Much dancing the house doubtless saw under the beautiful carved roof of the hall, with much song, games, kissing, and general abandon. Even when the bride and groom retired to the bridal chamber with its roll-moulded beams the merry-making was not done; they must hold a levee to their nearest friends in the bedchamber itself, enthroned in the great four-poster bed. There was no false delicacy about our ancestors. Indeed, as Henry Bullinger says (he was a very different person from jovial Deloney, but he was a contemporary of Paycocke's, and Coverdale translated him, so let him speak): 'After supper must they begynne to pype and daunce agayne of the new. And though the yonge parsones, beynge weery of the bablyng noyse and inconuenience, come ones towarde theyer rest, yet can they haue no quietnesse. For a man shall fynd unmanerly and restlesse people, that will first go to theyr chambre dore, and there syng vycious and naughtie balates that the deuell maye haue his triumphe now to the vttermost.'[11] What would we not give for one of those 'naughty ballads' today?

The bride Margaret, who was somewhat after this merry fashion brought home to Coggeshall, came from Clare, the ancient home of the Coggeshall Paycockes. She was the daughter of one Thomas Horrold, for whose memory Paycocke retained a lively affection and respect, for in founding a chantry in Coggeshall Church he desired specially that it should be for the souls of himself and his wife, his mother and father, and his father-in-law, Thomas Horrold of Clare. He also left five pounds, with which his executors were 'to purvey an oder stone to be hade to Clare chirch and layd on my ffader in lawe Thomas Horrold w't his pycture and his wife and childryn thereon' (i.e. a memorial brass), and also five cows or else three pounds in money to Clare Church 'to kepe and mayntene my ffader in lawe Thomas Horrold his obitt'. He also left money to his wife's brother and sisters. Margaret Paycocke died before her husband and without children; and the only young folk of his name whom Thomas ever saw at play in his lofty hall, or climbing upon his dresser to find the head, as small as a walnut, hidden in the carving of the ceiling, were his nephews and nieces, Robert and Margaret Uppcher, his sister's children; John, the son of his brother John; and Thomas, Robert, and Emma, the children of his brother Robert; perhaps also his little godchild Grace Goodday. It was perhaps in the hope of a son to whom he might leave his house and name that Thomas Paycocke married again a girl called Ann Cotton. She was the wife of his old age, 'Anne my good wif', and her presence must have made bright the beautiful house, silent and lonely since Margaret died. Her father, George Cotton, is mentioned in the will, and her brothers and sister, Richard, William, and Eleanor, have substantial legacies. But Thomas and Ann enjoyed only a short term of married life; she brought him his only child, but death overtook him before it was born. In his will he provides carefully for Ann; she is to have five hundred marks sterling, and as long as she lives the beautiful house is to be hers; for to his elaborate arrangements for its inheritance he adds, 'provided alwey that my wif Ann haue my house that I dwell in while she lyvyth at hir pleyser and my dof house [dove-house] with the garden y't stoundeth in.' A gap in the Paycocke records makes it difficult to say whether Thomas Paycocke's child lived or died; but it seems probable that it either died or was a girl, for Paycocke had bequeathed the house, provided that he had no male heirs, to his nephew John (son of his eldest brother John), and in 1575 we find it in the hands of this John Paycocke, while the house next door was in the hands of another Thomas Paycocke, his brother Robert's son. This Thomas died about 1580, leaving only daughters, and after him, in 1584, died John Paycocke, sadly commemorated in the parish register as 'the last of his name in Coxall'. So the beautiful house passed out of the hands of the great family of clothiers who had held it for nearly a hundred years.[12]

Of Thomas Paycocke's personal character it is also possible to divine something from his will. He was obviously a kind and benevolent employer, as his thought for his work-people and their children shows. He was often asked to stand godfather to the babies of Coggeshall, for in his will he directs that at his burial and the ceremonies which were repeated on the seventh day and 'month mind' after it there were to be 'xxiiij or xij smale childryn in Rochettes with tapers in theire hands and as many as may be of them lett them be my god childryn and they to have vj s. viij d. apece and euery oder child iiij d. apece ... and also euery god chyld besyde vj s. viij d. apece.' All these children were probably little bread-winners, employed at a very early age in sorting Thomas Paycocke's wool. 'Poore people,' says Thomas Deloney, 'whom God lightly blessed with most children, did by meanes of this occupation so order them, that by the time they were come to be sixe or seven yeeres of age, they were able to get their owne bread';[13] and when Defoe rode from Blackstone Edge to Halifax, observing the cloth manufacture, which occupied all the villages of the West Riding, it was one of his chief grounds for admiration that 'all [were] employed from the youngest to the oldest; scarce any thing above four years old, but its hands were sufficient for its own support.'[14] The employment of children at what we should regard as an excessively early age was by no means a new phenomenon introduced with the Industrial Revolution.

That Thomas Paycocke had many friends, not only in Coggeshall but in the villages round, the number of his legacies bears witness. His will also shows that he was a man of deep religious feeling. He was a brother of the Crutched Friars of Colchester and left them on his death five pounds to pray 'for me and for them that I am bound to pray fore'. It was customary in the Middle Ages for monastic houses to give the privilege of the fraternity of the house to benefactors and persons of distinction; the reception took place at a long and elaborate ceremony, during which the consrater received the kiss of peace from all the brethren. It is a mark of the respect in which Thomas Paycocke was held in the countryside that he should have been made a brother by the Crutched Friars. He seems to have had a special kindness for the Order of Friars; he left the Grey Friars of Colchester and the Friars of Maldon, Chelmsford, and Sudbury each ten shillings for a trental and 3s. 4d. to repair their houses; and to the Friars of Clare he left twenty shillings for two trentals, 'and at Lent after my deceste a kade of Red heryng'. He had great interest in Coggeshall Abbey; it lay less than a mile from his house, and he must often have dined in state with the abbot at his guest table on feast days and attended Mass in the abbey church. He remembered the abbey as he lay dying, and the sound of its bells ringing for vespers came softly in at his window on the mellow September air; and he left 'my Lord Abbot and Convent' one of his famous broadcloths and four pounds in money 'for to have a dirige and Masse and their belles Ryngyng at my buriall when it is doon at Chirche, lykewyse the vijth day and mounth day, with iij tryntalls upon the same day yf they can serve them, orells when they can at more leasur, Summa x li.'

His piety is shown also in his bequests to the churches of Bradwell, Pattiswick, and Markshall, parishes adjacent to Coggeshall, and to Stoke Nayland, Clare, Poslingford, Ovington, and Beauchamp St Pauls, over the Essex order, in the district from which the Paycockes originally came. But his greatest care was naturally for Coggeshall Church. One of the Paycockes had probably built the north aisle, where the altar was dedicated to St Katherine, and all the Paycocke tombs lay there. Thomas Paycocke left instructions in his will that he should be buried before St Katherine's altar, and made the following gifts to the church: 'Item, I bequeth to the high aulter of Coxhall Chirche in recompence of tithes and all oder thyngs forgoten, Summa iiij li. Item, I bequethe to the Tabernacle of the Trenyte at the high awlter and an other of Seint Margarete in seint Katryne Ile, there as the great Lady stands, for carvyng and gildyng of them summa c. marcs sterlinge. Item, to the reparacons of the Chirch and bells and for my lying in the Chirche summa c. nobles.' He founded a chantry there also and left money to be given weekly to six poor men to attend Mass in his chantry thrice a week.

Of piety and of family pride these legacies to religious houses and to churches speak clearly. Another series of legacies, which takes a form characteristic of medieval charity, bears witness perhaps to Thomas Paycocke's habits. He must often have ridden abroad, to see the folk who worked for him or to visit his friends in the villages round Coggeshall; or farther afield to Clare, first to see the home of his ancestors, then to court Margaret Horrold, his bride, and then, with Margaret beside him, to visit his well-loved father-in-law. Certainly, whether he walked to church in Coggeshall, or whether he rode along the country lanes, he often sighed over the state of the road as he went; often he must have struggled through torrents of mud in winter or stumbled among holes in summer; for in the Middle Ages the care of the roads was a matter for private or ecclesiastical charity, and all except the great highways were likely to be but indifferently kept. Langland, in his Piers Plowman, mentions the amending of 'wikked wayes' (by which he means not bad habits but bad roads) as one of those works of charity which rich merchants must do for the salvation of their souls. Thomas Paycocke's choice of roads no doubt reflects many a wearisome journey, from which he returned home splashed and testy, to the ministrations of 'John Reyner my man' or 'Henry Briggs my servant', and of Margaret, looking anxiously from her oriel window for his return. In his own town he leaves no less than forty pounds, of which twenty pounds was to go to amend a section of West Street (where his house stood), and the other twenty was 'to be layde on the fowle wayes bitwene Coxhall and Blackwater where as moost nede ys'; he had doubtless experienced the evils of this road on his way to the abbey. Farther afield, he leaves twenty pounds for the 'fowle way' between Clare and Ovington, and another twenty for the road between Ovington and Beauchamp St Pauls.

As his life drew to its close he doubtless rode less often afield. The days would pass peacefully for him; his business flourished and he was everywhere loved and respected. He took pride in his lovely house, adding bit by bit to its beauties. In the cool of the evening he must often have stood outside the garden room and seen the monks from the big abbey fishing in their stewpond across the field, or lifted his eyes to where the last rays of sun slanted on to the lichened roof of the great tithebarn, and on to the rows of tenants, carrying their sheaves of corn along the road; and he reflected, perhaps, that John Mann and Thomas Spooner, his own tenants, were good, steady friends, and that it was well to leave them a gown or a pound when he died. Often also, in his last year or two, he must have sat with his wife in his garden with the dove-house and watched the white pigeons circling round the apple-trees, and smiled upon her bed of flowers. And in winter evenings sometimes he would take his furred cloak and stroll to the Dragon Inn, and Edward Aylward, mine host, would welcome him with bows; and so he would sit and drink a tankard of sack with his neighbours, very slow and dignified, as befitted the greatest clothier of the town, and looking benevolently upon the company. But at times he would frown, if he saw a truant monk from the abbey stolen out for a drink in spite of all the prohibitions of bishop and abbot, shaking his head, perhaps, and complaining that religion was not what it had been in the good old days; but not meaning much of it, as his will shows, and never dreaming that twenty years after his death abbot and monks would be scattered and the King's servants would be selling at auction the lead from off the roof of Coggeshall Abbey; never dreaming that after four hundred years his house would still stand, mellow and lovely, with its carved ceiling and its proud merchant's mark, when the abbey church was only a shadow on the surface of a field in hot weather and all the abbey buildings were shrunk to one ruined ambulatory, ignobly sheltering blue Essex hay wagons from the rain.

