A Visitor's Verdict
Around 1500 the Venetian ambassador reported to his government that most English people, men and women of every age, were handsome and well-formed. They were in love with themselves and their belongings, thought of no one but themselves and no world but England, and when they saw a handsome, well-built stranger they would say "he looks like an Englishman" and regret that he was not one.
The English might reply that, with the necessary changes, much of this description fits many peoples. But there is no doubt that in body, character and speech they were a strong race. They swore so heartily that even Joan of Arc called them "goddams."
Blunt Speech and Rough Manners
Women spoke frankly and openly and discussed bodily and sexual matters with a freedom that would probably astonish modern progressives. Their jokes, like their language, were coarse and clumsy. Behavior, even among the aristocracy, was not free from roughness, and a strict code of ceremony was needed to refine manners. The spirited energy that would excite the England of Elizabeth was only taking shape in the fifteenth century. Everyone had to be his own policeman, repay a thrown clod with a stone, and not shrink from killing when necessary.
Yet these same fierce creatures could be generous, chivalrous and even tender-hearted in their place. When Sir John Chandos died, his fellow knights wept. The letter of Margaret Paston to her sick husband (1443) shows that love knows no time, place or lineage. It must be added, though, that this same compassionate lady broke her daughter's head because she refused to marry the man her parents had chosen.
Marriage as Property Transfer
Girls were raised in modesty and reserve so that they could defend themselves against men, who hunted them like predators, because virginity was a large capital asset in the marriage market. Marriage was largely a way of transferring property from one family to another. Legally girls could marry at twelve and boys at fifteen, even without parental consent. But in the upper classes, to speed property deals, parents arranged marriages as soon as children reached seven. A marriage based on love was therefore rare, divorce was forbidden, and adultery and unchastity were common, especially among the aristocracy.
Holinshed writes that the foul sin of lechery and the ugly sin of adultery were widespread everywhere, especially at the king's court. Edward IV, after seducing many beauties, chose Jane Shore as his favorite. She served Edward with an unchaste loyalty and was a good friend at court to many petitioners. When Edward died, Richard III, apparently to expose his brother's faults and cover his own sins, had Jane paraded through the streets of London in a white sheet, the dress of penance. Jane lived in poverty to old age and was scorned and insulted by the very people she had once helped.
An Age of Lawlessness
The English, now supporters of law, have never in their history been so lawless and unruly as then. A hundred years of war had made people brutish and savage. Nobles returned from the French wars and fell on each other in England, putting discharged soldiers to work on their estates. The greed of nobles and merchants for money trampled all moral laws. There were countless petty thefts. Merchants sold counterfeit goods and used false weights, and once fraud in the quality and quantity of exports badly hurt England's foreign trade. Maritime commerce went hand in hand with piracy.
Bribery was universal. Judges almost never sat without receiving a "present," and magistrates were bribed to favor the plaintiff, the defendant or both. Tax officers were bought to grant exemptions, and officers sent to recruit soldiers were bribed, like Shakespeare's Falstaff, to skip a whole town. Enemies with money seduced an English army invading France. People, as today, were mad for money. Poets like Chaucer, who condemned human greed, practiced it themselves.
The foundation of social morality would have collapsed had it not been welded to the simple life of the common people, who, while their lords plotted, fought and idled, thought of living and raising families.
From Castles to Manor Houses
All classes except merchants and the proletariat spent most of the year out of town when they could. Castles, which had lost their defensive purpose with the progress of cannon, slowly turned into manor houses. Brick replaced stone, though poor and middling houses were still built of mud and timber. The central hall, once usable for everything, lost its old size and grandeur and became a small porch opening onto a large living room, a few small rooms and a parlor for friendly conversation.
In rich houses tapestries hung on the walls, and windows, sometimes of stained glass, lit rooms that had been dark. Smoke from the hearth, which had once escaped through doors, windows and roof holes, now gathered and went out through a chimney, and a large wall fireplace gave the living room remarkable dignity. Ceilings were beamed and floors tiled, and rugs were still rare.
If we trust Erasmus's letters over his frank remarks, the floors of nearly all rooms were made of clay and rushes brought from the marshes, so carelessly renewed that they sometimes lay for twenty years, collecting beneath them spittle, vomit, dog and human urine, beer dregs, fish scraps and nameless filth. When the weather changed, vapor rose from it, which in my opinion stank worse than all its components.
Beds, Tables and Meals
Beds were handsome and luxurious, with carving, flowered coverings and canopies. In prosperous houses the dining table was a great carved masterpiece of walnut or oak. Near it, or in the hall, stood a cupboard, a sideboard or a finely covered table arranged for show or decoration. The room once used for conversation was now used for eating. To save lamp oil, main meals were eaten in daylight: dinner at ten in the morning and supper at five in the afternoon. Men kept their hats on at table so that their long hair would not fall into the food.
