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MEDIAEVAL BYWAYS




[Illustration: '_... sat for its portrait to Matthew Paris._']




  MEDIAEVAL BYWAYS


  BY L. F. SALZMANN F.S.A.

  AUTHOR OF
  'ENGLISH INDUSTRIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES'


  ILLUSTRATED BY
  GEORGE E. KRUGER


  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
  1913




  TO WHOM
  SHOULD I DEDICATE
  THESE STUDIES OF THE LIGHTER SIDE
  OF THE MIDDLE AGES
  IF NOT TO
  MY WIFE
  WHOSE STUDY IT IS TO LIGHTEN
  MY OWN MIDDLE AGE?




FOREWORDS

BEING SUNDRY PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS OF NO IMPORTANCE


Original research amongst the legal and other documents preserved in the
Public Record Office, and similar depositories of ancient archives is a
pursuit which our friends politely assume'must be very interesting,'
chiefly because they cannot believe that any one would undertake so dull
an occupation if it were not interesting. And it must be admitted that
there are grounds for looking askance at such work. To begin with, the
financial results of historical research are usually negligible or even
negative, and it is therefore clearly an undesirable, if not positively
reprehensible, employment. Then it is perfectly true that the vast
majority of these records are as dry as the dust which accumulates upon
them, and that in many cases such interest as they possess is
adventitious, being due to their association with some particular person
or place whose identity appeals to us. Thus even the most trivial
technical details of a suit by William S. against Francis B. for forging
his signature would become of absorbing interest if S. stood for
Shakespeare and B. for Bacon, but the chances are a hundred to one that S.
will stand for Smith and B. for Brown. At the same time the thoroughly
unpractical searcher, who allows his attention to be distracted and does
not confine himself to the strict object of his search, is constantly
rewarded by the discovery of entries, quaint, amusing, or grimly
significant, throwing a light upon the lives of men and women whose very
names perished out of memory centuries ago. Dim the light may be, but yet
it is an illumination not to be got elsewhere, for the writers of History,
with a big H, are concerned only with the doings of kings and statesmen,
and other people of importance, while these records tell us something of
the life of those who in their day, like most of us, were each the centre
of their own microcosm but made no figure in the eyes of the world. It is,
I think, not too much to claim that only through intimacy with the
nation's records, and I would use the word in the widest sense to include
also the records written on the face of our land in stone and timber and
even in earthen bank and hedgerow, that some conception can be obtained of
the mediaeval spirit. That same spirit is so subtle a thing, though one of
its leading characteristics is an extraordinary directness and simplicity,
that it is more easily understood than explained. But even if it were an
easy matter to dissect and analyse the mediaeval spirit, ticketing so much
as simplicity, such a percentage as humour, so many parts as fear of God,
and so many as fear of the Devil, and so forth, it should not be done
here. For though this book was written with a purpose, that purpose was
not to instruct and edify, but rather to interest and amuse, which is a
far higher mission, and if the reader on laying it down feels that he has
acquired knowledge it will probably be due in a large measure to the work
of the artist, who has translated into line something more than the
material details of the incidents which the writer has strung together.

So far as the half-dozen essays which follow are concerned their origin
was almost as spontaneous as Topsy's; like her, they grew. It has been my
fortune to spend much time searching ancient documents of every kind, and
indeed there is probably hardly a single class of pre-Reformation records
preserved between Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane into which I have not
delved. Being, moreover, of an unmethodical nature it has been my
practice, even when hard pressed for time, to allow my eye to be caught by
any strange or unusual entry which had nothing to do with the object of my
search;--I may admit in passing that I can rarely look up a word in the
_New English Dictionary_, because there are so many more interesting words
on the other pages. In this way my notebooks became full of queer and
fascinating little bits of ancientry, many of them clad