So Thomas Paycocke's days drew to a close amid the peace and beauty of the most English of counties, 'fatt, frutefull and full of profitable thinges,'[15] whose little rolling hills, wych elms, and huge clouded skies Constable loved to paint. There came a day in September when gloom hung over the streets of Coggeshall, when the spinning-wheels were silent in the cottages, and spinners and weavers stood in anxious groups outside the beautiful house in West Street; for upstairs in his bridal chamber, under its noble ceiling, the great clothier lay dying, and his wife wept by his bedside, knowing that he would never see his child. A few days later the cottages were deserted again, and a concourse of weeping people followed Thomas Paycocke to his last rest. The ceremony of his burial befitted his dignity: it comprised services, not only on burial day itself, but on the seventh day after it, and then again after a month had passed. It is given best in the words of his will, for Thomas Paycocke followed the custom of his time, in giving his executors elaborate injunctions for his funeral rites: 'I will myne executors bestowe vpon my buryng daye, vij day and mounthe daye after this manner: At my buriall to have a tryntall of prests and to be at dirige, lawdis, and comendacons as many of them as may be purveyed that day to serve the tryntall, and yf eny lack to make it vpp the vij'th daye. And at the Mounthe daye an oder tryntall to be purveyed hoole of myne executors and to kepe dirige, lawdis and commendacons as is afore reherssed, with iij high massis be note [by note, i.e. with music], oon of the holy gost, an other of owre lady, and an other of Requiem, both buriall, seuenth day and Mounthe daye. And prests beyng at this obseruance iiij d. at euery tyme and childryn at euery tyme ij d., w't torches at the buriall xij, and vj at the vij'th day and xij at the mounthe daye, with xxiij'th or xij smale childryn in Rochettes with tapers in theire honds, and as many as may be of them lett them be my god Childryn, and they to haue vj s. viij d. apece; and euery oder child iiij d. apece; and euery man that holdith torches at euery day he to have ij apece; and euery man, woman and child that holdeth upp hound [hand] at eny of thes iij days to haue j d. apece; And also euery god chyld besyde vj s. viij d. apece; and to the Ryngars for all iij dayes x s.; and for mete, drynke, and for twoo Semones of a doctor, and also to haue a dirige at home, or I be borne to the Chirche summa j li.'

Here is something very different from the modest Thomas Betson's injunction: 'The costes of my burying to be don not outrageously, but sobrely and discretly and in a meane maner, that it may be unto the worship and laude of Almyghty God.' The worthy old clothier was not unmindful of the worship and laud of Thomas Paycocke also, and over L500 in modern money was expended upon his burial ceremonies, over and above the cost of founding his new chantry. Well indeed it was that his eyes were closed in death, ere the coming of the Reformation abolished all the chantries of England, and with them the Paycocke chantry in St Katherine's aisle, which had provided alms for six poor men weekly. Thomas Paycocke belonged to the good old days; in a quarter of a century after his death Essex was already changing. The monks were scattered from the abbey, which stood roofless; the sonorous Latin tongue no longer echoed in the church, nor priests prayed there for the souls of Thomas and his wife and his parents and his father-in-law. Even the cloth industry was changing, and the county was growing more prosperous still with the advent of finer kinds of cloth, brought over there by feat-fingered aliens, the 'new drapery', known as 'Bays and Says'. For as the adage says:

Hops, reformation, bays and beer Came into England all in a year,

and Coggeshall was destined to become more famous still for a new sort of cloth called 'Coxall's Whites', which Thomas Paycocke's nephews made when he was in his grave.[16] One thing, however, did not change; for his beautiful house still stood in West Street, opposite the vicarage, and was the delight of all who saw it. It stands there still, and looking upon it today, and thinking of Thomas Paycocke who once dwelt in it, do there not come to mind the famous words of Ecclesiasticus?

Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through His great power from the beginning...

Rich men furnished with ability, living peaceably in their habitations: All these were honoured in their generations and were the glory of their times.



Notes and Sources

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

THE PEASANT BODO

A. Raw Material

1. The Roll of the Abbot Irminon, an estate book of the Abbey of St Germain des Pres, near Paris, written between 811 and 826. See Polyptyque de l'Abbaye de Saint-Germain des Pres, pub. Auguste Longnon, t. I, Introduction; t. II, Texte (Soc. de l'Hist. de Paris, 1886-95).

2. Charlemagne's capitulary, De Villis, instructions to his stewards on the management of his estates. See Guerard, Explication du Capitulaire 'de Villis' (Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Memoires, t. XXI, 1857), pp. 165-309, containing the text, with a detailed commentary and a translation into French.

3. Early Lives of Charlemagne, ed. A.J. Grant (King's Classics, 1907). Contains the lives by Einhard and the Monk of St Gall, on which see Halphen, cited below.

4. Various pieces of information about social life may be gleaned from the decrees of Church Councils, Old High German and Anglo-Saxon charms and poems, and Aelfric's Colloquium, extracts from which are translated in Bell's Eng. Hist. Source Books, The Welding of the Race, 449-1066, ed. J.E.W. Wallis (1913). For a general sketch of the period see Lavisse Hist. de France, t. II, and for an elaborate critical study of certain aspects of Charlemagne's reign (including the Polyptychum) see Halphen, Etudes critiques sur l'Histoire de Charlemagne (1921); also A. Dopsch, Wirtschaftsentwicklung der Karolingerzeit, Vornehmlich in Deutschland, 2 vols. (Weimar, 1912-13), which Halphen criticizes.

B. Notes to the Text

1. 'Habet Bodo colonus et uxor ejus colona, nomine Ermentrudis, homines sancti Germani, habent secum infantes III. Tenet mansum ingenuilem I, habentem de terre arabili bunuaria VIII et antsingas II, de vinea aripennos II, de prato aripennos VII. Solvit ad hostem de argento solidos II, de vino in pascione modios II; ad tertium annum sundolas C; de sepe perticas III. Arat ad hibernaticum perticas III, ad tramisem perticas II. In unaquaque ebdomada corvadas II, manuoperam I. Pullos III, ova XV; et caropera ibi injungitur. Et habet medietatem de farinarium, inde solvit de argento solidos II.' Op. cit., II, p. 78. 'Bodo a colonus and his wife Ermentrude a colona, tenants of Saint-Germain, have with them three children. He holds one free manse, containing eight bunuaria and two antsinga of arable land, two aripenni of vines and seven aripenni of meadow. He pays two silver shillings to the army and two hogsheads of wine for the right to pasture his pigs in the woods. Every third year he pays a hundred planks and three poles for fences. He ploughs at the winter sowing four perches and at the spring sowing two perches. Every week he owes two labour services (corvees) and one handwork. He pays three fowls and fifteen eggs, and carrying service when it is enjoined upon him. And he owns the half of a windmill, for which he pays two silver shillings.'

2. De Villis, c. 45.

3. Ibid. cc. 43, 49.

4. From 'The Casuistry of Roman Meals,' in The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed. D. Masson (1897), VII, p. 13.

5. Aelfric's Colloquium in op. cit. p. 95.

6. The Monk of St Gall's Life in Early Lives of Charlemagne, pp. 87-8.

7. Einhard's Life in op. cit., p. 45.

8. Anglo-Saxon charms translated in Stopford Brook, English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest (1899), p. 43.

9. Old High German charm written in a tenth-century hand in a ninth-century codex containing sermons of St Augustine, now in the Vatican Library. Brawne, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch (fifth edition, Halle, 1902), p. 83.

10. Another Old High German charm preserved in a tenth-century codex now at Vienna. Brawne, op. cit., p. 164.

11. From the ninth-century Libellus de Ecclesiasticis Disciplinis, art. 100, quoted in Ozanam, La Civilisation Chretienne chez les Francs (1849), p. 312. The injunction however, really refers to the recently conquered and still half-pagan Saxons.

12. Penitential of Haligart, Bishop of Cambrai, quoted ibid. p. 314.

13. Documents relatifs a l'Histoire de l'Industrie et du Commerce en France, ed. G. Faigniez, t. I, pp. 51-2.

14. See references in Chambers, The Medieval Stage (1913), I, pp. 161-3.

15. For the famous legend of the dancers of Koelbigk, see Gaston Paris, Les Danseurs Maudits, Legende Allemande du XIe Siecle (Paris 1900, reprinted from the Journal des Savants, Dec., 1899), which is a conte rendu of Schroeder's study in Zeitschrift fuer Kirchengeschichte (1899). The poem occurs in a version of English origin, in which one of the dancers, Thierry, is cured of a perpetual trembling in all his limbs by a miracle of St Edith at the nunnery of Wilton in 1065. See loc. cit., pp. 10, 14.

16. 'Swete Lamman dhin are,' in the original. The story is told by Giraldus Cambrensis in Gemma Ecclesiastica, pt. I, c. XLII. See Selections from Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. C.A.J. Skeel (S.P.C.K. Texts for Students, No. XI), p. 48.

17. Einhard's Life in op. cit. p. 45. See also ibid., p. 168 (note).

18. The Monk of St Gall's Life in op. cit., pp. 144-7.

19. Einhard's Life in op. cit., p. 39.

20. Ibid., p. 35.

21. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography (1897), I, p. 325.

22. The Monk of St Gall's Life in op. cit., pp. 78-9.

23. See the description in Lavisse, Hist. de France II, pt. I, p. 321; also G. Monod, Les moeurs judiciaires au VIIIe Siecle, Revue Historique, t. XXXV (1887).

24. See Faigniez, op. cit., pp. 43-4.

25. See the Monk of St Gall's account of the finery of the Frankish nobles: 'It was a holiday and they had just come from Pavia, whither the Venetians had carried all the wealth of the East from their territories beyond the sea,—others, I say, strutted in robes made of pheasant-skins and silk; or of the necks, backs and tails of peacocks in their first plumage. Some were decorated with purple and lemon-coloured ribbons; some were wrapped round with blankets and some in ermine robes.' Op. cit., p. 149. The translation is a little loose: the 'phoenix robes' of the original were more probably made out of the plumage, not of the pheasant but of the scarlet flamingo, as Hodgson thinks (Early Hist. of Venice, p. 155), or possibly silks woven or embroidered with figures of birds, as Heyd thinks (Hist. du Commerce du Levant, I, p. 111).

26. The Monk of St. Gall's Life in op. cit., pp. 81-2.

27. This little poem was scribbled by an Irish scribe in the margin of a copy of Priscian in the monastery of St Gall, in Switzerland, the same from which Charlemagne's highly imaginative biographer came. The original will be found in Stokes and Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (1903) II, p. 290. It has often been translated and I quote the translation by Kuno Meyer, Ancient Irish Poetry (2nd ed., 1913), p. 99. The quotation from the Triads of Ireland at the head of this chapter is taken from Kuno Meyer also, ibid. pp. 102-3.

CHAPTER III

MARCO POLO

A. Raw Material

1. The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, trans. and ed. with notes by Sir Henry Yule (3rd edit., revised by Henri Cordier, 2 vols., Hakluyt Soc., 1903). See also H. Cordier, Ser Marco Polo: Notes and Addenda (1920). The best edition of the original French text is Le Livre de Marco Polo, ed. G. Pauthier (Paris, 1865), The most convenient and cheap edition of the book for English readers is a reprint of Marsden's translation (of the Latin text) and notes (first published, 1818), with an introduction by John Masefield, The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian (Everyman's Library, 1908; reprinted, 1911); but some of the notes (identifying places, etc.) are now out of date, and the great edition by Yule and Cordier should be consulted where exact and detailed information is required. It is a mine of information, geographical and historical, about the East. I quote from the Everyman Edition as Marco Polo, op. cit., and from the Yule edition as Yule, op. cit.

2. La Cronique des Veneciens de Maistre Martin da Canal. In Archivo Storico Italiano, 1st ser., vol. VIII (Florence, 1845). Written in French and accompanied by a translation into modern Italian. One of the most charming of medieval chronicles.

B. Modern Works

1. For medieval Venice see— F.C. Hodgson: The Early History of Venice from the Foundation to the Conquest of Constantinople (1901); and Venice in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, A Sketch of Venetian History, 1204-1400 (1910). P.G. Molmenti: Venice, its Growth to the Fall of the Republic, vols. I and II (The Middle Ages), trans. H.F. Brown (1906); and La Vie Privee a Venise, vol. I (1895). H.F. Brown: Studies in the History of Venice, vol. I (1907). Mrs Oliphant: The Makers of Venice (1905) is pleasant reading and contains a chapter on Marco Polo.

