with pepper and saffron, wine and vinegar, and seem to have taken vast pains with their dishes. Here is a receipt for making an apple-pie: "Take gode applys, and gode spyces, and figys, and reysons, and perys (pears), and whan they are well y-brayed (pounded) coloure with saffron wel, and do yt in a cofyn, and do yt forth to bake wel." A coffin, we must understand, at that time meant any sort of box, and here it was what we should call a "mould." What we mean by a coffin they called a "chest." Our friend the country gentleman evidently liked pepper and vinegar and that sort of thing.

"Wo was his coke but if his sauce were

Poignant and sharpe

"It snewed in his house of meat and drink."

He had every kind of dainty, varying with the seasons: fish, meat, partridges, &c.; plenty of good wine and ale; and his table stood ready covered all day long.

15. In the winter people had to eat a great quantity of salted meat, for they had not yet learned to feed cattle as our farmers do, with oil-cake, mangel-wurzel, and the like. One of the great lords had at one time in his larder, which must have been a pretty large one, 600 bacon (salted pigs), eighty carcases of beef, and 600 sheep, for they salted mutton in those days as well as beef and pork. But this was at the end of the winter, so we may imagine what he had at the beginning. He had besides, alive, 28,000 sheep, and enormous numbers of oxen, cows, and pigs.

16. All this was to feed the innumerable servants and dependents of all sorts whom he kept. These servants, who had not much work to do, grew very idle and self-indulgent. Servants. They are always complaining of their food; they disdain salt meat, and grumble when there is no roast; they quarrel with the cookery, and with the beer, and say they will not stay in their places unless they get a better dinner to-morrow. So when people now-a-days find fault with their servants, and Punch draws pictures about them, they may as well remember that their great great grandfathers and grandmothers used to say just the same. There was even a law passed that the servants were not to expect to eat meat and fish twice a day.

17. Meanwhile, the poor people were very badly off indeed. The one sad and grievous fault of this time was, as we have often seen, that the rich and the poor were so far apart from each other, and hardly seemed to know

The poor.

66

or feel that they were of one flesh and blood. We know as well, however, how the poor lived as we do about the rich people's fine dinners. Chaucer takes the trouble to give us a very particular account of a certain poor old widow, who lived with her two daughters in a narrow cottage in a dale; this same cottage, he says, was full sooty." She knew nothing about "poignant sauce or dainty morsels. She was never made sick or had the gout with over-eating and drinking. Her table was mostly served with white and black. The white was milk, and the black was bread—white bread being a delicacy in those days; most people eat coarse, very dark-coloured bread, made of rye or barley, beans or peas. She had bacon, and sometimes an egg or two. This was not very bad fare, as far as nourishment went; if she had only some potatoes and some tea she would have done pretty well. But sometimes the poor were much worse off than that. This widow, who lived in the country, had some cows and some pigs; that was how she got her milk and her bacon. She had poultry too (the rest of the story is taken up with the adventures of her cocks and hens). 18. There is a piteous description of still poorer people given by William Langlande. He feels for the women most, where they have large families to keep. They spend all their time in carding and spinning wool, and can hardly earn enough to buy milk and flour to make pap for their children. They themselves suffer much hunger and woe in the winter; they have to get up at night to rock the cradle; they have to mend and wash; beside all this, they must card and comb the wool ready for spinning, or they would not get food for their children, and they get little enough after all their toil-a farthing's worth of mussels would be a feast for them. The winter-time, of course, is always the hardest for the poor, but it used to be much worse then than it is now. The ploughman describes what he has got to eat some time before harvest. He had no bacon left, nor had he a penny to buy pigs or geese, which were the commonest animals then, for pigs could feed in the woods, and geese on the commons; he had some cheese, and curds, and cream, some coarse bread made of beans, peas, and oats, a few vegetables, onions, and parsley, and cabbages, some half-ripe cherries and apples. And this poor fare must last till harvest, when he will be better off.

