Then there is the great day of the company – its saint's day – the day of visible greatness for the trade. On this day is the whole livery assembled; there must be none absent, great or small: all are met in the hall, every man in a new gown of the trade color. First to church; the boys and singing clerks lead the way, chanting as they go. Then march the Lord Mayor's sergeants, the servants of the company, and the company itself, with its wardens and the officers. Mass despatched, they return home in the same order to the hall, where they find a banquet spread for them, such a banquet as illustrates the wealth and dignity of the trade; the music is in the gallery, the floor is spread with rushes newly laid, clean, and warm; the air is fragrant with the burning of that scented Indian wood called sanders; at the high table sit the master or warden, the guests – even the King will sometimes dine with a city company – and the court. Below, at the tables, arranged in long lines, are the freemen of the company, and not the men alone, but with every man sits his wife, or, if he be a bachelor, he is permitted to bring a maiden with him if he chooses. Think not that a city company of the olden time would call together the men to feast alone while the women stayed at home. Not at all. The wardens knew very well that there is no such certain guard, and preservative of honesty and order, which are the first requisites for the prosperity of trade, as the worship of man for maiden and of maid for man.
When dinner is over, they will elect the officers for the year, and doubtless hear a word of admonition on the excellence of the work and the jealousy with which the standard of good work should be guarded. Then the loving-cup goes round, and the mummers come in to perform plays and interludes, dressed up in such fantastic guise as makes the women scream and the men laugh and applaud.
On the day before Ascension Day there was beating of the bounds, a custom still observed, but with grievous shrinkage of the ceremonies.
Perhaps the greatest festival of the year was May Day, which fell in the middle of our month of May. It must be a hard year indeed when the east winds are not over and done with by the middle of May. Spring was upon them. Only think what was meant by spring to a people whose winters were spent, as must have been the case with most of them, in small houses, dark and cold, huddled round the fire without candles, going to bed early, rising before daylight, eating no fresh meat, fruit, or vegetables, waiting impatiently for the time to return when they would live again in the open, shutters down and doors thrown wide.
All the young people on the eve of May Day went out into the fields to gather boughs and white-thorn flowers. In Chaucer's "Court of Love," "Forth goeth all the court, both most and least, to fetch the flowers fresh." Later on, Herrick writes:
Come, my Corinna, come, and coming, mark
How each field turns a street, each street a park
Made green and trimmed with trees; see how
Devotion gives each house a bough
Or branch; each porch, each door, on this
An ark, a tabernacle is
Made up of white thorn neatly interwoven.
It was the prettiest festival in the world. In every parish they raised a May-pole hung with garlands and ribbons; they elected a Queen of the May, and they danced and sang about their pole. The London parishes vied with each other in the height and splendor of the pole. One was kept in Gerrard's Hall, Basing Lane (now swept away by the new streets). This was forty feet high. A much later one, erected in the Strand, 1661, in defiance to the Puritans, was 130 feet high. And there was the famous May-pole of St. Andrews Under-shaft, destroyed by the Puritans as an emblem of idolatry and profligacy. The girls came back from their quest of flowers singing, but not quite in these words:
We have been rambling all the night,
And almost all the day,
And now returning back again
We have brought you a branch of May.
A branch of May we have brought you,
And at your door it stands;
It is but a sprout, but it's well budded out,
By the work of our Lord's hands.
And there was morris-dancing, with Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Little John, Tom the Piper, and Tom the Fool, with hobby-horses, pipe and tabor, mummers and devils, and I know not what; and Chepe and Cornhill and Gracechurch Street were transformed into leafy lanes and woodland ways and alleys cut through hawthorn and wild rose. You may see to-day the hawthorn and the wild rose growing in Epping Forest, just as they grew four hundred years ago. But the forest has been miserably curtailed of its proportions. A great slice, wedge-shaped, has been cut out bodily, and is now built upon. Hainault Forest has perished these forty years, and is converted into farms, save for a fragment, and of Middlesex Forest nothing remains except the little piece enclosed in Lord Mansfield's park. But in those days the forest came down to the hamlet of Iseldun, afterwards Merry Islington.
