The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (14 page)

If you find yourself speaking English with the locals do not be surprised if their language gets a little rough around the edges. Just as fourteenth-century place names are direct descriptions of localities (for instance: “Shitbrook Street,” “Pissing Alley”), so daily speech is equally straightforward and ribald. In telling his
Canterbury Tales
, Chaucer describes how one ardent lover pursued the married woman whom he fancied and “caught her by the cunt.” At another point in the same work, Chaucer has his host declare to him, “Your shithouse rhyming isn’t worth a turd.” Daily language is direct and to the point. So if someone slaps you on the back in a hearty way and exclaims, “Your breeches and your very balls be blessed!” do not take it amiss. It is a compliment.

When does a new year begin? January 1? Not always. Although aristocrats do give one another New Year presents on January 1, medieval English people count the year of grace (the year of the Lord) as starting on Lady Day, March 25. Curious, you might think. But it gets “curiouser and curiouser.” There are many ways of dating the beginning of the year, and several of them are in use simultaneously. In addition to January 1 and March 25 there is a third day on which to begin a new year, namely Michaelmas (September 29), which is used by the Exchequer. It is also adopted by the chronicler Adam Murimuth, whose work is widely copied, adopted, and adapted, complete with its odd dates.

Medieval dating systems become even more complicated for international travelers. The day on which New Year’s Day gifts are exchanged in England for the historical year 1367 falls in 1366 in Florence and Venice, but in 1367 in the Italian port of Pisa, where the year begins on the
previous
March 25. If you sail from England on January 1, 1366, and land at Pisa in mid-February, there it will be 1367 already. Travel on to Venice, and arrive before the end of February, and you will be back in 1366. Leave after March 1 and Anno Domini will be
1367. Ride into Florence and you will be back in 1366 again. Return to your boat at Pisa on or after March 25 and it will be 1368. Sail on to Provence and you will find yourself back in 1367. Stop in Portugal or Castile on the return journey—where the date is still reckoned from the advent of the Romans—and it will be 1405. The Spanish Era (as the dating system beginning in 38
BC
is called) is still in use in Portugal (until 1422) and Castile (until 1384).
²

In reality, only a few English people actually use Anno Domini. Instead, most use a far more complicated system: the regnal year. This takes the form of the first/second/third year of the reign of the king. Under this system, the new year actually begins on the anniversary of the king’s accession. The year
AD
1388 might begin on March 25 but most English people will refer to that day as March 25 in “the eleventh year of King Richard II” (as Richard came to the throne on June 22, 1377). So far so good. The complications arise from the year being set on this secular cycle and the days of the year being set to an ecclesiastical one, based in part on a moveable feast (Easter). Hence March 23, 1388, is “the Monday before the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the eleventh year of the reign of King Richard II after the Conquest.” Not exactly snappy. It is also a system prone to error. Replace “Annunciation” with “Assumption” and you get a totally different date in a different year (August 12, 1387). The fourteenthcentury way of recording the date might sound poetic, but that is the only thing in its favor.

Telling the time has its complications. These arise not so much from a split system as from the complexity of an old sun-based system giving way slowly to the “hour of the clock.” Before Edward III introduces the first mechanical clocks to his palaces in the 1350s and 1360s, there are none in England—with the exception of an experimental one devised by an enterprising abbot of St. Albans, Richard of Wallingford. People tell the time by assessing the hour as a fraction of the day, starting at daybreak. As the day and night are split into equal halves regardless of the season, it follows that the daytime “hour” (a twelfth of the daylight) is longer in the summer and shorter in the winter.