19. But when the better times came, and the labourers were getting more wages, and things were plentiful, they were very extravagant; it was just as it had been in William of Malmes

bury's days; they were more inclined to "revelling" than to laying by their money. Then they would not eat the coarse brown bread, but must have the very best and finest wheaten bread; no "half-penny ale" for them then, but the strongest and brownest that brewers could make; nor would they eat bacon, but fresh hot meat or fish; and so it went on till the bad weather, and cold and scarcity, came again, and hunger pinched them. Sometimes hunger and cold pinched them terribly; we shall hear in the next reign what came of it.

20. We will end this lecture by reading the advice William Langlande gives to the different classes of people in the land. Though he is a poor man himself, and sees the faults William and follies of the rich very clearly, he does not wish Langlande's to do away with them altogether, and to level all admonitions. people to one another. He does not wish the lords and knights to turn ploughmen, but he wishes them to leave off their follies and fopperies. They are to be merciful to their tenants, to take no gifts from the poor, nor to hurt their bondmen. They are to reprove robbers, flatterers, and false men, and to help to keep good order in the land. He says they ought to hunt wild beasts. They are rather fond of doing so now for their amusement; but we have to remember that at that time the greater part of the country was still wild forest and waste land, full of foxes, hares, and other creatures, which did great harm to the farmers. There seem even to have been wolves still, which, he says, worried men, women, and children. So he desires the knights to hunt these and the wild birds of prey, on the weekdays; but to go to church on Sundays, and attend to their religion.

The merchants are to trade honestly, and to use their wealth in repairing hospitals for the sick, in mending bridges which are broken down, helping poor sick people and prisoners, and to do other charitable works, and then he promises no devil shall hurt them.

The lawyers are not to take bribes, but for the love of the Lord they are to speak for the innocent and poor, and to comfort them.

The sick, the blind, and the unfortunate are to be helped and comforted; but the idle beggars are to be set to work. They are to be fed with dog's food until they will work; but when they have deserved it they shall sup the better.

Women are to do a good deal of needlework. Some of them are to sew sacks for the wheat; the ladies, with their long fingers,

should sew with silk, and work vestments for the clergy; and they should all spin wool and flax to make cloth for the poor, and help the labourer who wins their food.

There is one set of people he cannot put up with at all—the jugglers and story-tellers, who went about to amuse the people. As he was of a very grave and melancholy sort of character, anything like fun and merry-making was, as Solomon says, “like vinegar upon nitre" to him. We need not agree with him in this, but otherwise we shall perhaps all feel that the world would still be the better if the spirit of his advice were followed; and shall agree too with Gower, when he says the sun looks not on a worthier race than the English, "had but its people love for one another."

LECTURE XXXI.-NEW ASPIRATIONS.

Wycliffe. The English Bible. Richard II. Wat Tyler and the insurrection of the people. Its results.

1. Of all the great men who lived in Edward III.'s long reign, and that of his successor, Richard II., the one whose work was the most important and has borne the most precious fruit was John Wycliffe, who has been called the Father of the Reformation. The Reformation we may look upon as the greatest event in the whole history of England; it is that which has most affected all our lives and thoughts and actions.

2. We have seen how for several hundred years there had been frequent disputes with the Pope, from the time when William the Conqueror disdainfully refused to do homage to him for the kingdom of England. We remember the great quarrel in Henry II.'s time, which ended in the murder of Becket, and Henry's humble submission. Going on a little farther, we find King John really owning the Pope as his master, doing homage to his legate for his crown, and paying him a large tribute. Though this caused great fury and indignation among the English, it was never formally put an end to till, in the reign of Edward III., the whole parliament, lords, commons, and bishops too, agreed all together to cast it off, and declared they would not only not pay up the back sums of the tribute which had fallen into arrears, but would never pay it at all any more.

3. Still all these disputes were what we may call political; they were all concerning worldly affairs, and had nothing to do with religious belief. Up till this time all the English people believed every one of the doctrines of the Roman Church. John Wycliffe was the first man who began to doubt some Wycliffe. of those doctrines, and to teach other people to do the same. He was a clergyman, a very learned and clever man, the head of Balliol College at Oxford. He was also a man of a strong character; very religious, and heartily in earnest in whatever he did.