20 
Land & Water 
February 2 1 , 1 9 1 8 
Life md letters^ J. CSouire 
Merry England 
ENGLISHMEN fairly weU informed about modern 
history frequenUy' show a deplorable lack of 
curiosity about what England was like before the 
Guilds were broken up, the shecj) ate up the fields, 
the new leaniing and the new scepticism came m, 
and Henry VIII. and Thomas Cromwell had been forced by 
tlieir exquisite religious consciences to batter down the Abbeys 
and ' ' sequestrate "* their lands. And even those who do study 
the Middle Ages have concentrated too largely on (first) 
their constitutional and (later) their economic histor>'. The 
Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation 
(Cambridge Press, 15s.) with which Mr. G. G. Coulton has 
followed up his Mediceval Games, is, therefore, doubly to be 
welomed. It is a w^rk that has all the merits of the academic 
and none of the faults. 
♦ ♦•*»* 
It opens, as such a book should open, with passages on 
Land and Folk. The best of them are taken from Trevisa's 
fourteenth-century translation of the work Higden's Latin 
Polychronism. lie gives what he deems the most important 
facts about the three Kingdoms : their climates, characters, 
manners and marvels. He has a partiality for the men of 
the South, the northerners being harder and talking, also, 
in a most uncouth way " that we southeme men may that 
longage unnethe understonde." His passages on Scotland 
(which he describes as full of " moyst rivers ") is delightful. 
The Scots " love nyghe as well death as thraldome," but : 
Though the men herre semely ynough of fygure and shape, 
and fayre of face generally by "kind, yet theyre owne scotlyshe 
clothynge dyes fygure them full moche. . . . And, bycause 
of medlyng with englishe men, many of them have changed 
the olde maners of scottes in to better maners for the more 
parte, but the wylde scottes and Iryshe accounte greate 
worshyppe to folowe theyre fore fathers in clothynge, in tonge, 
and in lyvynge, and in other maner doynge. 
" They repute," he concludes, " no man, of what nation, 
blondde, or puissance so ever he be, to be hardy and valiant 
but themselfe." The Irish he found given to idleness and 
evil manners ; they paid no tithes and, though chaste, were 
drunken and unreliable ; but " good men among them 
(theis there beeth but feive) beeth goode at the best." Our 
own praises of England may be set against the more detached 
observations of foreign visitors. Mr. Coulton gives most 
interesting extracts from an Italian account of the end of the 
fifteenth century. The Italian essay said : 
The English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything 
belonging to them ; they think that there are no other men 
than themselves, and no other world but England ; and 
whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say that " he 
looks like an Englishman," and that " it is a great pity that 
he should not be an Englishman " ; and when they partake 
of any delicacy with a foreigner, they ask him, " whether 
such a thing is made in his country. . . . They think that 
no greater honour can be conferred, or received, than to 
invite others to eat with them, or to be invited themselves ; 
and they would sooner give five or six ducats to provide an 
entertainment for a persojj than a groat to assist him in any 
distress. 
Oae would like to quote the whole of this description. Amongst 
the Venetian's obiter dicta are " They generally hate their 
present, and extol their dead sovereigns " ; " The people are 
held in little more esteem than if they were slaves," and " If 
the King should propose to change any old-established rule, 
it would seem to every Englishman as if his life were taken 
from him." 
****** 
Mr. Coulton classifies his extracts in sixteen sections, 
covering the whole range of social life. If you want to find 
what the Middle Ages thought about art or architecture you 
will find all the documents together. This is very convenient 
for reference ; but the reviewer cannot be systematic with so 
large a subject, and one can only dip in here and there for 
characteristic and human things. The novice in such records 
will find all the colour and robustness he expects. He will 
also probably find far more commonsense than he expects, 
if he has shared the common unimaginative habit of con- 
ceiving the Middle Ages as inhabitated by grossly super- 
stitious people inferior to ourselves in intellect as well as in 
knowledge and lacking, altogether lacking in the finer feelings. 
Frequently when we smile at the " naivete " of a medieval 
writer we smile not because he is wrong, but because he has 
put the bones of the truth more baldly than we should do, 
or because he is discovering things that we, being later, take 
for granted. It would not be easy for a modern writer to 
compose an essay on " The Father " with sentences like : 
The fader is dyligent and besy, and lovyth kindely his chylde, 
in so moche that he sparjrth his owne mete to fede his 
chyldren. . . . The more the chvldeis like to the fader, the 
better the father loveth hym. The fader is ashamed, if he 
here any foule thing told by his chyldren. The father's herte 
is sore greved if his chyldren rebel agenst him. 
