Wyth, Hey, dogge, hey, Haue these hogges away[10] Wyth, Get me a staffe, The swyne eate my draffe! Stryke the hogges wyth a clubbe, They haue dranke up my swyllyn tubbe.
The unlovely Elynor scraped up all manner of filth into her mash-tub, mixed it together with her “mangy fists,” and sold the result as ale. It is proverbial that “there is no accounting for tastes,” and it would appear as though the district had a peculiar liking for this kind of brew. They would have it somehow, even if they had to bring their food and furniture for it:
Insteede of quoyne and mony,
Some bryng her a coney,
And some a pot wyth honey;
Some a salt, some a spoone,
Some theyr hose, some theyr shoone;
Some run a good trot
Wyth skyllet or pot:
Some fyll a bag-full
Of good Lemster wool;
An huswyfe of trust
When she is athyrst
Such a web can spyn
Her thryft is full thyn.
Some go strayght thyther
Be it slaty or slydder,
They hold the hyghway;
They care not what men say,
Be they as be may
Some loth to be espyd,
Start in at the backesyde,
Over hedge and pale,
And all for good ale.
Some brought walnuts,
Some apples, some pears,
And some theyr clyppying shears.
Some brought this and that,
Some brought I wot ne’re what,
Some brought theyr husband’s hat.
and so forth, for hundreds of lines more.
The old inn—still nothing more than an ale-house—is in part as old as the poem, but has been so patched and repaired in all the intervening centuries that nothing of any note is to be seen within. A very old pictorial sign, framed and glazed, and fixed against the wall of the gable, represents the ill-favoured landlady, and is inscribed: “Elynor Rummyn dwelled here, 1520.”
Accounts we have of the fourteenth-century inns show that the exclusive, solitary Englishman was not then allowed to exist. Guests slept in dormitories, very much as the inmates of common lodging-houses generally do now, and, according to the evidence of old prints, knew nothing of nightshirts, and lay in bed naked. They purchased their food in something the same way as a modern “dosser” in a Rowton House, but their manners and customs were peculiarly offensive. The floors were strewed with rushes; and as guests generally threw their leavings there, and the rushes themselves were not frequently removed, those old interiors must have been at times exceptionally noisome.
Inn-keepers charged such high prices for this accommodation, and for the provisions they sold, that the matter grew scandalous, and at last, in the reign of Edward the Third, in 1349, and again in 1353, statutes were passed ordering hostelries to be content with moderate gain. The “great and outrageous dearth of victuals kept up in all the realm by innkeepers and other retailers of victuals, to the great detriment of the people travelling across the realm” was such that no less a penalty would serve than that any “hosteler or herberger” should pay “double of what he received to the party damnified.” Mayors and bailiffs, and justices learned in the law, were to “enquire in all places, of all and singular, of the deeds and outrages of hostelers and their kind,” but it does not appear that matters were greatly improved.
THE “RUNNING HORSE,” LEATHERHEAD.
It will be observed that two classes of innkeepers are specified in those ordinances. The “hosteler” was the ordinary innkeeper; the “herberger” was generally a more or less important and well-to-do merchant who added to his income by “harbouring”—that is to say, by boarding and lodging—strangers, the “paying guests” of that age. We may dimly perceive something of the trials and hardships of old-time travel in that expression “harbouring.” The traveller then came to his rest as a ship comes into harbour from stormy seas. The better-class travellers, coming into a town, preferred the herberger’s more select table to the common publicity of the ordinary hostelry, and the herbergers themselves were very keen to obtain such guests, some even going to the length of maintaining touts to watch the arrival of strangers, and bid for custom. This was done both openly and in an underhand fashion, the more rapacious among the herbergers employing specious rogues who, entering into conversation with likely travellers at the entrance of a town, would pretend to be fellow-countrymen and so, on the understanding of a common sympathy, recommending them to what they represented to be the best lodgings. Travellers taking such recommendations generally found themselves in exceptionally extortionate hands. These practices early led to “herbergers” being regulated by law, on much the same basis as the hostelers.
Not many records of travelling across England in the fourteenth century have survived. Indeed the only detailed one we have, and that is merely a return of expenses, surviving in Latin manuscript at Merton College, Oxford, concerns itself with nothing but the cost of food and lodging at the inns and the disbursements on the road, made by the Warden and two fellows who, with four servants—the whole party on horseback—in September, 1331, travelled to Durham and back on business connected with the college property. The outward journey took them twelve days. They crossed the Humber at the cost of 8d., to the ferry: beds for the entire party of seven generally came to 2d. a night, beer the same, wine 1¼d., meat 5½d., candles ¼d., fuel 2d., bread 4d., and fodder for the horses 10d.
CHAPTER III
GENERAL HISTORY OF INNS
The mediæval hostelries, generally planned in the manner of the old galleried inns that finally went out of fashion with the end of the coaching age, consisting of a building enclosing a courtyard, and entered only by a low and narrow archway, which in its turn was closed at nightfall by strong, bolt-studded doors, are often said to owe their form to the oriental “caravanserai,” a type of building familiar to Englishmen taking part in the Crusades.
But it is surely not necessary to go so far afield for an origin. The “caravanserai” was originally a type of Persian inn where caravans put up for the night: and as security against robbers was the first need of such a country and such times, a courtyard capable of being closed when necessary against unwelcome visitors was clearly indicated as essential. Persia, however, and oriental lands in general, were not the only countries where in those dark centuries robbers, numerous and bold, or even such undesirables as rebels against the existing order of things, were to be reckoned with, and England had no immunity from such dangers. In such a state of affairs, and in times when private citizens were
