an important point of its worth, must have suffered from the slow mode of conveyance in former times. The advantages which we enjoy in this age of rapid transit have been thus cleverly illustrated by a contemporary:--"A little more than half a century ago it took about six weeks to drive the herds of cattle from the north of Scotland to the metropolis: now they can be whirled here in a few hours. Fish in great variety may be caught in the morning on the coast of Berwick and Coquet, and be boiling in the kitchens of Belgravia on the same evening for dinner. In exchange for the sheep and beeves from the highlands and Cheviot, the choice fruits and early vegetables of the south are rapidly passed. By means of steamships and other quick sailing vessels, the oranges of Spain and Portugal, the grapes of France and Italy, and the oxen, sheep, fruits, &c. of other foreign parts are brought in fine condition; and delicacies which were not easily obtained even by the rich are now common amongst the multitude. But for this increased facility of conveyance how would it be possible to feed the immense multitude of London, which, in half a century of time, will in all probability number 5,000,000?"

ANTIQUITY OF CHEESE.

Cheese and curdling of milk are mentioned in the Book of Job. David was sent by his father, Jesse, to carry ten cheeses to the camp, and to see how his brethren fared. "Cheese of kine" formed part of the supplies of David's army at Mahanaim during the rebellion of Absalom. Homer makes cheese form part of the ample stores found by Ulysses in the cave of the Cyclop Polyphemus. Euripides, Theocritus, and other early poets, mention cheese. Ludolphus says that excellent cheese and butter were made by the ancient Ethiopians. Strabo states that some of the ancient Britons were so ignorant that, though they had abundance of milk, they did not understand the art of making cheese. There is no evidence that any of these ancient nations had discovered the use of rennet in making cheese; they appear to have merely allowed the milk to sour, and subsequently to have formed the cheese from the caseous part of the milk, after expelling the serum or whey. As David, when too young to carry arms, was able to run to the camp with ten cheeses, ten loaves, and an ephah of parched corn, the cheeses must have been very small.

Thomas Coghan, in _The Haven of Health_, 1584, says: "What cheese is well made or otherwise may partly be perceived by an old Latin verse translated thus--'Cheese should be white as snowe is, nor ful of eyes as Argos was, nor old as Mathusalem was, nor rough as Esau was, nor full of spots as Lazarus.' Master Tusser, in his book of Husbandrie, addeth 'other properties also of cheese well made, which whoso listeth may reade. Of this sort, for the most part, is that which is made about Bamburie in Oxfordshire; for of all the cheese (in my judgment) it is the best, though some prefer Cheshire cheese made about Nantwich, and others also commend more the cheese of other countries; but Bamburie cheese shall goe for my money, for therein (if it be of the best sort) you shall neither tast the renet nor salt, which be two speciall properties of good cheese. Now who is so desirous to eat cheese must eate it after other meate, and in a little quantity. A pennyweight, according to the old saying, is enough; for being thus used it bringeth two commodities. First, It strengthened a weake stomache. Secondly, It maketh other meates to descend into the chief place of digestion; that is, the bosome of the stomache, which is approved in "Schola Salerni." But old and hard cheese is altogether disallowed, and reckoned among those ten manner of meates which ingender melancholy, and bee unwholesome for sick folkes, as appeareth before in the chapter of Beefe.'"

The county of Chester was, ages since, famous for the excellence of its cheese. It is stated that the Countess Constance of Chester (reign of Henry II., 1100), though the wife of Hugh Lupus, the King's first cousin, kept a herd of kine, _and made good cheese_, three of which she presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Giraldus Cambrensis, in the twelfth century, bears honourable testimony to the excellence of the Cheshire cheese of his day.

Cheshire retains its celebrity for cheese-making: the pride of its people in the superiority of its cheese may be gathered from the following provincial song, with the music, published in 1746, during the Spanish war, in the reign of George II.

"A Cheshire-man sailed into Spain, To trade for merchandise: When he arrivèd from the main A Spaniard him espies.

"Who said, 'You English rogue, look here-- What fruits and spices fine Our land produces twice a year! Thou hast not such in thine.'

"The Cheshire-man ran to his hold, And fetched a Cheshire cheese, And said, 'Look here, you dog! behold, We have such fruits as these!

"'Your fruits are ripe but twice a year, As you yourself do say; But such as I present you here, Our land brings twice a day.'

