"Oure Citee": Illegality and Criminality in Fourteenth-CenturyLondon

Thomas Carney Forkin

Essays in Medieval Studies, Volume 24, 2007, pp. 31-41 (Article)

Published by West Virginia University PressDOI: 10.1353/ems.0.0003

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Chapter 3 “Oure Citee”: Illegality and Criminality in Fourteenth-Century London

Thomas Carney ForkinLady Margaret Hall Oxford University

Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007), 31-41. © Illinois Medieval Association. Published electronically by Project Muse at http://muse.jhu.edu.

Due to unfamiliarity with medieval English law, a modern reader may pass over a bevy of matters concerning legality and illegality in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Late medieval cities, including London, were rife with trade and business, affairs of the royal court, travelers, growing populations gradually recovering from the Black Death and recurrent outbreaks of plague, as well as the presence of countless criminals and reprobates. Through a close reading of the Cook’s Tales and several specimens included in the Tales that provide further description of Roger the Cook, placed alongside contemporary laws and statutes of the period, the modern reader is able to glimpse the more nefarious underworld of Chaucer’s London and how he incorporated the character of the city into his characters.

The description Chaucer provides Roger the Cook in the General Prologue is at first glance rather flattering where the Cook’s culinary abilities are concerned:

He koude rooste, and sethe, and broille, and frye,Maken Mortreux, and wel bake a pye. (I.383-84)1

Chaucer, not content to leave Roger characterized merely as a chef capable of diverse cooking methods, continues his description,

But greet harm was it, as it thoughte me, That on his shyne a mormal hadde he. For blankmanger, that made he with the beste. (I.385-387)

It is this suggestion that forces the reader to question what sanitary standards Roger maintains in his kitchen, if any. The modern reader who understands a mormal as simply a dry-scabbed ulcer; sore; an abscess,2 neglects the innuendo Chaucer has ascribed to Roger by inflicting him with this particular unsightly excrescence. It is

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Lydgate’s use of the mormal that offers the best source of comparison to Chaucer’s. In the Falle of Princes Lydgate writes:

Of glotonie & riotous excesse..Kometh unkouth feveres...Goutes, mormalles, horrible to the siht.3

Lydgate explicitly states that one will become afflicted with feveres, goutes, and mormalles, by living a life of glotonie & riotous excesse. Chaucer expects his au-dience to keep these imbalances of the humours in mind while reading the Cook’s Prologue where a further perspective into the character of Roger is afforded the reader. The Cook exemplifies that some of Chaucer’s most vivid characterization derives not from, as Geoffrey of Vinsauf observed, what is actually said, or in this case written, but what it left unsaid or, more accurately, what is implied.4 Knowing that one becomes afflicted with a mormal through glotonie & riotous excesse, Chau-cer assumed that his audience would take these sins as being implicit characteristics of the Cook. It does not require a great stretch of imagination to envisage Roger dipping grimy hands into dishes intended for customers in order to sate his own gluttonous appetite. There are several legal issues raised by Chaucer’s description of Roger that the modern reader might easily pass over due to unfamiliarity with medieval English law.

Roger is a “Cook of Londoun” (I.4325) and it is assumable, though not ex-plicitly stated, that the shop he keeps is in London. As such, very specific statues regulating the procuring, preparation, and selling of food would govern his trade. The Judicium Pillorie, thought to be a statute passed during the reign of Henry III, and maintained during Chaucer’s lifetime, contains an article that identifies several illegal practices cooks seem often to have engaged in:

Item de Cocis, si qui decoquant carnes vel pisces in pane vel in aqua vel alio modo non sanas corpori hõminis, vel postquam talia tenuerint, ita quod debitam naturam amiserint, ea recalefa-ciant & vendant: vel si quis emat carnes de Judeis, & eas vendat Christianis.5

Item concerning Cooks, if any do seethe flesh or fish with bread or water, or any otherwise, that is not wholesome for Man’s Body, or after that they have kept it so long that it loses its natural wholesomeness, and then seethe it again, and sell it: [or if any do buy flesh of Jews, and then sell it to Christians].6

