66 SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS, AND THE 



warmth, and the incense, must have formed a peculiarly ac- 

 ceptable contrast to those who lived in chilly dark huts, 

 where glass was unknown, fuel comparatively dear, and 

 cleanliness all but impossible. Scurvy in its most virulent 

 forms, and leprosy, modified perhaps by the climate, were 

 common disorders, for, as has been often said, the people 

 lived on salt meat half the year, and not only were they 

 without potatoes, but they do not appear to have had other 

 roots which are now in common use, as carrots and parsnips. 

 Onions and cabbage appear to have been the only esculent 

 vegetables. It will be found that nettles (if we can identify 

 these with urticse) were sold from the garden. Spices, the 

 cheapest of which was pepper, were quite out of their reach. 

 Sugar was a very costly luxury, and our forefathers do not 

 appear, judging from the rarity of the notices, to have been 

 skilful in the management of bees. 



Clothing, again, was dear. It has been observed before 

 that the cloth was coarse, if we may judge from the lining 

 of Wykeham's mitre-case, but its price is high. So with 

 linen, which appears to have been costly. Shirts were, in 

 fact, such valuable articles, that they are often the subjects 

 of charitable or ostentatious doles, and we find them not 

 unfrequently at this time, as well as for centuries afterwards, 

 devised by will. 



The condition of the socage, or free tenant, was, by the 

 terms of his tenure, independent and safe. He owed, it is true, 

 suit and service ; he paid a quit-rent, not as now, trivial, but 

 hardly less than the annual value of the land. He was, in fact, 

 a farmer at a perpetual lease, but secure of recovering all outlay 

 which he might make on the soil, and of all additions which his 

 labour and capital could annex to its permanent value. He 

 was accustomed on the occasions for holding courts (generally 

 three times a year) to pay some small acknowledgment of his 

 tenure to his lord's steward. He was registered in the decenna 

 before he reached adolescence, and was called on to serve in 

 the various offices of the manor, as juryman and aletaster ; but 



