Early English Meals and Manners Part 12

[Footnote 63: Edited by Mr Halliwell in his 'Selection from the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate.' Percy Society, 1840, quoted by Prof. Morley.]

[[Footnote 63a: 'Fitz-Stephen says on the parents of St Thomas, "Neque fnerantibus neque officiose negotiantibus, sed de redditibus suis honorifice viventibus."' E. A. F.]]

[Footnote 64: Mr Skeat's readings. The _abbot_ and _abbots_ of Mr Wright's text spoil the alliteration.]

[Footnote 65: Compare the previous pa.s.sages under heading 1, p. vi.]

[Footnote 66: May Mr Skeat bring the day when it will be done!]

[Footnote 67: Later on, men's games were settled for them as well as their trades. In A.D. 1541, the 33 Hen. VIII., cap. 9, -- xvi., says,

"Be it also enacted by the authority aforesaid, That no manner of Artificer or Craftsman of any Handicraft or Occupation, Husbandman, Apprentice, Labourer, Servant at Husbandry, Journeyman or Servant of Artificer, Mariners, Fishermen, Watermen or any Serving man, shall from the said feast of the Nativity of St John Baptist play at the Tables, Tennis, Dice, Cards, Bowls, Clash, Coyting, Logating, or any other unlawful Game out of Christmas, under the Pain of xx s. to be forfeit for every Time; (2) and in Christmas to play at any of the said Games in their Master's Houses, or in their Master's Presence; (3) and also that no manner of persons shall at any time play at any Bowl or Bowls in open places out of his Garden or Orchard, upon the Pain for every Time so offending to forfeit vi s. viiii d." (For _Logating_, &c., see Strutt.)]

[Footnote 68: Translated from the Latin copy in the British Museum, MS. Harl. 1197, art. 15, folio 319 b.]

[Footnote 69: Duodecim pauperes de sumptibus dictae Ecclesiae _alendi_.]

[Footnote 70: Duo _unus_ Pincernae, et _unus subpincerna_, duo unus cociquus, et unus subcoquus. Sic in MS]

[Footnote 71: MS. No. 688 in Lambeth Library. MS. Harl. cod. 1594, art. 38, in Brit. Mus.]

[Footnote 72:

Farewell, in Oxford my college cardynall!

Farewell, in _Ipsewich, my schole gramaticall!_ Yet oons farewell! I say, I shall you never see!

Your somptious byldyng, what now avayllethe me?

_Metrical Visions_ [Wolsey.] by George Cavendish, in his Life of Wolsey, (ed. Singer, ii. 17). Wolsey's Letter of Directions about his school should be consulted. It is printed.]

[Footnote 73: Colet's Statutes for St Paul's School are given in Howard Staunton's _Great Schools of England_, p. 179-85.]

[Footnote 74: 'That there was a school at Rochester before Henry VIII.'s time is proved by our Statutes, which speak of the _Schola Grammaticalis_ as being _ruinosa & admodum deformis_.' R.

Whiston.]

[Footnote 75: Pegge concludes these to have been St Paul's, Bow, and Martin's le Grand.]

[Footnote 76: The custom of boys bringing c.o.c.ks to masters has left a trace at Sedburgh, where the boys pay a sum every year on a particular day (Shrove-Tuesday?) as "c.o.c.k-penny." Quick.]

[Footnote 77: On the London Schools, see also Sir George Buc's short _cap._ 36, "Moore of other Schooles in London," in his _Third Vniuersitie of England_ (t.i. London). He notices the old schools of the monasteries, &c., 'in whose stead there be some few founded lately by good men, as the Merchant Taylors, and Thomas Sutton, founder of the great new Hospitall in the Charter house, [who] hath translated the Tenis court to a Grammar Schoole ... for 30 schollers, poore mens children.... There be also other Triuiall Schooles for the bringing up of youth in good literature, _viz._, in S. _Magnus_, in S. _Michaels_, in S. _Thomas_, and others.']

