Gifts of food in late medieval England

Journal of Medieval History

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 6-18

  Woolgar, C M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Alms; Charity; Food; Gifts; Late medieval England; Lordship; Social customs

Indexed keywords

EID: 79751526025     PISSN: 03044181     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jmedhist.2010.12.004     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. E. Stengel, 'Die beiden Sammlungen altfranzösischer Sprichwörter in der Oxforder Handschrift Rawlinson C 641', Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Litteratur, 21 (1899), 1-21 (5, no. 52, 16: 'Meuz valt pome dunee, que mangie'; 'Betere is appel ygeve than yete').
2. A.J.A. Bijsterveld, 'The medieval gift as agent of social bonding and political power: a comparative approach', in: Medieval transformations. Texts, power, and gifts in context, ed. E. Cohen and M.B. de Jong (Leiden, 2001), 123-56 (144-52).
3. S.D. White, 'The politics of exchange: gifts, fiefs and feudalism', in: Medieval transformations, ed. Cohen and de Jong, 169-88, especially 169-73.
4. V. Groebner, 'Accountancies and arcana: registering the gift in late medieval cities', in: Medieval transformations, ed. Cohen and de Jong, 219-43.
5. M. Damen, 'Giving by pouring: the function of gifts of wine in the city of Leiden (14th-16th centuries)', in: Symbolic communication in late medieval towns, ed. J. Van Leeuwen (Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, 1st series, Studia 37, Leuven, 2006), 84-100; also V. Groebner, Liquid assets, dangerous gifts. Presents and politics at the end of the middle ages (Philadelphia, 2002).
6. J. Rosenthal, The purchase of paradise. Gift giving and the aristocracy, 1307-1485 (London, 1972), 102-22 (102).
7. M. Jones, Feast. Why humans share food (Oxford, 2007), 22-43, 73-151.
8. J.L. Nelson, 'Introduction', in: The languages of gift, ed. Davies and Fouracre, 7; Zemon Davis, Gift, 57; B. Laurioux, Gastronomie, humanisme et société à Rome au milieu du XVe siècle. Autour du De honesta voluptate de Platina (Florence, 2006), 469-70.
9. F. Heal, 'Food gifts, the household and the politics of exchange in early modern England', Past and Present, 199 (May 2008), 41-70.
10. In the Dona section of Bishop Mitford's household account, that is, the gifts of cash that were made on his behalf, those bringing gifts to him do so 'de exhenio', or 'presentibus': 'Item datum Alicie Shepherd de Poterne et filie sue differentibus domino de exhenio poma et pira ultimo die Octobris apud Poterne precepto domini xx d.'; 'Item datum Willelmo Gardiner de Poterne et uxori eius presentibus domino poma ibidem x die Novembris ii s. viii d.'; HAME, vol. 1, 418. In 1485-6, the bishop of Carlisle gave ('datur') wheat to the Dominicans of Carlisle: HAME, vol. 2, 559. I have not found munus or munusculum used in relation to gifts of food, and the words do not appear in this context in the Dictionary of medieval Latin from British sources, ed. R.E. Latham, D.R. Howlett and others (London, 1975-). An attractive notion is that the word 'community' itself delineates those who give gifts - munera - to each other, bound together through service, office, employment, and by duty, burden and tribute (A Latin dictionary, ed. C.T. Lewis and C. Short (Oxford, 1879), and Dictionary of medieval Latin from British sources, sub munus); A. Putter, 'Gifts and commodities in Sir Amadace', Review of English Studies, new series 51 (2000), 371-94 (378). For an overall consideration of the language of gift-giving, C. Wickham, 'Conclusion', in: The languages of gift, ed. Davies and Fouracre, 238-61.
11. See below, for example, for the discussion of loaves and the 'reward' at meals.
12. Household accounts from medieval England, ed. C.M. Woolgar, 2 vols (British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, new series 17-18, London, 1992-3) [hereafter HAME], vol. 1, 261-2, 279, 418.
13. N.J. Sykes, 'The impact of the Normans on hunting', in: Food in medieval England: diet and nutrition, ed. C.M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson and T. Waldron (Oxford, 2006), 162-75.
