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

by Ian Mortimer

  Daily Wages of Hired Workers21

  Worker

  1301–10

  1331–40

  1361–70

  1391–1400

  Carpenter

  2¾d

  3d

  4½d

  4½d

  Laborer

  1½d

  1¾d

  3¼d

  3¼d

  Thatcher

  2½d

  3d

  3½d

  4¼d

  Thatcher’s mate

  1d

  1¼d

  2d

  2¼d

  Mason

  5d

  5½d

  6d

  6d

  Obviously there is some variation according to where and for whom you work. There are also variations in payment according to season. Masons chiseling away on the stones for Exeter Cathedral in 1306 are paid 1¼d per day in summer but 4½d in winter, because of the shorter daylight hours. This is common for most sorts of building and laboring work. Tilers in London in the 1340s can expect 5½d in summer and 4½d in winter.22 But even at a tiler’s wage, you will find it very difficult to save enough to pay a fine of £2 for entry to a guild merchant. The low wages are rendered even lower by the fact that food is extremely expensive. Laborers must expect at least two-thirds of their wages to go on food and drink in the early part of the century. You might be offered a choice: Id with food or 2½d without. Casual harvest workers especially experience this mixed form of payment, receiving wages (occasionally as much as 5d per day) plus as much food as they can eat. However, as soon as the harvest is in, they are laid off.

  Considering that no one should work on a Sunday, and considering that there are between forty and fifty further “holy days” in the year, which are also not working days, the most that your average mason will earn over the course of the year is £7 Is 6d. This is a substantial income, more than the vast majority of people earn. However, if he goes on to become a master mason, he stands to make much more. At Wallingford in 1365, the master mason is paid 4s. per week, and at Windsor Castle the master mason in charge of the grand rebuilding is paid 7s per week.23 A master carpenter can earn similar amounts. This puts these masters into an earning bracket of £10 to £17, similar to highly educated lawyers and physicians. In this way you can work your way up to a high level of social respectability, even if you do not come from a landed family.

  Service in someone else’s household pays badly in comparison. Not even the royal household can be said to pay well. Although Edward II’s chief officers do receive between 8 marks and £20 per year, and the next rank down—the king’s sergeants—receive 7½d per day, plus food and clothes, the third rank are on just 4½d per day. Valets receive only 1½ per day, one meal in hall, and the right to share a bed with another man of the same rank.24 And this is the best establishment in which to be a servant. Pages and grooms in other lords’ households are lucky if they receive more than 1d a day. A live-in manservant in a yeoman’s household might be paid as little as 4d per week. A live-in woman servant can expect little more than half this, about 2½ per week, and she is often paid annually, in arrears. The same goes for women and girls in laboring and harvest work: normally they are paid half the wages of their male counterparts.25 When the ostentation of the wealthy is so great, and the wages of those who labor so low, it is not surprising that a great many people turn to crime.

  5

  What to Wear

  Hollywood has given us the impression that medieval people dress in stereotypical uniforms. Kings wander around their palaces in erminetrimmed robes, knights always wear armor, ladies flounce wistfully in long flowing gowns, and court jesters prance in red-and-yellow jangling jumpsuits. Similarly, the association of haute couture with glamorous modernity suggests that fashion in the modern sense cannot possibly have existed by 1400. These impressions are all wrong. The fourteenth century sees greater changes in clothing styles than any previous period of a hundred years. And men’s fashion changes more than in any century since.

  In 1300 clothes are straightforward and practical, appropriate to rank, adding distinction through color and fabric quality rather than cut and tailoring. Then about 1330 things begin to change. The essential difference lies in the way a sleeve is cut. The advent of tailored sleeves allows clothing to reflect the shape of the body. Clothes no longer just hang from the shoulders like tunics: they reveal the natural curves of men’s and women’s forms. As a result, there is greater differentiation in cut between male and female clothing. Around 1400 fashion reaches the pinnacle of design eccentricity, with trailing dresses, tunics cut so short that they allow men to show off their legs up to the hips, long-hanging sleeves, and ridiculously pointed shoes.

