The past is a foreign country; they did things differently there . . .
Imagine you could travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see, and hear, and smell? Where would you stay? What are you going to eat? And how are you going to test to see if you are going down with the plague?
In The Time Traveller’s Guide . . . Ian Mortimer’s radical new approach turns our entire understanding of history upside down. History is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived, whether that’s the life of a peasant or a lord. The result is perhaps the most astonishing history book you are ever likely to read; as revolutionary as it is informative, as entertaining as it is startling.
A Handbook for Visitors to the
Fourteenth Century
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ISBN 9781845950996
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Ian Mortimer
Illustrations
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction: Welcome to Medieval England
1. The Landscape
2. The People
3. The Medieval Character
4. Basic Essentials
5. What to Wear
6. Travelling
7. Where to Stay
8. What to Eat and Drink
9. Health and Hygiene
10. The Law
11. What to Do
Envoi
Picture Section
Notes
Full titles of works mentioned in the notes
Acknowledgements
Index
Copyright
For my wife, Sophie,
Without whom this book would not have been written
And whom I would not have met
Had it not been for this book.
Ian Mortimer is the author of the bestselling The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, eight other books and many peer-reviewed articles on English history between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) for his work on the social history of medicine in seventeenth-century England. In June 2011, the University of Exeter awarded him a higher doctorate (D. Litt) by examination, on the strength of his historical work. He also writes historical fiction, published under his middle names (James Forrester). He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon.
The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer
The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III
The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England’s Self-Made King
1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory
I would like to thank my editors Will Sulkin and Jörg Hensgen, and all their colleagues at Random House who have helped to bring this idea to fruition, and my agent, Jim Gill, for sound advice. I am very grateful also to Kathryn Warner for giving me feedback on the first draft, and to those who accommodated me on various research trips, namely Zak Reddan and Mary Fawcett, Jay Hammond, Judy Mortimer, and Robert and Julie Mortimer. I would also like to record my gratitude for the helpful suggestions which Peter McAdie and Anne Wegner made during the course of editing this book.
By far my greatest debt is to my wife, Sophie. We first met in order to discuss this book in January 1995. I am deeply grateful to her not only for encouraging me to write it but also for subsequently marrying me. We now have three children: Alexander, Elizabeth and Oliver. I am grateful to them too for teaching me things about life in all ages which one simply cannot learn from a book.
Moretonhampstead, Devon
9 March 2008
The past is a foreign country –
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between
Welcome to Medieval England
What does the word ‘medieval’ conjure up in your mind? Knights and castles? Monks and abbeys? Huge tracts of forest in which outlaws live in defiance of the law? Such images may be popular but they say little about what life was like for the majority. Imagine you could travel in time; what would you find if you went back to the fourteenth century? Imagine yourself in a dusty London street on a summer morning. A servant opens an upstairs shutter and starts beating a blanket. A dog guarding a traveller’s packhorses starts barking. Nearby traders call out from their market stalls while two women stand chatting, one shielding her eyes from the sun, the other with a basket in her arms. The wooden beams of houses project out over the street. Painted signs above the doors show what is on sale in the shops beneath. Suddenly a thief grabs a merchant’s purse near the traders’ stalls, and the merchant runs after him, shouting. Everyone turns to watch. And you, in the middle of all this, where are you going to stay tonight? What are you wearing? What are you going to eat?
As soon as you start to think of the past happening (as opposed to it having happened), a new way of conceiving history becomes possible. The very idea of travelling to the Middle Ages allows us to consider the past in greater breadth – to discover more about the problems which the English have had to face, the delights they found in life, and what they themselves were like. As with a historical biography, a travel book about a past age allows us to see its inhabitants in a sympathetic way: not as a series of graphs showing fluctuations in grain yields or household income but as an investigation into the sensations of being alive in a different time. You can start to gain an inkling as to why people did this or that, and even why they believed things which we find simply incredible. You can gain this insight because you know that these people are human, like you, and that some of these reactions are simply natural. The idea of travelling to the Middle Ages allows you to understand these people not only in terms of evidence but also in terms of their humanity, their hopes and fears, the drama of their lives. Although writers have traditionally been forced to resort to historical fiction to do this, there is no reason why a non-fiction writer should not present his material in just as direct and as sympathetic a manner. It does not make the facts themselves less true to put them in the present tense rather than the past.
