Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- FRONTISPIECE
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- SECTION I LAND AND FOLK
- SECTION II BIRTH AND NURTURE
- SECTION III AUTHORS, SCRIBES AND READERS
- SECTION IV CHURCH AND CHURCHMEN
- SECTION V KINGS, KNIGHTS AND WAR
- SECTION VI MANOR AND COTTAGE
- SECTION VII TOWN LIFE
- SECTION VIII RICH AND POOR
- SECTION IX HOUSE, DRESS AND MEALS
- SECTION X SPORTS AND PASTIMES
- SECTION XI WAYFARING AND FOREIGN TRAVEL
- SECTION XII WOMEN'S LIFE
- SECTION XIII ARCHITECTURE AND THE ARTS
- SECTION XIV MEDICINE AND JUSTICE
- SECTION XV SUPERSTITIONS AND MARVELS
- INDEX
- SOCIAL LIFE IN BRITAIN FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION
- Plate section
SECTION VI - MANOR AND COTTAGE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- FRONTISPIECE
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- SECTION I LAND AND FOLK
- SECTION II BIRTH AND NURTURE
- SECTION III AUTHORS, SCRIBES AND READERS
- SECTION IV CHURCH AND CHURCHMEN
- SECTION V KINGS, KNIGHTS AND WAR
- SECTION VI MANOR AND COTTAGE
- SECTION VII TOWN LIFE
- SECTION VIII RICH AND POOR
- SECTION IX HOUSE, DRESS AND MEALS
- SECTION X SPORTS AND PASTIMES
- SECTION XI WAYFARING AND FOREIGN TRAVEL
- SECTION XII WOMEN'S LIFE
- SECTION XIII ARCHITECTURE AND THE ARTS
- SECTION XIV MEDICINE AND JUSTICE
- SECTION XV SUPERSTITIONS AND MARVELS
- INDEX
- SOCIAL LIFE IN BRITAIN FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION
- Plate section
Summary
This subject is so vast that we must restrict ourselves to a few documents which may supply some real historical background for Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale and for Piers Plowman.
A MODEL MANOR
Léopold Delisle, in his exhaustive Condition de la Classe Agricole en Normandie au Moyen-Age, laments that France possesses no such medieval treatises on rural economy as we possessed already in the 13th century. Perhaps the best of these is Fleta, edited by John Selden in 1647, from which the following extracts are translated: similar matter may be found in Walter of Henley (ed. Lamond and Cunningham, 1890) and in the Bibliothèque de l'École des Charles, 1856, pp. 123 ff. The author of Fleta describes the model servant in the same Utopian spirit in which monastic custumaries sometimes describe the ideal of a conventual administrator. A duchess of the Ancien Régime is said to have replied to a friend who besought her to procure a chef answering to a long list of transcendental qualities; “My dear, if I could ever find a man like that, I would marry him!” Her ancestress of the 13th century might almost have said the same of Fleta's Seneschal, or Steward. The reader will hardly need to be reminded that Malvolio was Olivia's seneschal.
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- Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation , pp. 301 - 314Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1918