1215: The Year of Magna Carta Ebook (4 page)

Whether it was a feast day or not, meals in an aristocratic household were very formal occasions. Even the washing of hands before and after every meal was ceremonious. A pitcher of water, or a pottery
aqua manile
in the shape of a horse or a ram, designed so that the water came out of the animal’s mouth, would be brought round; one servant poured the water while another held a bowl under the diner’s hands. In a well-run household the approved arrangement was for a high table and two side tables to be set out, and covered with cloth, usually linen. Spoons, salt-cellars (which might be silver-gilt and very ornamental indeed) and bread would be laid out, and knives too – though many people brought their own knife. (At this date pepper was much too expensive to be left on the table.) The pantler (from the French word
pain
) with the bread and the butler (from
bouteille
) with a fine drinking cup – perhaps a mazer, a cup made of maplewood, mounted in precious metals – stood side by side in front of the lords while grace was said. The marshal or steward supervised the serving of food and drink, and kept order in the hall – young servants were notoriously rowdy. According to Daniel’s book, the servers should be well groomed and neatly dressed, their hands and nails clean, their hair properly combed. They should make sure there were no long hairs growing out of their noses, and that their shoes didn’t squeak. Those serving drink should never fill cups more than two-thirds full. Whereas those serving food had to go to the kitchen to collect each course, the drinks waiters would bring wine or ale from another table, the ‘cupboard’, in the hall, on which precious plates and goblets might also be displayed. When Thomas Becket was chancellor he was famous for the luxurious state he kept. According to Herbert of Bosham, his friend and biographer: ‘His table was resplendent with gold and silver plate, and abounded in dainty dishes and expensive wines. Whatever food or drink was a celebrated rarity, no price was so high that it deterred his agents from buying it.’

Wine was not stored in bottles but kept in wooden casks and drunk young. Henry II’s dominions included some of the finest wine-growing areas in Europe: the Bordeaux region, the hinterland of La Rochelle in Poitou, and Anjou and Touraine from where the best wines, the
vins pour la mer
, were taken down the Loire valley to be exported from Nantes. According to one twelfth-century author, English wine could be drunk only with eyes closed and teeth clenched. When John came to the throne he fixed the prices at which the wines of Poitou and Anjou were to be sold. In an effort to boost his popularity, he set them low with, in the view of disapproving contemporaries, the inevitable consequence that ‘the whole land was filled with drink and drinkers’. The king’s wine was transported in tuns, casks containing 252 gallons, and stored in castles and other houses such as Marlborough and Clarendon until the king called for them. Archaeologists have uncovered the great wine cellar known as ‘La Roche’ built for Henry II at Clarendon. An audit of John’s wine revealed that in 1201 he had over 700 tuns of wine (180,000 gallons) at his disposal. Perhaps he went for quantity rather than quality. In 1201 he visited the king of France at Fontainebleau and was given the run of the palace and its wine cellar. ‘After he had gone,’ a Frenchman wrote, ‘the king of France and his people all had a good laugh at the way the people of the English king had drunk all the bad wines and left all the good ones.’ Or was King John just being polite?

In the largest households there might have to be two sittings for lunch. Since ceremony and hierarchy required that the head of household would be the first served and the last to leave the table, lunch might take a long time, two or three hours. It is not surprising that some lords and ladies preferred to eat in the relative privacy of their own chambers – though this was frowned upon by traditionalists who thought it was a lord’s duty to maintain his own dignity, and that of his household, by dining publicly.

Tableware – plates, bowls, cups, saucers, and platters for trenchers (the slices of thick bread on which food was served and which could be eaten after the juices had been absorbed) – was generally made of wood, earthenware or pewter, though inevitably the richest households liked to display their silver. At lunch two main courses were served, and two light courses, each course including a great variety of dishes. A week’s shopping list made for King John’s niece Eleanor of Brittany gives a good idea of aristocratic diet.