[Footnote 78: Udall became Master of Eton about 1534. He was sent to prison for sodomy.]

[Footnote 79: The perversion of these elections by bribery is noticed by Harrison in the former extract from him on the Universities.]

[Footnote 80: See p. 273-4, 'all of a fourme to name who is the best of their fourme, and who is the best next him'.]

[Footnote 81: ? key of the Campo, see pp. 299 and 300, or a club, the holder of which had a right to go out.]

[Footnote 82: See Mr Froude's n.o.ble article in _The Westminster Review_, No. 3, July, 1852 (lately republished by him in a collection of Essays, &c.).]

[Footnote 83: Their eyes must have smarted. The natives' houses in India have (generally) no chimneys still, and Mr Moreshwar says the smoke _does_ make your eyes water.]

[Footnote 84: Mouffet is learned on the Louse.

"In the first beginning whilest man was in his innocency, and free from wickednesse, he was subject to no corruption and filth, but when he was seduced by the wickednesse of that great and cunning deceiver, and proudly affected to know as much as G.o.d knew, G.o.d humbled him with divers diseases, and divers sorts of Worms, with Lice, Hand-worms, Belly-worms, others call _Termites_, small Nits and Acares ... a Lowse ... is a beastly Creature, and known better in Innes and Armies then it is wellcome. The profit it bringeth, _Achilles_ sheweth, _Iliad_ I. in these words: _I make no more of him then I doe of a Lowse_; as we have an English Proverb of a poor man, _He is not worth a Lowse_. The Lice that trouble men are either tame or wilde ones, those the _English_ call _Lice_, and these _Crab-lice_; the North _English_ call them _Pert-lice_, that is, a petulant Lowse comprehending both kindes; it is a certain sign of misery, and is sometimes the inevitable scourge of G.o.d."

Rowland's _Mouffet's Theater of Insects_, p. 1090, ed. 1658 (published in Latin, 1634). By this date we had improved. Mouffet says, "These filthy creatures ... are hated more than Dogs or Vipers by our daintiest Dames," _ib._ p. 1093; and again, p. 1097, "Cardan, that was a fancier of subtilties, writes that the _Carthusians_ are never vexed with Wall-lice, and he gives the cause, because they eat no flesh.... He should rather have alledged their cleanliness, and the frequent was.h.i.+ng of their beds and blankets, to be the cause of it, which when the _French_, the _Dutch_, and _Italians_ do less regard, they more breed this plague. But the English that take great care to be cleanly and decent, are seldom troubled with them." Also, on p. 1092, he says, 'As for dressing the body: all _Ireland_ is noted for this, that it swarms almost with Lice. But that this proceeds from the beastliness of the people, and want of cleanly women to wash them is manifest, because the English that are more careful to dress themselves, changing and was.h.i.+ng their s.h.i.+rts often, having inhabited so long in _Ireland_, have escaped that plague....

Remedies. The _Irish_ and _Iseland_ people (who are frequently troubled with Lice, and such as will fly, as they say, in Summer) anoint their s.h.i.+rts with Saffron, and to very good purpose, to drive away the Lice, but after six moneths they wash their s.h.i.+rts again, putting fresh Saffron into the Lye.' Rowland's Mouffet (1634), _Theater of Insects_, p. 1092, ed. 1658.]

[Footnote 85: Prof. Brewer says that Erasmus, rejecting the Mediaeval Latin and adopting the Cla.s.sical, no doubt used _salsamenta_ in its cla.s.sical sense of salt-meat, and referred to the great quant.i.ty of it used in England during the winter, when no fresh meat was eaten, but only that which had been killed at the annual autumn slaughtering, and then salted down.

Stall-fattening not being practised, the autumn was the time for fat cattle. _Salsamentum_, however, is translated in White and Riddle's Dictionary, "A. Fish-pickle, brine; B. Salted or pickled fish (so usually in plural)."]