A sentence to the pillory for a specified period of time would have been the punish-ment for a cook found in violation of the aforesaid. In Statutum de Pistoribus there exists a paragraph specifying the punishment for butchers who sell unwholesome flesh. Note that the last clause of this passage extends the incremental consequences faced by butchers to include cooks:

“Oure Citee”: Illegality and Criminality in Fourteenth-Century London 33

Carnifex qui vendit carnes porcinas supersennuatas, vel carnes de morina, vel emit carnes a Judeis et vendit Christianis, postquam primo covictus fuerit graviter amercietur, secundo convictus paciatur judiciūm Pillorie; tercio incarceretur & redimatur; quarto abjuret villam; & hoc judiciūm fiat de cocis transgredientibus.7

A butcher that selleth swines flesh meazled, or flesh dead of the murrain, or that buyeth flesh of the Jews and selleth the same unto Christians, after he shall be convicted thereof, for the first time, he shall be grievously amerced; the second time he shall suffer judgement of the pillory; and the third time he shall be imprisoned and make fine; and the fourth time he shall forswear the town. And in this manner shall it be done of all that offend in like case.

Certainly, Roger cannot be condemned under any of these laws by the mere speculative and highly circumstantial evidence we might infer from Chaucer’s description of him in the General Prologue. However, it is worth mentioning one final observation of what appears a rather curious repetition by Chaucer, which may further the evidence against Roger.

Chaucer wrote that Roger uses two spices, poudre- marchant tart and gal-yngale, and that he could competently create dishes of mortreux and blankmanger (I.381, 384, 387). Perhaps Chaucer used these dishes because they included in-gredients that might have been quite fascinating and exotic to medieval London-ers―spices. London Lickpenny, an anonymous poem of the early fifteenth century, provides evidence that spices were quite a fascination in London, if not something of a novelty:

One bad me come nere and by some spice;Pepar and saffron they gan me bede,Clove, grayns, and flowre of rise. For lacke of money I might not spede.8

The anonymous narrator lists several other items one would find on offer in a typical London market—including his own stolen hood—giving the modern reader another perspective into the London underworld. It is tempting to suppose that Chaucer does not couple the Cook with the potent and exotic spices to demon-strate Roger’s refined tastes or his fascination for imports, but that he uses spices to mask bland, or simply bad, flavour and the multifarious bad odours emanating from the food in his shop and, also, the odours produced by his mormal, the mormal being gangrenous rather than cancerous.9 Much of this is speculative, but when this evidence is considered in light of the Cook’s Prologue, the material above examin-ing the mormal and Roger’s use of spices will demonstrate that Chaucer intended the audience to view his Cook as being entirely inviolate of the laws and statutes governing sanitary and ethical business practice. At the very least, one can with

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reasonable surety acknowledge that Chaucer has afflicted Roger with the mormal in order to note the Cook’s penchant towards self-indulgence, especially gluttony. Even if one maintains that Chaucer intends to compliment Roger by listing numer-ous cooking terms to impress the audience, then it still may be shown that Roger, like the outwardly appealing yet inwardly putrid pasties he sells, is at his core a licentiate as is revealed by the Host who says in the Manciple’s Prologue:

See how he nappeth! See how, for cokkes bones,That he wol falle fro his hors atones! Is that a cook of Londound, with meschaunce? (IX.9-11).

A few lines later (IX.31-45) the Manciple cites Roger for drunkenness and the cook then falls from his horse [IX (H) 48]. However, to justly make such accusations of illegal business practices and drunkenness against Roger it would do well to present several further specimens of evidence.

