Foundation

by Peter Ackroyd

  It is easy to mock what seem to be absurd provisions, but they belonged to a tradition that viewed the human and natural world as part of the same unity. That is why doctors prescribed the flesh of tame beasts rather than of wild ones; a carp from the pond was better than a shrimp from the seashore. It calmed, rather than excited, the patient. Melancholy men must avoid eating venison; the deer is a beast that lives in fear, and fear only augments the melancholy humour. If a man was sick of the jaundice and saw a yellow thrush, the man would be cured and the bird would die. The power of suggestion was also very great, judging by the extraordinary number of miraculous cures that took place at the shrines of the saints. The majority of people never saw a ‘leech’ in the whole course of their lives; they relied upon the herbs and potions of the local wise woman.

  Buildings known as hospitals did exist, but they were essentially large chapels in which invalids were lodged; prayer was as good a remedy as medicine. No medical attendants were employed in the hospitals, only monks and chaplains. If illness was a punishment sent by God, then it might be impious to seek to cure it. The soul’s health was in any case more important than that of the body. Yet the hospitals played their part. An interval of rest and care was probably more efficacious than many of the available remedies.

  The medical treatment of the period, where available, was based on folklore or the instructions of Galen from the second century AD which were based on the doctrine of the four ‘humours’. Just as the universe was made of four elements – earth, water, air and fire – so the human body was comprised of phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholy humours in various proportions. The house of melancholy, for example, lay in the spleen. Good health was the result of the balance between them. The doctor would taste the blood of his patient, after one of the frequent bloodlettings considered to be necessary. Healthy blood was slightly sweet.

  The inspection of urine, in special glass vessels or urinals, was also an important part of the doctor’s regimen; it bears a resemblance to the modern blood test. Urine is in fact still inspected as part of a general health precaution. Twenty types of urine could be found, with certain broad divisions based upon the humours. If the urine was white and thin, for example, it signified melancholy; melancholy was considered to be cold and dry. The doctor would observe, smell and taste the urine to discover the governing condition of the patient and the part of the body most in danger. A good doctor also had to be an astrologer. When the moon was in Aries, a fiery and moderately dry sign, it was proper to operate upon the head and the neck. The leaves of henbane, good for the gout, could only be picked on Midsummer Eve.

  The possibility of saintly intervention was also at hand. St Blaise was the patron saint of throat disease, St Hubert of hydrophobia and St Martin of the itch. The top joint of the second finger of the right hand was dedicated to St Simon Cleophas, while the second joint of the third finger of the left hand was under the protection of St Bartholomew. By various means, sacred and secular, the good doctor was thus able to prepare a diet and a routine of life to suit the particular temperament of each patient; if the body was in tune with the stars and the elements, then it would not suffer.

  Bathing was a luxury of the upper classes and those who liked to imitate them; bathhouses were established in the larger towns, and the magnates possessed their own wooden bathtubs which were shaped like vats and bound with hoops. Soap was readily available, as well as instruments for cleaning the teeth and ears. Bathwater was supposed to be tepid, the same temperature as that which ran from the side of Christ at the time of his crucifixion. The prayer ‘Anima Christi’ has the invocation, ‘Water from the side of Christ, cleanse me.’

  Only four English kings of the medieval period lived beyond the age of sixty, which can be considered as the gateway to old age. It was once widely supposed that men and women over the age of forty were considered to be old, but that is not the case; only after sixty was that attribute used. In the century and a half after 1350, 30 per cent of the members of the House of Lords were over sixty, and 10 per cent over seventy. It would still be considered a respectable proportion of that parliamentary chamber. Life expectancy was of course a different matter; throughout our period it has been variously estimated at forty or fifty years. In some regions it might have been as low as thirty.

  When death arrived, the body was wrapped in a shroud tied at head and neck. Coffins were not used for the ordinary dead. The favoured part of the churchyard was the south, the north part being considered damp and mossy. The corpse was met at the principal gate of the churchyard by the priest, who led the mourners in procession to the site of the grave where the burial service was held. Only the rich dead deserved a stone memorial, which was to be found within the church. So the cemetery itself was free of gravestones, except for a few wooden markers and small carved stones. The churchyard itself was considered to be part of the common space of the parish, used for sports and markets; it could also be used as a pigsty and as pasture for cattle. As the dead multiplied, so did the surface of the churchyard rise.

  23

  The sense of a nation

  The new king, Edward III, was compared to the Israelites taken out of the house of bondage; he was free at last from the schemes and wiles of his mother who had sometimes been known as ‘the she-wolf of France’. After the capture of Mortimer in Nottingham Castle a public proclamation was issued, to be read by the sheriffs in churchyards, courts and marketplaces. It stated in part that ‘the king’s affairs and the affairs of his realm have been directed to the damage and dishonour of him and his realm, and to the impoverishment of his people’; it went on to promise that the new king ‘will henceforth govern his people according to right and reason, as befits his royal dignity’.