In some senses this idea is not new. For many decades architectural historians have been recreating images of castles and monasteries as they appeared in their heyday. Museum curators similarly have reconstructed old houses and their interiors, filling them with the furniture of a past age. Groups of individuals have formed re-enactment societies, attempting to discover what it was like to live in a different time through the bold, practical experiment of donning period clothing and cooking with a cauldron on an open fire, or trying to wield a replica sword while wearing heavy armour. Collectively they remind us that history is much more than an educational process. Understanding the past is a matter of experience as well as knowledge, a striving to make spiritual, emotional, poetic, dramatic and inspirational connections with our forebears. It is about our personal reactions to the challenges of living in previous centuries and earlier cultures, and our understanding of what makes one century different from another.
The nearest historians have come to considering the past at first hand is the genre of ‘What if?’ or ‘virtual history’. This is where historians consider what would have happened if things had turned out differently. For example, what if Hitler had invaded Britain in 1940? What if the Spanish Armada had been successful? While such speculations are open to the obvious criticism that these things did not happen (with the implication that there is no point considering them) they have the great virtue of taking the reader directly to a moment in time, and presenting events as if they were still unfolding. This can bring a real immediacy to a narrative. Put yourself in the shoes of the duke of Wellington at Waterloo, or Nelson at Trafalgar: they were only too well aware of the consequences of defeat. So too were their political masters back in England. They certainly considered the past that never was; so to reconstruct what might otherwise have happened brings us closer to those leaders in the moments of their decision-making. Just think: if Henry IV had not returned to England in 1399 to remove Richard II from power, we would have had several more years – perhaps many more – of Richard’s tyrannical rule, probably resulting in the destruction of the Lancastrian dynasty and all those who supported it. In the spring of 1399 that likelihood was the key political issue and one of the reasons why Henry did return. It was also the principal reason why so many men supported him. In this way it is clear that seeing events as happening is crucial to a proper understanding of the past, even if the results are just as speculative now as they were at the time.
Virtual history as described above is only useful for understanding political events; it has relatively little value for social history. We cannot profitably speculate on what might have happened if, say, the Black Death had not come to Europe; it was not a matter of decision-making. But as with a reconstruction of a typical medieval house, virtual time travel allows us a clearer, more integrated picture of what it was like to live in a different age. In particular, it raises many questions which previously may not have even occurred to us and which do not necessarily have easy answers. How do people greet each other in the Middle Ages? What is their sense of humour like? How far away from home do individuals travel? Writing history from the point of view of our own curiosity forces us to consider a number of questions which traditional history books tend to ignore.
Medieval England is potentially a vast destination for the historical traveller. The four centuries between the Norman invasion and the advent of printing see huge changes in society. The ‘Middle Ages’ are exactly that – a series of ages – and a Norman knight would find himself as out of place preparing for a late-fourteenth-century battle as an eighteenth-century prime minister would if he found himself electioneering today. For this reason, this guidebook concentrates on just one century, the fourteenth. This period comes closest to the popular conception of what is ‘medieval’, with its chivalry, jousts, etiquette, art and architecture. It might even be considered the epitome of the Middle Ages, containing civil wars, battles against the neighbouring kingdoms of Scotland and France, sieges, outlaws, monasticism, cathedral building, the preaching of friars, the flagellants, famine, the last of the crusades, the Peasants’ Revolt and (above all else) the Black Death.
Having emphasised that the focus of this book is fourteenth-century England, a few caveats must be added. It is not possible to recover every detail of the period on the basis of fourteenth-century English evidence alone; sometimes the contemporary record is frustratingly incomplete. Also we cannot always be sure that the manner of doing something in 1320 necessarily held true in 1390. In some cases we can be sure that things changed dramatically: the entire nature of English warfare altered over this period, and so did the landscape of disease, with the catastrophic advent of the plague in 1348. Thus, where necessary, details from the fifteenth century have been used to inform descriptions of the later part of the fourteenth century, and the thirteenth century has been used to inform judgements about the early part. This blurring of time boundaries is only necessary where very difficult questions are raised. For example, we have relatively few sources underpinning our understanding of courtesy and manners in the fourteenth century whereas we have several excellent sources for the early fifteenth. Since it is unlikely that good manners developed overnight, the later evidence has been used as the fullest and most accurate available.