"The Spaniard in a passion flew, And his rapier took in hand; The Cheshire-man kicked up his heels, Saying, 'Thou art at my command!'

"So never let a Spaniard boast, While Cheshire-men abound, Lest they should teach him, to his cost, To dance a Cheshire round!"[56]

Next to Cheshire rank Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Somerset, for their cheese. In the latter county they have the proverb:

"If you wid have a good cheese, and hav'n old, You must turn 'n seven times before he is old."

To curdle the milk in cheese-making was formerly used the _Galium verum_ of botanists, a wild flower with square stems, shining whorled leaves, and loose panicles of small yellow flowers, popularly known as _Cheese Rennet_.

The practice of mixing sage and other herbs, and the flowers or seeds of plants, with cheese, was common among the Romans; and this led to the herbs, &c. being worked into heraldic devices in the Middle Ages. Charlemagne once ate cheese mixed with parsley-seeds at a bishop's palace, and liked it so much, that ever after he had two cases of such cheese sent yearly to Aix-la-Chapelle. Our pastoral poet of the last century has noted this device:

"Marbled with sage, the hardened cheese she pressed."--GAY.

ALE AND BEER.

The virtues of Saxon ale have already been commemorated, at pp. 66-68. We return to the subject, at a later period.

"It may be remarked," says Mr. Hudson Turner, "that in the thirteenth century the English had no certain principle as to the grain best suited for brewing. A roll of household expenses of the Countess of Leicester shows that Beer was made indiscriminately of barley, wheat, and oats, and sometimes of a mixture of all. As the Hop was not used we may conjecture that the produce of their brewing was rather insipid, and not calculated for long keeping: it was drunk as soon as made. To remove the mawkish flatness of such beer it was customary to flavour it with spices and other strong ingredients: long pepper continued to be used for this purpose some time after the introduction of hops. The period at which the last-named plant became an ingredient of English beer is not precisely known. It was cultivated from a very early date in Flanders and Belgium, where it was both employed in brewing, and eaten in salads; and from those countries it was imported into England while the produce of our own hop-grounds was inconsiderable. It would appear, however, that Hops were used in this country for brewing, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, as Gilbert Kymer, in his _Dietary_, pronounces beer brewed from barley, and well hopped, also of middling strength, thin and clear, well fined, well boiled, and neither too new or too old, to be a sound and wholesome beverage. It is pretty certain, nevertheless, that in his time the hop was not _grown_ in England. In ancient days brewing was almost solely managed by women, and till the close of the fifteenth century the greater part of the beer-houses in London were kept by females who brewed what they sold."

Ale, the favourite drink of our Saxon forefathers, has been described as a thick, sweet, _unhopped_ liquor, and as such distinguished from our modern _hopped_ "beer." Gerard says: "The manifold virtues in hops do manifestly argue the wholesomeness of _beer_ above _ale_;" and conjectures that the origin of this distinction may be due to the use of the word beer in the Low Countries, from which hops were introduced. It would appear, however, that beer was known in this country, and specified as such, before the use of hops; which were not imported till 1524, other bitters having supplied their place.

There is an ancient rhyme which says,--

"Turkeys, Carps, _Hops_, Piccarel, and _Beer_, Came into England all in one year."

The year when all these good things are supposed to have been introduced, was somewhere in the early part of the reign of King Henry VIII. But it is evident that as early as 1440, when the _Parvulorum Promptorium_ was compiled, the use of hops was not altogether unknown. Mr. Albert Way supposes that at that time hopped beer was either imported from abroad or brewed by foreigners. And this supposition is certainly supported by the _Promptorium_.

The great hop county of Kent produced better ale than any other; and the large quantity of ale found in the cellars of the Kentish gentry, had much to do with fomenting Jack Cade's rebellion, which arose in Kent.

Unhopped ale, having no bitter principle, would easily run into acetous fermentation. And this is the reason why, in old family receipt-books, we find that our great-grandmothers were in the habit of using alegar where, by the cooks of the present day, vinegar is employed.

In modern usage the distinction between _Ale_ and _Beer_ is different in various parts of the country. But originally, the distinction was very clearly marked: _Ale_ being a liquor brewed from _malt_, to be drunk fresh; _Beer_, a liquor brewed from _malt and hops_, intended to keep.

