The Field of Cloth of Gold by Glenn Richardson

Author:Glenn Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300181654
Publisher: Yale University Press (Ignition)

Made from malt and water, without hops for flavouring, ale was partly supplied through London. The physician Andrew Boorde called it the ‘natural drink’ for Englishmen and no fewer than 48 tuns of ale were purchased through the capital. Brewing was also an important business in Calais, not least because of the large garrison there. In the south-west corner of the town was Bullen Well, a conduit whose water was used chiefly in brewing ale and beer, and more supplies would doubtless have come from the town. Beers were brewed in different strengths and the malt would be used several times. ‘Best beer’ was brewed with the first use of the malt, ‘small beer’ with the third. The latter is what servants (and children) commonly drank. It was very weak and not infrequently rather bitter – but safer than water. Ale did not keep well and had to be brewed fairly shortly before drinking.

With about 6,000 people to supply, a special brewing house was also established in a rented property at ‘Medelweye’ for thirteen weeks at 40s. rent. This hamlet is shown as ‘the medelve’ or ‘middle way’ on a survey map of the Pale of Calais made by a German surveyor in 1540 who labelled its features phonetically. It lay just east of the town along the road to Guînes and, together with the nearby hamlet of St Peter's, served as a storage and preparation area for a number of household departments. It is likely that ‘Middle Way’ is also the ‘Medelham’ noted in the accounts where one Jane Whitefield had a mill where wheat was ground for use by the bakery and perhaps for the buttery as well. The stream flowing through the hamlet powered the mill, supplied water for brewing and for the livestock and poultry penned nearby.8

At the highest social level of sixteenth-century society, that of the great nobles and the monarch, hospitality was a vital aspect of the noble virtue of ‘liberality’ or ‘magnificence’. Both these terms were used very precisely in the period, to encapsulate a range of qualities also summed up as ‘good lordship’. A monarch was expected to show ‘largesse’, which implied the giving of rewards without apparent expectation of return, immediate or otherwise. In England in particular, but in France too, hospitality was very consciously linked to the maintenance of the social hierarchy and order. Hence the elaborate concern for precedence in seating arrangements for dining at court feasts or public festivals.9

The kings offered hospitality mutually and reciprocally, according to a strict protocol of visits, in order to maintain a careful balance of honour between them. Neither king could be allowed to offer, or receive, from the other greater or lesser hospitality than he himself provided. It also meant that one could not directly upstage the other by the standard of feasting he offered, nor was there any intimation that in accepting food from each other, either acknowledged the other's ‘good lordship’ over him.10 This was particularly important because Henry's formal title still made a claim for him as ‘king of France’.

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