[Footnote 86: If any member or reader can refer me to any other verse or prose pieces of like kind, unprinted, or that deserve reprinting, I shall be much obliged to him, and will try to put them in type.]

Errata (noted by transcriber):

_Capiendo pro_[26]...'" [_missing '_]

the case is too too evident [_duplication in original_]

sums it up.[59] [_footnote marker missing in text_]

a pa.s.sage in Edward the Fourth's _Liber Niger_ [pa.s.saeg]

ab. 1460 ... Marmaduke Constable [460]

In the section "Post-Reformation Cathedral Schools" the attribution of quotes is sometimes obscure. The text layout has been kept as close as possible to the original.

PREFACE TO RUSSELL.

Though this _Boke of Nurture_ by John Russell is the most complete and elaborate of its kind, I have never seen it mentioned by name in any of the many books and essays on early manners and customs, food and dress, that have issued from the press. My own introduction to it was due to a chance turning over, for another purpose, of the leaves of the MS.

containing it. Mr Wheatley then told me of Ritson's reference to it in his _Bibliographica Poetica_, p. 96; and when the text was all printed, a reference in _The Glossary of Domestic Architecture_ (v. III. Pt. I.

p. 76, note, col. 2) sent me to MS. Sloane 1315[1]--in the Glossary stated to have been written in 1452--which proved to be a different and unnamed version of Russell. Then the Sloane Catalogue disclosed a third MS., No. 2027[2], and the earliest of the three, differing rather less than No. 1315 from Russell's text, but still anonymous. I have therefore to thank for knowledge of the MSS. that special Providence which watches over editors as well as children and drunkards, and have not on this occasion to express grat.i.tude to Ritson and Warton, to whom every lover of Early English Ma.n.u.scripts is under such deep obligations, and whose guiding hands (however faltering) in Poetry have made us long so often for the like in Prose. Would that one of our many Historians of English Literature had but conceived the idea of cataloguing the materials for his History before sitting down to write it! Would that a wise Government would commission another Hardy to do for English Literature what the Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records is now doing for English History-- give us a list of the MSS. and early printed books of it! What time and trouble such a Catalogue would save!

But to return to John Russell and his Boke. He describes himself at the beginning and end of his treatise as Usher and Marshal to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, delighting in his work in youth, quitting it only when compelled by crooked age, and then anxious to train up worthy successors in the art and mystery of managing a well-appointed household. A man evidently who knew his work in every detail, and did it all with pride; not boastful, though upholding his office against rebellious cooks[3], putting them down with imperial dignity, "we may allow and disallow; our office is the chief!" A simple-minded religious man too,--as the close of his Treatise shows,--and one able to appreciate the master he served, the "prynce fulle royalle," the learned and munificent Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, the patron of Lydgate, Occleve, Capgrave, Withamstede, Leonard Aretine, Petrus Candidus, Petrus de Monte, t.i.to Livio, Antoyne de Beccara, &c. &c., the lover of Ma.n.u.scripts, the first great donor to the Oxford University Library which Bodley revived[4], "that prince peerless," as Russell calls him, a man who, with all his faults, loved books and authors, and shall be respected by us as he was by Lydgate.

But our business is with the Marshal, not the Master, and we will hear what John Russell says of himself in his own verse,

an vssher{e} y Am / ye may behold{e} / to a prynce of high{e} degre, at enioyeth{e} to enforme & teche / all{e} o thatt wille thrive & thee,

Of suche thyng{es} as her{e}-aft{ur} shall{e} be shewed by my diligence To them at nought Can / w{i}t{h}-owt gret exsperience; Therfor{e} yf any man {a}t y mete with{e}, at for fawt of necligence, y wyll{e} hym enforme & teche, for hurtyng{e} of my Conscience.

To teche vertew and co{n}nyng{e}, me thynketh hit charitable, for moche youth{e} in co{n}nyng{e} / is baren & full{e} vnable.

(l. 3-9.)

At the end of his Boke he gives us a few more details about himself and his work in life: