CHAPTER IX.

ENGLAND, PAST AND PRESENT, LAY AND CLERICAL—THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND DANES—THE NORMANS AND EARLY ENGLISH.

Although we will endeavour, for the sake of convenience, to divide the story of drink in England into something like epochs, the distinction between any two periods must by no means be considered arbitrary. The conquering Danes are said to have stimulated and intensified the passion for drink in the Anglo-Saxons, and those again, it is maintained by some writers, corrupted and debauched the Normans when they settled in England. So, again, modern writers amongst the Roman Catholic clergy declare that the Reformation deprived the Church of her due influence over the social habits of the people, and that drunkenness as a national vice increased materially after that event,[211] whereas numerous authors, both Protestant and Catholic, have drawn vivid pictures of the debaucheries practised by the monks themselves, and more than one eminent writer goes so far as to say that the whole tenor of mediæval popular and historical literature shows the clergy to have been the great corruptors of domestic virtue both in the burgher and agricultural classes.[212] It is quite possible, therefore, that one class of society may have indulged immoderately whilst another order was comparatively sober; and all we shall attempt to do will be to glance down the pages of history, and note any phases of our subject which we deem likely to interest the reader, and which bear upon our general conclusions.

There can be little doubt that, in the matter of drink, the Anglo-Saxons resembled their congeners abroad, and that intemperance was one of their conspicuous vices. Their drinks were chiefly ale and mead, the latter being prepared from honey, which was very plentiful in England. They took their potations from horns and cups of various shapes, some of which are still preserved, and make considerable pretensions to art. That drinking was common in monasteries is shown by the fact that cups of various materials, and some of very large size, were often bestowed upon or left to religious houses by princes and nobles. Amongst many other instances of this, Lady Ethelgiva is said to have presented to the Abbey of Ramsey, among other things, “two silver cups for the use of the brethren in the refectory, in order that while drink is served in them to the brethren at their repast, my memory may be more firmly imprinted on their hearts.”[213] Nor need there be any doubt of the use to which such cups were often put. A Roman Catholic writer on temperance, whom we shall often have occasion to quote, and who is not at all disposed to exaggerate the vices of the priesthood, gives anything but a flattering picture of the habits of the Anglo-Saxon clergy.

St. Boniface, he says, writes as follows in the eighth century to Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury:—“It is reported that in your dioceses the vice of drunkenness is too frequent, so that not only certain bishops do not hinder it, but they themselves indulge in excess of drink, and force others to drink till they are intoxicated. This is most certainly a great crime for a servant of God to do or to have done, since the ancient canons decree that a bishop or a priest given to drink should either resign or be deposed.”[214] And the same writer gives us extracts from the canons which determine the penances and punishments to be borne by priests addicted to drunkenness, and which show plainly that the vice was by no means exceptional, but was widely spread amongst the clergy. We shall revert to this portion of the subject presently, and have only to remark here, that, with such an example in their spiritual superiors, it is no wonder the laity should be addicted to excess in drinking. Their bouts were conducted pretty much in the style of those of other nations. They pledged each other freely, the distinctive feature in their case being that the ceremony was accompanied by a kiss; and from the illuminated manuscripts which have been handed down to us,[215] we learn that their entertainments were accompanied by such amusements as singing the national poetry, recounting their own exploits, propounding riddles, dancing, and rude instrumental music. Amongst the wealthier classes professional minstrels were kept, but in humbler life each guest took his turn in contributing to the joviality of the feast. As may be readily imagined, when the liquor began to take effect, the guests usually became noisy and quarrelsome, their disputes frequently terminating in strife and bloodshed. As not every reader can be expected to follow these accounts of Anglo-Saxon life to their source, it may be interesting if we give a brief description of a scene represented upon one of the illuminated manuscripts referred to, as it presents a vivid picture of jollity in that day.

The guests are seated at a round table, near which stands a cupbearer, who is pouring out some kind of drink from a large vase-shaped vessel, resembling the Roman amphora. In the centre of the picture a man and woman, evidently professionals, are dancing to music, which consists of a harp (played by two men), two trumpet-shaped instruments, apparently buffalo horns, and one of which appears to have stops or keys, and a species of guitar. At one side of the picture is a person (of which sex it is impossible to say) who, it is thought by the author of the work which contains the picture, is about to join the players, but who seems to us to be engaged in recitation.[216] It is not our province to enter further into the amusements which were engaged in during these feasts, but it may be mentioned in passing, that amongst them were gambling with dice, witnessing sleight-of-hand performances, acrobatic exercises, &c. That the feasts very often terminated in deadly strife is certain from the accounts that are still extant. Here is the translation of part of an Anglo-Saxon legend in which the Evil Spirit describes the influence which he exercises over the festive board:—