  He could not have made a stronger contrast with his unfortunate father. He is generally reported to have been convivial and engaging. One of the mottoes woven into his jacket stated simply ‘It is as it is.’ Another, worn by the courtiers as well as the king, read ‘Hey, hey, the white swan, by God’s soul I am thy man.’ He also spoke English much better than his predecessor.

  He had personal courage, too, and identified himself with all the chivalric virtues. As a result he inspired loyalty among the magnates. He restored lands that had been rendered forfeit by his father, and actively helped to enlarge the membership of the nobility; four of the senior members of his household, for example, were granted earldoms. He had to rely at first upon the councillors and courtiers he had inherited, but over a few years he gathered together a group of knights and nobles who would remain with him for the rest of his reign.

  Yet the token of a righteous sovereign was still success in war. The new king realized that his father’s military incapacity was the single most important reason for his failure, and he strove very hard to reverse the image of weakness. That is why his first enterprise was against Scotland. The tears he had shed, at his earlier humiliation by the Scots, had not been forgotten. An opportunity soon arose for action. The death of Robert Bruce in 1329 put his infant son upon the throne of Scotland, but Edward III espoused the cause of a rival claimant, Edward Balliol; he was eager to undo the damage of the previous campaign, and in 1333 he won a notable victory at Halidon Hill two miles outside Berwick. Balliol then became the client king; Berwick and the surrounding area were returned to English rule. This was only the beginning of further raids and campaigns in the area of the border, but Halidon Hill was in fact the only battle Edward himself fought on English soil. The field of his other military endeavours lay across the Channel.

  The kings of France and of England were, at the time, the two most powerful sovereigns in Europe; much of the continent was divided into dukedoms and principalities that fought only against each other. So it was perhaps inevitable that France and England should vie for mastery. That is the law of life.

  The particular source of conflict was, once again, the duchy of Gascony that represented the last piece of the Plantagenet Empire still in English hand
s. In the Treaty of Paris, signed more than eighty-three years before, Henry III had given up his old French empire in exchange for its possession. Yet Gascony was still considered to be part of France, and therefore the new king of England on his succession was obliged to do fealty (or ‘liege homage’ as it was known) as a vassal of the French king. But how could an English sovereign owe loyalty to a foreign sovereign? He would be obliged to supply the French king with arms and soldiers. He was not allowed to enter an alliance with the enemies of France. If he did so, Gascony might be confiscated.

  It was unthinkable. It was also an anomaly, a structural imbalance, that could only end in discord. Edward III refused to accept that he was a feudal subject of Philip of Valois and instead declared himself to be the king of France as well as of England. He claimed that through his mother, Isabella, he was in the direct line of royal succession – despite the fact that the French crown could not by law be transmitted through the female line. His declaration was inspired in part by bravado and in part by pride. He declared that he was fighting ‘to recover his rights overseas and to save and defend his realm of England’. He was looking for an excuse to attack the enemy.

  In the largest perspective it might be said that he was helping to break down the old European feudal order and to supplant it with the new recognition of the power of nation-states; in this period England and France became more centralized and bureaucratized. Edward III himself, however, is most unlikely to have seen it in those terms. He just wanted to preserve his honour and perhaps win some spoils. Of arms and the man, I sing. His fighting spirit had the unfortunate consequence, however, of beginning a conflict that became known as the Hundred Years War. The controversy lasted for a much longer period. Only in the nineteenth century did the English throne renounce its claim to the French crown.

  The war, costing so many lives and so much money, had little permanent consequence. The English gained Calais, but that town became a burden rather than a glory. The real interests of England were not involved in the conflict, except perhaps for the consumption of wines from Gascony. But the appetite of the king for power and glory took precedence over the claims of the nation.

  It is true to say that when war was first declared in 1337 some enthusiasm might be found, at least among the magnates, for a campaign against France. The indolence and indignity of the previous reign were supplanted by something approaching martial fervour. War might be said to animate the leaders of the nation, and bring together its disparate and sometimes feuding parts. There would be no need for the magnates to fight each other if they could reap the spoils of battle in an enemy country.

  This newly found unity of purpose was dramatized when, in 1348, Edward III instituted the Order of the Garter. The celebrated motto, Honi soit qui mal y pense or ‘Shame on him who thinks ill of it’, refers to Edward’s claim upon the throne of France. Almost all of the original twenty-six knights, divided into two groups for the sake of jousting competitions, had taken part in the French campaigns. It was a military brotherhood.

  The king had in any case a strong sense of the dramatic, and loved ceremonial occasions; he engaged in all the panoply of chivalry and, more than a century before Sir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte Darthur, he tried to restore an Arthurian sense of kingship. The king was therefore popular among the grandees of the realm. They were once more part of a great adventure, and Edward had become their warrior king. The king’s eldest son, Edward – dressed as Lionel, cousin of Lancelot – took part in a grand tournament. The contemporary chronicler, Jean Froissart, wrote that ‘the English will never love or honour a king who is not a victor and a lover of war’. Other kings of Europe might be celebrated for their piety, or for their learning, but in England those criteria did not apply.