Many types of source material have been used in writing this book. Needless to say, contemporary primary sources are of vital importance. These include unpublished and published chronicles, letters, household accounts, poems and advisory texts. Illuminated manuscripts show daily life in ways which the texts do not always describe: for example, whether women rode side-saddle. A wealth of architectural evidence is available in the extant buildings of fourteenth-century England – the houses as well as the castles, churches and monasteries – and the ever-expanding literature about them provides even more information. In some cases we have documents which complement the architectural record: building accounts and surveys, for example. We have an increasing array of archaeological finds, from excavated tools, shoes and clothes to the pips of berries found in medieval latrines, and fish bones on the waterlogged sites of ancient ponds. We have a plethora of more usual archaeological artefacts too, such as coins, ceramics and ironware. The extent to which a good museum can give you an insight into how life was lived in the Middle Ages is restricted only by your own curiosity and imagination.
But most of all, it needs to be said that the very best evidence for what it was like to be alive in the fourteenth century is an awareness of what it is like to be alive in any age, and that includes today. Our sole context for understanding all the historical data we might ever gather is our own life experience. We might eat differently, be taller, and live longer, and we might look at jousting as being unspeakably dangerous and not at all a sport, but we know what grief is, and what love, fear, pain, ambition, enmity and hunger are. We should always remember that what we have in common with the past is just as important, real and as essential to our lives as those things which make us different. Consider a group of historians in seven hundred years’ time trying to explain to their contemporaries what it was like to live in the early twenty-first century. Maybe they will have some books to rely on, some photographs, perhaps some digitised film, the remains of our houses and the odd council rubbish pit, but overall they will concentrate on what it is to be human. W. H. Auden once suggested that to understand your own country you need to have lived in at least two others. One can say something similar for periods of time: to understand your own century you need to have come to terms with at least two others. The key to learning something about the past might be a ruin or an archive but the means whereby we may understand it is – and always will be – ourselves.
IT IS THE cathedral which you will see first. As you journey along the road you come to a break in the trees and there it is, massive and magnificent, cresting the hilltop in the morning sun. Despite the wooden scaffolding at its west end, the long 80ft high, pointed lead roof, with its flying buttresses and colossal towers, is simply the wonder of the region. It is hundreds of times bigger than every other building around it, and dwarfs the stone walls which surround the city. The hundreds of houses appear tiny, all at chaotic angles, and of different shades and hues, as if they were so many stones at the bottom of a stream flowing around the great boulder of the cathedral. The thirty churches – though their low stumpy towers stand out from the mass of roofs – seem humble by comparison.
When you draw closer to the city walls you will see the great gatehouse. Two round towers, each more than 50ft high, stand either side of a pointed arch, newly built, with a painted statue of the king in a niche above the grand entrance. It leaves you in no doubt about the civic pride of the city, nor its authority. Beyond these gates you are subject to the mayor’s jurisdiction. Here reside the king’s officers, in the castle on the north-eastern perimeter. Here is a place of rule and order. The high circling walls, the statue of the king, the great round towers and – above it all – the immense cathedral, collectively impress you with their sheer strength.
And then you notice the smell. Four hundred yards from the city gate, the muddy road you are following crosses a brook. As you look along the banks you see piles of refuse, broken crockery, animal bones, entrails, human faeces, and rotting meat strewn in and around the bushes. In some places the muddy banks slide into thick quagmires where townsmen have hauled out their refuse and pitched it into the stream. In others, rich green grasses, reeds and undergrowth spring from the highly fertilised earth. As you watch, two semi-naked men lift another barrel of excrement from the back of a cart and empty it into the water. A small brown pig roots around on the garbage. It is not called Shitbrook for nothing.
You have come face to face with the contrasts of a medieval city. It is so proud, so grand, and in places so beautiful; and yet it displays all the disgusting features of a bloated glutton. The city as a body is a caricature of the human body: smelly, dirty, commanding, rich and indulgent. As you hurry across the wooden bridge over Shitbrook, and hasten towards the gates, the contrasts become even more vivid. A group of boys with dirty faces and tousled hair run towards you, and crowd around, shouting, ‘Sir, do you want a room? A bed for the night? Where are you from?’, struggling between them to take the reins of your horse, and maybe pretending that they know your brother, or are from the same region as you. Their clothes are filthy, and their feet even filthier, bound into leather shoes which have suffered the stones and mud of the streets for more years than their owners. Welcome to a place of pride, wealth, authority, crime, justice, high art, stench and beggary.
The city described above is Exeter, in the southwest of England, but it could almost be any of the seventeen cathedral cities. You could say the same for many of the large towns too, except for the fact that their churches are not cathedrals. Arriving in every one of these places involves an assault on all the senses. Your eyes will open wide at the great churches, and you will be dazzled by the wealth and the stained glass they contain. Your nostrils will be invaded by the stench from the sewage-polluted watercourses and town ditches. After the natural quiet of the country road, the birdsong and the wind in the trees, your hearing must attune to the calls of travellers and town criers, the shouts of labourers and the ringing of church bells. In any town on a market day, or during a fair, you will find yourself being jostled by the crowds who come in from the country for the occasion, and who live it up rowdily in the taverns. To visit an English town in the late fourteenth century is a bewildering and extreme sensory experience.
