Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/353

 and Senti?nents. o o ^ M'ith the fame welcome. His horfe is taken into a liable, and carefully attended to, while the lady labours to keep him in converlation until fupper is ready, after which a good bed is made for him, and they all retire to rell. The comforts, however, which could be otlered to the vihtor, conhrted often chiefly in eating and drinking. People had few fpare chambers, efpecially furnlihed ones, and, in the fimplicity of mediaeval manners, the guefls were obliged to lleep either in the fame room as the family, or, more ufually, in the hall, where beds were made for them on the floor or on the benches. "Making a bed" was a phrafe true in its literal fenfe, and the bed made confifted ftill of a heap of ftraw, with a Iheet or two thrown over it. The hoft, indeed, could often furnifli no more than a room of bare walls and floor as a protedion from the weather, and the guefl had to rely as much upon his own refources for his perlbnal comforts, as if he had had to pafs the night in the midft of a wild wood. Moreover the guells, however numerous and though flrangers to each other, were commonly obliged to lleep together indilbriminately in the fame room. The old Anglo-Saxon feeling, that the duration of the chance viflt of a ftranger fliould be limited to the third day, feems flill to have prevailed. A Latin rhyme, printed in the "Reliquiae Antiquse" (i. 91), tells us, Venim dixit anus, quod fifcis old triduanus ; Ejus de more fimili fatet hofpes odore. In towns the hofpitality of the burghers was not always given gratis, tor it was a common cuftom, even among the richer merchants, to make a profit by receiving guefts. Thefe letters of lodgings were diftinguilhed from the inn-keepers, or hoftelers, by the title of herl-ergeors, or people who gave harbour to ftrangers, and in the larger towns they were fub- mitted to municipal regulations. The great barons and knights were in the cullom of taking up their lodgings with thefe herbergeors, rather than going to the public hoflels ; and thus a fort of relationlhip was formed between particular nobles or kings and particular burghers, on the ftrength of which the latter adopted the arms of their habitual lodgers as their figns. Thefe herbergeors pradifed great extortions upon their accidental guefts.