Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and Present Part 14

Love-boons are described by the Law authorities as "the voluntary labour of the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns.h.i.+ps."

The memorable truce between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, in 1458, was called a love-day.

A customary tenant, in some places, was bound to appear on the grandest day with his whole family, except the housewife, who stayed at home and spun; sometimes excepting the nurse as well the mistress. In the neighbourhood of Oxford, in the year 1279, all the men who held yard-lands, and all who held half-yard-lands, came to two autumnal precations, each of them with one man; and to the third precation each of them with his whole family, excepting his wife and shepherd, and was regaled by the lord on this third day,--not on the two former days; and all the customary tenants were obliged to ride beyond the lord's crops, to see that they were reaped safe and well. They rode in saddles, with bridles and spurs; if they failed in any part of this equipment, they were fined. These mounted overseers were called reap-reeves. In the time of Edward the Third, the tenant of an estate called Fawkner Field was bound to ride among the reapers in the lord's demesnes, at Isleworth, on the bederepe day, in autumn, with a sparrow-hawk upon his wrist. The officers of the court were ent.i.tled to a share of the crop. In some places, the sicklemen received a worksheaf each; each man was expected to reap half an acre, called a deywine (day-win), or day's labour. In the accounts of the tenures at Booking, in Ess.e.x, there is a curious estimate of the cost of these autumnal precations. The expense of the food provided for the reapers is weighed against the value of their work, and the balance is found to be fivepence and three-farthings.

A yard-lander at Chalgrave, in Oxfords.h.i.+re, reaped at the two precations in autumn with all his household but his wife and shepherd; if he brought three labourers, he walked with his rod, or rode, in front of the reapers; if he brought no labourers, he worked in person; for two repasts, at nones, a wheaten loaf, pottage, meat, and salt; at supper, bread and cheese and beer, and enough of it, with a candle while the guests were inclined to sit. The last day was always the grand day, when, at Piddington, the tenants and their wives came with napkins, dishes, platters, cups, and other necessary things.

In the reign of Henry III., the ploughmen and other officers, at East Monkton, near Warminster and Shaftesbury, were allowed a ram for a feast on the Eve of St. John the Baptist, when they used to _carry fire round the lord's corn_. This form of the Beltane superst.i.tion was observed in the north of England, and in Scotland, about fifty years ago. The Beltane flourishes at the uttermost ends of Europe, in the Scilly Islands, and in Russia; and even the main of Madagascar, who holds his head to other stars, is accustomed to kindle bonfires on the day which we have dedicated to St. John. We learn from the _Popular Antiquities_ that in our time, in Gloucesters.h.i.+re and Herefords.h.i.+re, on the eve of Twelfth Day, fires used to be lit at the ends of the lands, in fields just sown with wheat.

Tenants in old times were required to cut and clear the lord's hay-field. A tenant at Bradbury, for one day's mowing, received a meal of bread and cheese twice in the course of the day; and for carrying the same meadow, a bundle of hay, for his pains. The mowers also received among them twelvepence or a sheep, which they were to choose out of the lord's fold by sight, not by touch. In other places the mower was allowed as much gra.s.s as he could raise up on his scythe, without breaking its handle; and a haymaker received as much hay as he could grasp with both arms. At Sturminster, a tenant, after mowing and carrying, received a knitch of hay,--that is, as much hay as the hayward could raise with one finger to the height of his knees.

In the year 1308, it was the rule at Borley that the mowers and haymakers should have two bushels of wheat for bread, a wether worth eighteenpence, a gallon of b.u.t.ter, the second-best cheese out of the lord's dairy, salt and oatmeal for their pottage, and the morning's milk of all the cows; and a mower as much gra.s.s as he could lift upon the point of his scythe. In 1222 they had in common a cheese and a good ram.

A sheep was commonly the reward of work in the hay-field. Old English husbandmen were very fond of mutton, and the hay-harvest fell about St.

John's Day, when mutton was considered in season.

HOCK-DAY.

The second Tuesday after Easter, was another very important day in bygone times. At Chingford, the ward-staff was presented in court on Hock-day. John Ross, of Warwick, records that, on the death of Hardicanute, England was delivered from Danish servitude; and to commemorate this deliverance, on the day commonly called Hock Tuesday, the people of the villages are accustomed to pull in parties at each end of a rope, and to indulge in other jokes. The Hock-tide sports were kept up at Hexton, in Hertfords.h.i.+re, in the time of Elizabeth, and are described in Clutterbuck's Hertfords.h.i.+re. Hock-day was usually set apart for a love-day, law-day, or court-leet. This court could be held but twice in the year, and was generally held at Hock-tide and Michaelmas, or Martinmas, since a court on these days would not interfere much with agricultural operations. Leets, like most other gatherings, ended with good cheer. In the thirteenth century, when the officers of East Monkton attended the Hundred courts at Deverell--which were held at Hock-tide and Martinmas--they were allowed a loaf and a piece of meat each. A feast following a court-leet or law-day, was called a leet-ale, or scot-ale, as ale is said to mean no more than a feast. There were leet-ales and scot-ales, church-ales, clerk-ales, bid-ales, and bride-ales. Scot-ales were often abused, and made means of extortion.