A major town is an intimidating place. Already you will have seen the desiccated remains of thieves left hanging on gallows at windswept crossroads. At the principal gates of a regional capital you will find the heads and limbs of traitors on display. When you enter the city of York (the largest city in the north) you will see the blackened heads of criminals stuck on poles above the city gates, their eyes plucked out by birds. Legs and arms hang by ropes, each the relic of a treasonable plot, and now riddled with maggots or covered with flies. These remains remind you of the power of the king, a greater and more ominous shadow behind the immediate authority of the mayor and aldermen, local lords, sheriffs and judicial courts.
This, you could say, is the landscape of medieval England: a place of fear and decay. But the moment you walk under the shadow of a city gatehouse, you realise it is much more than that. In Exeter, for example, as soon as you enter the great gate of the city, you face the wide and handsome prospect of South Street. Some of the finest houses and inns are here, the gable ends of their steeply angled roofs neatly meeting the street. On your right is the church of Holy Trinity, a cult of special devotion in the late fourteenth century. Further down you have the handsome town house of an abbot. On your left is a row of merchants’ houses, some with their shops open, with silks and other expensive fabrics on show inside the covered shop fronts. For a moment you might notice the uneven surface of the road, which is dust, or mud after it has rained. But then you will be distracted by the amount of activity around you. Ponies and packhorses are ambling through the town, towards the marketplace, laden with corn and guided by peasants from the local farms. Priests pass by, robed in their habits, with crucifixes and rosaries hanging from their girdles. Perhaps a black-robed Dominican friar is preaching to the people at the top of the street, watched by a small circle of admirers. Workers are driving their sheep and cattle into market, or steering carts laden with eggs, milk and cheeses towards the line of shops known as Milk Street.
The city is so alive, so full of busy people, that within a short while you have forgotten about the decapitated traitors. And Shitbrook’s stench is no longer in the air; now there is a remarkable absence of animal dung in the streets. All is revealed in South Street when you see a servant shovelling up horse dung from the area in front of his master’s house. As you walk towards the centre of the city, you will encounter more traders’ shops tightly packed together in small street-front premises – sometimes tiny rooms of less than forty square feet – but all with their distinctive projecting signs to tell the illiterate their trade. Some are paintings depicting the items on sale, such as a painted knife indicating the shop of a cutler. Others are three-dimensional objects: a bushel on a pole, showing that freshly brewed ale is available; or a bandaged arm, marking a surgeon’s premises. At the top of Smithen Street, which leads down to the river, you can hear the clang of blacksmiths hammering away at their forges, and shouting in guttural voices at their apprentices to fetch water or bring coal. Others in the same street are setting up stalls, hanging out iron wares such as scissors, rushlight holders and knives to attract the attention of those coming in from the surrounding countryside. A little further on you come to Butchers Row, or the Shambles, where the counters of the shops are laden with meat lying exposed in the sun, with joints and carcases hanging from hooks in the shade of the shop behind. Listen to the thunk as the cleaver comes down and strikes the chopping board, and watch as the leather-aproned butcher lifts the red meat on to the scales, balancing it carefully with metal weights until he is satisfied that he, at least, is getting a good deal.
