Food consumption in English towns and cities, 14th-15th centuries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21847/1728-9343.2016.2(142).67698Keywords:
urban history, Late Middle Ages, Alltagsgeschichte, food, consumption, gluttonyAbstract
This article deals with nutrition of English town and city dwellers in 14th and 15th centuries. The author argues that nutrition regime was heavily regulated by both secular and religious (e.g., during fasts) authorities. Overall, food served as yet another indicator of one's position in the social hierarchy; for this reason it was included in the so called "sumptuary laws" as well as clothing; conspicuous consumption, especially during festivities and celebrations, was also quite widespread. The town and city dwellers remained dependent on the harvest in the countryside (as the Great Famine of 1315-7) testifies. However, the general tendency pointed towards the more assorted and diversified choice of food. The main staples remained bread and ale, but the choice could be substantially augmented by fish, vegetables and fruits (often grown in the gardens and orchards within the city), sometimes poaching. Three meals a day became a norm during this period. The wealthy segment of population could also count on imported wine and exquisite poultry, while the poorest often had to rely on handouts. Additionally, it was possible to improve the flavor of the dishes with spices which became much more popular during late medieval period. The consumption of food, in the opinion of medieval Englishmen, should not be excessive because overeating leads to the mortal sin of gluttony. It became customary to have three meals a day.
In general, the peculiarities of late medieval English situation merit further research, with close attention paid to the attitudes towards consumption.References
Watts S. (2012), Food and the Annales School, in Jeffrey M. Pilcher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Food History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 3-18 (engl).
Mennel S. (1985), All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 380 p. (engl).
Brears P. (2012), Cooking and Dining in Medieval England, Prospect Books, Blackawton, 557 p. (engl).
Henisch B. (2009), The Medieval Cook, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 245 p. (engl).
Newman P. B. (2001), Daily Life in the Middle Ages, McFarland, London, 300 p. (engl).
Quennell M., Quennell C. H. B. (2002), Everyday life in England 1066-1499, inQuennell M, Quennell C. H. B., Everyday life in Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Normantimes, Evraziia, Moscow, pp. 125-352 (rus).
Riley H. T. (ed.) (1868), Memorials of London and London life, in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries: being a series of extracts, local, social, and political, from the early archives of the city of London: A.D. 1276-1419, Longmans Green, London, 784 p. (engl).
Book Four (1389-1400) (1978), in Brereton G. (ed.), Chronicles of Jean Froissart, Penguin Books, London, 496 p. (engl).
Langland W. (1941), William'sVisionofPiersPlowman, Institute of History of Academy of Sciences of Soviet Union, Moscow-Leningrad, 275 p. (rus).
Sneyd C. A. (trans.) (1847), A Relation, or Rather a True Account, Of the Island of England, Camden Society, London, 131 p. (engl).
Rawcliffe C. (2012), Sources for the study of public health in the medieval city, in Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe, Routledge, London, pp. 177-195 (engl).
Ellis H. (ed.), Three books of Polydore Vergil's English history, comprising the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III from an early translation, preserved among the mss. of the old royal library in the British museum, Camden Society, London, 1845, 244 p. (engl).
McLean T. (2014), Medieval English Gardens, Dover Publications, New York, 320 p. (engl).
Utterström G. (1988), Climatic Fluctuation and Population Problems in Early Modern History, in Worster D. (ed.), The Ends of The World: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 39-79 (engl).
Hinton D. (1990), Archaeology, Economy and Society: England from the Fifth to the Fifteenth century, Routledge, London-New York, 245 p. (engl).
The Assizes of Bread, Beer, & Lucrum Pistoris, in Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Fordham University, available at: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/breadbeer.htm (engl).
The Life of Edward the Second by the So-called Monk of Malmesbury (2008), in Amt E. (ed.), Medieval England 1000-1500: A Reader, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp. 306-307 (engl).
Riley H. T. (ed.) (1854), Ingulph’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland with continuations by Peter of Blois and anonymous writers, Henry G. Bohn, 1854, 546 p. (engl).
James M. Dean (ed.) (1996), Symonye and Covetise, or On the Evil Times of Edward II, in Medieval English Political Writings, Medieval Institute Publications, Kalamazoo, available at: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/simonfrm.htm (engl).
The Landof Cockayne(2010), in Treharne E. (ed.), Old And Middle English. An Anthology, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, pp. 545-549 (engl).
Baldwin F. E. (1923), Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England. A Dissertation, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 282 p. (engl).
Wyatt A. J. (trans.) (1889), The Ayenbite of Inwit, W.B. Clive&Co, London, 46 p. (engl).
The Lytylle Childrenes Lytil Boke, or Edyllysbe (1868), in Furnivall F. J. (ed.), Early English Meals and Manners, Early English Texts Society, London, p. 265 (engl).
Rules for the conduct of the masons at York Minster, 1370 (1996), in Myers A. R. (ed.), English Historical Documents, Vol. IV: 1327-1485, Routledge, London, p. 1204 (engl).
Chaucer G. (1946), Canterbury Tales, OGIZ, Moscow, 508 p. (rus).
Borough ordinances of Leicester, 1467 (1996), in Myers A. R. (ed.), English Historical Documents, Vol. IV: 1327-1485, Routledge, London, p. 575 (engl).
Unlawful nets condemned to be burnt (1329) (2008), in Amt E. (ed.), Medieval England 1000-1500: A Reader, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp. 322-323 (engl).
Dresvina Yu. (trans.) (2010), Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, Russkiy fond sodeystviya obrazovaniyu i nauke, Moscow, 560 p. (rus).
29. Harvey J. H. (ed.) (1969), Itineraries of William Worcester; edited from the unique MS. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 210, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 480 p. (engl). 30. Dyer C. (2000), The Consumption of Freshwater Fish in Medieval England, in Dyer C., Everyday Life in Medieval England, Hambledon andLondon, London, pp. 101-111 (engl).
Laughton J. (2008), Life in a Late Medieval City: Chester 1275-1520, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 260 p. (engl).
Trevelyan G. M. (2007), English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries: Chaucer to Queen Victoria, Rusich, Smolensk, 624 p. (rus).
Hours of the Blessed Virgin (15th century) (2011), in Collette C.P., Garrett-Goodyear H. (eds.), The Later Middle Ages: A Sourcebook, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2011, pp. 77-82 (engl).
Margaret Paston to John Paston III (1471, 5 November) (2008), in Davis N. (ed.), The Paston Letters: A Selection in Modern Spelling, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 203 (engl).
Hanham A. (1985), The Celys and Their World: An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 487 p. (engl).
Laurioux B. (1983), De l'usage des épices dans l'alimentation médiévale, in Médiévales, Vol. 5: Nourritures, pp. 15-31 (french).
An action of debt in a town court, 1464 (1996), in Myers A. R. (ed.), English Historical Documents, Vol. IV: 1327-1485, Routledge, London, p. 573 (engl).
The Offences of Cooks, 1475 (1996), in Myers A. R. (ed.), English Historical Documents, Vol. IV: 1327-1485, Routledge, London, p. 1121 (engl).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2016 Oleksii Cherednichenko
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
1. Authors bear responsibility for the accuracy of facts, quotations, numbers and names used.
2. Manuscripts are not sent back.
3. The publisher does not always agree with the authors' opinion.
4. The authors reserve the right to authorship of the work and pass the first publication right of this work to the journal under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which allows others to freely distribute the published research with the obligatory reference to the authors of the original work and the first publication of the work in this journal.
5. The authors have the right to conclude separate supplement agreements that relate to non-exclusive work distribution in the form in which it has been published by the journal (for example, to upload the work to the online storage of the journal or publish it as part of a monograph), provided that the reference to the first publication of the work in this journal is included.
