Conviviality and charity in medieval and early modern England - response to Judith M. Bennett, Past and Present, no. 134, February 1992

Past & Present, Feb, 1997 by Maria Moisa

(20) For instance, many Wakefield tenants, members of what the Toronto school calls the `A families', were rustlers on the side. See, for example, the story of the Patriks in Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, v, 40, passim. Minstrels, on the other hand, were not a good example of the `poor and honest'; they were often considered idle hangers-on (otiosi satellites) of the nobility, and were on the fringes of the inhonesta mercimonia, or disreputable activities: Bennett, `Conviviality and Charity', 30.

(21) This was achieved through indulgences granted to donors who contributed funds to restore the recipients to their previous fortunes. The indulgences amounted to a form of begging licence which ordinary beggars did without.

(22) We do not know how mans of them were kin. Medieval texts seem to include kin among `neighbours'. See below, nn. 20, 23, 27.

(23) Bennett, `Conviviality and Charity', 29. The sources of Bennett's interpretation are F. Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1990); S. Brigden, `Religion and Social Obligation in Early Sixteenth-Century London', Past and Present, no. 103 (May 1984); J. Rosenthal, The Purchase of Paradise (London, 1972).

(24) Walter of Henley and Other Treatises, ed. D. Oschinsky (Oxford, 1971), 310-11 c. 11 (my translation from the French version). I am not suggesting that Henley wrote for the middle peasantry. He aimed higher, but his advice reflected current practice.

(25) Ibid., c. 14, 15.

(26) John Myrc, Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. E. Peacock (Early Eng. Text Soc., xxxi, London, 1868), 11. 1471-2, 45, on succouring the poor, 11. 1205 ff., 37, on help to neighbours; 11. 1240-4, 38, on backbiting; 11. 1287-94, 39, on lending without gain; 11. 1067-75, 33, on coveting one's neighbour's goods or wife. According to the mid-fourteenth-century Memoriale presbiteriorum, in W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955; repr. Toronto, 1980), 209, peasants sinned against their neighbours, as Myrc explained, and they sinned especially against the poor, who had nothing to offer.

(27) How the Good Wijf Tauzte hir Douztir, a poem of c.1430, in Early English Meals and Manners, ed. F. J. Furnivall (Early Eng. Text Soc., ord. ser., xxxii, London 1931), 11. 168-72, 44. A similar difference can be observed in monastic customs relating to hospitality (at the guest-house, according to status) and almsgiving to the poor (at the gate).

(28) T. Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (Oxford, 1984), 132, 160, 197.

(29) Walter of Henley and Other Treatises, ed. Oschinsky, 310-11, c. 13.

(30) Tusser, Good Husbandry, 19.

(31) Studies on functioning and membership of drinking groups include: N. Dennis, F. Henriques and C. Slaughter, Coal is our Life (London, 1969), on Yorkshire; T. Brass, `Beer Drinking Groups in a Peruvian Agrarian Co-operative', Bull. Latin Amer. Research, vii (1989); L. Magnusson, `Proto-industrialisation, culture et tavernes en Suede (1800-1850)', in Annales E.S.C., xlv (1990-1); M. Douglas and B. Isherwood, The World of Goods (Harmondsworth, 1980); further studies in M. Douglas (ed.), Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology (Paris and Cambridge, 1987). The quote is from Douglas and Isherwood, World of Goods, 169. Their findings on group membership through consumption are confirmed by the thirteenth-century Potatores exquisiti, one of the Carmina Burana, in Medieval Latin Lyrics, ed. H. Waddell (Harmondsworth, 1952), 196: `If anyone happens to be hiding here / who is not interested in strong wine / let him be shown the door / and leave this crowd ...' (si quis latitat hic forte / qui non curat vinum forte / ostendatur ilk porte / exeat ab hac cohorte ...).