The Last Plantagenets (14 page)

But the sins of profligate warrior kings are always visited on their
successors, who must keep the peace through sheer lack of funds and the war weariness of their subjects. In the early years of Richard’s reign the royal revenue was lavished on a huge household and not on armies to fight the French. The people complained and the popularity of the youthful monarch, which began on such a high level, sank lower and lower.

It has been estimated, largely from the details supplied in the time of Edward I, that Richard’s normal revenue was about £65,000 a year. When an army was raised to fight in Scotland or France, the grand annual expenditure would soar as high as £155,000. Normal expenditures included much giving of alms. A furious rate of expenditure was maintained for horses, the necessary masters, knights, and grooms, as well as stud costs and the upkeep of the great royal stables. Whenever men got together over mugs of London ale (the greatest luxury of the lower classes), they spoke in awed tones of young Richard’s favorite steed, Barbary, the choice grains on which he was fed and the number of precious stones set in the silver of his equipment. The cost of the pampered Barbary, it was apparent, would have relieved much of the poverty of a London parish.

The most open dissatisfaction was felt over the lazy and dissolute nobility who held posts at court. That one young dandy could swagger in satins and have a household of his own in order to conduct the superintendence of, say, the royal soup spoon raised the hackles of hardworking merchants and bent-backed yeomen. Annual court salaries ran in the neighborhood of £9000 and this at a time when a gallon of the finest ale could be purchased for a groat, and a smart doublet, slashed with cloth of gold, cost half a mark!

Then there was the victualing of the royal castles, a staggering total of over £18,000. And finally the maintenance of the Wardrobe, which cost the nation £15,000. The term Wardrobe was somewhat misleading, for this was not purely a matter of regalia and personal attire, although in this popinjay period the sums expended on royal and noble backs were quite stupendous. Household expenses were included: the kitchens, the sculleries, the spiceries, and the pittances paid to hundreds of cooks, grooms, maids, and varlets in general. Even some military costs, including the upkeep of naval bases, were entered in this category.

All in all the handsome boy king was an expensive luxury for the realm of England.

Because the looters of the Savoy had found it packed with beautiful things from France and the East did not mean that the palaces of all noblemen were furnished on the same scale. Some of the grimness of Norman days was being eliminated, but there had been no radical departures yet in architecture. The Great Hall was still the focal point of the house, which extended up to the very roofs where no light penetrated, and the ghostly rustling of pennons could be heard in the drafts and the fluttering of bats and birds which had found their way in and could not get out. Here the whole household gathered for meals around trestle tables. Sleeping chambers had been airless holes scooped out of the thick masonry, but in the preceding two generations there had been a change to more luxurious accommodations. For a lord or lady of high rank there would be tiled floors and the windows might even be filled with colored glass. There probably would be cupboards or presses of handsome wood, richly decorated and secured by steel locks from the East. And the beds! Here is where the highborn of the late Plantagenet period displayed their magnificence. They were large and high, with canopies of colored silks, satins, or velvet. With a king of the artistic tastes of young Richard, there would be gold decorations on the headboard above the royal pillow. The pillow, naturally, would be of the finest linen and would carry heraldic embroideries.

In spite of these advances, the possession of a feather bed still meant that someone in the family had been to the wars in France. Tapestries and rugs were prizes from the Crusades.

A chamber on the first floor called the Solar had begun to take the place of the Great Hall in smaller manor houses and in the town residences of affluent citizens. The Solar seems to have served either one of two purposes. With the nobility it could be used as a reception room, but in the smaller houses it was a community bedchamber. This was a step in the direction of comfort and would lead in time to revolutionary changes.