It is here, among the city’s shops, that your preconceptions of medieval England will begin to fall apart. Walk into the centre of any large town or city and you will be struck by the extraordinary range of costumes, from russet-clad peasants to richly dressed merchants and esquires and their wives, and maybe even a knight or nobleman. Their travelling cloaks might hide the colourful hues of their clothes in grey winter but, in this sunlight, the rich reds, bright yellows and deep blues are shown off, trimmed with furs according to social rank. Similarly the languages and accents you hear in a city give a cosmopolitan air to the place. Foreign merchants are regularly to be found in the greater towns and cities, but even in the smaller ones you will hear both French and English spoken in the street, and occasionally Latin and Cornish. Over the hubbub of the morning’s business you will hear the town crier, calling from the crossroads at the centre of the town, or laughter as friends share a joke. Over it all the practised cries of the street vendors ring out as they walk around with trays of food, calling out ‘Hot peascods’ or ‘Rushes fair and green’, ‘Hot sheep’s feet’ or ‘Ribs of beef and many a pie’.1
Given the noise and the textures of the place, you may be surprised to learn how few people actually live in the greater towns and cities of England. In 1377 the walls of Exeter encircle six or seven hundred houses where about 2,600 citizens live. But that makes it the twenty-fourth largest community in the whole kingdom. Only the very largest – London, with more than forty thousand inhabitants – can properly be called a great city when compared to the largest continental cities of Bruges, Ghent, Paris, Venice, Florence and Rome, all of which have in excess of fifty thousand. However, do not be misled into thinking that towns like Exeter are small, quiet places. The inns add considerably to the total, albeit on a continually shifting basis. Travellers of all sorts – clergymen, merchants, messengers, king’s officers, judges, clerks, master masons, carpenters, painters, pilgrims, itinerant preachers and musicians – are to be found every day in a town. In addition you will come across crowds of local people coming in from the countryside to buy goods and services, or to bring their produce to the retailers. When you think of the sheer variety of wares and services which the city provides, from metalwork to leatherwork, from the sheriff’s courts and scriveners’ offices to apothecaries’ and spicemongers’ shops, it soon becomes clear how the daytime population of a city can be two or even three times as great as the number of people living within the walls. And on a special occasion – during a fair, for example – it can be many times greater.
The total of 100,000 taxpayers in the thirty largest communities indicates that about 170,000 people – about six or seven per cent of the population of the kingdom – live in towns. There are about two hundred other market towns in England with more than four hundred inhabitants. In total, about twelve per cent of English people live in a town of some sort, even if it be a small town of just a hundred families.3 It follows that the majority live in rural areas, coming into their local town or city when necessary. The majority walk in, and walk home, carrying whatever they have bought or driving whatever livestock they have to sell. It is this purposeful coming and going of people, this movement, which makes a medieval city feel so vibrant and alive.
The range of people living in a city is matched by the wide variety of buildings to be found within the walls. You have already seen some of the most handsome and prestigious houses, situated on the widest, grandest and cleanest streets, which are almost always those leading from the principal gates into the centre of town. But not all citizens dwell in the luxury of handsome three-storey houses. You will have noticed the small alleys, sometimes no more than six or seven feet wide. They look dark on account of the jetties of upper storeys which close in over the thoroughfare, so that the second and third storeys of houses facing each other come within just three or four feet. Houses here have little light and probably no outside space. Some alleys are barely more substantial than muddy paths. If there are no servants to clear them, and if the householders fail to clean them, before long they become dank, smelly and altogether unsavoury. Walk along one of them in winter, on a murky afternoon in the rain, and your impression of richness and civic pride will soon be washed away. The rain splashes down into wide muddy puddles through which you will have to pass, and the lack of light (due to the louring clouds and the overarching houses) rinses all colour from the scene. Then you see the rivulets of water trickling between the buckets of offal and kitchen rubbish outside a house, carrying the liquid of rotting food into the street. Next time you walk along here in the churned-up mud, the stench of decay will fill your nostrils.
These two- and three-storey buildings are nowhere near the bottom end of the housing hierarchy. If you walk down a few more of these dark alleys, you will see that there are turnings off which are even narrower. The most densely inhabited areas of a city are warrens of tiny lanes and paths, sometimes no more than three or four feet wide. Here you find the poorest houses: low, single-storey terraces of old timber buildings, with no proper foundations, subdivided into small rented rooms. You can see that they are old: the shutters hang at angles or have disappeared completely. The shingles (wooden tiles) are slipping from the roofs, which are covered in lichen and moss or streaked with birdlime. The paths and alleys leading to them are little more than stinking drains, effectively open sewers. They are the most dilapidated buildings in the city but because they are not on a main street, and because they do not threaten civic pride (because no visitors or wealthy people see them), the authorities do not force the owners to keep them in good repair. If a door is open, you may just discern in the gloom a single room divided into two unequal parts, the smaller for the children to sleep in, and the other for cooking and the adults’ mattresses. There is often no toilet, just a bucket (to be emptied at Shitbrook). The tenants of these houses spend almost the whole day away from home, at their workplaces; they eat in the street, and urinate and defecate where they can, ideally in the municipal toilets on the city bridge. Their children grow up similarly out of doors, playing in the street. They were the urchins who ran up to you when you first approached the city gate.
