3Iediceval England. 141 



narrator thought justly warranted by the offence. Another 

 reformer of domestic manners, Robert de Blois, who furnished 

 young ladies with a code of instruction in verse, entitled the 

 Chastisement des Dames, does not make us in love with the ways 

 of feudalism in the fourteenth century. Many of his directions 

 point to practices of gross indecency, and the believers in the 

 so-called " ages of faith," which preceded the Reformation, 

 may be astonished to find it was necessary to recommend the 

 daughters of noble families not to get drunk, and not to use the 

 table-cloth for a pocket handkerchief when they went out to 

 dine ! 



It is customary to talk of the refined cookery introduced by 

 the Normans, but when the luxury of feasting was at its height, 

 we do not discover any rational principles of culinary art. The 

 dinners were elaborate and costly, consisting of many courses, 

 prepared with great trouble and expense, and yet scarcely a 

 dish would be tolerated by the palate of modern times. In the 

 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there seems to have been a 

 rage for highly-flavoured compositions, in which the ingredients 

 were mingled with little regard to what we should consider 

 their natural affinities. Perhaps equally disagreeable combi- 

 nations might be selected from the records of Roman feasts ; 

 and there is scarcely anything, however nauseous, to which 

 habit and fashion will not reconcile the accommodating stomach 

 of man. Here is a specimen of a delicacy in the days of 

 Richard II.; it is called &farsed broivet, or broivet farsyn : 



" Take almonds, and pound them, and mix them with beef 

 broth, so as to make it thick, and put it into a pot, with cloves, 

 maces, and figs and currants, and minced ginger, and let this 

 seethe : take bread, and steep it in sweet wine, and ' draw it 

 up/ and put it to the almonds with ginger : then take conyngs 

 (rabbits) or rabettes (young rabbits), or squirrels, and first par- 

 boil, and then fry them, and partridges parboiled : fry them 

 whole for a lord, but otherwise chop them into gobbets ; and 

 when they are almost fried, cast them into a pot, and let them 

 boil altogether, and colour with sandal-wood and saffron ; then 

 add vinegar and powdered cinnamon, strained with wine, and 

 give it a boil ; then take it from the fire, and see that the 

 potage is thin, and throw in a good quantity of powdered 

 ginger." 



During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a desire for 

 education exercised a beneficial effect, and Mr. Wright artributes 

 this movement to the rise of an industrial class. It was, as he 

 tells us, the merchants in the towns who made the first step in 

 advance, and founded the most important local schools. We 

 could have wished he had devoted more space to tracing the 

 growth of the intellectual element in English society, and ex- 