14. A collection of ordinances and regulations for the government of the royal household made in divers reigns, ed. Anon (London, 1790), *32, 95-6.
15. G.C. Homans English villagers of the thirteenth century (Cambridge, MA, 1941; repr. New York, 1970), 225-6, 258-60, 268-9, 357.
16. The text first appears in the late thirteenth century, after 1273, and survives in later copies as well: Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Archives of the Dean and Chapter, Treasurer/38 and DE/165; later copy, DE/120: mem. 3r, 'Hec sunt exennia que debentur domino archiepiscopo ad natalem et ad pasca de maneriis monachorum ecclesie Cristi.'
17. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Archives of the Dean and Chapter, DE/26.
18. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Archives of the Dean and Chapter, DE/20.
19. Mauss, The gift, 15; C.M. Woolgar The senses in late medieval England (New Haven, 2006), 29-62.
20. Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, heremitae de Finchale auctore Reginaldo monacho Dunelmensi. Adjicitur appendix miraculorum, ed. J. Stevenson (Surtees Society 20, Durham, 1845), 71, 73. It is also probable that in this case the ordinary foods are to be seen as humanising the saint: he was no longer eating the food of beasts, just as his acceptance of the authority of the Benedictines of Durham brought him into an acceptable fold for his spirituality - a point I owe to Dominic Alexander's paper at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in 2009.
21. The patterns observed by Zemon Davis, Gift, 36-55, can be paralleled in many respects in medieval England, although with some distinctive variations.
22. HAME, vol. 1, 3-9; Heal, 'Food gifts, the household and the politics of exchange', 47-55, 64-5.
23. Stengel, 'Die beiden Sammlungen altfranzösischer Sprichwörter', 13, no. 362, 'Qui riens n'a, rien ne pert, ne ses amis nel plaignent.'
24. Salisbury Cathedral Library and Archives [hereafter SCLA], treasurer's account, mem. 1r. I am grateful to the Dean and Chapter for the opportunity to consult this document. The record is, however, only one of two accounts for the household: there was once a parallel document covering 'wardrobe' type expenditure, that is, cash expenses on bulk purchases, cloth, spices, messengers, and so on.
25. SCLA, treasurer's account, mem. 2d. (guijon': leg of lamb).
26. SCLA, treasurer's account, mem. 5r.
27. SCLA, treasurer's account, mem. 6r.
28. SCLA, treasurer's account, mem. 8r.
29. SCLA, treasurer's account, mem. 10r.
30. HAME, vol. 1, 177-9, 204.
31. HAME, vol. 1, 272-3, 417.
32. HAME, vol. 1, 382, 386, 418-21. The exact date of the bishop's death is uncertain: his will was made on 29 April and proved on 11 May (Lambeth Palace Library, Register of Archbishop Arundel, volume 1, f. 237v-239r). For Sturmy, C. Given-Wilson, The royal household and the king's affinity. Service, politics and finance in England 1360-1413 (New Haven, 1986), 221, 233, 247. For the bishop's economy generally, C. Dyer, 'The consumer and the market in the later middle ages', Economic History Review, 2nd series 42 (1989), 305-26; repr. in C. Dyer, Everyday life in medieval England (London, 1994), 257-82. Goats, especially kids (along with young meatstock of most kinds), had a welcome place at the aristocratic table. For goats, C. Dyer, 'Alternative agriculture: goats in medieval England', in: People, landscape and alternative agriculture. Essays for Joan Thirsk, ed. R.W. Hoyle (Agricultural History Review, Supplement Series 3, 2004), 20-38.
33. See the sections on commodities in Food in medieval England, ed. Woolgar, Serjeantson and Waldron, 11-188.
34. M. Mauss, 'Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques', L'Année Sociologique, 2nd series 1 (1923-4), 30-186; various translated editions, most recently by W.D. Halls, with introduction by Mary Douglas: M. Mauss, The gift. The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies (London, 1990; cited here from the reprinted edition, Abingdon, 2002).
35. HAME, vol. 1, 167.
36. J. Birrell, 'Procuring, preparing, and serving venison in late medieval England', in: Food in medieval England, ed. Woolgar, Serjeantson and Waldron, 176-88; J. Birrell, 'Deer and deer farming in medieval England', Agricultural History Review, 40 (1992), 112-26 (126, for Bishop Mitford).