And in the month of June there were the burning of bonfires to clear and cleanse the air, and the marching of the watch on the vigils of St. John Baptist and St. Peter.
Hear the testimony of Stow:
In the months of June and July, on the vigils of festival days and on the same festival days in the evenings after the sun setting, there were usually made bonfires in the streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them; the wealthier sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfires, would set out tables on the vigils, furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on the festival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit and be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for His benefits bestowed on them. These were called bonfires as well of good amity amongst neighbours, that being before at controversy, were there, by the labour of others, reconciled, and made of bitter enemies loving friends; and also for the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the air. On the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and on St. Peter and Paul the Apostles, every man's door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, white lillies, and such like, garnished upon with garlands of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oil burning in them all the night; some hung out branches of iron curiously wrought, containing hundreds of lamps alight at once, which made a goodly show, namely, in New Fish Street, Thames Street, &c. Then had ye besides the standing watches all in bright harness, in every ward and street of this city and suburbs, a marching watch, that passed through the principal streets thereof, to wit, from the little conduit by Paul's Gate to West Cheap, by the stocks through Cornhill, by Leadenhall to Aldgate, then back down Fenchurch Street, by Grass Church, about Grass Church conduit, and up Grass Church Street into Cornhill, and through it into West Cheap again. The whole way for this marching watch extendeth to three thousand two hundred tailor's yards of assize; for the furniture whereof with lights, there were appointed seven hundred cressets, five hundred of them being found by the companies, the other two hundred by the Chamber of London. Besides the which lights every constable in London, in number more than two hundred and forty, had his cresset: the charge of every cresset was in light two shillings and fourpence, and every cresset had two men, one to bear or hold it, another to bear a bag with light, and to serve it, so that the poor men pertaining to the cressets, taking wages, besides that every one had a straw hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost two thousand. The marching watch contained in number about two thousand men, part of them being old soldiers of skill, to be captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals, &c., whifflers, drummers, and fifes, standard and ensign-bearers, sword-players, trumpeters on horseback, demilances on great horses, gunners with hand guns, or half hakes, archers in coats of white fustian, signed on the breast and back with the arms of the city, their bows bent in their hands, with sheaves of arrows by their sides, pikemen in bright corslets, burganets, &c., halberds, the like billmen in almaine rivets, and aprons of mail in great number; there were also divers pageants, morris dancers, constables, the one-half, which was one hundred and twenty, on St. John's Eve, the other half on St. Peter's Eve, in bright harness, some overgilt, and every one a jornet of scarlet thereupon, and a chain of gold, his henchman following him, his minstrels before him, and his cresset light passing by him, the waits of the city, the mayor's officers for his guard before him, all in a livery of worsted or say jackets party-coloured, the mayor himself well-mounted on horseback, the sword-bearer before him in fair armour well mounted also, the mayor's footmen, and the like torch-bearers about him, henchmen twain upon great stirring horses, following him. The sheriff's watches came one after the other in like order, but not so large in number as the mayor's; for where the mayor had besides his giant three pageants, each of the sheriffs had besides their giants but two pageants, each their morris dance, and one henchman, their officers in jackets of worstead or say party-coloured, differing from the mayor's, and each from other, but having harnessed men a great many, &c.
On the Feast of St. Bartholomew there were wrestlings, foot-races, and shooting with the bow for prizes. On Holyrood Day (September 14th) the young men and the maidens went nutting in the woods. At Martinmas (November 1st) there was feasting to welcome the beginning of winter. Lastly, the old year ended and the new year began with the mixture and succession of religious services, pageants, shows, feasting, drinking, and dancing, which the London citizen of every degree loved so much.
Then there were the City holidays. St. Lubbock had predecessors. There were Christmas Day, Twelfth Day, Easter, the day of St. John the Baptist, on June 24th, and of St. Peter and St. Paul, on June 29th. On the last two days, to discourage the people from keeping it up all night, the vintners had to close their doors at ten.