2. For medieval China, the Tartars, and European intercourse with the far East see— Sir Henry Yule's introduction to his great edition of Marco Polo (above). Cathay and the Way Thither: Medieval Notices of China, trans. and ed. by Sir Henry Yule, 4 vols. (Hakluyt Soc., 1915-16). Contains an invaluable introduction and all the best accounts of China left by medieval European travellers. Above all, Oderic of Pordenone (d. 1331) should be read as a pendant to Marco Polo. R. Beazley: The Dawn of Modern Geography, vols. II and III (1897-1906). R. Grousset: Histoire de l'Asie, t. III (3rd edit., 1922), Chap. I. A short and charmingly written account of the Mongol Empires from Genghis Khan to Timour. H. Howarth: History of the Mongols (1876).

3. For medieval trade with the East the best book is— W. Heyd: Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, trans., F. Raynaud; 2 vols. (Leipzig and Paris, 1885-6, reprinted 1923).

C. Notes to the Text

1. To be exact, the Flanders galleys which sailed via Gibraltar to Southampton and Bruges were first sent out forty years after 1268—in 1308. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they sailed every year, and Southampton owes its rise to prosperity to the fact that it was their port of call.

2. The occasion of the speech quoted was when the imperial representative Longinus was trying to get the help of the Venetians against the Lombards in 568 and invited them to acknowledge themselves subjects of the Emperor. The speech is quoted in Encyclop. Brit., Art. Venice (by H.F. Brown), p. 1002. The episode of the loaves of bread belongs to the attempt of Pipin, son of Charlemagne, to starve out the Rialto in the winter of 809-10. Compare the tale of Charlemagne casting his sword into the sea, with the words, 'Truly, even as this brand which I have cast into the sea shall belong neither to me nor to you nor to any other man in all the world, even so shall no man in the world have power to hurt the realm of Venice; and he who would harm it shall feel the wrath and displeasure of God, even as it has fallen upon me and my people.'—See Canale, Cron., c. VIII. These are, of course, all legends.

3. 'Voirs est que la mer Arians est de le ducat de Venise.'—Canale, op. cit., p. 600. Albertino Mussato calls Venice 'dominatrix Adriaci maris.'—Molmenti, Venice, I, p. 120.

4. See some good contemporary accounts of the ceremony quoted in Molmenti, Venice, I, pp. 212-15.

5. During the fatal war of Chioggia between the two republics of Venice and Genoa, which ended in 1381, it was said that the Genoese admiral (or some say Francesco Carrara), when asked by the Doge to receive peace ambassadors, replied, 'Not before I have bitted the horses on St Mark's.'—H.F. Brown, Studies in the Hist. of Venice, I, p. 130.

6. Canale, op. cit., p. 270.

7. 'The weather was clear and fine ... and when they were at sea, the mariners let out the sails to the wind, and let the ships run with spread sails before the wind over the sea'—See, for instance, Canale, op. cit., pp. 320, 326, and elsewhere.

8. Canale, op. cit., cc. I and II, pp. 268-72. Venice is particularly fortunate in the descriptions which contemporaries have left of her—not only her own citizens (such as Canale, Sanudo and the Doge Mocenigo) but also strangers. Petrarch's famous description of Venetian commerce, as occasioned by the view which he saw from his window in the fourteenth century, has often been quoted: 'See the innumerable vessels which set forth from the Italian shore in the desolate winter, in the most variable and stormy spring, one turning its prow to the east, the other to the west; some carrying our wine to foam in British cups, our fruits to flatter the palates of the Scythians and, still more hard of credence, the wood of our forests to the Egean and the Achaian isles; some to Syria, to Armenia, to the Arabs and Persians, carrying oil and linen and saffron, and bringing back all their diverse goods to us.... Let me persuade you to pass another hour in my company. It was the depth of night and the heavens were full of storm, and I, already weary and half asleep, had come to an end of my writing, when suddenly a burst of shouts from the sailors penetrated my ear. Aware of what these shouts should mean from former experience, I rose hastily and went up to the higher windows of this house, which look out upon the port. Oh, what a spectacle, mingled with feelings of pity, of wonder, of fear and of delight! Resting on their anchors close to the marble banks which serve as a mole to the vast palace which this free and liberal city has conceded to me for my dwelling, several vessels have passed the winter, exceeding with the height of their masts and spars the two towers which flank my house. The larger of the two was at this moment—though the stars were all hidden by the clouds, the winds shaking the walls, and the roar of the sea filling the air—leaving the quay and setting out upon its voyage. Jason and Hercules would have been stupefied with wonder, and Tiphys, seated at the helm, would have been ashamed of the nothing which won him so much fame. If you had seen it, you would have said it was no ship but a mountain, swimming upon the sea, although under the weight of its immense wings a great part of it was hidden in the waves. The end of the voyage was to be the Don, beyond which nothing can navigate from our seas; but many of those who were on board, when they had reached that point, meant to prosecute their journey, never pausing till they had reached the Ganges or the Caucasus, India and the Eastern Ocean. So far does love of gain stimulate the human mind.'—Quoted from Petrarch's Lettere Senili in Oliphant, Makers of Venice (1905), p. 349; the whole of this charming chapter, 'The Guest of Venice', should be read. Another famous description of Venice occurs in a letter written by Pietro Aretino, a guest of Venice during the years 1527 to 1533, to Titian, quoted in E. Hutton, Pietro Aretino, the Scourge of Princes (1922), pp. 136-7; compare also his description of the view from his window on another occasion, quoted ibid., pp. 131-3. The earliest of all is the famous letter written by Cassiodorus to the Venetians in the sixth century, which is partly translated in Molmenti, op. cit., I, pp. 14-15.

9. The account of the march of the gilds occupies cc. CCLXIII-CCLXXXIII of Canale's Chronicle, op. cit., pp. 602-26. It has often been quoted.

10. Canale, op. cit., c. CCLXI, p. 600.

11. This account of Hangchow is taken partly from Marco Polo, op. cit., bk. II, c. LXVIII: 'Of the noble and magnificent city of Kinsai'; and partly from Odoric of Pordenone, Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Yule, pp. 113-20.

12. Oderic of Pordenone, who was a man before he was a friar, remarks: 'The Chinese are comely enough, but colourless, having beards of long straggling hair like mousers, cats I mean. And as for the women, they are the most beautiful in the world.' Marco Polo likewise never fails to note when the women of a district are specially lovely, in the same way that that other traveller Arthur Young always notes the looks of the chambermaids at the French inns among the other details of the countryside, and is so much affronted if waited on by a plain girl. Marco Polo gives the palm for beauty to the women of the Province of Timochain (or Damaghan) on the north-east border of Persia, of which, he says, 'The people are in general a handsome race, especially the women, who, in my opinion, are the most beautiful in the world.'—Marco Polo, op. cit., p. 73. Of the women of Kinsai he reports thus: 'The courtesans are accomplished and are perfect in the arts of blandishment and dalliance, which they accompany with expressions adapted to every description of person, insomuch that strangers who have once tasted of their charms, remain in a state of fascination, and become so enchanted by their meretricious arts, that they can never divest themselves of the impression. Thus intoxicated with sensual pleasures, when they return to their homes they report that they have been in Kinsai, or the celestial city, and pant for the time when they may be enabled to revisit paradise.' Of the respectable ladies, wives of the master craftsmen he likewise says: 'They have much beauty and are brought up with languid and delicate habits. The costliness of their dresses, in silks and jewellery, can scarcely be imagined.'—op. cit., pp. 296, 297-8.

13. Yule, op. cit., II, p. 184.

14. For Prester John see Sir Henry Yule's article 'Prester John' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923), II, pp. 236-45. There is a pleasant popular account in S. Baring Gould, Popular Myths of the Middle Ages (1866-8).

15. For their accounts see The Journal of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts, 1253-5, by himself, with two accounts of the Earlier Journey of John of Pian da Carpine, trans. and ed. with notes by W.W. Rockhill (Hakluyt Soc., 1900). Rubruck especially is a most delightful person.

16. This, together with the whole account of the first journey of the elder Polos, the circumstances of the second journey, and of their subsequent return occurs in the first chapter of Marco Polo's book, which is a general introduction, after which he proceeds to describe in order the lands through which he passed. This autobiographical section is unfortunately all too short.

17. As a matter of fact, William of Rubruck had seen and described it before him.

18. For Marco Polo's account of this custom in the province which he calls 'Kardandan', see op. cit., p. 250. An illustration of it from an album belonging to the close of the Ming dynasty is reproduced in S.W. Bushell, Chinese Art (1910), fig. 134.

19. Marco Polo, op. cit., pp. 21-2.

20. A certain Poh-lo was, according to the Chinese annals of the Mongol dynasty, appointed superintendent of salt mines at Yangchow shortly after 1282. Professor Parker thinks that he may be identified with our Polo, but M. Cordier disagrees. See E.H. Parker Some New Facts about Marco Polos Book in Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review (1904), p. 128; and H. Cordier, Ser Marco Polo, p. 8. See also Yule, Marco Polo, I, Introd., p. 21.

21. P. Parrenin in Lett. Edis., xxiv, 58, quoted in Yule, op. cit., I, Introd., p. II.

22. On Marco Polo's omissions see Yule, op. cit., I, Introd., p. 110.

23. Marco Polo, op. cit., p. 288.

24. On Chao Meng-fu see S.W. Bushell, Chinese Art (1910), II, pp. 133—59; H.A. Giles, Introd. to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art (Shanghai, 2nd ed., 1918), pp. 159 ff.; the whole of c. VI of this book on the art which flourished under the Mongol dynasty is interesting. See also L. Binyon, Painting in the Far East (1908), pp. 75-7, 146-7. One of Chao Meng-fu's horse pictures, or rather a copy of it by a Japanese artist, is reproduced in Giles, op. cit., opposite p. 159. See also my notes on illustrations for an account of the famous landscape roll painted by him in the style of Wang Wei.

25. Bushell, op. cit., p. 135.

26. Ibid., pp. 135-6, where the picture is reproduced.

27. For the episode of the mangonels constructed by Nestorian mechanics under the directions of Nicolo and Maffeo see Marco Polo, op. cit., pp. 281-2.

28. Marco Polo, op. cit., bk. III, c. I, pp. 321-3.

29. Ramusio's preface, containing this account, and also the story of how Rusticiano came to write the book at Marco Polo's dictation at Genoa, is translated in Yule, op. cit., I, Introd., pp. 4-8.

30. He mentions these in Marco Polo, op. cit., pp. 136, 138, 344.

31. Yule, op. cit., I, Introd., p. 79.

32. On Rusticiano (who is mistakenly called a Genoese by Ramusio), see ibid., Introd., pp. 56 ff.

33. Paulin Paris, quoted ibid., Introd., p. 61.

34. Ibid., Introd., pp. 67-73.

35. Extract from Jacopo of Acqui's Imago Mondi, quoted ibid., Introd., p. 54.

36. M. Ch.-V. Langlois in Hist. Litt. de la France, XXXV (1921), p. 259. For tributes to Marco Polo's accuracy see Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan (1907) and Ruins of Desert Cathay (1912); Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia (1910); and Sven Hedin, Overland to India (1910).

