23o EVERYDAY LIFE
from nettles. Spinning-wheels, distaffs, and needles were never idle.
Home-made cloth and linen supplied all wants. Flaxen linen for
board-cloths, sheets, shirts, smocks or shirts, and towels, as the nap-
kins were called, on which, before the introduction of forks, the hands
were wiped, was only found in wealthy households and on special
occasions. Hemp, in ordinary households, supplied the same necessary
articles, and others, such as candle-wicks, in coarser form. Shoe-
threads, halters, stirrup-thongs, girths, bridles, and ropes were woven
from the "carle" hemp; the finer kind, or "finable" hemp supplied
the coarse linen for domestic use, and "hempen homespun" passed
into a proverb for a countryman.1
The fragile nature of the houses has already been mentioned,
and hence we need feel no surprise at finding constant references
to "ruinous and dilapidated cots" in the Court Rolls and else-
where. It was obviously against the lord's interests that houses
should be like this, and therefore tenants were generally ordered
to repair their houses within a given time,2 and sometimes a
stake was driven in before their door as a reminder of this.3 If a
cottage was in so " feeble'' a condition that it required repair by an
incoming tenant, his rent would be reduced for the time being,4 or
he would be allowed timber to help him to put it in order again.5
Even when in good repair, however, such fragile buildings had
their drawbacks, as is brought home to us when we read that
thieves broke in indifferently through the walls or the doors; or
that a man was killed at his own fireside by a spear thrust in
through the side of the house.6 Once such houses fell into dis-
repair it only needed a few violent storms and a winter or two to
bring them crashing to the ground.7
Undoubtedly the greatest incentive to the peasant to keep his
house in repair was a generous allowance of timber from the
lord's woods and forests, and this was appreciated by many
1 Lord Ernie, English Farming, Past and Present (second ed.), 29. Cf. the
account given in The Countryman, July 1935, p. 356, of the way the Austrian
peasants still live an almost self-supporting life in the villages of the Salz-
kammergut.
2 Abbots Langley, f. 37 r., 37 v.; Wilts. Arch. Mag. v, 74.
8 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxn, 294.
4 Durham Halmote Rolls, 21; Thoresby Soc. xv, 157.
5 Sussex Rec. Soc. xxi, 83; Davenport, op. cit. 32; Durham Halmote Rolls,
xrx.
6 Selden Soc. i. 3. Cf. Cathottcon, where "howse breker" is translated
"apercularius ".
7 Wakefield Court Rolls, i, 274.