Medieval Table Manners: How People Ate in a Great Hall

The books that taught good manners

Most of what we know about behavior at a medieval English table comes from courtesy books, short works written to train the young people who served in great households. In 1868 Frederick Furnivall gathered the main English ones for the Early English Text Society.

None can be pinned to the year 1420, but several sit close to it. Stans Puer ad Mensam, attributed to the poet John Lydgate, survives in a manuscript of about 1430. John Russell describes himself as usher and marshal to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the same duke who, according to Holinshed, oversaw Queen Catherine's coronation banquet; Furnivall dated his Boke of Nurture to the middle of the century. The Boke of Curtasye and The Babees Book survive in manuscripts of about 1460 and 1475.

Finding your seat

The Boke of Curtasye walks a visitor into the hall step by step. He takes off his hood and gloves at the hall door, greets the steward at the dais, and then waits by the screen until the marshal or usher leads him to a table.

Seating was the marshal's business, and Russell insists that a marshal must know the rank of everyone in church and state. He gives the order from the pope, emperor and king downward, and then says who may eat with whom: a bishop with an earl, a knight with a dean or an archdeacon, and merchants, gentlemen and gentlewomen at a squire's table.

Sharing a mess

Diners were served in messes. The word covers both a serving of food and the small group that shared it. Russell ties the size of the group to rank: two or three to a mess for a baron, a mitred abbot or the mayor of London, three or four for those equal to a knight, and four for those equal to a squire.

Sharing explains much of the etiquette. Stans Puer warns against keeping the best morsel for yourself. The Babees Book says that good food sent to you should be shared with strangers at your table. The Boke of Curtasye asks for clean nails, so that your companion is not put off his dinner.

Washing hands

Hand washing was a ceremony performed where everyone could see it. In For to Serve a Lord, a serving guide from around 1500, the chief servants stand ready with basins, ewers and a towel until grace has been said. Water goes first to the lord, with two servants holding the towel, and then to those who sit at his mess. The Babees Book tells diners to keep their seats at the end of the meal until they have washed again.

In a great lord's hall the ritual could be elaborate. The Boke of Curtasye has the water tasted from a cup of white wood before two knights hold the towel in front of the lord's sleeves. A National Geographic history feature describes the ornate pitchers called aquamaniles that held warm, scented water for the purpose.

Trenchers, knives and spoons

In place of a plate, each diner had a trencher, a square slice of bread. The Boke of Kervynge, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, wants trencher bread four days old. Russell lays four trenchers in a square with one on top for his lord, and For to Serve a Lord gives four to the principal person, three to the next, and three or two to the rest according to degree.

The Babees Book tells its readers to keep a knife clean and sharp for cutting their own food, to cut bread instead of breaking it, and never to carry food to the mouth on the blade. Pottage was eaten with a spoon, quietly, and the spoon was not left in the dish.

The texts do not mention table forks. Furnivall held that forks were not introduced into England until the time of the traveler Coryat, whose book of 1611 described the Italian habit of using a little fork as a custom he had seen nowhere else. Fingers did the work, and neatly: Russell's carver cuts each piece small enough for the lord to lift with two fingers and dip in his sauce without soiling the cloth.

The carver, the sewer and the cupbearer

Serving at table was skilled and honorable work. Russell's carver may set no more than two fingers and a thumb on the meat he is carving. The sewer brings the dishes from the kitchen and sets them on the lord's table. In the Boke of Curtasye he also tastes each dish, which is kept covered on its way through the hall for fear of treason, while the butler tastes the wine.

At the grandest feasts these offices went to men of rank. At Queen Catherine's coronation banquet, Holinshed lists a carver, a cupbearer, a sewer, a pantler, a butler, a naperer and an almoner, and gives each office to a named lord, knight or earl's brother. The almoner had a dish of his own. In the Boke of Curtasye a loaf goes into it first, the carver adds a piece of everything he serves, and the broken food and leftover drink are kept for poor men at the gate.

Two popular beliefs, checked

Medieval diners are often pictured tossing bones over their shoulders, and trenchers are often said to have gone to the poor after every meal. The period texts give a more careful picture.

• Bones on the floor: The Lytylle Childrenes Lytil Boke, of about 1480, tells children not to cast bones onto the floor but to lay them on the trencher. The rule suggests that some people did it, and also that it was bad manners.
• Trenchers for the poor: giving food to the poor was a real duty with its own officer and dish. In the texts read for this page, however, used trenchers are swept into a container called a voider with the broken bread, and nothing says that they in particular were handed out.

A place at the table today

Guests at the St. Nicholas Day Feast at Yuletide Medieval Festival sit down to five courses with King Henry V and St. Nicholas of Myra presiding. The old advice still holds up well: arrive with clean hands, share what is passed to you, and do not talk with your mouth full.

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