In the Cook’s Prologue, Harry Bailly makes some poignant accusations against Roger:

For many a pastee hastow laten blood,And many a Jakke of Dovere hastow sooldThat hath been twies hoot and twies coold.Of many a pilgrym hastow Cristes curs,For of thy percely yet they fare the wors,That they han eten with thy stubbel goos,For in thy shoppe is many a flye loos. (I .4346-52)

A cursory reading of these lines may lend support to what is frequently described as jocund or lighthearted dialogue. Yet, does awareness of the statutes quoted above change one’s perception of the ‘humour’ in a character who would sell stale meats and fishes to unsuspecting Londoners (though one may speculate that London-ers were in fact quite suspicious of the many city cooks)? In this practice, Roger might be any cook of fourteenth-century London. Ordinances show that medieval cook-shops were oft cited for serving foods unfit for consumption.10 However, Roger’s foisting of stale and tainted food upon his London customers cannot be viewed as simply another element contributing to comedic one-dimensionality. Such an interpretation neglects recognition of Chaucer’s genius for observance of London life and her inhabitants and the actual ways in which the city functioned. That Chaucer knew the court, diplomats, barristers, and had personal involvement with the King’s Bench is undeniable and, with a view to such an understanding of Chaucer within his own context, one can assume that when Chaucer describes his Cook as violating various statutes and ordinances he assumes that his audience possesses at least a cursory familiarity with the laws and punishments against such behaviour. An ordinance dating from 1379, during the reign of Richard II, captures a stratum that is lost to many modern readers when they read about Roger the Cook

“Oure Citee”: Illegality and Criminality in Fourteenth-Century London 35

in the Canterbury Tales. The ordinance reads:

Because that the pastelers (pastie/pie bakers) of the city of Lon-don have heretofore baked in pasties—rabbits, geese, and gar-bage (entrails)11, not befitting and sometimes stinking, in deceit of the people, and also have baked beef in pasties and sold the same for venison, in deceit of the people; therefore, by assent of the four master pastelers and at their prayer, it is ordered and assented to.—

In the first place—that no one of the said trade shall bake rabbits in pasties for sale, on pain of paying, the first time, if found guilty thereof, 6s. 8d., to the use of the Chamber and of going bodily to prison, at the will of the Mayor; the second time, 13s. 4d. to the use of the Chamber, and of going etc.; and the third time, 20s. to the use of the Chamber, and of going etc.12

This ordinance presents the modern reader with a specimen of the legal, or rather illegal, London Chaucer would have known. It also demonstrates that the unethical actions of London’s cooks were endemic; an ordinance such as this would not be passed due to the foul actions of one or two rogue cooks. The Pardoner, a rascal himself, expresses the same disenchantment one senses in the aforementioned ordinance:

Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grynde, And turnen substaunce into accidentTo fulfille al thy likerous talent! (VI.538-540)13

These statutes, ordinances, and passages all serve as powerful evidence to the grave problem of sanitary food control faced by medieval Londoners; a problem that David Wallace classified as “a common practice that warranted civic attention.”14

Based on the information presented above, one can assume that a significant number of “criminal cooks” thrived in London, daily violating the victual laws. “Fishmongers, tanners, poulterers, cooks, etc., are fined wholesale year after year for breaking every by-law that concerned their business”. 15 It may be tempting for the modern reader to write off laws and ordinances concerning victuals as being nearly unenforceable and assume that offenders went unpunished, but the London Letter Books record quite a different story. The following is a unique record describing the detection, summoning, judgment, and punishment of one John Welburgham who was, like Roger, a cook. The record is a vivid testament deserving nearly full citation:

On the eighth day of May [1382], after dinner...[five citizens] of the county of Somerset came before the Mayor, sheriffs, and certain of the alderman [of London] and showed to them two

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pieces of cooked fish commonly called ‘congre’, rotten and stinking, and unwholesome for man, which they had bought of John Welburgham, a cook in Bredstret, at noon on the same day; and which the said cook warranted to them to be good and wholesome for man, and not putrid.

And hereupon the said John Welburgham was immediately sent for, and, being questioned thereon, he said that he did sell to the said complainants the said fish so cooked, and that he warranted it unto them as being good and wholesome, and still did war-rant it; and this he demanded to be proved in such manner as the Court should think proper etc. Whereupon, the said Mayor caused to be summoned [twelve] reputable men...neighbours of the said cook...who said upon their oath, that the said pieces of fish were rotten, stinking, and unwholesome for man. Wherefore it was awarded, that the said John Welburgham should repay to the said complainants six pence, which he acknowledged he had received for the fish aforesaid; and that he should also have the punishment of the pillory for one hour of the day, and that the said fish should then be burnt beneath him.16

An example as such puts into perspective the humor that is so often attributed to Chaucer’s description of Roger the Cook and makes the modern reader realize that Chaucer, having seen persons chained or tied to the pillory for such offenses as Welburgham’s rotten fish, assumed that his audience would know the consequences for Roger’s breaches of the victual laws. Still, the neat problem of whether or not Roger actually did sell unwholesome foodstuffs remains.