  Despite this new figure-hugging sexiness, some important moral and social dimensions continue to limit what people may wear. At no level of society does clothing become a free-for-all. Women are never at liberty to show their naked legs or arms in public—the only female arms and legs you will see are those of washerwomen. Clothing remains a key means of preserving the social order. Prostitutes are tolerated in London as long as they wear the yellow hood of their trade and abide by the city regulations. To have prostitutes wearing normal clothes would be a threat to the respectability of the wives and daughters of the townsmen. Likewise lepers are expected to wear cloaks and bells; it forms part of the social contract under which they are tolerated. Friars and monks similarly are expected to wear the clothing appropriate to their status and order. Aristocrats wear expensive furs, lesser men and women cheaper furs, townswomen rabbit furs, and so on. In medieval society, what you wear denotes what you are.

  In some respects your clothing also establishes who protects you and where your loyalties lie. The men who serve in lordly households are normally expected to wear the livery of that household: a sort of uniform which accords with the heraldic colors of the lord himself. Alternatively, a servant of a great lord might wear his lord’s livery collar, notifying everyone that he has that lord’s protection. This is a serious use of clothing: a symbolic threat. To attack a man who is wearing a great lord’s livery is tantamount to attacking the lord himself. Conversely, if a man thus dressed starts attacking you, you had better beware. If his lord decides he will protect his man from the law—a practice known as “maintenance”—then the chances are that you will not see justice done. Men banded together wearing an identical livery are not above the law in theory, but in practice they are almost untouchable.

  Obviously changes in fashion and the social functions of clothing are not wholly compatible. You cannot have a society in which clothing is both a conservative moral benchmark and yet changes with the season. Can you imagine the gossips of medieval London remarking on how the prostitutes are wearing their yellow hoods so much higher this year? No more so than you can imagine nuns wearing scarlet habits. As a result there is a fundamental tension between the agents of change and those who have a vested interest in the status quo. Hence the sumptuary laws are passed. These are restrictions preventing certain people from dressing to a standard above their station. In London, at the start of the century, it is the rule that

  no common woman should go to market or out of her house with a hood furred with anything other than lambskin or rabbit fur, on pain of losing her hood to the sheriffs, with the exception of those ladies who wear furred capes . . . because shopgirls, wetnurses and other servants, and loose women bedizen themselves with hoods furred with ermine and minever, like ladies of quality.1

  Sumptuary laws based on those of London are added to the statute books in 1337. From that year on, only those with an annual income of £100 per year are allowed to wear furs. This legislation is widely flouted, and plenty of merchants’ and esquires’ wives continue to wear their ermine and miniver with pride. So in 1363 the sumptuary laws are extended, on account of the “outrageous and excessive apparel of many people above their estate and degree, and to the great destruction of a
ll the land.”

  Clothing Regulations Imposed by the Sumptuary Laws of 13632

  Status

  What They May Wear

  Lords with lands worth £1,000 annually, and their families

  No restrictions

  Knights with lands worth 400 marks (£266 13s 4d) annually, and their families

  May dress at their will, except they may wear no weasel fur, ermine, or clothing of precious stones other than the jewels in women’s hair

  Knights with lands worth 200 marks (£133 6s 8d) annually, and their families

  Fabric worth no more than 6 marks (£4) for the whole cloth; no cloth of gold, nor a cloak, mantle, or gown lined with pure miniver; sleeves of ermine or any material embroidered with precious stones; women may not wear ermine or weasel fur, or jewels except those worn in their hair

  Esquires with land worth £200 per year and merchants with goods to the value of £1,000, and their families

  Fabric worth no more than 5 marks (£3 6s 8d) for the whole cloth; they may wear cloth of silk and silver, or anything decorated with silver; women may wear miniver but not ermine or weasel fur, or jewels except those worn in their hair

  Esquires, gentlemen with £100 per year and merchants with goods to the value of £500, and their families

  Fabric worth no more than 4½ marks (£3) for the whole cloth; no cloth of gold, silk, or silver, no embroidery, no precious stones or fur