“Some I by wiles have drawn To strife prepared, That they suddenly Old grudges Have renewed, Drunken with beer; I to them poured Discord from the cup, So that in the social hall, Through gripe of sword, The soul let forth From the body.”[217]

Women joined the men in their feasts; but it is said that, as in recent times, they retired from the table before the heavy drinking began, and the blood of the company was roused. The lower classes, both men and women, frequented taverns, of which there were many all over the country, and there they were joined by the more dissolute of the clergy, who were always welcome guests at such parties. Inns were very rare, and the result was, that, as in all primitive races or sparsely peopled countries, travellers were received in private and religious houses, and the practice of hospitality was universal.

But whilst it is beyond doubt that in Anglo-Saxon times both laity and clergy drank to excess, it is only due to the latter to say that the great preachers denounced drunkenness, and visited it with more or less severe punishment. We have referred to the canons that were framed against it, extracts from a few of which, accompanied by references to the cause of their promulgation, may be found interesting, and will save the necessity of repetition at a later period, for they were promulgated time after time in a modified form by the Councils of the Church.

St. Gildas the Wise (A.D. 570) decreed, “If any one (that is, a monk) through drinking too freely gets thick of speech, so that he cannot join in the psalmody, he is to be deprived of his supper.”[218] No very severe penalty that; for he would probably be all the better for the abstinence. The year previously (A.D. 569), synods were held by St. David, and amongst the decrees we find the following, which refers to priests:—“He that forces another to get drunk out of hospitality must do penance as if he had got drunk himself. But he who out of hatred or wickedness, in order to disgrace or mock at others, forces them to get drunk, if he has not already sufficiently done penance, must do penance as a murderer of souls.”[219]

The reverend author whom we are quoting explains that the Anglo-Saxon monasteries were sometimes villages or towns with many hundred inmates, many of whom were laymen, and to them he is disposed to attribute the drunkenness. Besides, of the monks he says, that after their days in which long fasting was joined to manual labour, “it is no wonder that, when the refreshment hour came, the beer got into the heads of some.”[220] Other very conscientious writers do not, however, endorse this view, and, as we have already said, they charge the monastic orders with great excesses. One of these says that in early Anglo-Saxon times both nunneries and convents were places in which the worst vices were practised. It was the fashion, he says, for nobles and others to purchase crown lands upon pretence of founding a monastery; upon which they made themselves abbots, collected a convent out of expelled monks (a proof that in some monasteries at least dissolute monks were not tolerated), and led a life perfectly secular, bringing their wives into the monastery, and being husbands and abbots at the same time. Nor were the nunneries, at least some of them, any better. The nuns of Coldingham are said to have spent their time in feasting, drinking, and gossiping. “They also employed themselves in working fine clothes, dressing themselves like brides, and acquiring the favour of strange men.”[221]

Against such places the Anglo-Saxon synods preached and remonstrated. They forbade all the practices referred to, and advised the abbots and monks to set a good example themselves, to be vigilant against theft, and to inculcate reading both in monks and nuns; monasteries were not to be made the receptacles of ludicrous arts, of poets, harpers, fiddlers, and buffoons, such as we have described in connection with the festivals of the laity. “They were not to be houses of gossiping and drunkenness;” and “abbots and abbesses were to be chosen of approved life, not stained with the crimes of child-getting, homicide, or theft, but leading regular lives in their cloisters.”[222]

Still the use of wine and beer was not by any means forbidden in religious houses. Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury (A.D. 925-988), limited the supply of wine as follows:—After mass the officiating ministers received a quarter of a pound of bread and a quarter of a pint of wine; this was called _mixtus_. After collations (which did not mean lunch, as nowadays, but reading of Lives of the Fathers) on feast days, each monk received a cup of wine, which was followed by a few words of thanksgiving by the abbot; and both there and in other well-regulated monasteries drinking does not appear to have been excessive.[223] With time, however, as we shall see presently, great changes for the worse supervened.

The Danes are said to have been much heavier drinkers than the Saxons, and from the stories which are told of them in the old chronicles, the soldiers seem to have set no bounds upon their intemperance. More than one anecdote is related of guards being overcome by drink;[224] and every child knows the story of King Alfred introducing himself in the disguise of a minstrel into the camp of Guthrum the Danish general, and finding his soldiers steeped in drunkenness and dissipation. The last Danish king, Hardicanute, was a great drunkard; in fact, his death is said to have resulted in 1042 from a debauch at Lambeth.