Muriel Bowden was of the opinion that a modern audience is able to safely distance itself from the “offensive person and decaying foods” of Roger, that one can be “fascinated by the reality of a vivid portrait,” and David Wallace feels that Harry Bailly is merely joking at the Cook’s expense when he accuses him of selling inferior and stale pies.17 Would Chaucer’s audience, not a modern audience, have been “fascinated” and amused by Roger or, knowing full well the laws governing medieval London, would the reality of the portrait have led to the conclusion that Roger de Ware of London, Cook, was a drunkard and libertine who hazarded poi-soning Londoners for the sake of profit and deserved strict punishment under the arm of the law?18 Would the portrayal have been a vivid and humorous caricature or might it have been a slightly too accurate reflection of one of the constituting members of London’s underworld, a member many Londoners were forced to deal with on a daily basis? I suspect the latter of these two possibilities. Finally, a conclusion is imperative as to whether or not Roger was indubitably guilty of breeching any of the laws concerned with victuals.

In this instance, unlike so many others, the audience is fortunate to be told how the dialogue and accusations between Roger and Harry are to be understood,

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as truth. Harry says to Roger:

But yet I pray thee, be nat wroth for game;A man may seye ful sooth in game and pley. (I.4354-55)

The counter:“Thou seist ful sooth,” quod Roger, “by my fey! But ‘sooth pley, quaad pley,’ as the Flemyng seith. (I.4353-57)19

Though Harry might have cast his aspersions at Roger in jest, one must acknowl-edge that the Cook himself has unwittingly confessed culpability for his breaches of the victual laws. When Roger says to Harry “Thou seist ful sooth,” is he citing the truthfulness of the Host’s quip that “A man may seye ful sooth in game and pley,” or is he saying that all Harry has said about his less than appetizing cooking is true? Based on the sequential nature of the dialogue it seems that Roger is only agreeing with Harry in that “A man may seye ful sooth in game and play,” he is merely acknowledging the validity of the adage. However, Roger has, on a linguistic technicality, admitted culpability for the crimes Harry accuses him of perpetrating (I.4346-52). When Roger admits that Harry’s comment is said “ful sooth” he is not only saying that the wisdom of the adage is true; he also acknowledges that what the adage is in defense of is true. In essence, Harry has acted the part of a prosecuting lawyer and tricked Roger into admitting his guilt. Harry is by no means attempting an apology. He has, however, demonstrated marked rhetorical ability. These four lines have long been held as a dialogue in which Harry was acting as peacekeeper, much in line with his role of host and judge, a role he was probably quite practiced in as a taverner and innkeeper.20

However, the “playing” has ended poorly for Roger. If Harry has said “ful sooth,” as Roger stated, then even though the accusations were “in game and pley,” they were nonetheless truthful—and Roger has unwittingly admitted his guilt. Recognition that this citizen and “master” cook of London is, by self-admission, a scalawag chef is an interesting end of the Cook’s Prologue and an apropos transi-tion introducing Perkyn Revelour, that “compeer” who “lovede dys, and revel, and disport” (I.4419-20). As the worthy victualler whom Perkyn was in the service of is not an accurate reflection of Roger, perhaps the story, or fragment of a story, of the young reprobate is a bit autobiographical; it would certainly be a fitting prequel to Roger’s later years.