The bishops, the judges, and all the king's men in vain tried to suppress them. All persons present at a scot-ale paid _scot_,--that is, a fine, or fee; the money raised nominally furnished a feast, but was really for the benefit of the chief officer of the court--the portreeve, head borough, or third borough. In some places, leet-ale was not entirely supported by subscription. In Tollard, on the edge of Cranborne Chase, the steward was allowed on the law-day to have a course at a deer out of Tollard Park. At Bovey Tracy, the profits of the Portreeve's Park defrayed the expenses of the annual revel. The Glas...o...b..ry Rental describes the mode of keeping the scot-ales in Wilts.h.i.+re, in the thirteenth century. The customs are very like those of ancient Guilds.

By the rules of the Guild of the Holy Ghost at Abingdon, members who sat down at dinner paid one rate, and members who stood for want of room paid another.

SHEEP-SHEARING.

This was another service imposed upon the tenantry. Though hard and heavy work to wash and shear sheep, in the thirteenth century it was done by women, who are called "shepsters" in the _Vision_ of Piers Plowman. The sheep were washed in the mill-pond. Shearers were usually ent.i.tled to the wambelocks, or loose locks of wool under the belly of the sheep; or at Weston, in Oxfords.h.i.+re, a penny instead of the locks.

The finest part of the fleece is the wool about the sheep's throat, called in Scotland the haslock, or hawselocks:

"A tartan plaid, spun of good hawslock woo', Scarlet and green he sets, the borders blew."

_The Gentle Shepherd._

Up in the North they call a sheep-shearing the clipping-time; and to come in clipping-time is to come as opportunely as at sheep-shearing, when there are always mirth and good cheer. In the middle of the seventeenth century, clippers always expected a joint of roasted mutton.

In the _Winter's Tale_, the clown ponders:

"Let me see, what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pounds of sugar, five pounds of currants, rice--what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on.... I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates, none! That's out of my note.

Nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger--but that I may beg; four pounds of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun."

The old customs of clipping-time were observed by Sir Moyle Finch, at Walton, near Wetherby, in the time of Charles I., and are thus described by Henry Best:

"Hee hath usually fower severall keepinges shorne altogether in the Hall-garth.... He hath had 49 clippers all at once, and their wage is, to each man 12_d_. a day, and when they have done, beere and bread and cheese; the traylers have 6_d_. a day. His tenants the graingers are tyed to come themselves, and winde the well; they have a fatte wether and a fatte lambe killed, and a dinner provided for their paines; there will be usually three score or fower score poore folkes gatheringe up the lockes; to oversee whom standeth the steward and two or three of his friends or servants, with each of them a rodde in his hande; there are two to carry away the well, and weigh the roll so soone as it is wounde up, and another that setteth it downe ever as it is weighed; there is 6_d_. allowed to a piper for playing to the clippers all the day; the shepheards have each of them his bell-weather's fleece,"--the "bellys" allowed to the shepherd by the old Saxon laws.

Sheep-shearing was thus celebrated in ancient times with feasting and rustic pastimes; at present, excepting a supper at the conclusion of the sheep-shearing, we have few remains of the older custom. Nevertheless, it is interesting to revert to these pictures of pastoral life and rusticity, more especially as we find them embellished by the charms of poetry, and enlivened by a simplicity of manners which, to whatever period it may belong, is always entertaining, if not productive of better fruit. The season of the shearing is thus laid down by Dyer:

"If verdant Elder spreads Her silver flowers, if humble Daisies yield To yellow rowfoot and luxuriant gra.s.s, Gay Shearing Time approaches."

CONVEYANCE SERVICE.

The most irksome tasks were the transport services, called in Scotland the duties of _arriage_ and _carriage_. The load of a sumpter-horse was usually eight bushels--the weight of a sack of wool, or a quarter of corn. A wain-load was apparently nine seams. The goods carried were chiefly provisions--grain, pulse, malt, honey, bacon, suet, salt, and wood. A castle or monastery was _farmed_--that is, supplied with food--by the nearest manors belonging to the lord. The farming was done according to a regular cycle, each manor sending supplies in its turn for so many days or weeks. We have a list of thirty-five villages which took turns to farm Ely Minster--some for three or four days, some for a week, some for a fortnight.

