COLCHESTER IN 1301.

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never worn. Linen was so dear that Shakspeare makes Falstaff's shirts eight shillings an ell. The more sumptuous articles of a mercer's stock were treasured in rich families from generation to generation; and even the wives of the nobility did not disdain to mention in their wills a particular article of clothing, which they left to the use of a daughter or a friend. The solitary old coat of a baker came into the Colchester valuation; nor is this to be wondered at, when we find that even the soldiers at the battle of Bannockburn, about this time, were described by an old rhymer as "well near all naked."

The household furniture found in use among the families of Colchester consisted, in the more wealthy, of an occasional bed, a brass pot, a brass cup, a gridiron, and a rug or two, and perhaps a towel. Of chairs and tables we hear nothing. We learn from the Chronicles of Brantôme, a French historian of these days, that even the nobility sat upon chests in which they kept their clothes and linen. Harrison, whose testimony we have already given to the poverty of these times, affirms, that if a man in seven years after marriage could purchase a flock bed, and a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself as well lodged as the lord of the town, "who peradventure lay seldom on a bed entirely of feathers." An old tenure in England, before these times, binds the vassal to find straw even for the king's bed. The beds of flock, the few articles of furniture, the absence of chairs and tables, would have been of less consequence to the comfort and health of the people, if they had been clean; but cleanliness never exists without a certain possession of domestic conveniences. The people of England, in the days of which we are speaking, were not famed for their attention to this particular. Thomas à Becket was reputed extravagantly nice, because he had his parlor strewed every day with clean straw. As

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PRIVATIONS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

late as the reign of Henry VIII., Erasmus, a celebrated scholar of Holland, who visited England, complains that the nastiness of the people was the cause of the frequent plagues that destroyed them; and he says, "their floors are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lie unmolested a collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and of every thing that is nauseous." The elder Scaliger, another scholar who came to England, abuses the people for giving him no convenience to wash his hands. Glass vessels were scarce, and pottery was almost wholly unknown. The Earl of Northumberland, whom we have mentioned, breakfasted on

trenchers and dined

on pewter. While such universal slovenliness prevailed as Erasmus has described, it is not likely that much attention was generally paid to the cultivation of the mind. Before the invention of printing, at the time of the valuation of Colchester, books in manuscript, from their extreme costliness, could be purchased only by

princes. The royal library of Paris, in 1378, consisted of nine hundred and nine volumes-an extraordinary number. The same library now comprises upward of six hundred thou

READING THE BIBLE.

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sand volumes. But it may fairly be assumed that, where one book could be obtained in the fourteenth century by persons of the working classes, four hundred thousand may be as easily obtained now. Even as late as 1539, in England, the Bible, now distributed gratuitously, was placed in churches and often chained to the desk for the use of the common peo

ple; and the multitude assembled to hear it read from the few who possessed sufficient education for this purpose.

Here then was a privation which existed five hundred years ago, which debarred our ancestors from more profit and pleasure than the want of beds, and chairs, and linen; and probably, if this privation had continued, and men therefore had not cultivated their understandings, they would not have learned to give any really profitable direction to their labor, and we should still have been as scantily supplied with furniture and clothes as the good people of Colchester of whom we have been speaking.

Let us see what accumulated supply, or capital of food, the inhabitants of England had five centuries ago. Possessions in cattle are the earliest riches of most countries. We have seen that cattle was called "live money ;" and it is supposed that the word capital, which means stock generally, was derived from the Latin word "capita," or heads of beasts. The law-term "chattels," is also supposed to come from cattle. These circumstances show that cattle were the chief property of our ancestors. Vast herds of swine constituted the great provision for the support of the people; and these were principally fed upon acorns and beech-mast. In Domesday Book, a valuation of the time of William the Conqueror, it is always mentioned how many hogs each estate can maintain. Hume the historian, in his Essays, alluding to the great herds of swine described by Polybius as existing in Italy and Greece, concludes that the country was thinly peopled and badly cultivated; and there can be no doubt that the same argument may be арplied to England in the fourteenth century, although many swine were maintained in forests preserved for fuel. The hogs wandered about the country in a half wild state, de stroying, probably, more than they profitably consumed; and they were badly fed, if we may judge from a statute of 1402, which alleges the great decrease of fish in the Thames and other rivers, by the practice of feeding hogs with the

fry caught at the weirs. The hogs' flesh of England was constantly salted for the winter's food. The people had little fodder for cattle in the winter, and therefore they only tasted fresh meat in the summer season. The mustard and vinegar seller formed a business at Colchester, to furnish a relish for the pork. Stocks of salted meat are mentioned in the inventory of many houses there, and live hogs as commonly. But salted flesh But salted flesh is not food to be eaten constantly, and with little vegetable food, without severe injury to the health. In the early part of the reign of Henry • VIII., not a cabbage, carrot, turnip, or other edible root, grew in England. Two or three centuries before, certainly, the monasteries had gardens with a variety of vegetables; but nearly all the gardens of the laity were destroyed in the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. Harrison speaks of wheaten bread as being chiefly used by the gentry for their own tables; and adds that the artificer and laborer are 66 driven to content themselves with horse-corn, beans, peason, oats, tares, and lentils." There is no doubt that the average duration of human life was at that period not one half as long as at the present day. The constant use of salted meat, with little or no vegetable addition, doubtless contributed to the shortening of life, to say nothing of the large numbers constantly swept away by pestilence and famine. Till lemon-juice was used as a remedy for scurvy among seamen, who also are compelled to eat salted meat without green vegetables, the destruction of life in the navy was something incredible. The English admiral, Hosier, buried his ships' companies twice during a West India voyage in 1726, partly from the unhealthiness of the Spanish coast, but chiefly from the ravages of scurvy. Bad food and want of cleanliness swept away the people of the middle ages, by ravages upon their health that the limited medical skill of those days could never resist. Mat