Travellers bought separately their food and drink, chiefly bread, a little meat, and beer. Complaints as to excessive prices were not less frequent than now. The innkeeper’s extortions were supplemented by those of his assistants. Chaucer’s good parson, branding those men who encourage the evil practices of their subordinates, does not forget “thilke that holden hostelries,” and who “sustenen the theft of hir hostilers (ostlers).”[138] The people petitioned parliament and the king interfered accordingly with his wonted useless good will. Edward III promulgated, in the 23rd year of his reign, a statute to constrain “hostelers et herbergers” to sell food at reasonable prices; and again, four years later, tried to put an end to the “great and outrageous cost of victuals kept up in all the realm by inn-keepers and other retailers of {126} victuals, to the great detriment of the people travelling through the realm.”[139] To have an example of ordinary travelling, we may follow the warden and two fellows of Merton College, who went with four servants from Oxford to Durham and Newcastle in 1331.[140] They travelled on horseback; it was in the dead of winter. Their food was very simple and their lodging inexpensive, the same items constantly recur; they comprise, on account of the season, candles and fire, sometimes a coal fire. One of their days may give an idea of the rest: for a Sunday spent at Alreton they write down: Bread 4d. Beer 2d. Wine 1 ¼d. Meat 5 ½d. Potage ¼d. Candles ¼d. Fuel 2d. Beds 2d. Fodder for Horses 10d. [Illustration 25. THE NEW HABITS OF LUXURY. A GENTLEMAN DRESSING BEFORE THE FIRE. (_From the MS. 2 B._ vii., _in the British Museum_. _Fourteenth Century._)]