The City of London has always been famous for the great plenty and variety of its food. Beef, mutton, and pork formed then, as now, the staple of the diet; small beer was the drink of all, men, women, and children. When, for instance, the Franciscans first set up their humble cells, the small beer being short in quantity, they did not drink water, but mixed water with the beer, in order to make it go round. There were so many fast-days in the year that fish was as important a form of food as mutton or beef. They ate lampreys, porpoise, and sturgeon, among other fish. Ling, cod, and herring furnished them with salted fish. Peacocks and swans adorned their tables at great banquets. Their dishes were sweetened with honey, for sugar was scarce, but spices were abundant. By the thirteenth century they had begun to make plentiful use of vegetables. They were fond of pounding meats of different kinds, such as pork and poultry, and mixing them in a kind of rissole. At a certain great banquet, the menu of which has survived, there appears neither beef nor mutton, probably because those meats belonged to the daily life, but there are great birds and little birds, brawn, rabbits, swans, and venison for meats, soup of cabbage, then the rissoles just mentioned, and various sweetmeats. Their drink was strong ale for banquets, hot spiced ale with a toast, the loving-cup of hypocras, and for wines, Rhenish, sack, Lisbon, and wine of Bordeaux.
Since every man in the City who practised a trade must be a freeman and a member of a company or trade guild, and since every company looked after its livery, there should have been no poor in the City at all. But performance falls short of promise; laws cannot always be enforced; there was, it is quite certain, a mass of poverty and worthlessness in the City even in those days. Perhaps the City proper, with its wards, was tolerably free from rogues and vagabonds, but there were the suburb of Southwark, that of the Strand, that already springing up outside Cripplegate, and the city of Westminster. Plenty of room here for rogues to find shelter. There were also the trades of which the City took no heed, of minstrels, jugglers, and actors, and all those who lived by amusing others; also the calling of servant in every kind, as drover, carter, wagoner, carrier, porter (not yet associated), and so forth. And there were the men who would never do any work at all, yet wanted as much drink and food as the honest men who did their share. For all these people, when they were hungry, there were the charities of the great men, the bishops, and the monasteries. For instance, the Earl of Warwick allowed any man to take as much meat as he could carry away on a dagger; the Bishop of Ely (but this was later, in the sixteenth century) gave every day bread, drink, and meat to two hundred poor people; the Earl of Derby fed every day, twice, sixty old people; thrice a week all comers; and on Good Friday 2700 men and women. In the year 1293, being a time of dearth, the Archbishop of Canterbury fed daily four or five thousand. In 1171, Henry II., as part of his penance for the murder of à Becket, fed 10,000 people from April till harvest. In the reign of Edward III. the Bishop of Durham bestowed on the poor every week eight quarters of wheat, besides the broken victuals of his house.
The almshouses, of which there are so many still existing, belong for the most part to a later time. The citizens founded hospitals for the necessitous as well as for the sick; they rebuilt and beautified churches; they endowed charities, and gave relief to poor prisoners. The first almshouses recorded were founded in the fourteenth century by William Elsing, mercer, who, in 1332, endowed a house for the support of a hundred blind men, and by John Stodie, citizen and vintner, Mayor in 1358, who built and endowed thirteen almshouses for as many poor citizens. In 1415 William Sevenoke, citizen and grocer, founded a school and almshouses in his native place, and two years later Whittington founded by will his college and almshouses. The college has been swallowed up, but the almshouses remain, though transferred to Highgate. After this the rich citizens began to remember the poor in their wills, choosing rather, like Philip Malpas, Sheriff in 1440, to give clothing to poor men and women, marriage dowries to poor maidens, and money for the highways than to bequeath the money for the singing of masses or the endowment of charities.
One more amusement must be mentioned, because it is the only one of which the honest Londoners have never wearied. It is mentioned by the worthy Fitz Stephen. It still continues to afford joy to millions. The craftsman of the fourteenth century found it at the Mermaid in Cornhill, or the Three Tuns of Newgate, or the Swan of Dowgate, or the Salutation of Billingsgate, or the Boar's Head of London Stone. He found it in company with his fellows, and whether he took it out of a glass or a silver mazer or a black jack, he took it joyfully, and he took it abundantly. Tosspots and swinkers were they then; tosspots and swinkers are they still.