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With the advent of the Normans new phases of social life were introduced into England, and at first there may have been a little less coarseness in the drinking customs of the conquerors than in those of the vanquished race. The former did not, however, long enjoy even that qualified reputation for sobriety, and they are said soon to have excelled the Saxons in their feats of debauchery. Our information regarding their ways and customs is derived from other sources besides those which we have hitherto examined. The French illuminated manuscripts as well as our own give us considerable insight into the habits of the time, and show that similar customs obtained in both countries. The chief sources of information are, however, the French and Anglo-Norman Fabliaux or tales in verse, written chiefly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the Bayeux tapestry. We learn a good deal from the wood carvings of the period still preserved in churches, and from the “men” which were used in the favourite game of chess; the chronicles of the monasteries, too, are a fertile source of instruction. Our attention will naturally be turned first to the nobles and knights, and along with them we shall consider the clerics, many of them priests-militant, and the monastic orders.

In the early Norman times we have little else than accounts of knightly debauchery. Here are two of them, anything but edifying, but both remarkably characteristic of a victorious and dominant race of soldiers. The first is taken from the Life of Hereward.[225] “The new Lord of Brunne (a Norman baron) was surrounded by his knights, who were scattered about helpless from the extent of their potations, and reclining on the laps of their women. In the midst of them stood a jongleur or minstrel, alternately singing and exciting their mirth with coarse and brutal jests.” It is, says the writer, a first rough sketch of a part of mediæval manners which we shall find more fully developed at a later period. The same author says that in the reign of Stephen “we find the amusements of the hall varied with the torture of captured enemies.”

The other account referred to is taken from the Chronicles of St. Edmundsbury, and relates to a time (A.D. 1194) when the monastery was under the rule of a good and sober abbot, Sampson by name. A tournament was held near St. Edmund, after which eighty young men with their followers, sons of noblemen, were invited to dine with the abbot; “but,” says the chronicle, “after dinner, the abbot retiring to his chamber, they all arose and began to carol and sing, sending into the town for wine, drinking and then screeching, depriving the abbot and convent of their sleep, and doing everything in scorn of the abbot, and spending the day, until the evening, in this manner,[226] and refused to desist even when the abbot commanded them. But when the evening was come, they broke open the gates of the town and went forth bodily. The abbot indeed solemnly excommunicated them, yet not without first consulting Hubert, at that time Justiciar,[227] and many of them came promising amendment and seeking absolution.”[228]

As an amusing contrast to this example of knightly misconduct and ecclesiastical reproof, we propose to describe a similar breach of the peace committed by the lower classes, taken from the same chronicles, and the reader will see the difference in the mode of dealing with the rich and the poor in those days, as well as in the influence exercised by the Church over the two classes of society. “On the morrow of the Nativity of our Lord, there took place in the churchyard meetings, wrestlings, and matches between the servants of the abbot and the burgesses of the town, and from words it came to blows, and from cuffs to wounds and to shedding of blood. The rioters were obliged to do penance by stripping themselves altogether naked except their drawers, to prostrate themselves before the door of the church; and when the abbot saw more than a hundred men lying down naked he wept. They were then sharply whipped and absolved.”[229]

Of course the propensity to over-indulgence was not universal, even in the race of warriors who had quartered themselves upon the forest lands of Britain. The Normans were always more polished in their manners than the Anglo-Saxons, and their dwellings were much more commodious. This we learn not only from the appearance of the remains of those buildings, but also from the statements of the learned men of the period. William of Malmesbury, who wrote about the year 1130, says that “the Saxon nobility passed entire nights and days in drinking, and consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses; that they had their hair cropped, their beards shaven, their arms laden with golden bracelets, and their skin adorned with punctured designs; that they were accustomed to eat till they became surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. And these latter qualities,” adds the candid Norman historian, “they imparted to their conquerors.”[230]

In well-regulated Norman households, the dinner, which was partaken of early in the forenoon, was not accompanied by excessive drinking. After it was removed, and the ceremony of washing performed, the wine-cup was passed round once, and the guests retired. Sometimes wine and sweetmeats were served in an adjoining apartment, and on grand occasions the after-dinner entertainment comprised not only drinking, but story-telling and performances by jongleurs, which, we are told, were often very obscene, even in the presence of the ladies. It was customary, by the way, for the lady of the house, however high her rank might be, occasionally to fill the cups of the guests, and on the chessmen of the twelfth century the “queen” usually carries a drinking horn. Some of these chessmen are still preserved.

