{"id":789,"date":"2019-09-18T07:52:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T06:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/?p=789"},"modified":"2020-04-22T17:29:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T16:29:45","slug":"the-simple-act-of-hospitality-the-tudor-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/2019\/09\/18\/the-simple-act-of-hospitality-the-tudor-way\/","title":{"rendered":"The Simple Act of Hospitality the Tudor Way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Summers for me always mean getting together with\nfriends and family for BBQs and picnics. The simple act of hosting a party\ncomes with a range of logistics for the host to manage: buying, cooking, and\nserving food, providing entertainment, ensuring everyone is enjoying\nthemselves, along with more practical tasks such as cleaning communal areas\nthat guests will frequent. The Tudor period did not entail many modern-style\nBBQs in the backyard; however, hosting celebrations was a large part of elite\nculture. Scholars of hospitality in the medieval and early modern periods have\nlong recognized its social and cultural significance. Generosity was a\nChristian value and was expected from those who could afford to provide it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hans Holbein the Younger, ‘Henry VIII dining in the great chamber’ (c. 1548). Photo from the British Museum<\/a>, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hospitality leaves very little trace in architectural remains, so historians must turn to documentary records to investigate how castles were used to host feasts and celebrations. Household Books are one such record that provide a clue into the extravagance and hierarchy of these revels. These documents were created as a sort of \u2018how-to-guide\u2019 for management and maintenance of a large residence. Unsurprisingly, households played a main role in the performance of hospitality and therefore, protocols for dining and hosting are a common feature in these records. King Edward IV\u2019s Liber Niger <\/em>is one of the most used sources for demonstrating the splendour of royal households, and many of the large noble households of the late medieval period take some instruction from the king. For instance, Henry Percy, the fifth earl of Northumberland (1477\u20131527) kept a detailed Household Book <\/em>for the year 1512 in which daily ritual and splendour are of the foremost concerns.[1]<\/a><\/sup> The Northumberland Household Book <\/em>(NHB<\/em>)is specifically for the earl\u2019s main castles of Wressle<\/a> and Leckonfield in Yorkshire.[2]<\/a><\/sup> It gives exact numbers of servants, their role and responsibilities, instructions for dining etiquette, and seeing to the lord and his family. In a theoretical sense, it provides us with an image of the perfectly run noble household. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Wressle Castle by Peter Brears, based on the 2014 survey. See the CST blog ‘Re-imagining Wressle Castle’<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the concerns in the NHB <\/em>is the procedure for eating. It tells us that the earl of\nNorthumberland sat at the high table with his wife, Catherine Spencer, and his\nson and heir, Henry Percy. Northumberland\u2019s other two sons, Thomas and William,\nserved the food for the high table.[3]<\/a><\/sup> The NHB <\/em>continues to list a total of sixteen people to attend the needs\nof the lord and his family, including \u2018the childe of the kechinge that shall\nhelp the saide Yoman or Groome to dresse my Lords Metes and Servyce for the\nHowsehold And to be ath the Revercion\u2019.[4]<\/a><\/sup> After the list of those\nserving the high table, the NHB <\/em>lists\nthe people who should sit at each of the tables in the great chamber and\nsubsequently in the great hall. Controlling where people sat, the food that\nthey ate, and the order of service was one way for a lord to visually display\nand reinforce the social hierarchy on a daily basis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A section from the Portrait of Sir Henry Unton (c. 1558 – 1596), held at the National Portrait Gallery<\/a>, London <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Some days called for special feasts and the NHB <\/em>isolates the principal feasts of the\nyear when the household could expect a \u2018great repaire of Straungers\u2019 arriving\nat the castle. These days include: Easter, St George\u2019s Day, Whitsun, All\nHallows Eve, and Christmas. These celebrations did not just provide food for\nguests, but entertainment as well. For the Twelfth Night celebrations at\nWressle in 1512, the \u2018hoole chappell\u2019 was directed to \u2018sing wassaill\u2019, a carol\ncelebrating the service of the wassail drink at the evening banquet.[5]<\/a><\/sup> On All Souls Day,\nNorthumberland\u2019s chapel performed the \u2018responde callede Exaudivi at the\nMatyns-tyme for xij virgyns\u2019.[6]<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an earlier blog post<\/a> for the CST, Dr Kate Buchanan explored ideas of a social gathering around Christmas time at Huntly Castle and the sensory experience that those present might have experienced. She demonstrates that hosts could \u2013 and oftentimes did \u2013 blend business with pleasure when it came to hospitality. This is definitely the picture from other fifteenth- and sixteenth-century household books. Celebratory periods brought family, peers, political allies, and even tenants together under one roof. Castles facilitated the gathering of a community and it was the space in which relationships could be forged.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hospitality was just one way that castles were used to\npromote and uphold the social hierarchy of Tudor England. We must remember that\nhospitality was not just an act that the host actively placed on the passive\nguest. It was very much a performance with the household servants as many of\nthe main players. Servants prepared and served the food, attended to guests,\nand ensured that everyone adhered to protocol. Castles played a much greater\nrole than being the theatres on which this performance took place. The great\nhall and the household chapel were key areas in the castle that hospitality was\ndispensed. These spaces brought everyone in the castle together for\nentertainment and allowed for interaction of people across the social and\ngender hierarchy. These interactions were of course heavily regulated. Although\ncastles accommodated people from across the social spectrum, they helped to\nensure, through visual cues, the social order of premodern England by promoting\nthe owner\u2019s wealth and status through ritual and display. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you would like to know more my forthcoming book, <\/em>The Culture of Castles in Tudor England and Wales will be available in September 2019 from Boydell Press<\/a>.<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a><\/sup> Henry\nAlgernon Percy, The Regulations and\nEstablishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, the fifth Earl of\nNorthumberland at his Castles of Wressle and Leakenfield in Yorkshire <\/em>(London,\n1905). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a><\/sup> The Castle Studies Trust has funded two projects at Wressle. You can\nexplore the findings here: http:\/\/www.castlestudiestrust.org\/Wressle-Castle.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a><\/sup> The Regulations of the Earl of Northumberland<\/em>,pp. 349-353.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a><\/sup> The Regulations of the Earl of Northumberland<\/em>, p. 351. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a><\/sup> The Regulations of the Earl of Northumberland<\/em>, pp. 342-3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a><\/sup> The Regulations of the Earl of Northumberland<\/em>, pp. 342-3. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summers for me always mean getting together with friends and family for BBQs and picnics. The simple act of hosting a party comes with a range of logistics for the host to manage: buying, cooking, and serving food, providing entertainment, ensuring everyone is enjoying themselves, along with more practical tasks such as cleaning communal areas … Continue reading The Simple Act of Hospitality the Tudor Way<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[46,149,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796,"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions\/796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}