To set against this eagerness for pleasure, this avidity after sports of every kind, we must remember the continual recurrence of plague and pestilence, especially in the fourteenth century,13 when the love of shows and feasting was at its highest, and when the Black Death carried off half the citizens. Is it not a natural result? When life is so uncertain that men know not to-day how many will be alive to-morrow, they snatch impatiently at the present joy; it is too precious to be lost; another moment, and the chance will be gone – perhaps forever. As is the merriment of the camp when the battle is imminent, so is the joy of the people between the comings of the plague. Life never seems so full of rich and precious gifts as at such a time. As for the lessons in sanitation that the plague should teach, the people had not as yet begun to learn them. The lay stalls and the river-bank, despite laws and proclamations, continued to be heaped with filth, and the narrow street received the refuse from every house. And, in addition to the occasional plague, there was ever present typhoidal fever striking down old and young.
Perhaps the joy of the present was also intensified by the possibility of famine. At the end of the twelfth century there was a terrible famine. There was one in 1251; there was one in 1314, when "no flesh was to be had … a quarter of wheat, beans, and peas was sold for twenty shillings." This is something like twenty pounds at present prices. This famine continued throughout the next year, when Stow says "horse-flesh was counted great delicates, the poore stole fatte dogges to eate; some (as it was said), compelled through famine, in hidden places, did eate the fleshe of their owne children, and some stole others, which they devoured. Thieves that were in prison did plucke in pieces those that were newlie brought among them, and greedily devoured them half alive." The uncertainty whether next year would produce any bread at all sweetened the loaf of to-day. In the year 1335 long-continued rains caused a famine. In 1353 there was another; in 1438 the scarcity was so great that bread was made from fern-roots, and so on.
The earliest schools of the City were those of St. Paul's, Westminster, and the Abbey of Bermondsey. Each of the religious houses in turn, as it was erected, opened another school. When, however, Henry V. had suppressed the alien priories, of which four certainly, and perhaps more, belonged to London, their schools were also suppressed. So much was the loss felt that Henry VI., the greatest founder of schools of all the kings, erected four new grammar-schools, namely: at St. Martin's le Grand, St. Dunstan in the West, St. Mary le Bow, and St. Anthony's; and in the following year he made four more, namely: in the parishes of St. Andrew's, Holborn; All Hallows the Great, Thames Street; St. Peter's, Cornhill; and St. Thomas of Acon.
But to what extent education prevailed, whether the sons of craftsmen were taught to read and write before they were apprenticed, I know not. For them the trivium and the quadrivium of the mediæval school, the grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy could not possibly be of use. On the other hand, one cannot understand that the child of a respectable London craftsman should be allowed to grow up to the age of fourteen with no education at all. As for the children of gentle birth, we know very well how they were taught. Their education was planned so as to include very carefully the mastery of those accomplishments which we call good manners. It also included Latin, French, reading, writing, poetry, and music. In the towns the merchants and the better class understood very well the necessity of education for their own needs. The poor scholar, however – the lad who was born of humble parents and received his education for nothing – was a young man well known and recognized as a common type. But he never intended his learning to adorn a trade; rather should it lead him to the university, to the Church, even to a bishopric. It is significant that throughout Riley's Memorials there is no mention of school or of education; there is no hint anywhere how the children of the working-classes were taught. One thing is certain, the desire for learning was gradually growing and deepening in those years; and when the Reformation set the Bible free, there were plenty – thanks perhaps to King Henry's grammar-schools – in the class of craftsmen who could read it. But as yet we are two hundred years from the freeing of the Book.
It is always found that the laws are strict in an inverse proportion to the strength of the executive. Thus, had the laws been properly carried out, London would have been the cleanest and the most orderly town of the present, past, and future. Every man was enjoined to keep the front of his house clean; no refuse was to be thrown into the gutter; no one was to walk the streets at night. When the curfew-bell rang, first from St. Martin's, and afterwards from all the churches together, the gates of the City were closed; the taverns were shut; no one was allowed to walk about the streets; no boats were to cross the river; the sergeants of Billingsgate and Queenhithe had each his boat, with its crew of four men, to guard the river and the quays; guards were posted at the closed gates; a watch of six men was set in every ward, all the men of the ward being liable to serve upon it. These were excellent rules. Yet we find men haled before the Mayor charged with being common roreres (roarers), with beating people in the streets, enticing them into taverns, where they were made to drink and to gamble. Among the common roreres was once found, alas! a priest. What, however, were the other people doing in the street after curfew? And why were not the taverns shut? As is the strength of the ruling arm, so should be the law. We are not ourselves free from the reproach of passing laws which cannot be enforced because they are against the will of the people, and the executive is too weak to carry them out against that will. People, you see, cannot be civilized by statute.