At the same time we should not fail to observe that no general- 
isations could be sounder and that a great many modem 
discussions on politics, education and domestic life entirely 
lose sight of them. Much the same simplicity may be observed 
in the tribute (if that is the word) to what Mr. Coulton terms 
" A familiar beast to man " : 
The flee is a lyttell worme, and greveth men mooste ; and 
scapeth and voideth peril with lepynge and not with reunynge. 
and wexeth slowe and fayleth in colde tyme, and in somer 
■ tyme it wexeth quiver and swyft ; and spareth not kynges. 
There are all sorts of other things to be told about the flea : 
its measurements, phrenology, sub-species (if any), nervous 
system, etc. But the most important and — -I may say in a 
strictly etymological way— salient things are here. And 
this scientific terseness and directness may well be connected 
with the general mediaeval habit of mind, with the mediaeval 
directness and bluntness of speech, with a stable order of 
society, a clean-cut code of morals, and an accepted religion. • 
•fC 3|t ^ 3|S SQC J|C 
I think that even some who fully appreciate what the 
Middle Ages did in architecture will be surprised to find a 
mediaeval writer consciously talking, at Lincoln Cathedral, 
of " those slender columns which stand around the great 
piers, even as a hey of maidens stand marshalled for a dance " ; 
for it is commonly assumed that the mediaevals were a sort 
of mechanical barbarians who built greatly like insects and 
without knowing what they were doing. Their manners, in 
some regards, were rough. It is not now necessary on the 
playing fields of Eton to keep " prepositors in the feld when 
they play, for fyghtyng, rent clothes, blew eyes, or siche 
like " ; still less, I trust, " for yll-kept hedys." But there 
are places where their roughness was a great virtue. If, in our 
time, a man sells bad food we fine him ten pounds ; if he sells 
a very great deal of bad food we make him a lord. The 
Government might well take a tip from proceedings of 1364 
and 1365. John Penrose, who sold red wine "unsound and 
unwholesome for man, in deceit of the common people, and 
in contempt of our Lord the King, and to the shameful 
disgrace of the officers of the City ; to the grievous damage 
of the Commonalty," etc., was compelled to drink a draught 
of his poison, " and the remainder shall then be poured on the 
head of the same John." John Russelle who at Billyngcsgate 
exposed for sale thirty-seven pigeons, " putrid, rotten, 
stinking, and abominable to the human race,"* was put in 
the pillory whilst the pigeons were burnt under his nose. 
' * * * * * * 
Tliis is the sort of book that schoolboys should be given as 
soon as they have learnt the skeleton of English history. 
They may be told any amount about, for example, the struggle 
between the English and Norman tongues ; but they will 
never properly realise it until they see original passages like : 
Children in scole, agenst the usage and manere of alle othere 
nacionns, beeth compelled for to leve thire owne langage, 
and for to construe thir lessonns and there thynges in 
Frensche, and so they haveth seth the Normans come fust 
in to Engelond. Also gentil men children beeth i-laugh 
to speke Frensche from the tyme that thev beeth i-rokked 
in their cradel an kunneth speke and playe with a childe's 
broche ; and uplondisshe men wil likne thym self to gentil 
men, and fondeth with greet besynesse for to speke Frensche, 
for to be i-tolde of. 
That may be said of hundreds of other truths which these 
documents vitalise. It may be said of the greatest and most 
moving truth of all, our continuity : the permanence of the 
land, the long succession of eyes that have looked on it and 
wondered and fallen to dust. Five hundred years ago an 
Englishman wrote of " Stonhenge by sides Salisbury " : 
There beeth grete stones and wonder huge, and beeth arered 
an high as hit were gates i-sette upon other gates ; notheles 
hit is nought clereUche i-knowe nother perceyved how and 
wherfore they beeth so arered and so wonderlicche i-honged. 
We, at least, who have stood by Stonehenge in the twilight 
and looked at those great slabs against the sky, as it were 
gates set upon other gates, those words move and stir more 
than all the records of battle and pageant that ever were. 