For those who took their religious observances to heart, Fridays, Saturdays and many Wednesdays were fish-days. There were also, in addition to Lent, a number of fast-days when little but bread and ale were consumed. By these standards the poor virtually fasted every day. They ate eggs, cheese, bread, vegetables and legumes; they drank ale – unprocessed water posed a known health risk. Ironically this meant that they suffered less from tooth decay than the rich who could afford sweeteners. However, bread baked from stone-ground flour often contained grit, so teeth tended to get worn down.

Food was served in units, known as messes, which were shared between two, three or four people. You used your thumb and index finger to take a portion of food, a piece of meat, for example, from the dish and place it on your trencher. (Table forks came gradually into fashion from the fourteenth century onwards.) You cut your portion into small pieces to be chewed politely, then wiped your knife on the bread. Sharing messes put a premium on good table manners, and Daniel of Beccles has much to say on that subject: don’t lick your fingers; don’t put them into the dish at the same time as a companion; above all, don’t grab the best bits. It was not done to use your fingers or a piece of bread to get the last morsel out of the dish. Sharing a soup bowl was an especially delicate operation, and there were lots of don’ts here. Don’t fill your spoon too full; don’t share it; don’t leave it in the soup plate; don’t soak bits of bread in it. If the soup is too hot don’t blow on it, although you can stir it with a crust or a spoon or put croutons into it. There were lots of other rules, many familiar today. Don’t get food on the table-cloth, or over your lips. Don’t pick your teeth. Wipe your hands discreetly with a napkin. Don’t stare, don’t point at people, or make big gestures with your arms. Don’t play with your knife and spoon. Don’t grumble about what you’re given. Sit up straight. Don’t put your elbows on the table. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Don’t pick your nose at table. Other rules remind us that notions of politeness change with time and place. If you feel the need to spit, then turn round and spit behind you so that you don’t offend others at your table. If you belch, look up at the ceiling.

After lunch was over, and you had washed your hands, and the left-over food had been distributed as alms for the poor, there was free time. You might retire to your chamber for a nap, or take part in a throwing-the-javelin or heaving-the-stone contest in the courtyard. Then you might expect to receive visitors for drinks. This was a crucial moment in the fabric of neighbourliness and networking. By now those who had gone hunting should have returned. Daniel of Beccles had plenty to say about visits, on how, for example, to accept or refuse invitations. Accepting all invitations shows, he insisted, a lamentable lack of discrimination.

After drinks it was time to attend evensong before going into the hall for supper at what we might call tea-time, four o’clock or thereabouts, perhaps again in two shifts. In winter the hall would be lit, chiefly by tallow candles. These would most probably have been made on the premises, from the by-product of animals slaughtered for the larder. In the early fourteenth century the Bishop of Bath’s household used six pounds of tallow candles a day in winter. Supper was always a lighter meal than lunch, perhaps just one main course, a dessert and cheese. But by the time it was over, the lord and his lady might have spent as much as five or six hours eating and drinking. After supper, the lord’s clerks were expected to go through the accounts for the day, but for everyone else it was time for recreation: backgammon, usually called ‘tables’, music, story-telling, dancing and flirting.

Anyone wanting to listen today to music sounding something like that played in King John’s time would have to go to Turkey or to parts of the Balkans where Ottoman influence used to be strong, and where strident reed pipes can still be heard. Or listen to the unforgettably colossal noise made by the bagpipes of Sardinia. In the West, industrial manufacture and nineteenth-century standardisation has brought about the demise of the old sound world. Although there were many kinds of bowed instruments in those days, none of them was held under the chin like a modern violin. Rather they were held – much as many folk instruments of the fiddle type still are – further down the body, or sometimes played on the lap with an underhand bow made from a hank of horsehair. A musical instrument coming into fashion at this time was the lute; its name is derived from an Arabic word meaning ‘the wooden thing’. Then there was the zither-like psaltery, the harpsichord, and a rich variety of harps; instruments such as the organ, confined to major churches, and those more suitable for outdoors or ceremonial occasions such as drums and trumpets. On feast days the sound of a trumpet might well have summoned the household to the hall for lunch and supper.