37. HAME, vol. 2, 516-17.
38. HAME, vol. 2, 543.
39. The register of Thetford Priory, ed. D. Dymond, 2 vols (British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, new series 24-5, London, 1995-6), vol. 2, 513.
40. For the background, D. Serjeantson and C.M. Woolgar, 'Fish consumption in medieval England', in: Food in medieval England, ed. Woolgar, Serjeantson and Waldron, 102-30; C. Dyer, 'The consumption of freshwater fish in medieval England', in: Dyer, Everyday life in medieval England, 101-11.
41. Winchester, Winchester College Muniments, 1, dorse.
42. Visitations of religious houses in the diocese of Lincoln, ed. A.H. Thompson, 3 vols (Lincolnshire Record Society 7, 14, 21, Horncastle, 1914-29) vol. 2, 18-19.
43. The court and household of Eleanor of Castile in 1290. An edition of British Library Additional Manuscript 35294, ed. J.C. Parsons (Toronto, 1977), 82.
44. The household book of Queen Isabella of England for the fifth regnal year of Edward II 8th July 1311 to 7th July 1312, ed. F.D. Blackley and G. Hermansen (Edmonton, Alberta, 1971), 132.
45. J. Parry, 'The gift, the Indian gift and the "Indian gift"', Man, new series 21 (1986), 453-73.
46. London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 208, f. 4v.
47. Manchester, John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Latin MS 236, f. 3v.
48. The moral was that like the son, many men do not wish to give their youth, their strength or their old age to God. Versions of the tale also appear in the Gesta Romanorum and the sermons of Jacques de Vitry: Les Contes moralisés de Nicole Bozon frère mineur publiés pour la première fois d'après les manuscrits de Londres et de Cheltenham, ed. L. Toulmin Smith and P. Meyer (Société des anciens textes français, Paris, 1889), 171, 290-1.
49. HAME, vol. 1, 253.
50. Records of Early English Drama: Coventry, ed. R.W. Ingram (Toronto, 1981), 37. For the gift of York to Henry VII, 1486, Records of Early English Drama: York, ed. A.F. Johnston and M. Rogerson (Toronto, 1979), 137-8. Compare M. Damen, 'Princely entries and gift exchange in the Burgundian Low Countries: a crucial link in late medieval political culture', Journal of Medieval History, 33 (2007), 233-49 (237-45), with its gifts of wine, as well as hospitality, plate and assorted other goods.
51. P. Stafford, 'The "farm of one night" and the organization of King Edward's estates in Domesday', Economic History Review, 2nd series 33 (1980), 491-502; R. Lavelle, 'The "farm of one night" and the organization of royal estates in late Anglo-Saxon Wessex', Haskins Society Journal, 14 (2005), 53-82; A. Gautier, 'Palais, itinéraires et fêtes alimentaires des rois anglo-saxons aux xe et xie siècles', Food and History, 4 (2006), 29-44 (38-42).
52. B.F. Harvey, 'The aristocratic consumer in England in the long thirteenth century', in: Thirteenth Century England VI, ed. M. Prestwich, R.H. Britnell and R. Frame (Woodbridge, 1997), 17-37 (21-5); for monastic hospitality, F. Heal, Hospitality in early modern England (Oxford, 1990), 223-56, especially 228-46.
53. For hospitality generally, C.M. Woolgar, The great household in late medieval England (New Haven, 1999), 21-6; Heal, Hospitality in early modern England, 22-90.
54. Walter of Henley and other treatises on estate management and accounting, ed. D. Oschinsky (Oxford, 1971), 402-5; for the date, 1245 x 1253, L.J. Wilkinson, 'The Rules of Robert Grosseteste reconsidered: the lady as estate and household manager in thirteenth-century England', in: The medieval household in Christian Europe, c.850-c.1550, ed. C. Beattie, A. Maslakovic and S. Rees Jones (Turnhout, 2003), 293-306 (299-300). See also L. Kjær, 'Food, drink and ritualised communication in the household of Eleanor de Montfort, February-August 1265', Journal of Medieval History, 37(2011), 75-80.
