484 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Oct. 



found on the coast were the perquisites of royalty ; 

 they were cut up and sent to the liing's kitchen 

 carts. Edward II. gave a reward of twenty shil- 

 lings to three mariners who had caught a whale 

 near London bridge. Those found on the banks 

 of the Thames were claimed by the Lord Mayor, 

 and added to the civic feast. Pieces of whale 

 were often purchased in the thirteenth century for 

 the table of the Countess of Leicester. England 

 was supplied with this choice dainty by the fisher- 

 men of Normandy, who made it an article of com- 

 merce. Tlie Normans had various ways of cook- 

 ing it ; sometimes it was roasted, and brought to 

 the table on a spit ; but the usual way was to boil 

 it and serve it up with peas ; epicures looked out 

 for a slice from the tongue or the tail. The gram- 

 pus, or sea- wolf, was also highly esteemed ; but of 

 all the blubber dainties the porpoise was deemed 

 the most savory. The Saxons called it sea-swine, 

 and the ecclesiastics of the middle ages ^orco »»o- 

 rino. Porpoises were purchased for the table of 

 Henry III. in 1246." 



The questions will naturally arise, Wliy 

 was society in so rude and unsettled a condi- 

 tion, and why were the necessaries, comforts, 

 and conveniences of life so few ? The land 

 was not poor, but capable of sustaining a 

 much larger population than it had, and yet 

 the people were scarcely out of a semi-barbar- 

 ous condition. No ! it was not poor land, or 

 bad seasons, nor even the indisposition of the 

 people to labor on the land, but a "general 

 round of oppression, resulting from ignorance 

 of the proper interests of the productive 

 classes, and a constant contest between capi- 

 tal and labo/-, each plundering the other, and 

 both plundered by arbitrary power f' 



In the reign of Henry HI. the whole stock 

 of a carpenter's tools was valued at one shil- 

 ling, and consisted of a broad axe, an adze, 

 a square and spoke-shave ! ' 'There were 

 very few chimneys ; the fire was laid to the 

 wall, and the smoke issued out at the roof, or 

 door, or window, and the furniture aqd uten- 

 sils were of wood. The people slept on straw 

 pallets, with a log of wood for a pillow." 

 Even as late as the time of Elizabeth, 1558, 

 it is stated that apologies were made to visi- 

 tors if they could not be accommodated in 

 rooms provided with chinmeys. They had 

 few glass windows, and when glass was intro- 

 duced it was for a long time so scarce, that 

 when the people went away they would order 

 the windows taken out and laid up in safety ! 

 In the 14th century, none but the clergy wore 

 linen. The household furniture, among the 

 wealthy, consisted of an occasional bed, a 

 brass pot, a brass cup, a gridiron, and a rug 

 or two, and perhaps a towel. Of chairs and 

 tables we hear nothing. Even the nobility 



sat upon chests "in which they kept their 

 clothes. If a man in seven years after mar- 

 riage could purchase a flock bed, and a sack 

 of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought him- 

 self as well lodged as the lord of the town ! 



In addition to this poverty of what seems to 

 us absolute necessities, the houses and the 

 people were exceedingly dirty. Erasmus, a 

 celebrated scholar of Holland, who visited 

 England, complains that "the nastiness of the 

 people was the cause of the frequent plagues 

 that destroyed them;" and he says their 

 floors are commonly of clay, strewed with 

 rushes, under which lie unmolested a collec- 

 tion of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, 

 excrements of dogs and cats, and of every 

 thing that is nauseous." 



Their tables were as miserably supplied as 

 their dwellings. They had little fresh meat, 

 but salted most of their cattle and swine in 

 November, upon which they mostly depended 

 through the winter. Very few vegetables of 

 any kind came upon their tables. It is stated 

 that in the early part of the reign of Henry 

 VIII., not a cabbage, turnip, carrot, or other 

 edible root grew in England ! 



The average duration of human life was, at 

 that period, not one half as long as at the 

 present day. The constant use of salted 

 meat, and few or no vegetables, contributed 

 to the shortening of life, to say nothing of the 

 larg§ numbers swept away by pestilence and 

 famine. 



It was probably in England then, pretty 

 much as it is in Nubia now, where Buckhardt 

 saw a farmer who had been plundered of 

 everything by the pacha, because it came to 

 the knowledge of the savage ruler that the un- 

 happy man was in the habit of eating wheaten 

 bread ; and that, he thought, was too great a 

 luxury for a subject ! 



In relation to the condition of things, 

 Knight says, — in his book entitled Knowledge 

 is Power, — "when these iniquities prevailed, 

 and there was neither freedom of industry nor 

 security of property — when capital and labor 

 were not united — when all men consequently 

 worked unprofitably, because they worked 

 without division of labor, accumulation of 

 knowledge, and union of force — there was 

 universal poverty, because there was feeble 

 production." 

 I With us, the difference is, that every per- 



