An Old English Home and Its DependenciesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
An Old English Home and Its Dependencies
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
England -- Social life and customs
If the people from a distance were to remain for the afternoon service,
they must go somewhere. The writer has seen the porches of German and
French cathedrals full of women eating their dinner, after having
heard the morning mass, and who were waiting for the service in the
afternoon; but they are no longer served there with ale and wine by
the clergy. Flodoard, in his account of S. Remigius, says that that
saint could only stop the inveterate custom at Rheims by a miracle: he
made all the taps of those who supplied the wine to stop running. But
to return once more to the ordinary tavern. The French _auberge_, the
Italian _albergo_, derive from the old Teutonic _here-berga_, which has
for signification "the lord's shelter"--that is, the house of shelter
provided by the lord of the manor.
A cartulary of 1243, published in the _Gallia Christiana_, shows us a
certain knight Raimond, who, on his birthday, assigns an annual charge
on his estate of three hundred sous for the support of the village
hostelry, which shows us that in France the nobles very early gave up
themselves entertaining, but considered themselves in some way bound to
keep up the inn.
In 1380, at Liège, the clergy stirred up the people against the nobles
to obtain their expulsion. But a difficulty arose, as it was found that
the nobles were the innkeepers of the city, and to expel them was to
close the public-houses, and for that the Liègeois were not prepared.
So the riot came to an abrupt conclusion.
In Farquhar's _Beaux' Stratagem_, 1707, the squire is represented as
habitually frequenting his village inn, and as habitually becoming
drunk there. Smollett tells us that Squire Pickle, when he retired
into the country, met with abundance of people who, in consideration
of his fortune, courted his acquaintance, and breathed nothing but
friendship and hospitality; yet even the trouble of receiving and
returning these civilities was an intolerable fatigue to a man of his
habits and disposition. He therefore left the care of the ceremonial
to his sister, who indulged herself in all the pride of formality,
while he himself, having made a discovery of a public-house in the
neighbourhood, went thither every evening, and enjoyed his pipe and
can, being well satisfied with the behaviour of the landlord, whose
communicative temper was a great comfort to his own taciturnity. At
the village tavern squire and attorney and doctor were wont to meet,
and not infrequently the parson appeared there as well. That condition
of affairs is past. It is not so in Germany--where, in small villages,
gentlefolks and tradesmen, the Catholic priest and the evangelical
pastor, the baron and the notary, the grocer and the surgeon, meet of
an evening, knock glasses, rub ideas, and in a cloud of tobacco smoke
lose bigotry in religion and class prejudice. Would not the same have
been the case had our squires and parsons continued to frequent the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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