The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (24 page)

Another unsavory fact about staying at an inn is the cost. A bed for the night will set you back about ½d to 1d, plus 1½d to 2½d for a meal (more if with meat and more again if with wine). In addition, it is most important to have your horse fed and looked after; you can expect to spend between 1½d (in summer) and 3½d (in winter) on stabling and fodder per animal. Of course you will also have to pay for a bed (¼d) and board (1d) for your servant too. At a fine, stone-built city inn with a good reputation, the bill will be higher. In some cases you may have to pay a total bill of 1s 6d for a single night’s accommodation for yourself, a servant, and three horses. And do not forget that, if you have been well served, your landlord will expect a tip as you leave. This applies to everywhere you spend the night—including the houses of wealthy and private citizens. As Chaucer puts it in “The Sea Captain’s Tale,” the welcome guest will “not forget to tip the meanest page in the whole house” and give to “his host and all the servants in the place some gift that is appropriate to their standing.”
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The poorest town dwellers are not people with whom you are likely to stay. As you have already seen (in
chapter 1
), their lowly single-storey dwellings are smoky, filthy, crowded, and damp. A wealthy merchant’s house, on the other hand, has all the spaciousness of an inn with many more comforts besides.

The layouts of merchants’ houses vary hugely. But take the substantial house built by the tallow-chandler Richard Willysdon in Thames Street, London, in 1384. Looking at the front you see a line of shops, which Willysdon lets out to traders. These form the ground floor of a three-storey timber-framed structure leaning out over the street. The ground floor is twelve feet high, the first floor ten feet, and the second seven feet. In the center of the building is an entrance arch with a gate, leading from Thames Street into the courtyard. If you go through this you will find yourself in a large entrance court, with storage buildings on your left and a high, long hall on your right. A short flight of stone steps leads up to this hall. Directly ahead of you are several timber-framed buildings where you will find the parlor, the chapel, and bedchambers.

Turn to your right and enter the hall. This is a room designed to impress you and every other visitor whom Willysdon receives. Its size and height will strike you—forty feet long by twenty-four feet wide, and between thirty feet and forty feet high. Its architectural wooden roof adds grace to the spacious and airy interior. The painted wall hangings and the colorful cushions on the benches along the walls add vibrancy. The stone floor gives the hall a sense of solidity; beneath it there is a vaulted undercroft where goods are stored. The shutters are open, and through them you can see that the windows are glazed with thick greenish glass, which is opaque but allows light in and keeps the cold out. There is a fire on the central hearth, smoke from which is rising in the sunlight towards the roof.

Turn around and explore this house further. You entered by means of a “screens passage”—a covered passageway enclosed behind a screen, which prevents the hall door opening directly to the cold. If you go back into this passage and go through the door directly opposite, you will find yourself in the buttery, where ale, wine, and all
other “wet” things are kept. The next door off the passage leads to the pantry, where bread and all “dry” things are kept (including spices, tablecloths, and other linen). At the end of the passage, beyond these rooms and tucked in behind the tenanted shops, is the kitchen: a large square room open to the roof beams, with wide fireplaces.

Walk back into the hall and go to the far end. Here you will see the merchant’s table. On one side is his aumbry, where he displays his finest pewter and silverware: silver spoons, flagons, mazers (silver-bound drinking vessels), and hanaps (two-handled drinking cups). In the end wall these is a door leading through to the south-facing parlor or solar, where Willysdon and his family spend much of their day. Upstairs from this are the main bedchambers for the family and guests, with views across the garden and down to the river. Willysdon even has his own private wharf. The rent he pays for this valuable piece of land is £12 per annum.
³