55. HAME, vol. 1, 358-63.
56. Mauss, The gift; for a range of perspectives, see the essays in The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge, 1986), especially his own 'Introduction: commodities and the politics of value', 3-63, and I. Kopytoff, 'The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process', 64-91.
57. Heal, 'Food gifts, the household and the politics of exchange', 41-70.
58. For links especially between religious women and food, and applicable to men in some instances as well, see C. Walker Bynum, Holy feast and holy fast. The religious significance of food to medieval women (Berkeley, 1987); M.G. Muzzarelli and F. Tarozzi, Donne e cibo: una relazione nella storia ([Milan], 2003), especially the chapter on 'Monache digiunatrici e monache pasticcere', 41-9; C. Mazzoni, The women in God's kitchen. Cooking, eating, and spiritual writing (New York, 2005).
59. HAME, vol. 1, 158. There are later gifts of corn, although they are unusual: note 17, above, for an example.
60. Court and household of Eleanor of Castile, ed. Parsons, 96-7, 130.
61. Manchester, John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Latin MS 235, f. 7v-8v; B.F. Harvey, 'Monastic pittances in the middle ages', in: Food in medieval England, ed. Woolgar, Serjeantson and Waldron, 215-27.
62. D. Postles, 'Small gifts, but big rewards: the symbolism of some gifts to the religious', Journal of Medieval History, 27 (2001), 23-42, especially 27-31.
63. HAME, vol. 1, 240. The gift probably reciprocated one from Lady De Roos: P. Coss, The foundations of gentry life. The Multons of Frampton and their world, 1270-1370 (Oxford, 2010), 68-9.
64. Heal, 'Food gifts, the household and the politics of exchange', 65.
65. Manchester, John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Latin MS 235, f. 5r, 15r-v. Philippa also received: 631/2 beef carcasses, 128 sheep, 94 pigs, 58 calves, 2 lasts of herring, 360 cod, 10 pieces of sturgeon, 15 pieces of whale, 5 deer, a kid, 5 lampreys, 98 pike and pikerells, 24 large eels, 20 bream, 8 perch and 22 tench, 12 rabbits, 2 cranes, 71 swans, 2 peacocks, 53 heron, 105 bitterns, 2 pheasants, 44 geese, 13 spoonbills and 255 capons.
66. C. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the soul: the life, death and resurrection of an English medieval hospital. St Giles's, Norwich, c.1249-1550, (Thrupp, 1999), 162-9; Heal, Hospitality in early modern England, 228-46.
67. Most recently, the essays in The languages of gift in the early middle ages, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre (Cambridge, 2010), especially the introduction by J.L. Nelson (1-17) and the conclusion by C. Wickham (238-61).
68. London, British Library Add. MS 57334, mem. 5r, 6r.
69. R. Graham and S.E. Rigold, Titchfield Abbey, Hampshire (London, 1969), 19-20.
70. H. Johnstone, 'Poor relief in the royal households of thirteenth-century England', Speculum, 4 (1929), 149-67.
71. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Lat. Vat. 4015, f. 23r-v: 'Cum autem dictus dominus Thomas quadem die comederet et haberet coram se quinque vel septem pauperes comedentes, precipit Roberto de Whytacre familiari suo quod iret ad portam ad videndum si erant ibi aliqui fratres et quod faceret ascendere duos. Dictus autem famulus ivit ad portam et non invenit ibi religiosos quos credebat vocari fratres et retulit dicto domino Thome quod non erant in dicta porta fratres alicuius ordinis ed dictus dominus Thomas dixit ei eum arguendo nonne sunt ibi tales fratres quales sunt isti qui comedunt hic ostendens illi pauperes coram ipso comedentes. Et ille Robertus respondit quod bene erant tales xx fratres ad portam. Et precepit tunc quod feceret ascendere quinque ex eis et factum est ita. Et predicta dixit fuisse apud Hampton' Wygorniensis diocesis acta presente ipso teste et pluribus aliis familiaribus dicti domini Thome bene per xvi annos antequam esset promotus ad episcopatum.'