Everything contributed in this manner did not travel in waggons, or packs and panniers; oxen and swine were driven to the head of the barony to be slaughtered, especially at Martinmas; if the drovers came from any distance, they received drove-meat. Arriage and carriage were not very burdensome when fulfilled by the removal of so much wool, or cheese, or corn, or bacon, to a neighbouring town; but they became serious when a tenant had to ride or drive from the heart of England to the coast and home again. Some tenants were called _pouchers_, because they were required to carry goods in a poke, pouch, or bag. In the Channel Islands, on the first spring-tide after the 24th of June, the poor who possess neither cart nor horse have the exclusive right to cut _vraic_ (wrack, sea-weed), on consideration that it is conveyed on their backs to the beach. Thus cut and conveyed it is called _vraic a la poche_, and distinguished from _vraic a cheval_.

When fish was wanted at Rochester, the tenants of the four hydes of Hedenham and Cuddington, near Aylesbury, were called out; two of the hydes brought the fish from Gloucester into Buckinghams.h.i.+re, and the other two hydes carried it on to Rochester: it is likely that they were sent to fetch the dainty lamprey, still sought for at Gloucester. The _langerodes_, or long journeys, were very troublesome to the tenants, but could not be dispensed with while there were no regular mails, and no public conveyances. A person undertaking a _langerode_ either received some remuneration or worked out his rent by serving as a carrier; in general he was not inclined to leave his home and farm, and found it more convenient to pay the price of the service, which enabled the lord to find another carrier. No services were more frequently commuted than the duties of arriage and carriage, and a body of professional carriers was gradually formed by the habit of constant commutation.

WATCH AND WARD.--THE BEADLE.

The wardmen of ancient times were a kind of rural police, whose duty of ward-keeping was connected with their tenure. They were, probably, maintained on the north side of London until the inst.i.tution of a general system of police in the time of Edward the First. By the statute of Winton, it was ordered that a watch should be kept by six men at each gate of a city, by twelve men in every borough, and by six men or four men in each rural towns.h.i.+p, every night, from the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord to the Feast of St. Nicholas. The watchmen could detain any one unknown to them; any one who would not stand and declare himself, was pursued with hue and cry--with horn and voice--

"Swarming at his back the country cried."

We suppose that St. Nicholas became the patron of highwaymen, because the watch was intermitted on the day dedicated to St. Nicholas. The wardmen were occasionally noticed in the Domesday of St. Paul's. The survey of 1279 states, that at Sutton, in Middles.e.x, each tenant who had cattle on the lord's lands to the value of thirty pence, paid a penny at Martinmas, called _ward-penny_; but this tax was not due from the watchmen of the ward, who waited at night in the King's highway, and received the ward-staff:--

"They wared and they waked, And the Ward so kept, That the king was harmless, And the country scatheless."

In Ess.e.x, the ward-keeper had a rope with a bell, or more than one bell, attached to it: the rope may have been used to stop the way. The ward-staff was a type of authority, cut and carried with peculiar ceremony, and treated with great reverence.

The duties of the beadle (Saxon, _bydel_ or _baedel_), in ancient times, lay more on the farm than in the law-court, the state procession, or in the parochial duties of punis.h.i.+ng petty offenders, as in the present day.[58] In many places, the bedelry and the haywards.h.i.+p were held together by one person. The beadle was the verger of the manorial court; he likewise overlooked the reapers and carried his rod into the harvest-field. At Darent, near Rochester, the beadle held five acres as beadle, shepherd, and hayward; he had eighteen sheep and two cows in the lord's pasture; against Christmas he had a _crone_--an old sheep--a lamb with a fleece, and some other allowances. At Ickham, in the same county, the beadle's office was hereditary: the beadle had five acres with a cottage for his service, and made all the citations of the court, and, if he went on horseback into the Weald of Kent, he was allowed provender for his horse; he had pasture for five hogs, five head of cattle, and a horse; he attended in the fields to regulate the labours of the harvest. And such had been the tenure of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

Old English gentlemen were anciently very much afraid of theft and peculation; they believed that "Treste lokes maketh trewe hewen,"--or, to change their maxim into current English, they believed that "firm locks made faithful servants." The barns were to be well closed after August, and no servant was to open them until thres.h.i.+ng-time, without the special direction of the landlord or the steward. The strictest accounts were kept. Every person, in any situation of the slightest trust or responsibility, was required to render an account of every penny and every article pa.s.sing through his hands, to the receiver, or bailiff, whose accounts were revised once a year by auditors, who went round from manor to manor.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] The staple of this paper is selected and condensed from a series of learned articles, ent.i.tled "The Rights, Disabilities, and Usages of the Ancient English Peasantry;" in the _Law Magazine and Law Review_, published by Messrs. b.u.t.terworth. Some of the ancient law terms have been omitted, in order to better adapt this abstract for popular reading.