Chaucer’s expository lines introducing Perkyn Revelour identify him as “A prentys” who dwells, or dwelled at some point, “in oure citee” (I.4365). From only five or six words a medieval audience would have added a contextual richness that a modern audience can only grasp at. For one, a medieval Londoner would, without even thinking, know that an apprenticeship lasted seven years during which the apprentice had to live up to certain codes of conduct and regulation and, at the termination of which he would become a master of his craft or trade. The Cham-berlain’s Devout Instructions to Apprentices (c.1450), included such expectations

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as serving God, being “diligent and faithful in a master’s service during the tenure of apprenticeship,” reading the covenants of indenture, avoiding all evil company and “all manner of gaming, cursing, swearing, and drunkenness,” amongst several other specificities.21 A juxtaposition of the scant fifty-eight lines of the Cook’s Tale with the document just quoted show the reader that Perkyn Revelour went beyond the boundaries of mere reveling. As John Scattergood has observed:

Perkyn Revelour corresponds both in his highly significant sur-name and in his character as an identifiable literary type. The habits attributed to him―his love of taverns, his preference for dancing and singing to work, his dicing, his womanizing, the poverty which causes him to resort to theft and his consequent suffering at the hands of the law―all mark him out as the typical dissipated urban wastrel.22

Chaucer’s use of a London apprentice, particularly one who shirks the duties of apprenticeship in favor of being a “dissipated urban wastrel,” is a potentially charged insight into those entering regulated professions during the fourteenth century. Roger the Cook demonstrates that a fully-fledged master victualler, a cook, can and did fall, figuratively and literally, far short of the expectations set by the various statutes and ordinances governing the profession. Perkyn Revelour was for a time an apprentice to a victualler, “And of a craft of vitailliers was hee” (I.4366). That Chaucer is calling attention to a craft that repeatedly flaunted numer-ous London statutes may be evinced in the Host’s enquiry to the Cook when his state of inebriation is detected in the Manciple’s Prologue, which contains a decided note of sarcasm: “Is that cook of Londoun, with meschaunce?” (IX.11). It would be rather contrary to what had previously been established as the Host’s contempt for London cooks, especially Roger, if this question were taken as anything but sarcastic. Indeed, it seems that Harry Bailly is probably used to observing drunken crowds, which likely included many cooks and apprentices.

Perkyn’s crimes and misdemeanors, several of which have been identified above, merit specific consequence under fourteenth-century English law. John Scattergood has observed, quite rightly, that Chaucer constructs “a character who breaks every precept, who resists being incorporated into the city ethos and uses what opportunities his lifestyle affords him for personal pleasures of an immoral and sometimes criminal sort.”23

For now it is sufficient to say that the Cook’s Tale and its protagonist, Perkyn Revelour, further contribute, indeed more than any other tale, to revealing Chaucer’s consciousness of London’s underworld and of her inhabitants. Chaucer’s all too acute eye for observation was focused not only on the pomp and circumstance of court and clergy, but also on the underlings, tramps, and rascals so often overlooked in history books.

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Notes

1 All citations to Chaucer are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd. ed. (Boston, 1987).

2 See entry “mormal” in Middle English Dictionary, ed. Robert E. Lewis and Sherman M. Kuhn (Ann Arbor, 1956-) p. 686.

3 Quoted in Middle English Dictionary, p. 686. Falle of Princes, 7.1255.4 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova, ed. & trans. Margaret Finims (Toronto,

1967), pp.46-47. See the whole of Geoffrey’s section titled “Ordering the Material,” which, throughout, touches upon this idea of “revealing through concealing.”

5 Statutes of the Realm, ed. A. Luders, vol I (London, 1810), p. 202. 6 Translation mine. 7 Statues, p. 203.8 “London Lickpenny” in Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries,

ed. Rossell Hope Robbins (New York, 1959), no. 50. 9 Riverside Chaucer includes a note that a mormal was probably gangrenous

rather than cancerous, p.814. As is commonly known, a gangrenous wound can produce most intolerable odours. The Middle English Dictionary also cites a passage from Chauliac attesting to the fetid odour of the mormal: “The mormale or dede apple..is generally cured as the scabbe..when that it is noght elles but a stynkynge and drye scabbe” (p. 686).

10 Muriel Bowden, A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales 2nd ed. (New York, 1967), p. 188.

11 In Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Cen-turies, ed. & trans. Henry Thomas Riley (London, 1868), Riley notes that: “Giblets are probably included under this uninviting term” (p. 438).