The wages and hours of work of the craftsman have not been satisfactorily ascertained. The day's work probably meant the whole day. Like the rustic, he would begin in the summer at five and leave off at 7.30, with certain breaks. In winter he would work through the daylight. His wages, which were ordered for the craft by the company, seem to have been ample so long as employment was continuous. But the crafts were always complaining of foreign competition. Edward IV., in 1463, states that owing to the import of wares fully wrought and ready made for sale, "artificers cannot live by their mysteries and occupations as they have done in times past, but divers of them, as well householders as hirelings, and under-servants and apprentices in great numbers, be this day unoccupied, and do hardly live in great misery, poverty, and need." Therefore the statute enumerates a long list of things that are not to be exported. Among these we observe knives, razors, scissors – showing that the cutlery trade was already flourishing then – but not swords, spear-heads, or armor of any kind. Actual artificers were not to be employers but only servants; those already established could sell in gross but not in retail, and they were not to have alien servants. That there was discontent among the working-men is clear from these statutes and from the constant attempts of the craftsmen to form journeyman, or yeoman guilds, whose real objects, though they might mask them under the name of religion, were to increase wages and keep out new-comers.
Apart from the question of wages, what the craftsmen wanted was what the masters, too, demanded – "encouragement of natives, discouragement of foreigners, the development of shipping, and the amassing of treasure."14
Such were the people of London in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Such was Plantagenet London, the land of Cocaigne – Cockney Land – whither the penniless young gentleman, the son of the country squire, made his way in search of the fortune which others had picked up on its golden pavement.
Strewed with gold and silver sheen,
In Cockneys' streets no molde is seen;
Pancakes be the shingles alle
Of church and cloister, bower and halle;
Running rivers, grete and fine,
Of hypocras and ale and wine.
But, indeed, a pavement of flints and stones the City offered to any who tried to win her fortunes save by the way prescribed. Of course there were – there always are – many who cannot enter by the appointed gate, nor keep to the ordered way. As it is now, so it was then. There were rogues and cheats; there were men who preferred any way of life to the honest way. How the City in its wisdom dealt with those we shall now see.
At first sight one may be struck with the leniency of justice. In cases which in later years were punished by flogging at the cart-tail, by hanging, by long imprisonment, the criminal of the fourteenth century stood in pillory, or was made to ride through the streets, the nature of his crime symbolized by something hung from his neck. There were as yet no burnings, no slicing off of ears; there was no rack, no torture by rope, boot, or water. It is true that those who ventured upon violence to the sacred person of an Alderman were liable to have the right hand struck off; but at the last moment that officer always begged and obtained a commutation, while the criminal made humble submission. Those who have entered upon an inheritance of law-abiding and of order have forgotten by what severities men were forced into external forms of respect for the officers of justice. Then, again, the Alderman knew every man in his ward; he was no stranger among his people; he knew the circumstances and the condition of every one; he was punishing a brother who had brought the ward into disrepute by his unruly conduct; he was therefore tender, saving the dignity of his office and his duty to the city.
For instance, it was once discovered that wholesale robberies were carried on by certain bakers who made holes in their moulding-boards, and so filched the dough. These rogues in the last century would have been flogged unmercifully. Robert de Bretaigne, Mayor A.D. 1387, was satisfied by putting them in pillory till after vespers at St. Paul's, with dough hung about their necks, so that all the world might know why they were there. When certain "tapicers" were charged with selling false blankets, that is, blankets which had been "vamped" in foreign parts with the hair of oxen and cows, the blankets were ordered to be burned. On the other hand, highway robbery, burglaries, and some cases of theft were punished by hanging. The unhappy Desiderata de Torgnton, for instance, in an evil moment stole from a servant of the Lady Alice de Lisle thirty dishes and twenty-four salt-cellars of silver. The servant was bound by sureties that he would prosecute for felony, and did so, with the result that Desiderata was hanged, and her chattels confiscated; but of chattels had she none.