  Yeomen and their families

  Fabric worth no more than 40s (£2) for the whole cloth; no jewels, gold, silver, embroidery, enamelware, or silk; no fur except lamb, rabbit, cat, or fox; women not to wear a silk veil

  Servants and their families

  Fabric worth no more than 2 marks for the whole cloth; no gold, silver, embroidery, enamelware, or silk; women not to wear a veil worth more than 12d

  Carters, plowmen, drivers of plows, oxherds, cowherds, swineherds, dairymaids, and everyone else working on the land who does not have 40s of goods

  No cloth except blanket and russet at 12d per ell, belts of linen (rope)

  Royalty

  The sumptuary laws impose no restrictions on what the royal family can wear. The pressure on them is rather the opposite: to dress the part of majesty and thus to demonstrate their status through excessively rich clothing. For this reason, members of the royal family tend to be trailblazers for fashion. What they are wearing today, the nobility will be wearing in a few weeks’ time, and the burghers of the provincial towns and cities will be wearing in the years to come, albeit in cheaper versions. Thus the king is at least partly responsible for the whole escalation in competitive fashion among the lower classes.

  What do kings wear when not draped in ceremonial robes? Let us look at Edward III. In February 1333, aged twenty, you will find him at Berwick dressed in “an outfit of green velvet embroidered all over with pearls,” or perhaps “an aketon [padded jacket] covered in vermilion velvet and embroidered with images of parrots and other decorations.”3 Two years later you might find him wearing “a coat and mantle of scarlet cloth garnished with silk fowl, trimmed with gold throughout, and decorated with birds on branches, the breasts of the birds being embroidered with two angels studded with pearls holding a golden crossbow crafted with gilt-silver and a string of pearls.”4 Edward is not one to hide his light under a bushel.

  Edward II and Richard II are hardly less extravagant in their clothing. The queens of medieval England are similarly resplendent. Just as the kings set the standards for male extravagance, so the queens set the standard for the women. Queen Margaret (second wife of Edward I) and Queen Isabella (wife of Edward II) both maintain strong links with their native France. Surrounded by French servants, they are aware of the new fabrics and styles from Rheims and Paris. Queen Anne, wife of Richard II, similarly brings fashions from her native Bohemia. Queen Philippa retains contacts with her native Hainault, and in Edward III has the benefit of a husband who dotes on her and supplies her with almost as many precious items and jewel-encrusted clothes as he orders for himself and his friends. If you should come across a lady wearing “a hood made of brown scarlet studded with 154 stars of pearls and trimmed with gold, each star being crafted out of seven large pearls with an especially large one at the top of each star,” or “a beaver-fur hat lined with velvet and adorned with white pearls and golden baboons,” have no doubt: she is a queen.5

  Aristocratic Men

  As it is a common trait for men to ape their social superiors, it is instructive to begin by considering the clothing of the rich and powerful. Your average man-about-court in the first decade wears a suit of robes: three or four garments selected to complement one another. The most important is the tunic: a sleeved dress-like garment reaching down almost to the ankles. This is cut in such a way that there is normally no seam between the sleeves and the body. Front and back—including the sleeves—are each cut together from a single piece of material and sewn together. The result is that both the sleeves and body are loose, to allow the arms to enter easily. If the garment has separate, tight-fitting sleeves, these will be sewn up around the arm every time the garment is worn.6 The body of the tunic remains loose; it hangs from the shoulders with as much grace as the wearer can give it. Sometimes it is worn with a belt but not always; a certain elegance lies in the folds in the rich fabric when it is allowed to hang loose. Normally a supertunic is worn draped over the top. This has short wide sleeves and is slightly shorter than the tunic itself, so the colors of the tunic may be seen. Contrasts are preferred; for example, a red tunic and green supertunic, or blue tunic and brown supertunic.

