Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) EditionReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) Edition
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Master and servants ceased to eat together in the same hall, except for
great occasions, on feast days, and for plays. The lord, and his lady,
family, and guests took their meals in a great chamber, usually up
beneath the roof next to the upper floor of the great hall. The
chimney-pieces and windows were often richly decorated with paneled
stonework, tracery and carving. There was often a bay or oriel window
with still expensive glass. Tapestries, damask, and tablecloths covered
the tables. The standard number of meals was three: breakfast, dinner,
and supper. There was much formality and ceremonial ritual, more
elaborate than before, during dinners at manorial households, including
processions bringing and serving courses, and bowing, kneeling, and
curtseying. There were many courses of a variety of meats, fish, stews,
and soups, with a variety of spices and elaborately cooked. Barons,
knights, and their ladies sat to the right of the lord above the salt
and were served by the lord's sewer [served the food] and carver and
gentlemen waiters; their social inferiors such as "gentlemen of worship"
sat below the salt and were served by another sewer and yeomen. The
lord's cupbearer looked after the lord alone. A knights' table was
waited on by yeomen. The gentlemen officers, gentlemen servants and
yeomen officers were waited on by their own servants. The amount of food
dished out to each person varied according to his rank. The almoner said
grace and distributed the leftovers to the poor gathered at the gate.
The superior people's hands were washed by their inferiors. Lastly, the
trestle tables were removed while sweet wine and spices were consumed
standing. Then the musicians were called into the hall and dancing
began. The lord usually slept in a great bed in this room.
The diet of an ordinary family such as that of a small shopholder or
yeoman farmer included beef, mutton, pork, a variety of fish, both fresh
and salted, venison, nuts, peas, oatmeal, honey, grapes, apples, pears,
and fresh vegetables. Cattle and sheep were driven from Wales to English
markets. This droving lasted for five centuries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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