Walking through the alleys and lanes of a medieval city, you are bound to come face to face with a high wall. This is not the great wall encircling the settlement but one of a number of subdivisions you can expect to find – around monasteries, for example, or protecting the houses of rich knights, prelates and lords. In most cities you will find the precincts of the cathedral area enclosed by a wall, with gates allowing people in during daylight hours, and firmly keeping them out after dark. Similarly, the older monasteries, which may date back to Saxon times, tend to be located in the centre of the city. All towns have at least one walled-off religious enclosure, and some have more than a dozen. For this reason, space inside even the most extensive city is relatively scarce. Often a third of the whole area inside the walls is given over to the monasteries and religious precincts. Add the tenth or so given over to the royal castle, and a similar area for the parish churches, and it is clear that almost the entire population has to live in half the city – with most of the best sites occupied by the large houses of the wealthy. Hence the immigrant population has to be squeezed into small tenements constructed on the sites of destroyed houses or alongside a churchyard. Few inhabitants of these slums make enough money to move up into the houses of the prosperous traders and freemen of the town.
Walk back to the market square or the main market street of the city, and look around. Notice how almost all the houses are narrow and tall. Each is no more than about fifteen or sixteen feet wide. Most are three or four storeys in height, with shutters either side of the unglazed windows. This arrangement of narrow, tall houses means that many merchants can have a frontage on to the main marketplace. At ground level you see the heavy oak door to the building. To its side, and occupying most of the front of the house, is the shop front. At night and on Sundays this is closed up, and looks like a wooden barricade across a large window. But during trading hours the lower half is hinged down to form a display counter and the upper half is hinged up, and propped, to provide a shelter for the goods. The shop inside may actually be a workshop – perhaps of a leatherworker, jeweller, tailor, shoemaker or similar craftsman. Other traders – butchers and fishmongers, for instance – tend to work out of doors, standing in front of their counters, using their shops’ interiors as storage areas. In either case, the house above is where the trader and his family live. Only the richest merchants – those who specialise in goods transported in bulk, by sea – have separate houses and warehouses. This close relationship of residence and work premises means that many shop buildings have some fine touches of decoration: tiled or slate-hung upper storeys, or projecting wooden beams with carved corner pieces. Some even boast carved and painted coats of arms or heraldic beasts.
And then you turn a corner and see some totally different houses, altogether larger and set sideways on to the street. Your eye is immediately drawn to the pointed gatehouse, with a crenellated stone tower above, or the long wooden house with large oriel windows projecting out over the road. These are the houses of the wealthiest and most important citizens. Just as the various types of traders congregate together – the dyers by a water course, the cloth merchants in Cloth Street, the butchers in Butchers Row – the majority of the most influential citizens also live in close proximity to one another, in the widest, most prominent streets. Here you may find the town house of a major financier next to that of a knight or an archdeacon. At the start of the century such houses may well be still made of wood but increasingly they are being rebuilt so that by 1400 the majority are proud and sturdy stone structures, with chimneys and glazed windows. This is why, when gazing down a street of well-spaced high-status town mansions, you will invariably see one or two covered in scaffolding. Close inspection will reveal that the scaffolding is made up of poles of alder and ash lashed together, supporting planks of poplar, with pulleys for raising and manoeuvring stones and baskets of tiles. In this way, the dilapidated remains of the thirteenth century are gradually being swept away, and new and extended structures are taking their place.
These types of accommodation – from the single-room alleyway slums to the tall merchants’ houses and the wide stone mansions of the wealthy – do not fully illustrate the variety in building and accommodation in a city. There are, in addition, the smart houses of the canons and other officers within the cathedral precinct, each with its scriptorium, chapel and library as well as living quarters. In the case of Exeter, there is the royal castle, with its ancient gatehouse (which is already three hundred years old by the time the Black Prince visits it in 1372). There is the guildhall abutting the high street, the bishop’s palace adjacent to the cathedral, and the College of the Vicars Choral (who sing Mass in the cathedral) just outside the cathedral close. The finest inns, with their signs displayed above their wide arched gates, are to be found on the main streets. The towers of the town gatehouses also provide accommodation to a select few civic servants. At the bottom end of society, accommodation for some visitors is provided by letting out sleeping space in the barns and stables which are to be found dotted around the city. Many houses are sublet so that, in a row of three old traders’ houses, you might find a dozen poor families. There are also the monastic guesthouses, the friaries and the hospitals. And as you leave the city itself and pass into the suburbs you will have the distinct impression that, while the residents might be relatively few in number, the structures in which they live show greater variety than any modern city, even though the latter has twenty or thirty times as many inhabitants.