The fork was used on special occasions, such as for salad or cheese, and its modern use first appears in 1463. A guest brought his own knife in a small sheath fastened at his collar. Good manners of the time required eating with the fingertips. Handkerchiefs were not in use until the middle of the sixteenth century, and the custom was to wipe the nose with the hand that held the knife, not the hand that ate. Napkins were unknown, but diners were asked not to wipe their mouths and teeth on the tablecloth.
Foods were heavy and rich. An ordinary dinner for a gentleman ran to fifteen or twenty dishes. Great lords kept richer tables and fed more than a hundred retainers, guests and servants daily. For the table of Warwick the Kingmaker six oxen were killed each day, and sometimes five hundred guests ate at his board. Meat was the common national food. Vegetables were few, or ignored if present. Ale was the national drink, and wine was not as common as in France or Italy, but the ordinary ration for each person, even nuns, was a gallon of ale a day. Sir John Fortescue said (around 1470) that the English "never drink water, except on religious fasts, or as penance for sin, or to ask forgiveness."
Dress
In aristocratic society clothing was splendid. Simple people wore plain gowns, smocks or short-sleeved garments suited to work. The wealthy liked fur or feathered hats, flowered coats or fancy puff-sleeved jackets, and tight, long hose. Chaucer mocks these as showing the lower body so prominently, and from behind so unflatteringly, that they looked absurd. Chaucer himself, when a page in a rich household, wore a bright costume with one leg of his hose red and the other black.
In the fifteenth century the long pointed shoes of the fourteenth went out of fashion and toes became broad or round. As for women's dress, a moralist complained that though some of their outward looks were quite plain and pleasing, the excessive tightness of their clothes spoke of lust and pride. Surviving pictures show that the fair sex covered itself from head to foot in long, tight garments.
Games, Music and Amusements
Entertainments were many, from chess, backgammon and dice to fishing, hunting, archery, jousting and riding. Playing cards reached England in the late fifteenth century, and the English still dress the kings and queens of the deck in the fashion of that time. Dancing and music were as common as gambling. Nearly all English people took part in the choral singing of the church. Henry V rivaled John Dunstable, a famous composer of the time, in writing music, and English singers were famous across the Continent.
Men played tennis, handball, football, bowls and ring games, wrestled, boxed, set cocks to fight, and baited bears and bulls. Crowds gathered to see acrobats and tightrope walkers, whose dangerous feats entertained the old and amazed the young. Kings and nobles kept jugglers, clowns and conjurers in their trains, and a Lord of Misrule appointed by the king or queen directed the games and festivities of Christmas week.
Women moved freely among men everywhere: they drank wine in taverns, rode to the hunt, hawked with falcons, and at tournaments drew the spectators' eyes from the contestants. It was the women, guided by the queen, who judged among the combatants and gave the golden crown to the winner.
Travel
To go on a journey was like going to hell, yet no one stayed home, and this was a plague of its own. Roads were dirt or mud, and robbers recognized no sex, race, class or creed. Inns were picturesque but dirty and full of cockroaches, rats and fleas. Nearly all inns had a flirtatious wench to offer travelers, and there was no room for chastity. The rich rode horses and the poor walked. Armed men often escorted the wealthy, and many rich people traveled in the new horse-drawn carriages, said to have been invented in the fifteenth century by a man from the Hungarian village of Kocs.
The lords' carriages were carved, painted, gilded, and fitted with cushions, curtains and carpets. Even so, they were more uncomfortable than a camel and, like small fishing boats, shaky and rolling. Ships were neither better nor worse than before: the vessel that brought King John from Bordeaux to London in 1357 took twelve days.
Crime and Punishment
Crime was widespread. Towns were too poor to hire anything but volunteer constables, but every man in a town was expected to join those who pursued a criminal with a hue and cry. The few who were caught received severe punishments. The penalty for night-prowling, theft, arson, blasphemy, murder and treason was hanging. The criminal was strung up on any suitable tree and the body left hanging as a warning to others and food for crows. Torture of both accused and witnesses became common under Edward IV and lasted two hundred years. The number of defense lawyers grew.
Fortescue's Defense of English Law
Perhaps our judgment of that age is unfair, and we forget the savagery of our own enlightened times. Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice under Henry VI, thought the conditions of his age far better than we imagine, and wrote two works on the subject that were once very famous. In one dialogue, In Praise of the Laws of England, he praises the nation's laws, commends trial by jury, condemns the use of torture, and, like thousands of other philosophers, advises princes to be obedient servants of the law.
In The Governance of England, in a tone full of patriotism, he compares France and England. In France people are condemned without public trial, the Estates-General are seldom consulted, and the king taxes his people whenever he needs to. After preferring his homeland in this comparison, Fortescue ends by saying all governments should be subject to the pope and "even kiss his foot."