The above distinction is clearly observed in Johnson's _Dictionary_, where _ale_ is defined, "A liquor made by infusing _malt_ in hot water, and then fermenting the liquor:" _Beer_, "Liquor made _from malt and hops_;" "distinguished from ale either by being older or smaller." Ale thus defined answers to the description given by Tacitus of the drink of the ancient Germans. The ancient Spaniards had a somewhat similar drink, called by them _Celia_.

M. Alphonse Esquiros writes of our national drink thus amusingly:--"It was the favourite fluid of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, whom we have seen descend in turn on Great Britain. Before their conversion to Christianity, they believed that one of the chief felicities the heroes admitted after death into Odin's paradise enjoyed, was to drink long draughts of ale from tall cups. Archæologians have made learned and laborious researches to recover the history of beer in Great Britain: it will be sufficient for us to say, that in Wales, ale, even small, was formerly regarded as a luxury, and was only seen on the tables of the great. In England, about the middle of the sixteenth century, Harrison assures us that, when tradesmen and artisans had the good fortune to stumble on a haunch of venison and a glass of strong ale, they believed themselves as magnificently treated as the lord mayor. At the present day, what a change! Ale and porter flow into the pewter pots of the humblest taverns; rich and poor--the poor more frequently than the rich--refresh themselves with the national beverage, as the Israelites in the Desert slaked their thirst at the water leaping from the rock, to quote a minister of the English Church. This abundance compared with the old penury, rejoices the social economist from a certain point of view, for he sees in it the natural movement of science, trade and agriculture, which in time places within reach of the most numerous class articles which, at the outset, were regarded as luxuries. Not only has beer become more available to the working classes, but the quality has improved, and at the present day English beer knows no rival on the Continent."

The old compound of roasted apples, ale, and sugar, which our ancestors knew as "Lamb's Wool," is thought to have derived its name as follows:--The words La Mas Ubal are good Irish, signifying the Feast, or day, of the Apple, and, pronounced _Lamasool_, soon passed into Lamb's Wool. The mixture was drunk on the evening of the above day, which was supposed to be presided over by the guardian angel of fruits and seeds.

A less fanciful etymology points to the above drink being named from its smoothness and softness, resembling the wool of lambs. Herrick sings:

"Now crowne the bowle With gentle lambs-wooll, Add sugar, and nutmegs, and ginger;"

and in an old play we read of this addition: "Lay a crab in the fire to roast for lamb's-wool."

FOOTNOTES:

[51] In the Sandwich and many of the islands of the Pacific, every child has a piece of sugar-cane in its hand; while in our own sugar colonies the negro becomes fat in crop time on the abundant juice of the ripening cane. This mode of using the cane is, no doubt, the most ancient of all, and was well known to the Roman writers. Lucan (book iii. 237) speaks of the eaters of the cane, as "those who drink sweet juice from the tender reed."

[52] It is remarkable, that the first house at which Coffee was first sold in England, the Angel, Oxford, and the first house at which Tea was sold in England, Garraway's, in Change Alley, London, were both taken down in the same year--1866.

[53] _Things not Generally Known._ Second Series.

[54] Harrison's _Description of England_, c. vi.; Holinshed's _Chron._ ii. 171.

[55] Abridged from a paper by Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A.; _Archæological Journal_, vol. ii. pp. 332-339.

[56] Dogget, the actor, who bequeathed the Coat and Badge, to be rowed for annually on the Thames, was noted for dancing the Cheshire Round, as he is represented in his portrait.

IV. Peasant Life.[57]

Few inquiries of social interest better show the progress of the English people than glances at their condition at various periods of their history. Here we may trace the rise of the people from rude forms of civilization, through its various grades, to the blessings of industry and independence, which have so materially contributed to the character of our National Life. Commencing with the substratum of these social changes, we are reminded of the truth of Goldsmith's oft-quoted lines:

"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied."

In early times freemen formed a mere section of the people, and the bulk of the English population were in a servile condition. Some of the bondmen were captives, or the children of captives; others had been reduced to servitude by distress, by debts, or crimes; but they were not all of them absolute slaves, for even amongst the convicts there were some who were not slaves, but serfs. Now, in acquiring the use of land, a slave made the first step towards freedom. In this manner a _thrall-bred_ man became _boor-bred_, and although still a bondman--he might hope, by good conduct or by the lord's bounty, to rise to the higher condition of a geneatman, or free farmer, and even to become a freeman, and a freeholder,--to become the absolute owner of his little croft.