37. Yule, op. cit., I, Introd., pp. 106-7.

38. For these later missions and traders see Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, Introd., pp. cxxxii-iv, and text, passim.

39. Ibid., II, p. 292; and App., p. lxv.

40. Concerning the marginal notes by Columbus see Yule, op. cit., II, App. H, p. 558. The book is preserved in the Colombina at Seville. I must, however, frankly admit that modern research, iconoclastic as ever, not content with white-washing Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine de Medicis, and with reducing Catherine of Siena to something near insignificance, is also making it appear more and more probable that Columbus originally set sail in 1492 to look for the islands of the Antilles, and that, although on his return after his great discovery in 1493 he maintained that his design had always been to reach Cipangu, this was a post hoc story, the idea of searching for Cipangu having probably come from his partner, Martin Pinzon. It is a pity that we do not know when he made his notes in the edition (the probable date of publication of which was 1485) of Marco Polo's book, which might settle the matter. On the whole question see Henry Vignaud, Etudes critiques sur la vie de Colomb avant ses decouvertes (Paris, 1905) and Histoire de la Grande Enterprise de 1492, 2 vols. (Paris, 1910), and the summary and discussion of his conclusions by Professor A.P. Newton in History, VII (1922), pp. 38-42 (Historical Revisions XX.—'Christopher Columbus and his Great Enterprise.') The idea that a new road to the East was being sought at this time, primarily because the Turks were blocking the old trade routes, has also been exploded. See A.H. Lybyer, The Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Oriental Trade in Eng. Hist. Review, XXX (1915), pp.577-88.

CHAPTER IV

MADAME EGLENTYNE

A. Raw Material

1. Chaucer's description of the Prioress in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

2. Miscellaneous visitation reports in episcopal registers. On these registers, and in particular the visitation documents therein, see R.C. Fowler, Episcopal Registers of England and Wales (S.P.C.K. Helps for Students of History, No. 1), G.G. Coulton, The Interpretation of Visitation Documents (Eng. Hist. Review, 1914), and c. XII of my book, cited below. A great many registers have been, or are being, published by learned societies, notably by the Canterbury and York Society, which exists for this purpose. The most important are the Lincoln visitations, now in the course of publication, by Dr A. Hamilton Thompson, Visitations of Religious Houses in the Diocese of Lincoln, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson (Lincoln Rec. Soc. and Canterbury and York Soc., 1915 ff.); two volumes have appeared so far, of which see especially vol. II, which contains part of Bishop Alnwick's visitations (1436-49); each volume contains text, translation, and an admirable introduction. See also the extracts from Winchester visitations trans. in H.G.D. Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey (1912). Full extracts from visitation reports and injunctions are given under the accounts of religious houses in the different volumes of the Victoria County Histories (cited as V.C.H.).

3. The monastic rules. See The Rule of St Benedict, ed. F.A. Gasquet (Kings Classics, 1909), and F.A. Gasquet, English Monastic Life (4th ed., 1910).

4. For a very full study of the whole subject of English convent life at this period see Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535(1922).

B. Notes to the Text

1. The Register of Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter (1307-26), ed. F. Hingeston Randolph (1892), p. 169. The passage about Philippa is translated in G.G. Coulton, Chaucer and His England (1908), p. 181.

2. See the account of expenses involved in making Elizabeth Sewardby a nun of Nunmonkton (1468) in Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. James Raine (Surtees Soc., 1886), III, p. 168; and Power, op. cit., p. 19.

3. Year Book of King Richard II, ed. C.F. Deiser (1904), pp. 71-7; and Power, op. cit., pp. 36-8.

4. G.J. Aungier, Hist. of Syon (1840), p. 385.

5. As at Gracedieu (1440-1), Alnwick's Visit, ed. A.H. Thompson, pp. 120-3.

6. G.J. Aungier, op. cit., pp. 405-9.

7. Translated from John de Grandisson's Register in G.G. Coulton, A Medieval Garner (1910), pp. 312-14.

8. Rule of St Benedict, c. 22.

9. V.C.H. Lincs., II, p. 131.

10. Translated in G.G. Coulton, A Medieval Garner.

11. Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. J.H. Blunt (E.E.T.S., 1873), p. 54. On Tittivillus see my article in The Cambridge Magazine (1917), pp.158-60.

12. Linc. Visit., ed. A.H. Thompson, II, pp. 46-52; and Power, op. cit. pp. 82-7.

13. V.C.H. Oxon, II. p. 77.

14. Linc. Visit., ed. A.H. Thompson, I, p. 67.

15. On these gaieties see Power, op. cit. pp. 309-14.

16. Linc. Visit., II, pp. 3-4; and see Power, op. cit., pp. 75-7, 303-5, on gay clothes in nunneries.

17. Linc. Visit., II. p. 175.

18. Power, op. cit., p. 307. On pet animals see ibid., pp. 305-9, and Note E ('Convent Pets in Literature'), pp. 588-95.

19. Power, op. cit., p. 77.

20. Ibid., pp. 351-2; and see Chap. IX passim on the Bull Periculoso and the wandering of nuns in the world.

21. Linc. Visit., II, p. 50.

22. V.C.H. Yorks., III, p. 172.



CHAPTER V

THE MENAGIER'S WIFE

A. Raw Material

I. Le Menagier de Paris, Traite de Morale et d'Economie Domestique, compose vers 1393 par un Bourgeois Parisien ... publie pour la premiere fois par la Societe des Bibliophiles Francois. (Paris, 1846). 2 vols., edited with an introduction by Jerome Pichon. There is a notice of it by Dr F.J. Furnivall, at the end of his edition of A Booke of Precedence (Early English Text Soc., 1869 and 1898), pp. 149-54. It was a book after his own heart, and he observes that it well deserves translation into English.

2. On the subject of medieval books of deportment for women see A.A. Hentsch, De la litterature didactique du moyen age s'addressant specialement aux femmes (Cahors, 1903), an admirably complete collection of analyses of all the chief works of this sort produced in western Europe from the time of St Jerome to the eve of the Renaissance. It is full of plums for adventurous Jack Horners.

3. With the Menagier's cookery book there may profitably be compared Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, ed. by Thomas Austin (E.E.T.S., 1888).

B. Notes to the Text

1. Pp. 1-2.

2. These long moral treatises on the seven deadly sins and the even deadlier virtues were very popular in the Middle Ages. The best known to English readers occurs in the Parson's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and is taken from the Somme de Vices et de Vertus of Frere Lorens, a thirteenth-century author. The sections on the deadly sins are usually, however, well worth reading, because of the vivid illustrative details which they often give about daily life. The Menagier's sections are full of vigour and colour, as one would expect. Here, for instance, is his description of the female glutton: 'God commands fasting and the glutton says: "I will eat". God commands us to get up early and go to church and the glutton says: "I must sleep. I was drunk yesterday. The church is not a hare; it will wait for me." When she has with some difficulty risen, do you know what her hours are? Her matins are: "Ha! what shall we have to drink? is there nothing left over from last night?" Afterwards she says her lauds thus: "Ha! we drank good wine yesterday." Afterwards she says thus her orisons: "My head aches, I shan't be comfortable until I have had a drink." Certes, such gluttony putteth a woman to shame, for from it she becomes a ribald, a disreputable person and a thief. The tavern is the Devil's church, where his disciples go to do him service and where he works his miracles. For when folk go there they go upright and well spoken, wise and sensible and well advised, and when they return they cannot hold themselves upright nor speak; they are all foolish and all mad, and they return swearing, beating and giving the lie to each other.'—Op. cit., I, pp. 47-8. The section on Avarice is particularly valuable for its picture of the sins of executors of wills, rack-renting lords, extortionate shopkeepers, false lawyers, usurers, and gamblers.—See ibid., I, pp. 44-5.

3. Prudence and Melibeus is worth reading once, either in Chaucer's or in Renault de Louens' version, because of its great popularity in the Middle Ages, and because of occasional vivid passages. Here, for instance, is the episode in Chaucer's version, in which Melibeus, the sages, and the young men discuss going to war, and the sages advise against it: 'Up stirten thanne the yonge folk at ones, and the mooste partie of that compaignye scorned the wise olde men, and bigonnen to make noyse, and seyden that "Right so as, whil that iren is hoot, men sholden smyte, right so men sholde wreken hir wronges while that they been fresshe and newe"; and with loud voys they criden, "Werre! werre!" Up roos tho oon of thise olde wise, and with his hand made contenaunce that men sholde holden hem stille, and yeven hym audience. "Lordynges," quod he, "ther is ful many a man that crieth 'Werre! werre!' that woot ful litel what werre amounteth. Werre at his bigynnyng hath so greet an entryng and so large, that every wight may entre whan hym liketh and lightly fynde werre; but certes, what ende that shal ther-of bifalle it is nat light to knowe; for soothly, whan that werre is ones bigonne ther is ful many a child unborn of his mooder that shal sterve yong by cause of that ilke werre, or elles lyve in sarwe, and dye in wrecchednesse; and therefore, er that any werre bigynne, men moste have greet conseil and greet deliberacioun."—Chaucer, Tale of Melibeus,Sec. 12; and see the French version, op. cit., I, p. 191.

4. II, p. 72-9.

5. I, pp. 71-2. These medieval games are very difficult to identify. The learned editor remarks that bric, which is mentioned in the thirteenth century by Rutebeuf was played, seated, with a little stick; qui fery is probably the modern game called by the French main chaude; pince merille, which is mentioned among the games of Gargantua, was a game in which you pinched one of the players' arms, crying 'Merille' or 'Morille'. Though the details of these games are vague, there are many analagous games played by children today, and it is easy to guess the kind of thing which is meant.

6. I, pp. 13-15.

7. I, 92, 96.

8. The story of Jeanne la Quentine is reproduced in the Heptameron of Margaret of Navarre (the 38th tale, or the 8th of the 4th day), where it is attributed to a bourgeoise of Tours, but it is probable that the Menagier's is the original version, since he says that he had it from his father; although, knowing the ways of the professional raconteur, I should be the first to admit that this is not proof positive.

9. I, pp. 125-6.

10. I, p. 139.

11. This was a favourite saying. It occurs in the story of Melibeus, 'Trois choses sont qui gettent homme hors de sa maison, c'est assavoir la fumee, la goutiere et la femme mauvaise.'—Ibid., I, p. 195. Compare Chaucer's use of it: 'Men seyn that thre thynges dryven a man out of his hous,—that is to seyn, smoke, droppyng of reyn and wikked wyves.'—Tale of Melibeus, Sec.15; and

'Thou seyst that droppying houses, and eek smoke, And chidyng wyves, maken men to flee Out of hir owene hous.'

—Wife of Bath's Prologue, LL, 278-80.

12. I, pp. 168-71, 174-6.

13. II, p. 54. The Menagier also warns against running up long bills on credit. 'Tell your folk to deal with peaceable people and to bargain always beforehand and to account and pay often, without running up long bills on credit by tally or on paper, although tally or paper are better than doing everything by memory, for the creditors always think it more and the debtors less, and thus are born arguments, hatreds, and reproaches; and cause your good creditors to be paid willingly and frequently what is owed to them, and keep them in friendship so that they depart not from you, for one cannot always get peaceable folk again.'

14. II, pp. 56-9.

15. It is curious here to note the antiquity of the term 'bloody' as an expletive. The Menagier says: 'Forbid them ... to use ugly oaths, or words which are bad or indecent, as do certain evil or ill bred persons who swear at bad bloody fevers, the bad bloody week, the bad bloody day ('de males sanglantes fievres,' 'de male sanglante sepmaine,' 'de male sanglante journee'), and they know not, nor should they know, what a bloody thing is, for honest women know it not, since it is abominable to them to see the blood but of a lamb or a pigeon, when it is killed before them.'—Ibid., II, p. 59.