12 Riley, Memorials of London and London Life, p. 438 (referring to London Letter-Book H, fol. cxvi). The ordinance continues by stating: “Also, that no one of the said trade shall buy of any cook of Bread Street or at the hostels of the great lords, of the cooks of such lords, any garbage from capons, hens, or geese to bake in pasty and sell, under the same penalty. Also, that no one shall bake beef in a pasty for sale and sell it as venison, under the same penalty. Also, that no one of the said trade shall bake either whole geese in a pasty, halves of geese, or quarters of geese for sale, on the pain aforesaid” (p. 438).

13 The Pardoner, speaking from a religious frame of reference, is not only dispar-aging cooks, but has also furthered the insult by making a derogatory analogy to transubstantiation. According to traditional beliefs on the sacrament of the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ (the substance) became the communion during transubstantiation (the accident). Thus, like the Eucharist, cooks’ dishes

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come about by “accident,” not through the skill of the practitioner. 14 Wallace, “Chaucer and the Absent City,” Chaucer’s England: Literature in

Historical Context, ed. Barbara Hanawalt (Minneapolis, 1992), p. 70.15 G.G. Coulton, Chaucer and His England (London, 1963), p. 114. 16 Riley, Memorials of London and London Life, p. 464 (citing London Letter-

Book H, fol. cxlv). Several other cases demonstrate that not only were the crimes of characters such as Roger the Cook a problem for London, but also that perpetrators were given due justice: In 1364, John Penrose was convicted of selling wine which was “unsound and unwholesome for man,” and was duly forced to drink a draught of the same and have the remainder poured on his head (Riley, Memorials, pp. 318-319 [citing London Letter-Book G, fol. cxli]). In 1387, Robert Porter was convicted for inserting a piece of iron in a penny loaf of bread, intending to make the bread weigh more, was put in the pillory for an hour and the loaf and iron were hung about his head, the reason for his punishment being publicly proclaimed (Riley, Memorials, p. 498 [cit-ing London Letter-Book H, fol. ccxxiv]). In 1364, a woman named Alice, wife of Robert de Caustone, was convicted of selling ale in a quart measure in the bottom of which was placed an inch and a half of pitch, so that six of the said ‘fixed’ quarts would not make one proper gallon of ale. Alice was also forced to undergo the punishment of the pillory, to which was tied in the sight of the common people one half of the same false measure (Riley, Memorials, p. 319 [citing London Letter-Book G, fol. cxxxvii]).

17 Bowden, A Commentary on the General Prologue, p. 189. Wallace, “Chaucer and the Absent City,” p. 70.

18 For information on the regulation of prices for all persons involved in the selling of victuals, see: Statutes of the Realm, vol. I, pp. 307-308 Anno 23 Edwardi. III. (1349); see especially Article VI, which regulates the selling of victuals at reasonable prices and the penalties for selling otherwise.

19 Damaging Roger’s reputation further is the suggestion that his knowledge of the Flemish proverb might have been the result of frequenting brothels; Flemish women are commonly cited as having partaken of this occupation. G.G. Coulton observed that: “The fact that the Cook knows some Flemish, then, does not mean that he is a friend of Flemings. He might, of course, have learned the language in a brothel, since many London prostitutes were of Flemish origin.” Coulton, Chaucer and his England, p. 71.

20 For an excellent discussion of the medieval innkeeper as mediator in quar-rels, arguments, etc., see: Barbara A. Hanawalt, “The Host, the Law and the Ambiguous Space of Medieval London Taverns,” Medieval Crime and Social Control, eds. Barbara Hanawalt & David Wallace, pp. 204-24; see especially pp. 217-19.

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21 John Scattergood, “The Cook’s Tale,” Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, vol.I, (Cambridge, 2003), p. 84.

22 John Scattergood, “Perkyn Revelour and the Cook’s Tale,” Chaucer Review 19 (1984): 14-23; rprt. Reading the Past: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. John Scattergood (Dublin, 1996), p. 190.

23 Scattergood, “Perkyn,” Reading, p. 185.