Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/339

 a?id Setitifnents. 319 Great importance was placed in the breeding of horfes in the middle ages. Charlemagne, in the regulations for the adminiftration of his private domains, gives particular dire6tions for the care of his brood-mares and rtallions. Normandy appears to have been famous for its fluds of horfes in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and documents Ihow that the monks took good care rigoroully to exaft the tithes of their produce to ftock the monallic llables. Traces of the exillence of limilar fluds are found alfo in other parts of France. At this time a horfe was confidered the handfomeft prefent that could be made by a king or a great lord, and horfes were often given as bribes. Thus, in 1227, the monks of the abbey of Troarn obtained from Guillaume de Tilli the ratification of a grant made to them by his father in conflderation of a gift to him of a mark of fllver and a palfrey 3 and the monks of St. Evroul, in 1165, purchafed a favour of the Englifli earl of Gloucefter by prefenting to him two palfreys eflimated to be worth twenty pounds of money of Anjou. Kings frequently received horfes as prefents from their fubjefts. The widow of Herbert du Mefnil gave king John of England a palfrey to obtain the wardiliip of her children 5 and one Geotirey Fitz-Richard gave the fame monarch a palfrey for a conceflion in the forefl: of Beaulieu. In 1 1 72, Raimond, count of St. Gilles, having become the vaflal of the king of England, engaged to pay him an annual tribute of a hundred marks of filver, or ten dextriers, worth at leaft ten marks each. The Englifli fluds appear already in the thirteenth century to have become remarkable for their excellence. Travelling, in the middle ages, was aihfled by few, it any, con- veniences, and was dangerous as well as difficult. The infecurity of the roads made it necelTary for travellers to aflbciate together for prote6lion, as well as for company, for their journeys were flow and dull ; and as they were often obliged to halt for the night where there was little or no accommodation, they had to carry a good deal of luggage. An inn was often the place of rendezvous for travellers flarting upon the lame journey. It is thus that Chaucer reprefents himfelf as having taken up his quarters at the Tabard, in Southwark, preparatory to undertaking the journey to Canterbury; and at night there arrived a company of travellers bent to the