16. The section on household management described above occupies sec. II, art. 2, of the Menagier's book (II, pp. 53-72).

17. I, pp. 171-2.

18. I, pp. 172-3.

19. The cookery book occupies sec. II, arts. 4 and 5 (II, pp. 80-272).

20. II, pp. 222-3. Translated by Dr Furnivall in A Booke of Precedence (E.E.T.S.), pp. 152-3.

21. II, pp. 108-18, 123. The feast was still a thing of the future when the Menagier thus gathered all the details. He calls it 'L'ordenance de nopces que fera maistre Helye en May, a un mardy ... l'ordonnance du souper que fera ce jour.'

22. 'The office of the woman is to make provision of tapestries, to order and spread them, and in especial to dight the room and the bed which shall be blessed.... And note that if the bed be covered with cloth, there is needed a fur coverlet of small vair, but if it be covered with serge, or broidery, or pinwork of cendal, not.'—II, p. 118. The editor quotes the following ceremony for blessing the wedding bed: 'Benedictio thalami ad nuptias et als, Beredic, Domine, thalamum hunc et omnes habitantes in eo, ut in tua voluntate permaneant, requiescant et multiplicentur in longitudinem dierum. Per Christum, etc. Tunc thurificet thalamum in matrimonio, postea sponsum et sponsam sedentes vel jacentes in lecto suo. Benedicentur dicendo: Benedic, Domine, adolescentulos istos; sicut benedixisti Thobiam et Sarram filiam Raguelis, ita benedicere eos digneris, Domine, ut in nomine tuo vivant et senescant, et multiplicentur in longitudinem dierum. Per Christum, etc. Benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti descendat super vos et maneat super vobiscum. In nomine Patris, etc.'—Ibid., I, Introd., p. lxxxvi.

23. Chaucer, Tale of Melibeus, Sec. 15.

CHAPTER VI

THOMAS BETSON

A. Raw Material

1. The Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290-1483, ed. C.L. Kingsford (Royal Hist. Soc., Camden, 3rd Series), 2 vols., 1919. The Betson correspondence is in vol. II.

2. The Cely Papers, selected from the Correspondence and Memoranda of the Cely Family, Merchants of the Staple, 1475-88, ed. H.E. Malden (Royal Hist. Soc., Camden 3rd series), 1900.

I am much beholden to the excellent introductions to these two books, which are models of what editorial introductions should be.

3. The best introduction to the history of the Company of the Staple is to be found in Mr Malden's aforesaid introduction to The Cely Papers, which also contains a masterly account of the political relations of England, France and Burgundy during the period. I have constantly relied upon Mr Malden's account of the working of the Staple system. Other useful short accounts of the wool trade and the Stapler's Company may be found in the following works: Sir C.P. Lucas, The Beginnings of English Overseas Enterprise (1917), c. II; and A.L. Jenckes, The Staple of England (1908).

B. Notes to the Text

1. Four interesting contemporary illustrations of Parliament in 1523, 1585, some date during the seventeenth century, and 1742 respectively, are reproduced in Professor A.F. Pollard's stimulating study of The Evolution of Parliament (1920).

2. The Lybelle of Englyshe Polycye, in Political Poems and Songs, ed. Thos. Wright (Rolls Ser., 1861), II, p. 162. This remarkable poem was written in 1436 or 1437, in order to exhort the English 'to kepe the see enviroun and namelye the narowe see' between Dover and Calais, since in the author's opinion the basis of England's greatness lay in her trade, for the preservation of which she needed the dominion of the seas. Its chief value lies in the very complete picture which it gives of English import and export trade with the various European countries. There is a convenient edition of it in The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation by Richard Hakluyt (Everyman's Lib. Edition, 1907), I, pp. 174-202.

3. G.W. Morris and L.S. Wood, The Golden Fleece (1922), p. 17.

4. For accounts of these brasses see H. Druitt, A Manual of Costume as Illustrated by Monumental Brasses (1906), pp. 9, 201, 205, 207, 253. John Fortey's brass and William Greville's brass are conveniently reproduced in G.W. Morris and L.S. Wood, op. cit., pp. 28, 32, together with several other illustrations, pertinent to the wool trade.

5. Gower, Mirour de l'Omme in The Works of John Gower. I. The French Works, ed. G.C. Macaulay (1899), p. 280-1.

6. The Paston Letters, ed. J. Gairdner (London, 1872-5); Supplement 1901. See also H.S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England (1922).

7. Plumpton Correspondence, ed. T. Stapleton (Camden Soc., 1839).

8. Cely Papers, p. 72; and compare below p. 134.

9. Stonor Letters, II, p. 2.

10. Ibid., II, pp. 2-3.

11. The brasses of his father 'John Lyndewode, woolman', and of his brother, also 'John Lyndewode, woolman' (d. 1421), are still in Linwood Church. They both have their feet on woolpacks, and on the son's woolpack is his merchant's mark. See H. Druitt, op. cit., pp. 204-5.

12. See Magna Vita S. Hugonis Episcopi Lincolniensis, ed. J.F. Dimock (Rolls Series, 1864), pp. 170-7.

13. For these extracts see a vastly entertaining book, Child Marriages and Divorces in the Diocese of Chester, 1561-6, ed. F.J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S., 1897), pp. xxii, 6, 45-7.

14. Stonor Letters, II, pp. 6-8.

15. Ibid., II, pp. 28, 64.

16. Ibid., II, p. 64.

17. Ibid., II, pp. 42-43.

18. Ibid., II, p. 44.

19. Ibid., II, pp. 61, 64-5.

20. Ibid., II, pp. 46-8.

21. Ibid., II, p. 53.

22. Ibid., II, p. 28.

23. Ibid., II, p. 47.

24. Ibid., II, p. 53.

25. Ibid., II, pp. 54-5.

26. Ibid., II, pp. 56-7.

27. Ibid., II, p. 69.

28. Ibid., II, pp. 87-8.

29. Ibid., II, pp. 88-9.

30. Ibid., II, p. 89.

31. Ibid., II, pp. 102-3, 117.

32. See Richard Cely's amusing account of the affair in a letter to his brother George, written on May 13, 1482, Cely Papers, pp. 101-4. For other references to the wool dealer William Midwinter see ibid., pp. 11, 21, 28, 30, 32, 64, 87, 89, 90, 105, 124, 128, 157, 158.

33. Stonor Letters, II, p. 3.

34. Ibid., II, p. 64.

35. Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Soc.), II, p. 56. He was a well-known wool merchant of York, at different times member of the town council of twelve, sheriff and mayor, who died in 1435. He is constantly mentioned in the city records; see York Memorandum Book, ed. Maud Sellers (Surtees Soc., 1912 and 1915), vols. I and II, passim.

36. Cely Papers, pp. 30-1.

37. Ibid., p. 64.

38. See his will (1490) in Test. Ebor., IV, p. 61, where he is called 'Johannes Barton de Holme juxta Newarke, Stapulae villae Carlisiae marcator,' and ordains 'Volo quod Thomas filius meus Johannem Tamworth fieri faciat liberum hominem Stapulae Carlis,' ibid., p. 62.

39. Ibid., p. 45.

40. Ibid., p. 48.

41. Ibid., pp. 154-5.

42. The Lybelle of Englysche Polycye in loc. cit., pp. 174-7, passim. Compare Gower's account of the machinations of the Lombards, op. cit., pp. 281-2.

43. See the clear account of all these operations in Mr Malden's introduction to the Cely Papers, pp. xi-xiii, xxxviii.

44. Ibid., p. vii.

45. Cely Papers, pp. 194-6; and see Introd., pp. xxxvi-viii.

46. Ibid., pp. 71-2.

47. Ibid., pp. 174-88, a book entitled on the cover 'The Rekenyng of the Margett Cely,' and beginning, 'The first viage of the Margaret of London was to Seland in the yere of our Lord God m iiijciiijxxv. The secunde to Caleis and the thrid to Burdews ut videt. Md to se the pursers accomptes of the seide viages. G. Cely.'

48. Ibid., p. xxxviii.

49. Stonor Letters, II, p. 2.

50. Ibid., II, p. 4.

51. Cely Papers, pp. 112-13.

52. Ibid., p. 106; compare ibid., p. 135.

53. 'Sir, the wool ships be come to Calais all save three, whereof two be in Sandwich haven and one is at Ostend, and he hath cast over all his wool overboard.'—Ibid., p. 129. 'Item, sir, on Friday the 27 day of February came passage from Dover and they say that on Thursday afore came forth a passenger from Dover to Calais ward and she was chased with Frenchmen and driven in to Dunkirk haven.'—Ibid., p. 142. (There are many records of similar chases; see Introd., pp. xxxiv-v.)

54. Ibid., p. 135.

55. 'Sir, I cannot have your wool yet awarded, for I have do cast out a sarpler, the which is [ap]pointed by the lieutenant to be casten out toward the sort by, as the ordinance now is made that the lieutenant shall [ap]point the [a]warding sarplers of every man's wool, the which sarpler that I have casten out is No. 24, and therein is found by William Smith, packer, a 60 middle fleeces and it is a very gruff wool; and so I have caused William Smith privily to cast out another sarpler No. 8, and packed up the wool of the first sarpler in the sarpler of No. 8, for this last sarpler is fair wool enough, and therefore I must understand how many be of that sort and the number of the[m], for they must be packed again' (12 Sept., 1487).—Ibid., p. 160. Item, sir, your wool is awarded by the sarpler that I cast out last, etc. Item, sir, this same day your mastership is elected and appointed here by the Court one of the 28, the which shall assist the Master of the Staple now at this parliament time.'-Ibid., p. 162.

56. Gower, op. cit., p. 281.

57. Cely Papers, pp. xii, xxiv-v.

58. Stonor Letters, II, pp. 62-3; see also Cely Papers, pp. 1, 10, 13.

59. Stonor Letters, II, p. 4.

60. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (Shipman's Tale) LL, 1243-6.