[58] In our day, the beadle is most familiar to us as an officer of the church. Formerly, one of his duties was a strange one. We read of the beadle, in a church, going round the edifice during service, carrying a long staff, at one end of which was a fox's brush, and at the other a k.n.o.b: with the former, he gently tickled the faces of the female sleepers, while on the heads of their male compeers he bestowed with the k.n.o.b a terrible rap.

At Acton church, in Ches.h.i.+re, some five and twenty years ago, one of the churchwardens, or the apparitor, used to go round the church during service, with a long wand in his hand; and if any of the congregation were asleep, they were instantly awoke by a tap on the head.

In the church at Dunchurch, a similar custom existed: a person, having a stout wand, shaped like a hay-fork at the end, stept stealthily up and down the naves and aisles, and whenever he saw an individual asleep, he touched him so effectually, that the spell was broken; this being sometimes done by fitting the fork to the nape of the neck.

OLDEN HOUSE-MARKS.

The means by which property has been identified, and denoted by some distinctive mark, at various periods, present us with some curious customs.

In England, individual marks were in use from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries, probably much earlier; and when a yeoman affixed his mark to a deed, he drew a _signum_, well known to his neighbours, by which his land, his cattle, and sheep, his agricultural implements, and even his ducks, were identified. In the 25th year of Queen Elizabeth, a jury at Seaford, in Suss.e.x, convicted John Comber "for markyng of three ducks of Edwd Warwickes and two ducks of Symon Brighte with his own marke, and cutting owt theire markes." Cows and oxen were marked on the near horn. When cattle in bodies of many hundreds ranged over extensive commons, as was formerly the case, the use of marks for identification was more indispensable than at present.

Our swans retain their marks to the present day. In Ditmarsh and Denmark the owner's mark was cut in stone over the princ.i.p.al door of the house; it designated not only his land and cattle, but his stall in the church, and his grave when he was no more. At Witney, Oxon, a woolstapler's mark may be seen so incised on a house, with the date 1564; and numerous merchants' marks are at Norwich and Yarmouth. At Holstein, within the memory of man, the beams of the cottages of the bond-servants were incised with the marks of their masters. A pastor, writing from Angeln, says, "The hides had their marks, which served instead of the names of their owners." In the island of Fohr, a little to the north of Ditmarsh, the mark, cut on a wooden ticket, is always sold with the house; and it is cut in stone over the door; and the same custom is still in use in Schleswig and Holstein. In the Tyrolese Alps, at the present day, the cattle that are driven out to pasturage are marked on the horn with the mark of their owner's land. Marks for cattle are also used in Switzerland, in the Bavarian Alps, and in some parts of Austria.

These house-marks are connected with merchants' and tradesmen's marks, and also with stonemasons' marks, all of which formed a lower kind of heraldry for those not ent.i.tled to the bearings of the n.o.ble; for, on old houses at Erfurt, double s.h.i.+elds, with the marks of the families of husband and wife, are found.

Many of the marks found on old pictures are true house-marks, and not alphabetical monograms. A painting by Wouvermans or Lingelback, in the writer's possession, bears the mark known as the crane's foot. Michelsen considers armorial bearings to have been originally little more than decorated marks, and to have been engrafted, as it were, upon the system: indeed, he a.s.serts that the arms of Pope Hadrian VI., a Netherlander, were framed from house-marks. Some knightly families in Schleswig still retain their house-marks on their coat-of-arms: for instance, the Von Gogerns bear the kettle-hanger, or pot-hook; the Von Sesserns, in 1548, bore the same, which occurred on their family tomb, _anno_ 1309. The earliest marks were supposed to represent the most indispensable agricultural implements, as a spade, a plough, a scythe, a sickle, a dung-hook, the tyres of a barrow; also, anchors, stars, &c.

There was, also, often a supposed connexion between the figurative name of a house and its owner's mark, which was a representation of the object, more or less exact. Michelsen considers that the names and signs of inns are but remnants of the once universal and necessary custom of giving figurative names to houses, which the modern numbers have superseded.