72. The register of Henry Chichele archbishop of Canterbury 1414-1443. Vol. II: Wills proved before the archbishop or his commissaries ed. E.F. Jacob and H.C. Johnson (Canterbury and York Society, 42, Oxford, 1937), 390, 392, 665.
73. B.F. Harvey, Living and dying in England 1100-1540. The monastic experience (Oxford, 1993), 12-16, for a discussion of this and the detail of variations. I have not traced a secular equivalent in England, although great households were sometimes kept together for up to a year after the decease of the lord or mistress. For French royal practice, M. Chatenet, 'Quelques aspects des funérailles nobiliaires au xvie siècle', in: Les Funérailles à la Renaissance: XIIe colloque international de la Société Française d'Étude du Seizième Siècle, Bar-le-Duc, 2-5 décembre 1999, ed. J. Balsamo (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance 366, Geneva, 2002), 38-54 (50-4).
74. Visitations of religious houses in the diocese of Lincoln, vol. 2, 179-81.
75. Visitations of religious houses in the diocese of Lincoln, vol. 1, 22-3.
76. I testamenti dei cardinali del duecento, ed. A. Paravicini Bagliani (Miscellanea della Società Romana di Storia Patria 25, Rome, 1980), 207-15 (207-9).
77. The register of Henry Chichele, 285-6. Of the 400, the first hundred, the poorer and those from the more remote parts of the diocese, were to have a loaf and a dish with an exceptional helping (copiosum ferculum) from the kitchen, besides 20s. and a pair of shoes; the second hundred were to have a loaf and a large dish (largum ferculum), 12s. and a pair of shoes; the third hundred, a loaf and good-sized dish (unum bonum ferculum), 8s. and a pair of shoes; and the final hundred also a good-sized dish of food, 4s. and a pair of shoes.
78. N. Zemon Davis, The gift in sixteenth-century France (Oxford, 2000), 1-35.
79. The register of Henry Chichele, 91, 649.
80. The register of Henry Chichele, 189.
81. The register of Henry Chichele, 452.
82. 'And whe had ryght gode comynecacyon, and the person plesetheyde me whell ...: sche ys zewnge, lytyll, and whery whellfavyrd and whytty, and the contre spekys myche good bye hyr': The Cely letters 1472-1488, ed. A. Hanham (Early English Text Society, Original Series 273, Oxford, 1975), 151-2.
83. Anglo-Norman Dictionary, ed. W. Rothwell and others, 2nd edn (London, 2005-), vol. 1, 353; also at , accessed 29 June 2009; Oxford English Dictionary, bribe sb.
84. W.C. Jordan, 'Anti-corruption campaigns in thirteenth-century Europe', Journal of Medieval History, 35 (2009), 204-19.
85. Zemon Davis, Gift, 142-66, especially 145-6, on the exception of food and perishables from proscribed categories of gift, traced back to antiquity. The contemporary British notion that a gift that can be consumed in 24 hours is not significant thus has a long pedigree. Groebner, 'Accountancies and arcana: registering the gift in late medieval cities', in: Medieval transformations, 219-43, highlights the intention of the gift, noting that corruption was held to be implicit in secret gifts of whatever substance, the difference between schenck and miet in the German and Swiss cities he has studied. 'Meed' as a corrupt gift was also well recognised in England, for example, in the case of Lady Mede, in Langland's Piers Plowman: Groebner, 'Accountancies and arcana', 234, n. 33.
86. SCLA, Treasurer's account, mem. 4r. For lawyers and food gifts, Heal, 'Food gifts', 63-4.
87. For example, the corporation of Southampton's payments for ale, wine, spices, buns (both white and spiced), and cheese at obit feasts: The Southampton steward's book of 1492-93 and the terrier of 1495, ed. A. Thick (Southampton Records Series 38, Southampton, 1995), 53-7.
88. F. Heal, 'Reciprocity and exchange in the late medieval household', in: Bodies and disciplines. Intersections of literature and history in fifteenth-century England, ed. B.A. Hanawalt and D. Wallace (Minneapolis, 1996), 179-98; E. Kendall, Lordship and literature. John Gower and the politics of the great household (Oxford, 2008), 18, 22-7.