  The king’s lavish architectural patronage was part of the chivalric programme. He had been born in Windsor Castle, but he proceeded to demolish the existing castle and build an even grander edifice in its place. It was his way of advertising his own glory and of proclaiming his superiority over the French king. It was here, in 1344, that the Round Table was recreated; the king and queen, clothed in red gowns, led a procession of knights and barons into the castle chapel where their quest for valour and virtue was consecrated. In the circular Round Table building, larger than the Pantheon of Rome, lavish feasts and dances were held in which the participants dressed as characters out of Arthurian romance. The foundations of this early theatre, or centre of ritual activity, were uncovered in the summer of 2006.

  As the knights sat on a stone bench running around the wall, and watched jousts as well as tournaments, the real conflict of the period was proceeding slowly enough. The first two of the hundred years of war (in fact 116) were spent in posturing; Edward sailed over to the Low Countries for the purpose of launching an invasion from Flanders, and for purchasing new allies. It was said that he was spending his time, and the money of the country, idly. The complaints against heavy taxation were mounting all the time. The poems and chronicles of the period are filled with complaints about oppression and shortages; no farmers or merchants were safe from the king’s depredations. It had become a familiar refrain of the fourteenth century. ‘He who takes money from the needy without just cause’, one versifier wrote, ‘commits sin.’ The wool merchants, in particular, were forced to pay for the king’s armies; the proceeds of 30,000 sacks of wool were to be lent to the king, accompanied by a temporary ban on exports to keep the prices high. Since wool was the single most important aspect of the English economy, the king’s demands led directly to unemployment and consequent poverty. The country had become essentially a cash cow for Edward’s military needs.

  Yet his plans for a rapid campaign were frustrated; the scheme for financing the war through wool proved disastrous; problems arose both with the merchants and the collectors of the customs. The king’s financiers were growing restless, and threatened to cut off supplies. With the king out of the country, too, rumours spread of invasions from France and from Scotland. The members of the council that Edward had set up to rule England in his absence were growing fractious; the king accused them of withholding money from him, while they in turn complained that they had many expensive duties to perform including the defence of the realm. It was said that the king was growing as reckless and as extravagant as his father. ‘I counsel that ye begin no war in trust of your riches,’ Dame Prudence declared in Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Melibee’, ‘for they … suffice not wars to maintain.’

  In 1340, three years after the declaration of war with France, a taxpayers’ revolt was organized in the parliament house. It was said that ‘a king ought not to go forth from his kingdom in manner of war unless the commune of his realm agree to it’. The parliament had become the institution that, according to the injunctions of Magna Carta, gave the consent of the realm to fresh taxation. Successive kings, under force of circumstance, had accepted its role. The knights and townsmen had already begun humbly to submit petitions from their various neighbourhoods, to which appropriate royal legislation came in response. It was a system of quid pro quo.

  The parliament had already granted heavy taxation for the first three years of the conflict. In the summer of 1339 the king asked for a further grant of £300,000. The Commons, made up of the townsmen and the knights of the shires, prevaricated; they asked leave to return to their own districts, and consult the people. When they assembled again, in the early months of 1340, they offered a grant in return for certain concessions from the king. They had in effect distinguished themselves from the Lords. They were beginning to feel their power.

  Their principal submission was that the finances of the nation should be ordered and controlled by a council of magnates answerable to parliament. It was to be directed by John Stratford, the archbishop of Canterbury. The king, in desperate need for the means to wage war, conceded this demand. As long as he was fighting, he was happy. His agreement also marks the moment when the Commons became a coherent political assembly that gradually began to f
ormulate its own rules of procedure. War, and taxation, had brought them together. The parliament itself was now supposed to meet on a regular basis; it was also the assembly in which the council of the nation, and the custodians of taxation, were chosen. Thirty-five years later, it would be strong enough to impeach the king’s principal councillors. The idea of an independent parliament, then, was part of the consequence of the Hundred Years War.

  On 22 June 1340, Edward returned to the Low Countries in the full expectation that hostilities would soon be resumed. Stratford would ensure that the money reached him. Yet the fresh exactions of the king provoked hostility and violence throughout the country; the collectors were supposed to take up 20,000 sacks of wool, from the nine most productive sheep-rearing counties, and sell them to the local merchants. But the people successfully resisted this extortion. As a result the king was not receiving the aid he had expected; he could not pay his debts, or his troops, and his active campaign came to an end.

  In his fury he turned upon Archbishop Stratford. He sailed back to England and, in the middle of the night of 30 November, he suddenly arrived at the Tower of London. He asked for the constable, but the absence of that official confirmed the king’s sense that his realm was not being properly administered. Edward accused the archbishop of wilfully withholding money; he believed, or professed to believe, that Stratford had wished to sabotage the French campaign of which the cleric disapproved. The senior members of the council were dismissed. Stratford fled back to Canterbury, where he was in theory safe from the king’s wrath.