In Anglo-Saxon times, the political station of a freeman was determined by his _were_--it was his worth or value; and the _wergyld_ was the fine paid in compensation of his life. The abolition or disuse of this fine was an encouragement of liberty, since it removed the strongest mark of distinction between freemen and non-freemen.

The free or unfree condition of a man descended to his posterity. At the close of the thirteenth century, many peasants in England were still affected by the crimes or the misfortunes of their remote ancestors. By that time there was an end of absolute slavery, and the bondsmen were all serfs, or the children of serfs.

OPERATIVE TENANTS.

Villenage and operative tenancy were almost extinct at the time of the Reformation. The few villeins, or operative tenants, then remaining, were in the occupation of small plots of land, or were, in fact, agricultural labourers, working for wages, rather than tenants _paying their rent in labour_. They were scarcely to be found except upon Church-lands, or upon lands which had lately belonged to the Church.

An operative tenant of five acres usually worked once a week for the lord. We learn from Domesday that bordars were tenants of five acres, and that the bordars under the Castle of Ewias worked once a week: the Saxon cottar held at least five acres, and was accustomed to work for the lord every Monday. This custom prevailed in later times. If a tenant worked for the lord once a week, the working-day was commonly Monday. The Monday-men at East Brent, in Somerset, had the following customs in the year 1517:--Each of them, by ancient usage, should annually, in forty days selected by the lord's steward, do forty works of summer and winter husbandry, called Monday-works, working and labouring well each day for six whole hours; each of them receiving, while at work, a halfpenny, the sum of which is twenty pence per annum: and each of them who should do eight autumnal works, working well six hours a day as before said, should receive one penny a day. At the same time there were Monday-men at Limpesham in the same county; and they are noticed in earlier rentals at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, at Leighton in Huntingdonshire, in East Kent, and at Bocking and Hadleigh in the eastern counties.

At Bury St. Edmund's anciently, there were humble servitors called Lancetts, who were bound by their tenure to clean the chambers of the monastery. A tenant of the abbey at Cokefield, whose tenure is not called lancettage, was obliged to thatch, to wattle and daub, to do carpenter's work, to collect compost, to clean houses, &c.--but was not required to clean out the lord's _latrines_.

Although villeins were said to hold their land at the will of the lord, their position was not really precarious; they did not hold at the lord's arbitrary will, but at the will of the lord subject to the custom of the manor. While they paid their dues and performed their services, the lord could not molest them; if the lord ejected a sick villein, the villein was emancipated. For trivial offences the villein was amerced, or was at the lord's mercy; that is, was obliged to pay a fine assessed by a jury who were sworn to spare no one for love or fear, and to punish no one too severely; for disobedience and disloyalty the lord could set his villein in the stocks; if others then came and broke the stocks to let the villein out, the lord could have an action of trespass: the stocks were chiefly designed for vagrants and unruly servants.

At one time the ties which bound a peasant to his landlord were like those which bound a soldier to his martial chief. Dependence on a lord was thought no degradation, and the state of society made independence impossible. The feudal system was exhausted as soon as the law became strong enough to protect an independent man.

SERVICES OF TILLAGE.

We now proceed to the several services. _Grass-erth_, or the service of Tillage, was in return for the privilege of feeding cattle in the lord's open pastures. The Saxon boor ploughed two acres, and might be allowed to plough more if he required more pasture.

At Sturminster Newton in Dorsetshire, certain tenants came upon the lord's grass-land on the morrow of St. Martin's Day with as many teams of oxen as they could bring, and they ploughed four acres of the land with each team; they brought seed from the hall to sow the land, and afterwards harrowed it. This service entitled them to feed their oxen with the lord's oxen, from the time that the meadows were mown until the cattle were housed. The lord might, in the meantime, raise no hedge, and might make no several pasture in the fallow-field, to exclude the cattle of the tenantry.

The Saxon boor, in addition to grass-erth, ploughed three acres of gafolyrthe: that is, ploughing alone in satisfaction of his gayfol, or rent; as well as three acres of benyrthe, or optional tillage, done as a _boon_ to the lord,--done out of grace and kindness, not in the way of duty.

A large part of the lord's arable land was entirely cultivated by the tenantry. The customary tenants at Cokefield, near Bury, ploughed 200 acres; or rather, they ploughed each acre more than once, and their labour was equal to the single tillage of 200 acres.