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

by Ian Mortimer

  You are wondering, no doubt, how an aristocrat manages to come by all this fish. After all, once out of water, they quickly go bad, and the means of transporting them from the sea to the kitchen are slow. No one can carry a barrel of sturgeon faster than twenty miles per day, nor a barrel of herrings for that matter. Besides, the nets of seagoing fishing vessels are relatively small and not very strong, and constantly in need of repair. In answer, no part of the country is more than seventy miles from the sea, and the vast majority is within forty miles. Some of the most active ports are situated inland on great rivers, like Gloucester, on the River Severn. Fish can be transported live, in barrels, and this is certainly the means of carrying oysters, mussels, whelks, lobsters, and crab, which are consumed in large quantities by the rich during Lent. Eels too are transported live in barrels from the rivers in which they are caught, and pike can be kept in vats for use when and where required. Most rivers have weirs and fishtraps on them, allowing roach, tench, dace, and bream simply to be lifted out of the river and dispatched in baskets, amid layers of wet straw. Fish-traps are also placed in estuaries, allowing thornback ray, gurnard, sea bream, salmon, grey mullet, herring, mackerel, plaice, and other sea fish to be caught without a net having to be cast or a boat launched. Lords with estates far inland maintain fishponds. The customs of a manor normally protect all freshwater fish for the lord, and he will either maintain his own fishermen to reap the benefit or hire occasional workers to do the fishing. So with all the rivers to draw on, and almost all the country within two days’ ride of a port, those who can afford it have access to a very wide variety of fresh fish. If you then add the pickled, salted, smoked, and dried varieties—for example, kippers, salt cod, and shrimps and mussels pickled in brine—there is no shortage of river fish and seafood for the noble household.

  Accompanying all this meat and fish is an array of vegetables and herbs. Lords, just like everyone else, cultivate as much garden produce as they can on their own land. But vegetables are not served independently; rather they are used in the sauces accompanying meat and fish. Cookery books include fruit sauces to go with many of the meat and fish dishes, such as applemoy (made out of apples) and verjuice (a sour grape juice used in cooking). Many vegetables and homegrown ingredients are necessary for the lord’s meat pottages and the more basic pottages which are fed to the less-important servants and the messengers and servants from other households visiting on business. Kitchen staff are employed chopping and cooking leeks, onions, herbs, colewort, cabbages, garlic, peas, parsley, and beans for the big pottages, feeding as many as a hundred men. For the lord’s dishes, cauliflower, peascods, borage, fennel, hyssop, and perhaps even parsnips and celery are used.

  With regard to bread, the lord himself and his favored guests will be given slices of the best freshly baked white bread, made with wheat, called “pain demain.” So precious is this that the flour to make it is sometimes kept in a locked chest. The important officers and gentlemen of the household probably eat “wastel,” the next best wheat bread, costing Via per loaf. Third-best is “cocket,” a round white loaf. And as you go down the hall, the quality of the bread goes down too. Brown rye bread may be eaten by those at the lowest end of the hall, and certainly by the stable boys who only get to eat in the hall at Christmas and on other feast days. If those at the bottom of the hall do eat cocket, it will be three or four days old.

  The range of wines available in a nobleman’s cellar is far greater than you can buy in any tavern. It is normally illegal for a taverner to sell Rhenish wine alongside Gascon or Spanish wine. But it is not illegal for a lord to keep a good stock of both. Edward Ill’s order for wine for the royal household in 1363-64 amounts to ten pipes of sweet wine (a pipe being 105 gallons), twelve pipes of Rhenish wine, and 1,600 pipes of Gascon wine—a total of 170,310 gallons.17 Not all of this is drunk by the king and his companions; quite a lot is given out to friends and retainers (a gallon a day to Geoffrey Chaucer, for example). But a lord’s household is never short of wine.

  The butler in a nobleman’s residence has to deal with just as much ale as wine. The servants and staff all require drink, and only the important officers are allowed wine. Each man has an allowance of a gallon of ale a day, but that is purely a nominal quantity. There is no flagon assigned to one man which he drains over the course of twenty-four hours. There is a clear distinction as to who may drink the best ale and who is drinking second and third best. Normally ale is brewed in the household’s own brewery from malted barley and is kept until it is all used up or has gone off. But a butler might buy ale from local alewives, if the stocks are running low or if his master has arrived unexpectedly at a manor house before his brewing staff have managed to make enough for the whole household.

  Monasteries

  The provision of food and drink in a monastic establishment is just as complicated as that in a nobleman’s household. Although the monks are all equal in the eyes of God, they are far from equal in their own eyes. The abbot gets the best food, and also gets to share the lordly fare provided in his house to the monastery’s noble guests, who stay with him in his lodging. Certain monastic officers, such as the almoner, sacrist, infirmarer, and chamberlain, have rights to better fish and more exotic fruit than the other monks. Those monasteries which have lay brothers provide them with their own refectory, kitchen, and diet. Guests staying in the monastic guesthouse may be given a different diet altogether.