We need not be surprised that the performances of the jongleurs before ladies were indecent, for the ladies themselves were by no means refined. There has been no attempt, that we know of, to edit the English “_Jus potandi_” of the Middle Ages, but it is certain that about the thirteenth century a genuine code of rules for good behaviour was published for the guidance of the fair sex. They were cautioned to avoid certain offences against morality which we could not even venture to repeat here; and in regard to drinking, they were warned not to get drunk, “that being a practice from which much mischief might arise.” “Each time you drink,” wrote their mentor, “wipe your mouth well, that no grease may go into the wine, which is very unpleasant to the person who drinks after you.”[231] From this it would appear that there was a partnership in cups in those days—at least, that each guest was not provided with a drinking vessel for his sole use.

After the Anglo-Saxon and Norman races became amalgamated, the lower classes were no better than their superiors. What the latter did in the hall, the former accomplished in the tavern, where the women are said to have spent much time idling and gossiping. The men, too, often wasted their whole substance in such haunts, drinking, and gambling with dice; and cases occurred in which one or other of the players gambled away his last garment, and was left in a state of complete nudity. The wealthy ecclesiastics lived in still greater luxury than the lay nobles and knights, for their revenues were protected by their sacred calling even in times of great commotion, and they never found it necessary to make a raid upon their neighbours’ cattle for a meal. Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald Barry, Archdeacon of Brecknock (1175-1200) describes a dinner with the Prior of Canterbury, where there were wines of various kinds, “piment, claret, mead, and others;” and at which, moreover, there was “licentious discourse.”[232] The same writer speaks of the Irish clergy, and after lauding their zealous preaching, fasting, and chastity, he concludes by saying that, “amongst so many thousands, you will not find one who, after all his rigorous observance of fasts and prayer, will not make up at night for the labours of the day, by drinking wine and other liquors beyond all bounds of decorum.”[233] The latter statement, indeed, seems incredible to the Catholic author who quotes it; but there need not be much hesitation in giving it credence, for it is completely confirmed by the other records of the period. These tell us that the monks ate and drank very intemperately, and that they selected the strongest wines; and one published bill of fare contains twenty-seven different dishes—fish, flesh, fowl, &c.—along with a variety of liquors.[234]

Every reader has heard of the cellarer, who managed the commissariat, and whose emoluments and powers were very great, not only within the convent, but even outside its precincts. At St. Edmundsbury he held a court, and had a prison in which he confined wrong-doers. Yet these officials were often guilty of great excesses. In 1197 the cellarer at St. Edmundsbury was displaced for drunkenness, and the following year his successor, Jocell, committed an offence for which the abbot forbade him to drink anything but water; and he still remaining contumacious, his superior forbade him both meat and drink until he repented.[235] About the same time another official (not the cellarer) had been sent to look after some of the estates of the convent, when it came to the abbot’s ears that he was “deporting himself in somewhat too secular a manner,” as the chronicle mildly puts it; but as he was serviceable to the community, the abbot winked at his irregularities. Eventually, however, they became so gross that the abbot could “wink” no longer, and his effects were ordered to be seized. To the astonishment of the brotherhood, they were found to comprise “a mighty deal of gold and silver, to the value of two hundred marks.”[236]

Nor were the opportunities for over-indulgence in drink very rare. Besides the sacred feasts, Christmas, Easter, &c., when the monks were not so closely restricted, and were allowed to take a little more wine than usual “in excess of joy,” we presume, there were other occasions which were made the excuse for “a drop extra.” On the admission of an abbot it was customary to allow every man a gallon of wine, a whole loaf, and three handsome dishes of fish.[237] As already stated, the abbots themselves fared very sumptuously. At one period they lived apart from the monks, but in the ninth century the Council of Aix (and others afterwards) ordered them to dine in the common refectory, to put bounds upon their indulgence. After that, wine was brought to them in their chamber when dinner was over. The prior, too, was allowed more wine than the monks; he might send his cup to the cellarer to be filled once or twice, and that officer had no power to refuse him. Much more has been written concerning the drinking habits of the monks, but, as we shall have to revert to them at a period when the whole system had become much more corrupt, we must stop here, and will close the present chapter with a brief mention of the kinds of intoxicating drinks which were consumed in Anglo-Saxon and Norman times.

These were beer and ale (Welsh ale is mentioned at a very early period), which varied very much in price, several gallons being at one time obtainable for a penny, whilst later on they were much dearer.[238] Mead or hydromel was a fermented drink produced from honey and flavoured with herbs and spices. Wines also were coming into use. They were produced either from grapes grown in England, those being very poor in quality, or were imported from France, Italy, Spain, and Greece; and amongst them we find mention made of claret, muscadelle, malmsey, &c. The wine called “piment” in a feast referred to in the present chapter was a sour thin wine, sweetened and flavoured with sugar, honey, and spices.