MEDIÆVAL BYWAYS
‘... sat for its portrait to Matthew Paris.’
MEDIÆVAL BYWAYS
BY
L. F. SALZMANN F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF
‘ENGLISH INDUSTRIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES’
ILLUSTRATED BY
GEORGE E. KRUGER
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1913
TO WHOM
SHOULD I DEDICATE
THESE STUDIES OF THE LIGHTER SIDE
OF THE MIDDLE AGES
IF NOT TO
MY WIFE
WHOSE STUDY IT IS TO LIGHTEN
MY OWN MIDDLE AGE?
FOREWORDS
BEING SUNDRY PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS OF NO IMPORTANCE
Original research amongst the legal and other documents preserved in thePublic Record Office, and similar depositories of ancient archives is apursuit which our friends politely assume ‘must be very interesting,’chiefly because they cannot believe that any one would undertake so dullan occupation if it were not interesting. And it must be admitted thatthere are grounds for looking askance at such work. To begin with, thefinancial results of historical research are usually negligible or evennegative, and it is therefore clearly an undesirable, if not positivelyreprehensible, employment. Then it is perfectly true that the vastmajority of these records are[Pg viii] as dry as the dust which accumulates uponthem, and that in many cases such interest as they possess isadventitious, being due to their association with some particular personor place whose identity appeals to us. Thus even the most trivialtechnical details of a suit by William S. against Francis B. for forginghis signature would become of absorbing interest if S. stood forShakespeare and B. for Bacon, but the chances are a hundred to one that S.will stand for Smith and B. for Brown. At the same time the thoroughlyunpractical searcher, who allows his attention to be distracted and doesnot confine himself to the strict object of his search, is constantlyrewarded by the discovery of entries, quaint, amusing, or grimlysignificant, throwing a light upon the lives of men and women whose verynames perished out of memory centuries ago. Dim the light may be, but yetit is an illumination not to be got elsewhere, for the writers of History,with a big H, are concerned only with the doings of kings and statesmen,and[Pg ix] other people of importance, while these records tell us something ofthe life of those who in their day, like most of us, were each the centreof their own microcosm but made no figure in the eyes of the world. It is,I think, not too much to claim that only through intimacy with thenation’s records, and I would use the word in the widest sense to includealso the records written on the face of our land in stone and timber andeven in earthen bank and hedgerow, that some conception can be obtained ofthe mediæval spirit. That same spirit is so subtle a thing, though one ofits leading characteristics is a