One last thing. Before you leave, turn around, and look back along the main street. Have you noticed that the roads are practically the only public spaces? There are no public parks, no public gardens, and large open squares are very rare in English cities except where they serve as the marketplace. The street is the sole common outdoors domain. The guildhall is only for freemen of the city, the parish churches are only for parishioners. When people gather together in large numbers they meet in the streets, often in the marketplace or at the market cross. It is there that news is disseminated by the town crier, jugglers perform and friars preach. But the market cross is only the central point in this network of conversations. Gossip is spread by men and women meeting in the lanes and alleys, at the shops, in the market itself or at the water conduits. It is not just the buildings which make a medieval city but the spaces between them.
No trip to medieval England would be complete without a visit to London. It is not just the largest city in England but also the richest, the most vibrant, the most polluted, the smelliest, the most powerful, the most colourful, the most violent and the most diverse. For most of the century the adjacent town of Westminster – joined to the city by the long elegant street called the Strand – is also the permanent seat of government. To be precise, it becomes the permanent seat of government. In 1300 the government is still predominantly itinerant, following the king as he journeys around the kingdom. However, from 1337 Edward III increasingly situates his civil service in one place, at Westminster. His chancellor, treasurer and other officers of state all issue their letters from permanent offices there. After the last meeting at York (1335), parliaments too are normally held at Westminster. Richard II does hold six of his twenty-four parliaments elsewhere (at Gloucester, Northampton, Salisbury, Cambridge, Winchester and Shrewsbury), but doing so only strengthens the feeling that Westminster is the proper place for parliamentary assemblies, so that the commons can more easily attend. All these developments, plus London’s links with European traders and banking houses, enhance the standing of the capital. Its importance as an economic and a political centre at the end of the century is greater than that of all the other cities in England combined.
Visitors arriving in London are overwhelmed by the spectacle – stunned by the sight of so many houses, so many shops, so many wide streets (in excess of twenty feet) and so many markets. They remark on the number of swans gracefully moving up the river, and on the whitewashed arches of London Bridge. They are engrossed by the hundreds of small boats bobbing up and down the Thames. By day the quays seem very busy, with both local and international trade, for ships of a hundred tons can dock here, bringing merchants and their goods from as far as the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Visitors are equally fascinated by the crowds. The forty thousand inhabitants of the capital are joined by travellers and businessmen from all the corners of Christendom. So many of them are dressed in fine velvet, satin and damask that all you can do is gawp at their finery as they swish into this shop or strut out of that one, attended by their servants.
London, like every city, is a place of huge contrasts. The streets – even the main ones – have tubs of putrid water positioned here and there, supposedly in case of fire but more often than not full of decaying rubbish. The few streets which do preserve some vestige of road surface are so badly paved that the stones serve more to preserve the puddles than to assist transport. Elsewhere the heavily-trodden mud seems to last all year. Inhabitants will draw your attention to how ‘evil-smelling’ this mud is just after it has rained (as if you need telling). And yet these are not the worst of London’s problems. The stench and obstruction of the animal dung, vegetable rubbish, fish remains and entrails of beasts present problems of public sanitation on a scale unmatched by any other town in England. With 40,000 permanent citizens and sometimes as many as 100,000 mouths to feed and bowels to evacuate, it is impossible for a city with no sewage system to cope. You will see rats everywhere. The place is infested with them. Such is the level of detritus, especially in the town ditches, that it is also infested with dogs and pigs. There are frequent attempts to eradicate the wild pig population but each one bears testimony to the failure of the previous effort. If you cannot get rid of the pigs, what hope is there for eradicating the rats?