  On one level you could describe the monastic household as a lordly one, with the abbot or prior as the lord. That would be superficial for many reasons. First, the man in charge has been elected to his position by the other monks, and so his relationship with his fellows is wholly different to that between a lord and his servants. Also the monastic refectory is a restricted area; only monks may eat there.18Important guests eat with the abbot in his lodging, less important guests in the guesthouse or at the beggars’ gate. But most of all it is the extraordinary customs about eating meat which have developed over the centuries which make dining in a monastery unique. Like everyone else, monks do not eat any flesh on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, nor in Advent or Lent. In addition, they are not supposed to eat the meat of four-legged animals at all, according to the Rule of St. Benedict. However, St. Benedict lived a long time ago—in the sixth century—and over the subsequent eight hundred years, monks all over Christendom have found ways to circumvent the Rule. These monks mostly come from well-off families, and so were stuffed with the best and richest meats from the day they could sit up at their father’s table. Then they entered the Church and were completely deprived of meat. The result is that many of them simply crave it. And the Rule states only that they should not eat meat in the refectory . . . Consequently, many monasteries have built a second dining room, called the “misericord” (place of mercy) where meat eating can take place. Also, although eating quadrupeds is banned, there is nothing in the Rule specifically against eating offal, which is removed from an animal prior to roasting it. Realizing that all this is not wholly within the spirit of the Rule, but realizing also that he cannot stand in the way of progress, Benedict XII (pope from 1334-42) suggests a compromise.19 As long as at least half of the monks eat in the refectory, the remainder can head off to the misericord and gorge themselves on whatever meat they choose, provided it is not a Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday, or a day in Advent or Lent. Those who remain in the refectory must refrain from eating the flesh of quadrupeds but may eat fowl and can include meaty ingredients—such as liver and other offal—in the cooking. On the nonmeat days everyone must eat together in the refectory and observe the nonmeat rules.

  Each member of a religious community has an allocation of a gallon of ale each day—although the officers are allowed more, if they want it. This is no hardship: monasteries brew very fine ale indeed. When offered for sale it regularly fetches 1 Via per gallon or even 2d. A few monasteries also have their own vineyards and make their own wine, but the majority import the wines of Gascony like most lar
ge households. Wine is drunk only on saints’ days, when the meal is more of a feast. Fortunately for the monks there are sixty or seventy of these in the year.

  As with a noble establishment, not everyone in a monastery has breakfast. Only the abbot and the principal officers are likely to be allowed to sit down and eat bread and cheese in the morning. The others must content themselves with Mass, in line with the old saying, “The sacrament is a good breakfast.”20 For most monks, lay brethren, and guests, the first meal of the day is dinner. In the refectory, it starts with a pottage. Thereafter, depending on whether it is a fish day or not, you may be served “umbles” (sheep entrails cooked in ale with breadcrumbs and spices, often served in winter), “charlet” (chopped meat, eggs, and milk), “dowcet” (a custard dish, containing milk, cream, eggs, sugar, and currants), or a rich cheese flan. Somehow the Benedictine monks at Westminster manage to justify eating bacon—even though it is most certainly the meat of a quadruped—and so bacon and eggs (”bacon collops” as it is called) is served in the refectory as a treat just before Lent.21

  When the misericord is functioning, the monks display a huge appetite for meat. Pope Benedict’s compromise means that a monk may only eat in the misericord for a maximum of eighty-six days per year. Hence he looks forward to his turn, especially if it follows a long period of abstinence, such as Lent. The first course at dinner is almost always beef. The second course normally consists of more beef plus three further roasted meats, veal, mutton, pork, or goose. Lamb is eaten in late spring, boiled pork in winter; at other times of year, mutton is served. At supper, only one meat course may be served. Thus most monks eat about four hundred meat dishes per year. You might agree that that is hardly following a Rule which dictates that he should not eat the flesh of quadrupeds at all.

  Many species of fish appear in a monastic diet. Every day the refectory sees fried, poached, baked, and roast fish served at dinner. Note that it is only at dinner that monks eat fish: at suppertime they eat shellfish, such as cockles and whelks. About half the intake is preserved sea fish, whether salted, smoked, dried, or pickled; but as monasteries often have the tithes of parishes, or are institutional lords of manors in their own right, they can expect to be sent freshwater fish on a regular basis. Some of the largest fishponds in the country are owned by monasteries—Gracious Pond (Surrey), constructed by the abbot of Chertsey in 1308, extends to over thirty-five acres and the ponds at Frensham (also Surrey) extend to over a hundred acres. Thus you will often find dace, roach, and bream served in the refectory, or that old favorite, pike in galantyne sauce. The abbot might eat more expensive seawater fish: turbot, gurnard, thornback ray, sole, conger eel, and salmon. It depends whether he is eating privately in his quarters with a guest or with the brethren in the refectory.

  One last thing. There is an old traveling minstrels’ trick which you might want to keep up your sleeve. How guests are treated in a monastery is the decision of the almoner. If he treats you badly, or serves you the most miserly portions of food, or if you get given “a vile and hard bed,” go to the abbot and praise him to the skies for the generosity of his house, and emphasize the large amount of money which the almoner must have laid out on your behalf.

