Sumptuary laws were constantly renewed and continually broken. Yet the
mass of the people obeyed the unwritten law by which a man’s station
was shown by his dress. For more on this subject see the Chapter on
Dress.
The ordering of the household was strict. Early hours were kept; in
summer servants and apprentices were up at five; in winter at six
or seven; there were rules as to attendance at morning and evening
prayers; there was to be no quarrelling; no striking; no profane
language.
It is said that coaches were introduced in this reign; but there had
always been coaches, _i.e._ wheeled conveyances of a kind. Such a
carriage, belonging to the fourteenth century, is figured in J. J.
Jusserand’s _English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages_—a cumbrous
unwieldy thing, yet still a coach. What really happened in this century
was the introduction of a much more convenient kind of coach from
Holland.
Stow laments the mud and the splashing in the streets. “The coachman
rideth behind the horse tails, lasheth them, and looketh not behind
him; the drayman sitteth and sleepeth on his dray and letteth his horse
lead him home.” Most of the City streets, however, were so narrow and
so much obstructed by houses standing out, for as yet there was no
alignment except in streets like Chepe, which were highways and market
streets, that no wheeled vehicle could pass at all.
[Illustration: SHOP AND SOLAR, CLARE MARKET, NOW DEMOLISHED
From a photograph taken in 1895.]
There was very little more lighting at night than there had been in the
preceding centuries. If a London dame ventured out of the house after
dark, the ’prentice carried a link before her. Some of the old shops or
sheds with “solars” over them remained in Stow’s time; the last of them
stood in Clare Market, and was pulled down a few years ago. See the
accompanying photograph of it. Stow says that stalls had become sheds,
_i.e._ roofed stalls; and then shops, _i.e._ enclosed stalls; and then
“fair houses.” He instances a block of houses called Goldsmiths’ Row,
between Bread Street and the Cross, which contained ten dwelling-houses
and fourteen shops, “all in one frame, uniformly built.” They were four
stories high. The shops seem to have been open, but perhaps the upper
part was protected with a shutter or with glass.
Inland communication was conducted by means of carts and coaches.
Harrison[5] complains of the new fashion: “Our Princes and the
Nobilitie have their cariage commonlie made by carts, wherby it commeth
to passe that when the Queene’s Majestie dooth remove from anie one
place to another, there are usuallie 400 carewanes, which amount to the
summe of 2400 horses, appointed out of the counties adjoining, whereby
hir cariage is conveied safelie unto the appointed place. Hereby also
the ancient use of sumpter horses is in maner utterlie relinquished,
which causeth the traines of our princes in their progresses to shew
far lesse than those of the kings of other nations.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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