For selling putrid meat the offender was put in pillory, and the bad meat – dreadful addition to the sentence – burned beneath his nose. The sale of "false" goods – that is, things not made as they should be made, either of bad materials or of inferior materials – was always punished by destruction of the things.
What should be done to a man who spoke disrespectfully of the Mayor? One Roger Torold, citizen and vintner, in the year of grace 1355, and in the twenty-eighth year of our Sovereign Lord King Edward III., said one day, in the presence of witnesses, that he was ready to defy the Mayor; and that if he should catch the Mayor outside the City, then the Mayor should never come back to it alive. These things being reported, the Mayor caused him to be brought before himself, the Aldermen, and Sheriffs at the Guildhall. The prisoner confessed his crime, and put himself upon the favor of the Court. He was committed to prison while the Court considered what should be done to him. Being brought to the bar, he offered to pay a fine of one hundred tuns of wine for restoration to the favor of the Mayor. This was accepted, on the condition that he should also make a recognizance of £40 sterling to be paid if ever again he should abuse or insult the name or person of the Mayor. For perjury, the offender was, for a first crime, taken to the Guildhall, and there placed upon a high stool, bareheaded, before the Mayor and Aldermen. For the second offence he was placed in pillory. For women, the thew was substituted for the pillory. One Alice, wife of Robert de Causton, stood in the thew for thickening the bottom of a quart-pot with pitch, so as to give short measure. The said quart-pot was divided into two parts, of which one half was tied to the pillory in sight of the people, and the other half was kept in the Guildhall.
Death by hanging or pillory. These were almost the only punishments. The cases before the Mayor's Court remind us of the remarkable resemblance we bear to our ancestors. They are monotonous because they read like the cases in a modern Police Court. Giles Pykeman goes in terror of his life, because certain persons threaten him, but they find surety for good behavior. John Edmond Commonger, convicted of passing off bad oats for good – pillory. John William, for passing off rings of latten as rings of gold – pillory. Nicolas Mollere, for spreading false news – pillory, with a whetstone round his neck to mark the offence. Heavens! if this offence were again made penal. John Mayn, indicted for being a leper – banished out of the city. Robert Brebason, stock fish-monger, charged with assault in presence of the Mayor. Not a case for pillory this: let him be imprisoned for a year and a day in Newgate. Alice Sheltoir, charged with being a common scold – to the thew. John Rykorre, cordwainer, for forging a bond – pillory.
As an illustration of the times I give the story of William Blakeney. He was a shuttle-maker by trade, but a pilgrim by profession. He dressed for the part with long hair, long gown, and bare feet. He loitered about in places where men resorted – taverns and such – and there entertained all comers with travellers' tales. He had been everywhere, this pious and adventurous pilgrim. He had seen Seville, city of sacred relics; Rome, the abode of his Holiness the Pope; he had even seen the Pope himself. He had been to the Holy Land, and stood within the very sepulchre of our Lord. And what with the strange creatures he had met with in those far-off lands, and the men and women among whom he had sojourned, and the things he could tell you, and the things which he postponed till the next time, the story would fill volumes. For six years he lived in great comfort, eating and drinking of the best, always at the expense of his hearers. This man must have been an unequalled story-teller. Six years of invention ever fresh and new! Then he was found out – he had never been a pilgrimage in his life. He had never been out of sight of the London walls. So he stood in pillory – this poor novelist, who would in these days have commanded so much respect and such solid rewards – he stood in pillory, with a whetstone round his neck, as if he had been a common liar! And then he had to go back to the dull monotony of shuttle-making, and that in silence, with nobody to believe him any more. Well, he shortly afterwards died, I am convinced, of suppressed fiction. But perhaps his old friends rallied round him, and by the light of the fire he still beguiled the long evenings by telling for the hundredth time of the one-eyed men, and the men with tails, and the men who have but one leg, and use their one foot for an umbrella against the scorching sun – all of whom he had seen in the deserts on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus, where St. Paul was converted.