How much we have fallen off in the capacity of our stomachs from the good old times of open-air life and daily exercise on horseback may be judged from the following allowance of provisions granted to Lady Lucy, one of the maids of honour to Queen Katherine of Aragon: “Breakfast--A chine of beef, a loaf, a gallon of ale. Luncheon--Bread and a gallon of ale. Dinner--A piece of boiled beef, a slice of roast meat, a gallon of ale. Supper--Porridge, mutton, a loaf, and a gallon of ale.” When the Warden of Merton College travelled with two of his fellows and four servants from Oxford to Durham in 1331, the season being winter, their average bill was 2d. for beds for the whole party, or for the servants alone, one halfpenny; at the town inns of fifty years later the price of a bed was one penny, and the increased comfort warranted the higher charge.[5] The private rooms, instead of being numbered, received names according to the subject portrayed on the tapestry hangings. This custom continued in old-fashioned inns up to quite recent times, and has served as the basis of stage humour of a sort: SCENE. A Country Inn. _Timothy._ What rooms have you disengaged, Waiter? _Waiter._ Why sir, there’s the Moon: but I forget--there’s a man in that. _Timothy._ Eh! A man in the Moon! Oh then we’ll not go there. _Waiter._ There’s the Waterloo Subscription, Sir; that’s full--there’s the Pope’s Head; that’s empty, etc., etc.[6] In the minute books of the Grey Coat Hospital, a very valuable religious educational charity, we come across a rather startling entry. On Epiphany, 1698, “After prayers and sermon in church, the children and their parents dined in Hell.” Heaven and Hell were two public dining rooms adjoining the old Palace of Westminster, and so named either from the hangings or other pictorial decoration. CHAPTER V THE CRAFT GUILDS AND TRADERS’ INNS Of the writing of books about the mediæval guilds there seems to be no end, and each new contribution serves to mystify rather than to throw light on the difficulties of the subject. From the earliest times, it was an inherent tendency of the Teutonic races to combine and form guilds. There were guilds for the building of bridges, for the relief of poor pilgrims, and for almost every imaginable purpose, ranging from the organisation of a municipality to the Saxon “frith-gild,” which undertook the punishment of thieves and the exacting of compensation for homicides. As to the craft guilds of the Middle Ages, some are content to regard them as trade unions, others as similar to our modern clubs, and a third class of writers assert that they were purely religious. As a matter of fact, they were capable of becoming all three in turn.