61. Stonor Letters, II, p. 48.

62. Cely Papers, p. xxiii.

63. Lybelle of Englysshe Polycye in loc. cit., pp. 179-81.

64. With deference, I think that Mr Malden in his introduction to the Cely Papers, App. II, pp. lii-iii, is mistaken in seeking to identify Synchon Mart with a particular fair at Antwerp on St John's Day, Bammes mart with the fair at St Remy (a Flemish name for whom is Bamis) on August 8, and Cold Mart with Cortemarck near Thourout. The names simply refer to the seasons in which there were fairs in most of the important centres, though doubtless in one place the winter and in another the spring, summer, or autumn fair was the more important. That the names refer to seasons and not to places appears quite clearly in various letters and regulations relating to the Merchant Adventurers of York. See The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers, 1356-1917, ed. M. Sellers (Surtees Soc., 1918), pp. 117, 121-5, 160, 170-1; see Miss Sellers' note, ibid., p. 122, quoting W. Cunningham: 'The ancient Celtic fairs ... were a widespread primitive institution and appear to have been fixed for dates marked by the change of seasons.'—Scottish Hist. Review, xiii, p. 168. For instance, a document of 1509 ('For now att this cold marte last past, holdyn at Barow in Brabond,' loc. cit. p. 121) disposes of the idea that the Cold mart was the mart at Cortemarck, while another document refers to merchants intending to ship 'to the cold martes' and 'to the synxon martes' in the plural. Ibid., p. 123. The identification of Balms mart with the fair at St Remy on August 8 is, moreover, belied by the same document (1510-11), which runs, 'Whereas this present marte ... we have lycensed and set you at libertie to shipp your commodities to the balmes marte next coming. Nevertheless ... we thinke it good ... that upon the recepte of these our letters ye ... assemble and consult together, and if ye shall thinke good amongest yourselffs ... discretly to withdraw and with holde your hands from shippyng to the said balmes marte.... Wryten at Andwarp the xvij day of August.' Ibid., p. 124. The Balms mart was obviously the autumn fairtide, and Mr Malden is no doubt right in identifying Balms (Bammys, Bammes) with Bamis, the local Flemish name of St Remy; St Remy's Day was October 28, and the Balms mart was not the mart held on August 8 at St Remy, but the mart held on and round about St Remy's Day. Another document of 1552 gives interesting information about the shippings for three of the marts: 'The last daye of shippinge unto the fyrst shippinge beinge for the pasche marte is ordeyned to be the laste of Marche nexte ensuyinge; and the seconde shippinge which is appointed for the sinxon marte the laste day to the same, is appoynted the laste of June then nexte followinge; and unto the colde marte the laste day of shippinge is appoynted to be the laste of November then nexte insuyinge.'—Ibid., p. 147. The Merchant Adventurers tried sometimes to restrict merchants to the Cold and the Synxon marts, which were the most important.

65. Cely Papers, p. xl, and passim.

66. Ibid., p. 74. Richard Cely the younger to George: 'I understand that ye have a fair hawk. I am right glad of her, for I trust to God she shall make you and me right great sport. If I were sure at what passage ye would send her I would fetch her at Dover and keep her till ye come. A great infortune is fallen on your bitch, for she had 14 fair whelps, and after that she had whelped she would never eat meat, and so she is dead and all her whelps; but I trust to purvey against your coming as fair and as good to please that gentleman.'—Ibid., p. 74.

67. Ibid., p. xlix.

68. Ibid., App. I., pp. xlix-lii, a very interesting note on contemporary coinage, identifying all the coins mentioned in the letters.

69. Ibid., p. 159.

70. Ibid., p. 161.

71. Stonor Letters, II, p. 43. So Dame Elizabeth Stonor ends a letter to her husband: 'Written at Stonor, when I would fain have slept, the morrow after our Lady day in the morning,'—Ibid., p. 77.

72. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (Shipman's Tale), LL, 1265-78, in Works (Globe Ed., 1903), p. 80.

73. The will is P.C.C. 24 Logge at Somerset House. For this analysis of its contents and information about the life of Thomas Betson after his breach with the Stonors see Stonor Letters, I, pp. xxviii-ix.

74. They are (1) John Bacon, citizen and woolman, and Joan, his wife (d. 1437); (2) Thomas Gilbert, citizen and draper of London and merchant of the Staple of Calais (d. 1483), and Agnes, his wife (d. 1489); (3) Christopher Rawson, mercer of London and merchant of the Staple of Calais, Junior Warden of the Mercers' Company in 1516 (d. 1518), and his two wives. Thomas Betson was doubtless acquainted with Gilbert and Rawson.



CHAPTER VII

THOMAS PAYCOCKE OF COGGESHALL

A. Raw Material

1. The raw material for this chapter consists of Paycocke's House, presented to the Nation in 1924 by the Right Hon. Noel Buxton, M.P., which stands in West Street, Coggeshall, Essex (station, Kelvedon); the Paycocke brasses, which lie in the North aisle of the parish church of St Peter ad Vincula at Coggeshall; and the wills of John Paycocke (d. 1505), Thomas Paycocke (d. 1518), and Thomas Paycocke (d. 1580), which are now preserved at Somerset House (P.C.C. Adeane 5, Ayloffe 14, and Arundell 50, respectively), and of which that of the first Thomas has been printed in Mr Beaumont's paper, cited below, while I have analysed fully the other two in my book, The Paycockes of Coggeshall (1920), which deals at length with the history of the Paycockes and their house. See also G.F. Beaumont, Paycocke's House, Coggeshall, with some Notes on the Families of Paycocke and Buxton (reprinted from Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc., IX, pt. V) and the same author's History of Coggeshall (1890). There is a beautifully illustrated article on the house in Country Life (June 30, 1923), vol. LIII, pp. 920-6.

2. For an apotheosis of the clothiers, see The Pleasant History of John Winchcomb, in his younger days called Jack of Newbery, the famous and worthy Clothier of England and Thomas of Reading, or the Six Worthy Yeomen of the West, in The Works of Thomas Deloney, ed. F.O. Mann (1912), nos. II and V. The first of these was published in 1597 and the other soon afterwards and both went through several editions by 1600.

3. On the cloth industry in general see G. Morris and L. Wood, The Golden Fleece (1922); E. Lipson, The Woollen Industry (1921); and W.J. Ashley, Introd. to English Economic History (1909 edit.). For the East Anglian woollen industry see especially the Victoria County Histories of Essex and Suffolk. For a charming account of another famous family of clothiers see B. McClenaghan, The Springs of Lavenham (Harrison, Ipswich, 1924).

B. Notes to the Text

1. Deloney's Works, ed. F.O. Mann, p. 213.

2. Thomas Fuller, The Worthies of England (1622), p. 318.

3. A convenient introduction to the study of monumental brasses, with illustrations and a list of all the surviving brasses in England, arranged according to counties, is W. Macklin, Monumental Brasses (1913). See also H. Druitt, Costume on Brasses (1906). These books also give details as to the famous early writers on the subject, such as Weaver, Holman, and A.J. Dunkin.

4. Testamenta Eboracensia, a selection of wills from the Registry at York, ed. James Raine, 6 vols. (Surtees Soc., 1836-1902). The Surtees Society has also published several other collections of wills from Durham and elsewhere, relating to the northern counties. A large number of wills have been printed or abstracted. See, for instance, Wills and Inventories from the Registers of Bury St Edmunds, ed. S. Tymms (Camden Soc., 1850); Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Hastings, London, ed. R.R. Sharpe, 2 vols. (1889); The Fifty Earliest English Wills in the Court of Probate, London, ed. F.J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S., 1882); Lincoln Wills, ed. C.W. Foster (Lincoln Record Soc., 1914); and Somerset Medieval Wills, 1383-1558, ed. F.W. Weaver, 3 vols. (Somerset Record Soc., 1901-5).

5. The will of the other Thomas Paycocke 'cloathemaker', who died in 1580, also refers to the family business. He leaves twenty shillings 'to William Gyon my weaver'; also 'Item, I doe give seaven poundes tenne shillinges of Lawful money of Englande to and amongest thirtie of the poorest Journeymen of the Fullers occupacion in Coggeshall aforesaide, that is to every one of them fyve shillinges.' William Gyon or Guyon was related to a very rich clothier, Thomas Guyon, baptized in 1592 and buried in 1664, who is said to have amassed L100,000 by the trade. Thomas Paycocke's son-in-law Thomas Tyll also came of a family of clothiers, for in a certificate under date 1577 of wool bought by clothiers of Coggeshall during the past year there occur the names of Thomas Tyll, William Gyon, John Gooddaye (to whose family the first Thomas Paycocke left legacies), Robert Lytherland (who receives a considerable legacy under the will of the second Thomas), and Robert Jegon (who is mentioned incidentally in the will as having a house near the church and was father of the Bishop of Norwich of that name). See Power, The Paycockes of Coggeshall, pp. 33-4.

6. Quoted in Lipson, Introd. to the Econ. Hist, of England (1905), I, p. 421.

7. Quoted ibid., p. 417.

8. On John Winchcomb see Power, op. cit., pp. 17-18; and Lipson, op. cit., p. 419.

9. Deloney's Works, ed. F.C. Mann, pp. 20-1.

10. Ibid., p. 22.

11. Quoted in C.L. Powell, Eng. Domestic Relations, 1487-1563 (1917), p. 27.

12. The house subsequently passed, it is not quite clear at what date, into the hands of another family of clothiers, the Buxtons, who had intermarried with the Paycockes some time before 1537. William Buxton (d. 1625) describes himself as 'clothyer of Coggeshall' and leaves 'all my Baey Lombs [Looms]' to his son Thomas. Thomas was seventeen when his father died and lived until 1647, also carrying on business as a clothier, and the house was certainly in his possession. He or his father may have bought it from John Paycocke's executors. By him it was handed down to his son Thomas, also a clothier (d. 1713), who passed it on to his son Isaac, clothier (d. 1732). Isaac's two eldest sons were clothiers likewise, but soon after their father's death they retired from business. He apparently allowed his third son, John, to occupy the house as his tenant, and John was still living there in 1740. But Isaac had left the house by will in 1732 to his youngest son, Samuel, and Samuel, dying in 1737, left it to his brother Charles, the fourth son of Isaac. Charles never lived in it, because he spent most of his life in the pursuit of his business as an oil merchant in London, though he is buried among his ancestors in Coggeshall Church. In 1746 he sold the house to Robert Ludgater and it passed completely out of the Paycocke-Buxton connexion, and in the course of time fell upon evil days and was turned into two cottages, the beautiful ceilings being plastered over. It was on the verge of being destroyed some years ago when it was bought and restored to its present fine condition by Mr Noel Buxton, a direct lineal descendant of the Charles Buxton who sold it. See Power, op. cit., pp. 38-40.

13. Deloney's Works, ed. F.O. Mann, p. 213.

14. Defoe, Tour through Great Britain, 1724 (1769 edit.), pp. 144-6.

15. 'This shire is the most fatt, frutefull and full of profitable thinges, exceeding (as far as I can finde) anie other shire for the general commodities and the plentie, thowgh Suffolk be more highlie comended by some (wherewith I am not yet acquainted). But this shire seemeth to me to deserve the title of the Englishe Goshen, the fattest of the lande, comparable to Palestina, that flowed with milk and hunnye.'—Norden, Description of Essex (1594), (Camden Soc.), p. 7.

16. According to Leake, writing about 1577, 'About 1528 began the first spinning on the distaffe and making of Coxall clothes.... These Coxall clothes weare first taught by one Bonvise, an Italian.'—Quoted V.C.H. Essex, II, p. 382.



Notes on Illustrations

PLATE I. Bodo at his work

From an eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon calendar in the British Museum (MS. Tit., B.V., pt. I), showing the occupations of Bodo, or of his masters, for each month of the year. The months illustrated are January (ploughing with oxen), March (breaking clods in a storm), August (reaping), and December (threshing and winnowing). The other pictures represent February (pruning), April (Bodo's masters feasting), May (keeping sheep), June (mowing), July (woodcutting), September (Bodo's masters boar-hunting), October (Bodo's masters hawking), and November (making a bonfire).

PLATE II. Embarkation of the Polos at Venice

From the magnificent MS. of Marco Polo's book, written early in the fifteenth century and now preserved at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. no. 264, f. 218). The artist gives an admirable view of medieval Venice, with the Piazetta to the left, and the Polos embarking on a rowing boat to go on board their ship. In the foreground are depicted (after the medieval fashion of showing several scenes of a story in the same picture) some of the strange lands through which they passed. Note the Venetian trading ships.