The last full meal of the day began at four o’clock, but none of the trappings of the ceremonial dinner, served at 10 to 11
A.M.
, were missing. There would be the procession first from the kitchens, led by the manciple or perhaps the sergeant of the ewery, followed by pipers blasting away on their instruments and then by the cooks and scullions proudly holding up the main dishes of the repast. As soon as the last gravy-soaked trencher of bread had been scraped off the board and the final bone had been tossed among the rushes, to be scrambled
for by the dogs, there would be cries of “A hall! A hall!,” the signal to clear the floor. This would bring a rush of servants from all directions to dismantle the trestles and pile them up along the walls, thus making room for the jugglers, tumblers, and wrestlers who provided most of the entertainment, although an occasional goliard might be given the floor to send the company into belly-shaking laughter with bawdy songs about strumpets and cuckolds. Sometimes there was dancing, particularly the sword dance which had survived from Anglo-Saxon days, or balancing on a tightrope to the mad rattle of kettledrums.

This had been the usual thing, even in the glamorous days of the conqueror Edward, but changes were coming in with Richard and his mother. The food was much more varied and appetizing. There was every conceivable spice and herb. Roses and violets were stewed and served as vegetables. An herb called Robert was actually a garden geranium. There was something very special called an alexander, or horse parsley which was eaten in sticks like celery. A sharp French concoction called verjuice was used in place of lemon juice and there were, perhaps needless to state, a great many new French sauces. No longer did the host try to deceive his guests by putting powdered darnel or passerose into the white wine to turn it red; the most costly of red wines from the South were always served: malvoisie, malmsey, cypress, and muscadel. Even the water used for hand-washing after any course had to be boiled with sage, camomile, and lemon peel.

Perhaps the innovation which suited English palates the least was in the dishes called entremets, the sweets. They were very artistic and gay, piled high in a dish with a base for the most part of jellies or fresh fruits in season, and served with light sweet wines. Now the English people liked pastry, served in the form of pies and tarts. They liked it so much that in Great Eastchepe, where the bakers clustered, every second shop seemed to be given over to the baking of pies. First there were the deepdish kinds: pork, beef, kidney, cony (rabbit), venison, chicken, goose, fish, eels, made in the shape of
coffyns
with crust done to a rich, juicy brown. These contained the merest hint of vegetables—these luscious, crumbling pies—perhaps a carrot or two or a slice of young turnip. And, ah, the great spoonfuls of gravy, with just a bit of suet! In season, of course, there would be open-faced tarts, called flans—cherry, plum, costard apple. These were so rich that the apprentices had only to hold up a fresh tray to bring trade on the run. Beggars, too poor to buy, clustered in Eastchepe to content themselves with snuffling the rich odors.

In other words, Englishmen liked pastry which “stuck to the ribs” and considered the fancy French concoctions as no more satisfying than a soft south wind blowing down the throat.

Most of the conversation was conducted in French and the entertainment offered after the meal was largely music, conducted by Richard’s head minstrel, one John Camuys, a native of Bordeaux. There would be singing, of course, mostly love ballads and rondels. The young king was passionately addicted to music and had already composed a few things of his own which the people of the court professed to find inspired. Sir Simon Burley had encouraged Richard to read and he had become avidly attached to French romances. At Shene there were scores of them, and the zealous Froissart kept sending over more. The conversation, in consequence, was lively and good, led by the young king and his mother with the unlettered nobility trailing silently and glumly far in the rear.

There was at this time an institution called the Board of the Green Cloth, consisting of the Lord Steward and his staff. This Board had control of the household purse and was responsible for the purchase of all supplies. It had full authority over the household staff, with the exception of the masters of the horse and the king’s own particular squires, of whom there were no fewer than forty. The innovations made by the young king kept the Board of the Green Cloth very busy indeed.

Fear of the end of the world hung heavy over the people of medieval days. It was coming to pass soon. Its imminence was preached from every pulpit and all the expected signs were being detected in earth and sky and in the course of human events. Would it come today? Tomorrow? At haying time? When the black mulberries turned? Or would it wait until the next year when the freshness of spring wrapped the earth in beautiful colors?

The Black Death had been the first sure sign, for was it not the Lord’s punishment for the wicked among men before the establishment of His domain? The clergy railed at men and women for vanity in dress when it was so clear that the Hand of divine retribution lay on the land.