The fundamental problem is that of scale. London is a walled city spilling over into its suburbs. There are more than a hundred overpopulated parishes. Even after the Great Plague of 1348–9 – which kills off the citizens at the rate of two hundred each day – people arrive continually from the countryside to take their place. Thus there is an unremitting stream of residential rubbish. There is also a constant demand for more products. London is a major manufacturing centre and so it consumes, among other things, thousands of animal carcases and hides. The easiest way of transporting these is on the hoof, alive, but this means slaughtering, skinning and butchering thousands of animals daily in residential areas. At the start of the century you can find tanning – one of the smelliest occupations of all – being carried on next to people’s houses. Likewise pelterers (selling animal skins) and fullers (cleaners of raw wool) ply their trades in streets alongside spicemongers and apothecaries. The resultant incongruity is like having a perfume shop situated next to a fishmonger’s – but far worse, for the smell of rotting meat is associated with diseases in the medieval mind, often for good reasons. You know things are really bad when, in 1355, the London authorities issue an order preventing any more excrement from being thrown into the ditch around the Fleet Prison on account of fears for the health of the prisoners.4
The state of London does improve. This is largely due to the efforts of successive mayors and aldermen to clean up the streets. The first step is the establishment of a mechanism for appointing official swine killers, who are paid 4d for each pig they remove. In 1309 punitive fines are levied on those who leave human or animal excrement in the streets and lanes: 40d for a first offence, 80d for a second.5 In 1310 tailors and pelterers are forbidden from scouring furs in the main streets during daylight hours, on penalty of imprisonment. The following year the flaying of dead horses is prohibited within the city walls. From 1357 there are rules against leaving dung, crates and empty barrels lying by the doors of houses, and against throwing rubbish into the Thames and the Fleet, the latter river being almost completely blocked. In 1371 all slaughtering of large beasts (including sheep) within the city is prohibited; henceforth they must be taken to Stratford Bow or Knightsbridge to be killed. Finally, the passing of the Statute of Cambridge in 1388 makes anyone who throws ‘dung, garbage, entrails and other ordure’ into ditches, ponds, lakes and rivers liable to pay a fine of £20 to the king. With that legislation, the idea of parliamentary responsibility for public hygiene has finally arrived, and – in London’s case especially – not before time.
Forget, if you can, the noxious smells and obstructive rubbish of the city and concentrate on its virtues. Look at how many goldsmiths and silversmiths there are, how many spicemongers’ shops, how many silk merchants’ emporia. There are people who will declare that London is a great city because you can get all the medicines you require. There are certainly more physicians, surgeons and apothecaries here than anywhere else in England. You will also find a communal running water supply – fed through a series of conduits – even though the pressure is sometimes low, as a result of all the siphoning off to private houses. On certain special occasions the conduits are even made to run with wine – for example, on the arrival of the captive king of France in 1357, or to celebrate the coronation of Henry IV in 1399.
Ten Places to See in London
1. London Bridge. The nineteen huge arches spanning the Thames constitute one of the engineering marvels of the kingdom. The surface is twenty-eight feet wide, with buildings taking up seven feet on either side. These are cantilevered for an extra seven feet out over the river, with shops opening on to the bridge and merchants’ houses above. There is a chapel dedicated to St Thomas halfway along and a drawbridge for the security of the city towards the southern end. Watch out for the rapids between the arches at changes of the tide; the city youths take bets on shooting them in rowing boats.
2. St Paul’s Cathedral. This church, started in the twelfth century and recently extended (finished in 1314), is one of the most impressive in the country. At 585ft long, it is the third-longest church in the whole of Christendom. Its 489ft spire is the second-tallest in England, dwarfing that of Salisbury (404ft) and second only to that of Lincoln Cathedral (535ft). But forget statistics; it is the beauty of the church – especially its rose window at the east end, and its chapter house – for which it deserves to be on any list of London sights.
3. The Royal Palace in the Tower of London. You are, of course, familiar with the White Tower, the great building left by William the Conqueror, but most of the visible castle – including the moat – actually dates from the thirteenth century. Here is situated an extensive royal palace, including a great hall, royal solar (private living room) and a multitude of lordly chambers. In addition, a royal mint is based here, as are the royal library and the royal menagerie. Edward III’s collection of lions, leopards and other big cats is kept here from the late 1330s and is continually being supplemented with new animals.
4. London Wall. All great cities are walled but London’s wall is special. It rises to a height of eighteen feet and has no fewer than seven great gatehouses: Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate and Bridgegate (the last leading on to London Bridge). These are the city’s security at night, their immense oak doors are secured by heavy drawbars. In times of war the citizens can defend their city as if it were an immense castle.
5. Smithfield, just outside the city walls, is home to the main meat market of the city. Needless to say, this is where people regularly meet in the course of shopping. Even more people gather, however, for the three-day fair held here every St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August). As it is still a field, literally, it provides a suitable ground for jousts and tournaments.
6. The Strand runs from the bridge over the Fleet, just outside Ludgate, along the north bank of the Thames to Westminster. Not only does it afford the medieval traveller the best view of the river, it is also where the most prestigious houses are situated. Several bishops have palaces along this street. Most impressive of all is the Savoy, a royal palace which is home to Edward III in his youth. Later Edward passes it on to his son, John of Gaunt, under whom it becomes the most wonderful town house anywhere in the kingdom. However, it is burnt to the ground during the Peasants’ Revolt (1381), and remains a burnt-out shell for the rest of the century.
7. Westminster Palace.his6