PLATE III. Part of a landscape roll by Chao Meng-fu

This very beautiful scene is taken from a roll painted by Chao Meng-fu in 1309 in the style of Wang Wei, a poet and artist of the T'ang dynasty (A.D. 699-759). A fine description of it is given by Mr Laurence Binyon: 'In the British Museum collection is a long roll, over seventeen feet long, painted almost entirely in blues and greens on the usual warm brown silk.... It is one continuous landscape, in which the scenes melt into one another. Such rolls are not meant to be exhibited or looked at all at once, but enjoyed in small portions at a time, as the painting is slowly unrolled and the part already seen rolled up again. No small mastery is requisite, as may be imagined, to contrive that wherever the spectator pauses an harmonious composition is presented. One has the sensation, as the roll unfolds, of passing through a delectable country. In the foreground water winds, narrowing and expanding, among verdant knolls and lawns, joined here and there by little wooden bridges; and the water is fed by torrents that plunge down among pine-woods from crags of fantastic form, glowing with hues of lapis-lazuli and jade; under towering peaks are luxuriant valleys, groves with glimpses of scattered deer, walled parks, clumps of delicate bamboo, and the distant roofs of some nestling village. Here and there is a pavilion by the water in which poet or sage sits contemplating the beauty round him. These happy and romantic scenes yield at last to promontory and reed-bed on the borders of a bay where a fisherman's boat is rocking on the swell. It is possible that a philosophic idea is intended to be suggested—the passage of the soul through the pleasant delights of earth to the contemplation of the infinite.'—Laurence Binyon, Painting in the Far East (1908), pp. 75-6. The section of the roll which has been chosen for reproduction here has already been reproduced in S.W. Bushell, Chinese Art (1910), II, Fig. 127, where it is thus described: 'A lake with a terraced pavilion on an island towards which a visitor is being ferried in a boat, while fishermen are seen in another boat pulling in their draw-net; the distant mountains, the pine-clad hills in the foreground, the clump of willow opposite, and the line of reeds swaying in the wind along the bank of the water are delightfully rendered, and skilfully combined to make a characteristic picture.'—Ibid., II, p. 134. Other sections of the same roll are reproduced in H.A. Giles, Introd. to the Hist, of Chinese Pictorial Art (2nd ed., 1918) facing p. 56; and in L. Binyon, op. cit., plate III (facing p. 66). It is exceedingly interesting to compare this landscape roll with the MS of Marco Polo, illuminated about a century later, from which the scene of the embarkation at Venice has been taken; the one is so obviously the work of a highly developed and the other of an almost naive and childish civilization.

PLATE IV. Madame Eglentyne at home

This is a page from a fine manuscript of La Sainte Abbaye, now in the British Museum (MS. Add. 39843, f. 6 vo). At the top of the picture a priest with two acolytes prepares the sacrament; behind them stands the abbess, holding her staff and a book, and accompanied by her chaplain and the sacristan, who rings the bell; behind them is a group of four nuns, including the cellaress with her keys, and nuns are seen at the windows of the dorter above. At the bottom is a procession of priest, acolytes and nuns in the choir; notice the big candles carried by the young nuns (perhaps novices) in front, and the notation of the music books.

PLATE V. The Menagier's wife has a garden party

This beautiful scene is taken from a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Roman de la Rose (Harl. MS. 4425), which is one of the greatest treasures of the British Museum.

PLATE VI. The Menagier's wife cooks his supper with the aid of his book

From MS. Royal, 15 D. I, f. 18, in the British Museum which is part of a petite bible historiale, or biblical history, by Guyart des Moulins, expanded by the addition of certain books of the Bible, in French. It was made at Bruges by the order of Edward IV, King of England by one J. du Ries and finished in 1470, so that it is about eighty years later than the Menagier's book. The illustration represents a scene from the story of Tobias; Tobit, sick and blind, is lying in bed, and his wife Anna is cooking by the fire, with the help of a book and a serving maid. The right-hand half of the picture, which is not reproduced here, shows the outside of the house, with Tobias bringing in the angel Raphael. The illuminated border of the page from which this scene is taken contains the arms of Edward IV, with the garter and crown.

PLATE VII. Calais about the time of Thomas Betson

This plan of Calais in 1546 is reproduced from a 'Platt of the Lowe Countrye att Calleys, drawne in October, the 37th Hen. VIII, by Thomas Pettyt,' now in the British Museum. (Cott. MS. Aug. I, vol. II, no. 70). There is only room to show the top corner of the plan, with the drawing of Calais itself, but the whole plan is charming, with its little villages and great ships riding in the channel.

PLATE VIII. Thomas Paycocke's house at Coggeshall

From a photograph of the front of the house, standing on the street. Note the long carved breastsummer that supports the overhanging upper story. On the left can be seen, much foreshortened, the archway and double doors of linen fold panels. The windows are renovations on the original design, flat sash windows having been put in in the eighteenth century.



Index

ABU LUBABAH, 33 Acqui, Jacapo of, 66, 182 Acre, 51, 53 Adrianople, 7, 42 Adriatic, 39, 41, 42, 63, 179 Aegean, 42, 179 Aelfric, Colloquium, 174, 175 Agnes, Dame, see Beguine Aldgate, 121 Alexander, 54 Alexandria, 40, 42 Alnwick, William, Bishop of Lincoln, 77, 184 Ambrose, 9 Andaman Islands, 69, 70 Anglia, East, 153, 156 Antilha, Antilles, 72, 183 Antwerp, 121, 145, 147 Arab, Arabia, 43, 47, 61, 171 Ararat, Mount, 54 Aretino, Pietro, 180 Arghun, Khan of Persia, 60, 61 Armenia, 42, 49, 53, 179 Arnold, Matthew, 51 Arras, 147 Asia: Central, 40, 49, 50, 51, 54, 67, 71, 72; Minor, 49 Attila, 8, 49 Audley, Lady, 91 Augustine, St, 9, 175 Augustus, 3 Ausonius, 5 ff; his country estate, 6 ff; his friends, 6 ff; and University of Bordeaux, 5 Austin Friars, 93 Auvergne, 5 ff

Bacon, Francis, 122 Badakhshan, 43, 54, 67 Bagdad, 43, 54 Baku, 54 Bale: Peter, 131; Wyllikyn, 131 Balk, 54 Ballard: James, 127; Jane, 127 Balms (Bammers, Bamis, Bammys) Mart, 147, 193 Barbarians, 1-17 Babarian invasions, 7 Bardi, 71 Barton, John, of Holme, 138 Base, Jacob van de, 149 Bath, Wife of, 84, 104, 118, 152 Bayard, 138 Bays and Says, 172 Beauchamp St Pauls, 169, 170 Becerillo, 33 Beguine, Dame Agnes the, 107, 116, 117 Bellela, see Polo Benedict, St, 81, 82, 184 Betson: Agnes, Alice, Elizabeth, John, Thomas (the younger), 150; Katherine, see Riche Betson, Thomas; Chap VI passim, 158; children of, 150; death of, 150; illness of, 133-5; letters of, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 189; member of Fishmongers Company, 150; partnership with Sir W. Stonor, 125, 137; will of, 134, 150, 194 Bevice, Mistress, 134 Bishops' registers, 74, 75, 76, 78, 183 Bicorne, 104 Black Death, 108, 109 Black Prince, 19 Black Sea, 40, 42, 50, 71 Blakey, Sir Roger, 127 Booking, 154 Bodo, Chap II passim, 18-38, 174-5, 198 Bokhara, 51, 52 Bolgana, wife of Khan of Persia, 60 Bordeaux, Burdews, 142; University of, 6 Bordelais, the, 6, 7 Brabant, 146, 148 Brad well, 140 Brasses, 123, 136, 151, 155, 156, 157, 159, 190, 195 Braunch, Robert, 156 Brenner Pass, 40 Brescia, Albertano de, 99 Breten, Will, 137 Brews, Margery, 125-6 Bridge, John, 119 Briggs, Henry, 169 Brightlingsea, 140 Brinkley, 135 Brittany, 147 Broadway, Whyte of, 137 Brogger, 137 Bruges, 121, 122, 145, 147, 178 Bruyant, Jean, 100 Bucephalus, 54 Buddha, 59 Bullinger, Henry, 165 Burgundy, Dukes of, 114, 148 Burma, 57, 67 Bury, 15 Busshe, John, 137 Buxton: Charles, Isaac, Samuel, Thomas, William, 197; Mr Noel, 195 Byzantium, see Constantinople

Caffa, 42 Calais, 121, 125, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 200 Cambaluc (see Peking), 57, 59, 60, 61, 67 Cambrensis, Giraldus, 176 Canale, Martino da, 43-5, 48, 50, 177, 179, 180 Candia, 42 Canterbury, 74 Canterbury Tales, 74, 75, 91, 183, 186 Canton, 70 Ca' Polo, 62, 63 Carrara, Francesco, 179 Carsy, Anthony, 149 Caspian Sea, 40, 54 Cassiodorus, 39, 180 Castro, Diego da, 149 Cathay (see also China), 47, 50, 58, 70, 71, 72, 178 Caucasus, 49, 180 Cely: family of wood merchants, 137-47 passim; George, 125, 137, 138, 142, 147; Richard, 125, 137, 138, 142; William, 125, 138, 142, 149 Cely papers, 125, 137, 142, 145, 147, 148, 189 Ceylon, 43, 47, 61, 70 Chagatai, Khan of, 51 Chao Meng-fu, 59, 182, 198 Chao Yung, 59 Charlemagne, 2, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 74, 176 Charms (see also superstition), 27-9, 100, 116, 175 Chatelet, 100 Chaucer, 26, 43, 74, 75, 81, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99, 104, 112, 119, 138, 142, 148, 152, 183 Chelmsford, 168 Chesne, Jean du, 114 Chichevache, 104 Chi'en Hsuean, 59 Child-marriages, 126-7, 190 Chilperic, King, 2, 13 Chilterns, 125 China (see also Cathay), 43, 46-50, 52, 57-61, 66, 67-70, 178, 180, 181 Chioggia, War of, 179 Church, attitude to: child marriages, 126, 190; convent pets, 91; dancing, 30, 31, 88; decline of Roman Empire, 9; monastic intercourse with the world, 92, 93; nuns' dowries, 78; superstition, 28, 29, 30; attack on worldliness of, 74; bequests to (see also Wills), 151, 168; brasses in, see brasses; councils of, 174 Churches of: Barking, All Hallows, 123,151; Beauchamp St Pauls, 168; Bradwell, 168; Calais, Our Lady, 151; Chipping Campden, 123; Chipping Norton, 123; Cirencester, 123, 157; Clare, 164, 168; Coggeshall, St Peter ad Vincula, 157, 159, 168, 172, 195; Constantinople, St Sophia, 41; East Anglia, 159; Lechlade, 123; London, St Olave's, 124; Linwood, 123, 190; Markswell, 168; Newbury, 163; Newland, 157; Northleach, 136, 157; Ovington, 168; Pattiswick, 168; Peking, 71; Poslingford, 168; Stoke Nayland, 168; Venice, St Mark's, 41, 44, 46, 60, 66, 179 Cipangu (Japan), 72, 183 Cistercian, Citeaux, 83, 136 Clare, 154, 164, 168, 178 Clarke, Thomas, 144 Cloth, see Chapter VII passim, 195; capitalism in industry, 164; Coxall's whites, 178, 197; growth of English manufacture of, 122-3; makers of, 120, 161; merchants of, see Merchants, Paycocke, Staple; processes in manufacture, 153, 154, 161, 164; where made, 122-3, 154, 155 Cochin China, 57, 67 Coggeshall, see Chapter VII passim, 154, 155, 159, 160, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172 Coinage, debasement and rates of exchange of, 148 Coins: crown, new and old, of France, 148; David, of Utrecht, 148; Falewe, of Utrecht, 148; florin, Rhenau, 148; groat, Carolus, Hettinus, Limburg, of Milan, of Nimueguen, 148, 149; Venetian, 48; guilder, Andrew (of Scotland), Arnoldus (of Gueldres) Rhenish, 148, 149; Lewe, Louis d'or, 148; noble, 148; Philippus (Philipe d'or) of Brabant, 148; Plaques, of Utrecht, 148; Postlate, 148; Rider, Scots, of Burgundy, 148; Ryall, English, 148; Setiller, 148 Colchester, 140, 154, 168 Cold Mart, 147, 193 Coleridge, 57 Colne, curate of, 127 Cologne, 148 Coloni, 21-2 Columbina, The (Seville), 183 Columbus, 71, 183 Company: East India ('John Company'), 156; Fishmongers, 150; Haberdashers, 151; Mercers, 149; Merchant Adventurers, 122; Staplers. Chapter VI passim Compline, 79, 82 Consrater, 168 Constantinople (see Byzantium), 41, 42, 46, 50, 51, 62 Convent, see Nunneries Cookery, Medieval, 100, 112-17, 186 Corea, 49 Corte Milioni, 63 Cotswolds, 123, 125, 129, 136, 137, 138, 145, 147, 150 Cotton, Ann, 166 Court Rolls, 26 Coverdale, 165 Coxall, see Coggeshall Coxall's Whites, 178, 197 Crimea, 42, 50 Croke, Mistress, 129 Crusader, Crusades, 41, 157