Thus the way to work out the time in the fourteenth century is to assess the proportion of the sky which the sun has crossed. This can be done with a sundial or by looking at the angle of shadows cast, by a tall object. In the introduction to “The Sergeant-at-Law’s Tale” Chaucer gives a good description of both methods. “Our host saw that the bright sun had traversed a quarter part, plus roughly half-an-hour, of the arc it covers from sunrise to sunset.” A quarter of the twelve hours represented by the sun’s arc is three hours after dawn; so, if you add the half hour mentioned, the time turns out to be between half-past nine and ten o’clock. Chaucer’s narrator confirms this by noting that the length of each tree’s shadow is equal to its height, implying the sun is at forty-five degrees in altitude, which he knows is the equivalent of about ten o’clock in April. Normally you would use a brass astrolabe for measuring the angle of the sun, if you know how. Most well-to-do people have one.
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The only mechanical clocks you will come across are large turret clocks built into the bell towers of aristocratic palaces and some of the major abbeys and cathedrals. By the end of the century there are clocks in the cathedrals of Salisbury and Wells, and in several royal palaces and castles, including Westminster, Windsor, Queenborough, and King’s Langley. Chaucer refers to a clock in the abbey tower in his “Nun’s Priest’s Tale.” Obviously clocks regulate the day in a wholly different way, measuring eighteen hours of daylight and six of nighttime in summer (not twelve and twelve). For this reason there are two sorts of time in use simultaneously: clock time and solar time. So it is necessary to specify “hour of the clock” (our “o’clock”), if that is what you mean, in order to differentiate between the two. Note that clocks do not
show
the time; they announce it by ringing a bell on the hour. Thus you will find people speak not only of “hours of the clock” but also of “hours of the bell.”
⁴

Even before clocks are invented, bells are an important means of telling the time in towns and cities. In London the great bell of St. Martin’s le Grand is the one to listen out for. It is this bell which tells you when the markets are open, and when curfew starts. In a large city like London, where many bells are rung for a wide variety of reasons, knowing the sound each bell makes represents a third method of telling the time. Most people get up at daybreak. The first hour of their day is known as “prime.” The third hour (about 9 a.m.) is called
“terce”; the sixth hour (noon) is “sext”; the ninth hour of the day (midafternoon), “nones”; and so on. The bells ring across the town for “vespers” at the twelfth hour. As the bells can be heard all over town, it does not matter if they are a few minutes out this way or that, or whether they are using solar hours or hours “of the clock.” Whoever rings the said bell sets the standard time for everyone else.

One time of day to which, as a traveler, you will need to pay particular attention is curfew. In London, when the bell of St. Martin’s le Grand rings out at the end of the day, the gates to the city are closed and all the people return to their homes or inns. Within the city the watchmen begin their duty—six men patrolling each ward, more guarding the gates—and only men of good repute are permitted in the streets, and then only if they are carrying a lantern. All the taverns have to close their doors. All boats on the river have to be moored. Strangers found out after curfew are likely to be arrested as nightwalkers. For this reason, if you have not found yourself somewhere to stay by the time the curfew bell rings, your best bet is to leave the city straightaway and seek a place to stay outside the city walls, in the suburbs or at Southwark. Otherwise the watch will probably find you overnight accommodation in one of the city prisons. These are among the least savory places to spend any length of time, let alone a whole night.

Having seen that there is little or no standardization of language, spelling, date, or time, it will not come as a total surprise to hear that there are considerable variations in some of the units of measurement employed in fourteenth-century England. For example: a “plowland” is the amount of land which a plowteam of eight oxen can plow in a year—this results in a very different acreage in steeply sloping Devon to the same measurement in flat Norfolk. The acre itself is somewhat variable, reflecting its origin as the area which a team of oxen could plow in a day. Although Edward I tries to standardize the acre at 4,840 square yards (the “statute acre”), customary acres persist. The Cheshire acre is nearly twice the size of a statute acre, and the Yorkshire acre is considerably larger too. The Cumberland acre varies in size from place to place, from just over one to almost two statute
acres.
⁵
The Cornish acre varies too but on a much grander scale, being anything from fifteen to three hundred statute acres.
⁶
As for distances, an Old French mile is about 1.25 statute miles, and many educated people in fourteenth-century England refer to distances in Old French miles.
⁷
This international standard is practically the only widespread measure of distance. Locally, miles of varying lengths are in use, such as the 2,428-yard mile in West Yorkshire (the modern mile of 1,760 yards will not be established until a statute of 1593).