  Most of the time you will add a third item, a hood, and a fourth, a mantle. The hood is made of soft fabric and hangs down the back when not pulled up to cover your head. The mantle will probably be square and made to hang around your shoulders (perhaps fastened across the front with a jeweled clasp). Alternatively it will be cut in a large circle, with a hole in the center for the head and two further holes for the arms. This long garment falls to the ground. Although its long sweeping folds make it look impressive, it is actually a little inconvenient, as it is very easy to trip over the hem. Convenience, you will soon realize, is not something to which aristocrats aspire. The more impractical the clothing, the higher the status of the wearer.

  What should you be wearing beneath these robes? A linen shirt. The very best quality linen comes from Rheims; the second-best from Paris. Underwear on your lower half will consist of braies or “breeches”—not to be confused with the later outer garment of the same name. These also are made of linen and hang down the leg, sometimes being tied with small cords around the knees. The cord or belt of the braies at the waist will be threaded through the top of the garment, and the braies themselves will be drawn up and rolled around the cord, to stop it cutting uncomfortably into the skin. Braies at this period are very loose fitting: with long, flowing tunics and supertunics over the top, you do not need bottom-hugging linen.

  From about 1330 you will notice variations appearing in the cut of the tunic. Men stop having their arms sewn into their sleeves and start using that great new invention: buttons.7 Hurrah! You might not realize how much the humble button has changed the way both men and women dress. For the real advance comes in the applications of these buttons. Using them you can have a tunic or “cote” which opens at the front and which does not need to go over the head and hang like a cassock. Thus it can fit the body snugly, with all the social, sensual, and stylistic consequences of figure-hugging elegance.8 Only the old, the fat, the prudish, and the clergy do not find this exciting. Hence the widespread disapproval among contemporary chroniclers.

  Let us move into the 1350s. What should you wear at court to welcome the king of France, brought to England in 1357 after his capture the previous year? Your underwear will still consist of a linen shirt and braies, but now the braies will be cut short and tight, not unlike modern underpants, with a fastening cord at the top. Over your braies you will wear colored hose (leggings) of
the finest wool, like modern tights. These are normally attached to the fastening cord of the braies—a bit like a modern women’s garter belt. Over your shirt you will wear a tailored, mid-thigh-length cote. Alternatively you might go for a doublet (a padded version of the same). Both of these garments have tight-fitting buttoned sleeves and are buttoned up the front. They are normally in two colors: one half of, say, blue and the other of yellow. This is described as “mi-parti” or “parti-colored.” If you are wearing just one color, or if it is cold, you will probably wear a contrasting surcote over the top, with a belt slung low. Alternatively you might just wear a buttoned cotehardie (a lavish doublet) over your shirt. Should you button up your newly tailored doublet only to find that close-fitting tailoring cruelly reveals a fat belly, do not forget that men also wear corsets at this time. While the traditional image of knights in armor is accurate and widely accepted, the equally representative image of knights wearing corsets and garter belts is perhaps less well known.

  Of course, fashion never stands still, and never does it change more rapidly than in the mid-fourteenth century. As the disgruntled author of the Brut chronicle points out, people change the shapes and style of their clothing every year. He is not at all happy to have to remark on the tapets (trailing pieces of cloth), which courtiers have dangling from their sleeves and hoods, nor on the “dagges” of their clothing (where the edges of fabric are cut into points) nor on their lengthening of hoods. “The clothing of devils” he calls it, and blames the Hainaulters in Queen Philippa’s entourage.9 Nor is he alone in being horrified. In 1370 another writer remarks with shock that tunics have now grown so short that you can see the outlines of men’s bottoms. By then, in order to be well dressed at court, you will wear a paltock: a form of doublet with a lining to which the tights or hose are tied directly. Alternatively you might wear a long gown. Both of these newfangled items of dress seem to originate in England and spread quickly to the Continent. You might wear a hood in a rakishly folded shape, tied in place by its “liripipe” (the extra-long tubular peak of the hood). To have it hanging down your back like a normal hood in 1360 is simply passé. The same goes for the circular mantle: no one puts their head through the central head hole anymore, but rather men try to wear the mantle rakishly, by putting their head through an armhole and gathering up the extensive folds over one shoulder.