Dalmatia, 41, 42 Dalton, William, 141, 144 Damaghan, 180 Dancing: at clothier's wedding, 165; Church's attitude to, 30, 31, 88; in churchyard, 30, 31; of dancers of Koelbigk, 30, 176; of nun at Northampton, 93 Dandolo, Doge, Enrico, 41 Danube, River, 49 Danyell, John, 141 Dardanelles, 40 Dean, Forest of, 157 Decasoun, Benynge, 149 Dedham, 154 Defoe, 152, 167 Defuye, Gabriel, 149 Deloney, Thomas, 160, 163-4, 165, 167, 195 Delowppys, John, 149 Denys, St, Abbey of, 36; fair of, 36, 37 Destermer, John, 137 Dogs, 33, 90, 91, 103, 117, 147, 156 Dogaressa, 45 Doges, 42, 44-6, 63, 179 Dolman, Thomas, 161 Domesday Book, 20 Dominic, Dominican, 53, 66 Don, River, 180 Donata, see Polo Doria, Lamba, 63

Edith, St, 176 Edward II, 75 Edward III, 19, 75 Eglentyne, Madame (see Chapter IV passim), see also Nunnery, Prioress Egypt, 40, 42 Einhard, 31, 32, 33, 174, 175 Elias, Master, 114, 116 Elizabeth, Queen, 120 Elmes, John, of Henley, 137, 156 England, 40, 121, 122, 123, 147, 152, 153, 155, 163 Ermentrude, wife of Bodo, 24-38, 175 Ermoin, 24 Eryke, Robert, 143 Essex, 140, 154, 168, 172, 197 Euric, King, 10 Ewen, Robert, 142 Exchange, rates of, 148-9 Exeter: Bishop of, 75, 184; Canons of, 82

Fairs, 36, 37, 147, 193. See Marts Fantina, see Polo Felmersham, wife of, 87 Fisc, 20 Flanders, 40, 121, 122, 123, 139, 142, 145, 150, 178 Flemings, 138, 145, 146, 147 Flodden Field, 163 Florence, 71, 145 Fo-Kien, 58 Fondaco, 71 Fortey: John, 123; Thomas, 123 Fortunatus, 12 ff Frambert, 24 France, French, 40, 42, 50, 78, 79, 108; see also Gaul Franciscan: convents, 71; friars, 49, 70, 71; nuns, 129; tertiaries, 107 Franks, 12 ff, 27 Fredegond, 13 Friars: Austin, 93; of Chelmsford, 168; of Clare, 168; Crutched, of Colchester, 168; Franciscan, 49, 50; of Maldon, 168; of Sudbury, 168 Frisia, 37 Fuller, Thomas, 154, 162 Fyldes, Welther, 141

Gallo-Roman civilization, 5 ff Games, medieval, 168, 187 Gall, Monk of St, 32, 33, 174, 176 Gascon, 147 Gaul, 5 ff Genoa, 42, 63, 64, 145, 149, 179, 182 Georgia, 49 Germain des Pres, Abbey of, 19-23, 27-8, 174 Germans, Germany, 2, 4, 5, 7, 14, 40, 42 Gerbert, 23, 33 Ghent, 122 Gibraltar, 40 Gilds (see also Companies); procession of, at Venice, 45, 48; restrictions of, 153 Gloucestershire, 136 Gobi, Desert of, 55 Goes, Benedict, 54 Golconda, 43 Golden Horde, 49, 50 Gooday (Coggeshall family), 159, 166 Goths, 7, 8 Gower, 123, 144, 190 Graunger, Thomas, 141, 144 Greece, 42 Gregory X, 53 Gregory of Tours, 12 ff Greve, Place de, 114 Grevel (Greville) William, 123 Griselda, 100, 104, 105, 118, 119 Groat (see Coins), 48, 123, 148, 149 Guelder, Guilder, Gulden (see coins), 123, 148, 149 Guntrum, King, 13

Hainault, Philippa of, 75 Halitgart, 175 Halstead, 154 Hangchow (see also Kinsai), 45-8, 57, 61, 70, 71, 180 Hansard, 147 Haroun el Raschid, 33 Hautecourt, wedding of, 114 Hedin, Sven, 67 Henham, Thomas, 135, 140, 143, 145, 151 Henley, see Elmes, John Henry VIII, 93, 120, 148 Heptameron, 187 Hildegard, 23, 24 Hiwen Thsang, 67 Hoangho, River, 47 Holake, see Howlake Holme, see Barton, John Holy Roman Emperor, 40, 42 Hormuz, 54 Horrold: Margaret, 166; Thomas, 166 House of Lords, 120 Howlake, Thomas, 140, 145 Hugh, St, Tale of, 94 Hull, 140, 141 Hun, 8, 49 Hungarian, 42, 49 Hundred Years War, 19, 155 Huntington, Ellsworth, 67

India, 47, 54, 57, 61, 70 Indian Ocean, 54 Indies, 43, 47 Indo-China, 43, 47, 49 Inns: the 'Dragon' (Coggeshall), 170; the 'Fleece' (Coggeshall), 154; the 'Tabard' (Southwark), 78; the 'Woolpack' (Coggeshall), 154 Ipswich, 143 Irminon, Abbot of St Germain des Pres, Estate book of, 19-25, 26, 28, 174 Islam, 71 Isomachus, 96, 97 Italy, Italian, 70; see also Florence, Genoa, Venice, etc.

Jamui, Queen of Kublai Khan, 61 Japan, 67 Java, 49, 67 Jerusalem, 41, 53 Jews, 13, 37 Johnson, Doctor, 156 Judea, 37 Julian the Apostate, 2, 7 Justices, itinerant, 35, 36

Karakorum, 50, 57 Kashgar, 54 Kerman, 54 Khan: of Central Asia, 50; of Kipchak, 51; of Persia, 51, 52, (see also Mangu, Kublai) Khorassan, 54 Khotan, 54, 67 Kinsai (see also Hangchow), 45-8, 57, 59, 181 Kipchak, 51, 61 Koelbigk, dancers of, 30, 176 Kuan, 59 Kublai Khan, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 71 Lagny, Abbot of, 114 Lajazzo, 54 Lamberton, see Turbot, Robert Lancaster, Thomas of, 75 Langland, 26, 118 Laos, 67 Lauds, 79 Leadenhall, 140 Letters, see Cely, Paston, Plumpton, Stonor Levant, 40, 42, 47, 48 Libelle of Englyshe Policye, 146, 189 Lincoln, 77, 89 Linwood, 123, 190 Lob, lake, 54 Lokyngton, John, 141 Lollington, John, 136, 141 Lombard, Peter, 119 Lombards, the, 42, 138, 139, 149 Lombard Street, 149 Lombardy, 37 London, 123, 129, 130, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 149 Louens, Renault de, 99 Louis, St, 36; the Pious, 30, 31 Louvain, 147 Lucca, 147 Lucolongo, Peter, of 71 Ludgater, Robert, 197 Lyndeshay, 137 Lyndwood (Lyndewode): John, 123, 190; William, 126 Lyndys, William, 141 Lynn, 156, 159 Lyons, 10

Madagascar, 43, 70 Maidstone, 140, 141, 142 Major, see Steward Malabar, 43, 47, 57 Maldon, 168 Manchuria, 49 Manji, 43, 61 Mangu Khan, 49 Mann, John, 170 Manor, see Bodo, 150 Manse, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25 Mansi. See Manji Marcus Aurelius, 2, 3, 4 Marignolli, John, 70 Marino Faliero, 63 Mark Lane, 140, 150 Markshall, 168 Marmora, Sea of, 42 Marts, 147, 150, 193. See Fairs Mass, 44, 71, 80, 99, 117 Matins, 79, 82 Mechlin, 122 Mediterranean, 15, 42, 43 Medway, 140, 142 'Meg', a hawk, 138 Melaria, 64 Melibeus and Prudence, 99, 186 Menagier de Paris, Chap. V passim 127, 185; on accounts, 188; on cookery, 100, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 186; on deportment, 99, 102-3, 116; on duty to husband, 99, 101, 103-7, 118; on extermination of insects, in, 112; on games, 101, 117, 187; on garments and household linen, 98, 99, 102, 111, 112, 117, 188; on management of farm, 100; on servants, 100, 102, 107-111, 114, 115, 117, 118; on wife's second marriage, 98, 114 Mercers, 149 Merchant Adventurers, 122, 193 Merchant: Arab, 47; Chinese, 46, 47, 58, 71; English, see Betson, Company Merchant Adventurers, Paycocke, Staple; Indian, 47; Italian, 149; Roman, 1 ff; Spanish, 149; Venetian, see Venice, trade of, marks of, 153, 157, 158, 159; repair of roads by, 169 Merovingian, 13 Meung, Jean de, 99 Middleburgh, 142 Middle classes: growth of, 158; houses of, 158, 159; menagier as type of, 158 Midwinter, William, 136, 137 Milhall, 140 Milton, 140 Minoresses, 129 Minstrels, 31, 32, 38 Missi dominici, see Justices Money, see Coins Mongol, 58, 60, 178, 182 Mongolia, 49, 55, 57, 67 Monte Corvino, John of, 70 Montfort, Simon de, 75 More, Lewis, 149 Moreta. See Polo Moslem, 42, 49 Mosul, 54 Myroure of Our Ladye, 83, 185 Navarre, Margaret of, 187 Navy: Genoese, 42, 63; Vandal, 15; Venetian, 45, 64 Nestorian, 49, 182 Netherlands, 122, 123, 152 Newark, 138 Newbury, 161; Jack of (John Winchcomb), 152, 162, 163-4, 195 Newhithe, 141 Nicobar, 70 Nile, 40 None, 79 Norman, Normandy, 155 Northampton, 93, 141 Northleach, 123, 136, 137, 138 Norwich, 154