There are considerable complexities attached to other measures. It is not so much that they vary as that they may be differently interpreted, according to what it is you are trying to measure. A foot in length is the same as your modern foot of 12 inches but if you are measuring cloth then you use the ell, normally 45 inches—but 27 inches if the cloth is Flemish. Probably the most complicated measures are those involving liquids. A gallon of wine is not the same volume as a gallon of ale. A standard hogshead contains 63 wine-gallons or 52.5 ale-gallons. Except that there is no such thing as a
standard
hogshead; there is a standard for wine, another for ale, and a third for beer (which is imported). If you are buying beer in London, a hogshead amounts to 54 ale-gallons; if you are buying ale, it amounts to 48.

This sounds complicated but it could be worse. Devon has its own peculiar weights and measures system, so any merchant doing business there needs to keep his wits about him. The Devon “rod” measures 18 feet, not 16.5, so an acre measures 5,760 square yards, not 4,840. There are 16.5 pounds to the stone (not 14), when measuring cheese or butter. The Devon pound weighs 18 ounces (not 16). A hundredweight is not 112 pounds as elsewhere in England but 120 pounds. There are 10 gallons in a Devon bushel, not the more usual 8. In a later century a traveler remarks that a man from the Midlands or the north of England “might travel through all the countries of Europe and not find practices more foreign to his own than those of Devon.”
⁸

At the start of the fourteenth century, it is not that unusual to come across people in rural England who have only one name. A villein called, say, Ilbert, who has always farmed the same clutch of acres
across his lord’s fields and has similarly spent all his life living in one cottage, Westcott, is unlikely to be addressed as anything other than Ilbert. A man of his lowly rank does not normally bear a hereditary surname. If he were called John, a much more common name, then the need to distinguish him from other Johns in the parish would doubtless arise, and the manorial clerk might describe him as “John of Westcott” or “John, Libert’s son.” But whichever appellation he is ascribed, it is simply a distinguishing feature, not a hereditary name. If John moves to Southcott he will soon become known as “John of Southcott.” In 1300 only your official, wealthy, and political classes need to have hereditary surnames, so they can be identified outside their places of residence, or so testimony given on their authority can be repeated in future years. Hence all the franklins, esquires, and gentry you meet will have a hereditary identity. Villeins who do not travel far, or hold an office, have little need of one.

All this changes in the second and third quarters of the century. Partly as a result of downturns in the economy from the 1315–23 period, and especially after the Great Plague of 1348–49, villeins start moving around between manors much more often. The need to identify different people from many more places becomes apparent. Moreover, the concept of a consistent family name for everyone—not just the rich and well traveled—develops, so that by 1400 people expect that a man called “John of Westcott” or “John Ilbertson” will be called by the same name whether he is in Westcott or Westminster. Moreover, the idea of an unchanging family name means that even John’s sons will be expected to carry the surname Ilbertson. By 1400 the idea of everyone having a hereditary surname has caught on.

Identity is much more than a name. It includes where you are from and, by implication, how far you are from those who will protect you. It includes status. In the case of a nobleman this obviously implies his title, or the name of his principal manor. A London freeman’s company or guild may also form part of his identity. In other towns and cities, the very fact that a man is a freeman of the place is important: it implies that he has certain rights. An abbot similarly depends on his religious house for his identity; the abbot of Westminster is a far more important man than the abbot of Flaxley, for example. Then of course there is the heraldic aspect of identity, which distinguishes the lords, knights, and esquires from the rest of the community, including such
merchants who are descended from heraldic families. These are not to be regarded lightly. Some knights value their coat of arms as highly as their family name and will enter into long and costly legal battles to prove their right to a particular design.

All these elements of identity come together in a seal. A seal is a matrix which creates an impression in soft wax, allowing a man or woman to authenticate a document. Most seals of the nobility contain either a coat of arms or a depiction of the lord in armor on horseback, bearing his arms on a shield. They normally have an inscription recording the lord’s name and principal title or, if merely a knight, his principal manor. Secular lords’ seals are round; so too are merchants’ seals, which carry a design of a bird or some other emblem (if the merchant is not armigerous). Ecclesiastical seals are not round but a tall, symmetrical convex shape, as are noblewomen’s seals. Normally a man keeps his seal about his person, or his secretary or chaplain will look after it. When he dies, the matrix of his seal will be broken. If it is lost, he will urge town criers to announce that documents sealed with it no longer carry his approval.