Entertainment of a bawdy kind was popular. Roland le Pettour (the Farter) was rewarded with an estate in Suffolk in return for entertaining the royal court at Christmas by ‘leaping, whistling and farting before the king’. Daniel of Beccles would not have approved of this amusement. In his view it was rude to fart noisily for fun. He would have approved even less of the
fabliaux
which were popular in French-speaking aristocratic circles, and which give us, as few other surviving sources do, an idea of what less earnest people liked to laugh about in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. So liberally are the four-letter French words ,
vit
(prick),
coilles
(balls),
con
(cunt),
cul
(arsehole) and
foutre
(fuck) scattered throughout them that since Victorian times many readers of a sensitive nature have found them distressingly crude and have preferred to avert their eyes.

After evening prayers, the lord went to his bedchamber with at least one servant, carrying a light, accompanying him every inch of the way. It was this chamberlain’s duty to inspect the privy before his master used it. When his master had finished, he had to hand him bunches of well-pressed hay with which to wipe his bottom. Daniel advised that the servant stand – that is, not kneel – when doing this. By the end of the thirteenth century the king and queen had separate bathrooms at Westminster, but bathrooms were not generally fashionable among the aristocracy until the fifteenth century. Before then it was usual to bathe in a wooden vat brought into a bedchamber for the purpose. While the master sat comfortably on a large sponge his chamberlain would wipe him with another sponge, dipping it into a basin of herb-infused water, then rinse him with rose water. Once in bed, linen sheets and a quilt were pulled over him, and his dressing gown placed to hand in case he wanted to get up during the night, for people generally slept naked. Just in case he felt hungry or thirsty, some bread, ale and wine was left in the room.

It was a sign of status to be accompanied almost everywhere, even when in the bath or the privy. Even so, there were a few things that people preferred to do alone. According to the historian William of Newburgh, writing in the 1190s, when the doctors advised a seriously ill archbishop of York that his only hope of recovery lay in having sex – many doctors believe in the restorative power of the sexual act. The Archbishop took the young woman they provided for him into his private room (
secretum
). But when the doctors examined his urine next morning they discovered that he had not, after all, followed their advice. He explained to his friends that he could not break his vow of chastity – not even for medicinal purposes – and that he had pretended to do so in order not to hurt their feelings.

Senior staff and guests went to their own lodgings for the night. The rest slept scattered throughout the buildings – in corridors, in warmer rooms such as the hall and kitchen if they were lucky. They slept on pallet-beds, palliasses stuffed with straw or rushes. The size of palliasses, some as much as nine feet by seven, shows that often they were expected to share. The lord’s bedchamber was lit throughout the night, and so too the stables, but everywhere else was left in darkness. Some stories suggest that indoors, with the shutters closed, it was very dark indeed. Gerald de Barri tells of a knight whose girlfriend had promised to creep into his bed at night. When he heard her coming he stretched out his hand to pull her to him, and had it bitten by a dog snuffling around in search of scraps of food. The angry knight grabbed his sword and waited for the dog’s next approach. The inevitable happened when his girlfriend arrived. Only their own experience of real darkness, a darkness we can hardly imagine, would have made this morality tale remotely plausible to its audience.

The fact that the permanent household staff was overwhelmingly male caused an obvious problem, and prostitutes provided a solution, but one that needed careful supervision. The porter, who had to ensure that no unauthorised people were bedding down when night came, bore a heavy responsibility. For the king’s household there was, in effect, a brothel by royal appointment, with twelve licensed ‘demoiselles’ who were entitled, and expected, to keep other whores away. When on duty in the king’s household even aristocrats, who had large estates of their own, were expected to leave their wives and family at home while they concentrated on the royal service which took them so close to the centre of power. At Christmas 1204 Joan, wife of Hugh de Neville, one of King John’s most influential household officials and gambling partners, offered the king two hundred chickens, which he accepted, for permission to lie one night with her husband.