1215: The Year of Magna Carta Ebook Read Online Free PDF Page A

one twelfth-century author, English wine could be drunk only with eyes closed and teeth clenched. When John came to the throne he fixed the prices at which the wines of Poitou and Anjou were to be sold. In an effort to boost his popularity, he set them low with, in the view of disapproving contemporaries, the inevitable consequence that ‘the whole land was filled with drink and drinkers’. The king’s wine was transported in tuns, casks containing 252 gallons, and stored in castles and other houses such as Marlborough and Clarendon until the king called for them. Archaeologists have uncovered the great wine cellar known as ‘La Roche’ built for Henry II at Clarendon. An audit of John’s wine revealed that in 1201 he had over 700 tuns of wine (180,000 gallons) at his disposal. Perhaps he went for quantity rather than quality. In 1201 he visited the king of France at Fontainebleau and was given the run of the palace and its wine cellar. ‘After he had gone,’ a Frenchman wrote, ‘the king of France and his people all had a good laugh at the way the people of the English king had drunk all the bad wines and left all the good ones.’ Or was King John just being polite?
    In the largest households there might have to be two sittings for lunch. Since ceremony and hierarchy required that the head of household would be the first served and the last to leave the table, lunch might take a long time, two or three hours. It is not surprising that some lords and ladies preferred to eat in the relative privacy of their own chambers – though this was frowned upon by traditionalists who thought it was a lord’s duty to maintain his own dignity, and that of his household, by dining publicly.
    Tableware – plates, bowls, cups, saucers, and platters for trenchers (the slices of thick bread on which food was served and which could be eaten after the juices had been absorbed) – was generally made of wood, earthenware or pewter, though inevitably the richest households liked to display their silver. At lunch two main courses were served, and two light courses, each course including a great variety of dishes. A week’s shopping list made for King John’s niece Eleanor of Brittany gives a good idea of aristocratic diet.
    Saturday: bread, ale, sole, almonds, butter, eggs .
    Sunday: mutton, pork, chicken and eggs
    Monday: beef, pork, honey, vinegar .
    Tuesday: pork, eggs, egret
    Wednesday: herring, conger, sole, eels, almonds and eggs
    Thursday: pork, eggs, pepper, honey
    Friday: conger, sole, eels, herring and almonds
    For those who took their religious observances to heart, Fridays, Saturdays and many Wednesdays were fish-days. There were also, in addition to Lent, a number of fast-days when little but bread and ale were consumed. By these standards the poor virtually fasted every day. They ate eggs, cheese, bread, vegetables and legumes; they drank ale – unprocessed water posed a known health risk. Ironically this meant that they suffered less from tooth decay than the rich who could afford sweeteners. However, bread baked from stone-ground flour often contained grit, so teeth tended to get worn down.
    Food was served in units, known as messes, which were shared between two, three or four people. You used your thumb and index finger to take a portion of food, a piece of meat, for example, from the dish and place it on your trencher. (Table forks came gradually into fashion from the fourteenth century onwards.) You cut your portion into small pieces to be chewed politely, then wiped your knife on the bread. Sharing messes put a premium on good table manners, and Daniel of Beccles has much to say on that subject: don’t lick your fingers; don’t put them into the dish at the same time as a companion; above all, don’t grab the best bits. It was not done to use your fingers or a piece of bread to get the last morsel out of the dish. Sharing a soup bowl was an especially delicate operation, and there were lots of don’ts here.