And yet a period of extreme extravagance and absurdity in styles began with the ending of the Black Death. The chaperon with its sensible combination of cape and cap went out. The cote-hardie with its rather plain horizontal stripes ceased to be popular. Ladies’ skirts became very full, almost bouffant, with deep fur bands and facing hems of different materials and colors. The feminine neck was often exposed, but to make up for this the sleeves covered the hands and fancy capes protruded from shoulders like the wings of angels. The plastron, used in male armor, was adapted in sideless surcoats of sufficiently stout material
to permit of as many as a dozen golden buttons down the front, sometimes with precious stones mounted in them. Fair ladies wore their hair long, but kept it coiled up under something resembling a caul and which was called a dorelet. The dorelet was not as absurd as the high hennin which came in early in the following century, but it permitted all manner of tall hairdressing and trailing bands. It robbed the poor women, trying so hard to keep up with their foppish husbands, of much of their natural beauty and charm.

What lovely woman did to herself was nothing compared to the eccentricities of male attire. Consider one of the illustrated manuscripts still in existence which gives a picture of the young king. His robe is of blue, lined with ermine, and his legs are encased with a trimness which led at this time to the coining of the word “tights.” Richard’s tights were parti-colored in a diamond-shaped pattern of maroon and pink. His shoes were so long and pointed that the toes curled up and had to be banded to his knees. To climb a stair he had two courses open; he could remove his shoes or go up backward. It was necessary to keep his arms folded in order to save his sleeves from trailing on the ground. A very odd-looking figure he cuts, without a doubt; quite as absurd as the Tudor courtier of a later century with his neck ruff like the cart wheel of a fairy coach and his sleeves puffed up like colored clouds.

Richard was a victim of his times. He felt a compulsion to follow the French styles and it was not his fault that the designers at the French court happened to be so completely deficient in good taste as to verge on the idiotic. He had some good ideas of his own. He invented the handkerchief, certainly a most useful article in a climate so conducive to colds in the head. If it had not gone through several stages in naming, beginning with hankercher, and had been called simply a richard, he would have been much surer of his place in human remembrance than by grace of his part in history.

When his first wife arrived in England, she brought a number of innovations, including the sidesaddle for ladies, but this will be dealt with at greater length later.

Everything was loaded lavishly with jewels. Once Richard raised the sum of £5000 in the city of London and gave some of his personal belongings as security. Among the items listed were hoods embroidered with diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and balasses (a variety of ruby spinel); beaver hats literally shining with pearls; a coat of cloth of gold, encrusted with golden balls; a doublet of tarse silk with every inch of its five-foot spread of sleeve like a jib boom heavily encrusted with pearls; rings with every kind of precious stone, some even inscribed with the magic names of The Three Kings, a protection from sudden death. It was whispered about that he had paid as much as 30,000 marks for one robe
so heavily bedizened that it weighed almost as much as “white armor,” the term used for steel.

This extravagance was not confined to the nobility. The rich merchants of London liked to swank in handsome attire. The wives of wealthy kempsters, lavenders, ganters, plumers, and stockfish (for modern terms, read wool combers, laundrymen, glovemakers, feather merchants, and dealers in dried fish) were not permitted by law to ape their betters but they did not hesitate to line their cloaks with ermine or vare. Their plump bodies were seldom subjected to the touch of anything but the finest linens or silks. A fig for the sumptuary laws! Styles in the provinces might be fifty years behind the times but in proud and prosperous London they seldom lagged as much as a season. They did not criticize Richard in London for his eccentricities of dress; they strove to keep up with him.

The size of the royal household did rouse the ire of the citizens who paid the taxes. Should the king have so many guests that hundreds of cooks were needed in the royal kitchens? Was it necessary for him, a mere boy, to have councilors, constables, stewards, chaplains, almoners, pursuivants, scriveners, trumpeters, mimics, prothonotaries, pages, yeomen of this and that, grooms of many varieties and duties? Should carvers who served only one kind of dish be considered artists and paid as such? Did he need forty squires about him at all times, to wait on him hand and foot? And must each squire have two horses and two servants of his own?