  My lord, I thank you and your worthy convent for the great cheer I have had here, and of the great cost I have taken of you; for your good liberal monk, your almoner, served me yester evening at my supper worthily, with many divers costly messes of fish, and I drank passing good wine. And now I am going he has given me a new pair of boots, and a good pair of new knives, and a new belt.22

  The abbot will have little choice but to take such thanks at face value and bask in the fictitious glory. But have no doubt: the almoner will have a lot of explaining to do later.

  9

  Health and Hygiene

  If you are ever asked whether you would rather live in a past century you would be wise to consider the problem of ill health before answering. How much better to live at a time in which, when you fall sick, you go to a doctor or a surgeon and get well again. It has to be said: the prime reason to avoid medieval England is not the violence, the bad humor, the poor roads, the inequality of the class system, the approach to religion and heresy, or the extreme sexism. It is the sickness.

  In almost every respect fourteenth-century life is unhealthy compared to our own. True, there are no exhaust fumes in the streets to pollute your lungs, and no tobacco smoke for that matter either; but there are open fires in many houses and the exposure to smoke for so much of the year causes lung diseases of a similar nature. There may be no fish-killing chemicals accidentally released by pharmaceutical companies into the rivers, but there are all sorts of other things which get into the water supply, from overflowing cesspits to dead animals. Children do not suffer from allergic reactions caused by dust in wall-to-wall carpeting or the excessive use of cleaning fluids, but you can hardly say that that is a good thing when nearly half of them do not live to adulthood. Very simply, if you do fall ill, or are seriously injured, you are going to suffer far more in medieval England than in the modern world.

  Ideas of Illness

  Why might you fall ill? There are, of course, many reasons. Not least is the likelihood that you will be struck by a blade, an arrow, a staff, or even a cannonball. The violence inherent in society, coupled with a near-complete disregard for what we think of as health and safety, mean that serious injuries are very common. In addition, even where such injuries are not fatal, poor knowledge of medicine and hygiene means that blood poisoning often leads to death or the amputation of a limb. There is very little understanding of how diseases spread or how the body functions. Hospital staff often put seriously ill people in one bed together, even when they are suffering from infectious illnesses. Germ theory is unknown. The circulation of the blood is a complete mystery. If you are found in a comatose state in 1300, no one will check your pulse to see whether you are still alive; instead they will place a bowl of water on your chest, to see if you are still breathing.1 Medieval life might be unhealthy, but some medieval medical concepts are unhealthier still. Before long you will think of medieval medicine as a bizarre mixture of arcane ritual, cult religion, domestic invention, and a freakshow

  The most common cause of illness is, according to most opinions, divine judgment. As God makes all things happen, so too all afflictions must ultimately come from God. Some people argue that, because God is a caring deity ill health and suffering must also have an origin in divine care. From this proceeds the widespread understanding that disease and physical suffering are the means by which God purifies the soul. Diseases are seen as tempering fires in which an individual’s belief in God’s mercy is put to the test. It is thus obvious why people are just as ready to seek religious cures for their illnesses as they are medical ones. Even if a physician is successful in curing them, such success will only have been obtained through God’s grace. The altars of churches are regularly strewn with little wax models of arms and legs, votive offerings made by sufferers so that God might relieve them of their ailments. Or at least permit a physician or a surgeon to act as a conduit for divine healing. Without the religious remedy in place, no one has a hope of being cured medically.

  Other ideas about the origins of disease are bound up with astrology. When the king of France asks the faculty of medicine at the University of Paris to explain the causes of the Great Plague of 1348-49, the worthy professors report that the pestilence is due to

  an important conjunction of the three higher planets in the sign of Aquarius, which, with other conjunctions and eclipses, is the cause of the pernicious corruption of the surrounding air, as well as a sign of mortality, famine and other catastrophes.

  As they go on to explain:

  The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter brings about the death of peoples and the depopulation of kingdoms . . . The conjunction of Mars and Jupiter causes great pestilence in the air.2

  Such planetary alignments are thought to lead to local miasmas: concentrat
ions of fetid air and noxious vapors. These miasmas are then blown on the wind and enter men’s and women’s bodies through the pores of their skin. Once inside they disrupt the balance of the “humors” (the substances believed to control the body’s functions), and people fall sick.

  The alignments of the planets and stars have significance for the health of individuals as well as communities. Letting blood at some stages of the lunar cycle can be beneficial; at other times it is deemed harmful. Specialists use astrology to determine when a particular patient might recover, based on the positions of the planets at the time he fell ill. Even having sex during some lunar and planetary conjunctions is thought to be harmful, regardless of whether the intercourse takes place within marriage, adulterously or with a prostitute. Some medical men, cringing to older medical writings, say that the movements of particular planets control the functioning of certain organs: Mercury controls the brain, Jupiter the liver, and so on. The business of diagnosis is thus much more complicated than merely ascribing all illnesses to divine causes.