The sort of items you will find in merchants’ houses are as varied as the houses themselves. If you stroll through the private quarters of Willysdon’s house and those of his neighbors you will see feather beds in the bedchambers, painted wooden altarpieces in the chapels, gilt-silver crucifixes, seals, Bibles, and even the odd vellum-bound book of romance or history. You will find the swords and breastplates which good citizens are expected to carry, chests of clothes, and utensils for washing your hands (such as basins and ewers). You will see large quantities of linen for the bedchambers and many varieties of tableware, from pewter plates to bronze flagons and enameled gilt-silver covered goblets. Furniture is relatively scarce, but in the parlors you will see benches, chests, candlesticks, and painted wallhangings; and in the bedchambers you will find a surprisingly varied range of beds—from large, comfortable feather beds to low, narrow truckle beds for children and servants. The personalities of these men and women are to be noted in the objects which hint at their creativity: an astrolabe for measuring the stars, for instance, or a musical instrument such as a harp, tambourine, or flute. Most interesting of all are the prized, luxurious possessions. In 1383 in the house of William Harecourt, a trader of Boston, you will find a gentleman’s falcon and a couple of other hawks. In 1337 in the house of Hugh le Bever, a taverner of London, you will see a rare cup made out of a coconut.
⁴

If you travel any distance, then at some point you will stay overnight in a religious house. Whether this be an abbey, priory, or hospital, they all offer hospitality as part of their Christian duty. It is particularly important for monks and nuns to do so on account of the exhortation in the Rule of St. Benedict: “Let all guests that come be received like Christ, for He will say: I was a stranger and you took me in.” However, it has to be said that this is a duty more eagerly observed by some monks than others. Those near remote ferry crossings see far too many travelers and pilgrims—more than they can afford to keep. Birkenhead Priory has an inn specifically for coping with the travelers hoping to stay a night before catching the morning ferry across the Mersey.
⁷

The sort of accommodation you can expect to find at a monastery depends upon your social standing as well as the wealth of the establishment. Noblemen and higher clergy are normally invited to share the abbot’s lodgings. It is unlikely that you will be allowed into the cloister or permitted to see much of the monastery apart from the nave of the church, the outer courtyard, and your place of accommodation. Even a place in the guesthouse should not be taken for granted. At the busier monasteries, only those arriving on horseback or
carried in a litter will be offered a place here; anyone arriving on foot is likely to be directed to the dormitory above the stables to share the accommodation of pilgrims, monastic laborers, and the itinerant poor.

The guesthouse of a reasonably prosperous monastery generally consists of a plastered, aisled hall of two or three bays open to the roof and heated by a central hearth. Some are larger: the hall of the guesthouse at Kirkstall has five bays, with a central hearth and chambers for the most important guests. There is normally little in the way of decoration, the purpose of the building being the fulfillment of a spiritual duty rather than the comfort of visitors. If there is a kitchen adjacent, it will be supervised by two of the brethren of the monastery; if not (as in most small priories), food will be fetched for you from a serving hatch in the outer wall of the monks’ kitchen and brought to the guesthouse to be served on cloth-covered trestle tables by the monastery’s servants. After dusk the windows are shuttered and tallow candles lit to supplement the light of the fire. If the building is of stone it is possible that cresset lamps will be lit. These are scooped-out stones protruding from the wall, filled with oil and containing a burning wick. As for sleeping arrangements, you will need to make yourself as comfortable as possible on one of the straw mattresses. At least you can be grateful that the straw inside them is replaced every year.
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It is with regard to sanitation that monastic guesthouses come into their own. Many monasteries have efficient systems of providing water for washing, drinking, and cooking. Many also have highly developed drainage systems, even having the facility to flush drains. Generally a monastic house takes water from a spring into a stone or lead-lined conduit and transfers it along stone drains or through lead pipes underground (sometimes controlled by brass taps) to the various parts of the monastery. The drains taking water away are lined and covered with flagstones. They run beneath all the latrines, including those of the monks’ dormitory and the guesthouse. With regard to the latter, these are very “public” conveniences. The usual sort of arrangement is three or four wooden seats in a row—sometimes more—with no partitions between them. Sitting down and chatting with your fellow traveler while trying to pass a meat-diet-engorged stool is something you might have difficulty getting used to.