also when you give a general order to every one, each will wait for the other to do it, and it is the same.’  Not only is the work of the servants to be carefully superintended by the mistress and by Dame Agnes, ’who is with you’, the Menagier tells his wife, ’in order to teach you wise and ripe behaviour and to serve and instruct you and to whom in particular I give the charge of this matter’, but she is to show herself careful and benevolent in looking after their health and happiness.  At the proper hour she is to cause them to sit down before a hearty meal of one sort of meat, avoiding rich viands, and one kind of drink, which must be nourishing but not intoxicating—­’the cup that cheers but not inebriates’; probably in this case the light ale which was the habitual drink of the Middle Ages.  She is to admonish them to eat and drink their fill, but

as soon as they begin to tell stories, or to argue, or to lean on their elbows, order the beguine to make them rise and take away their table, for the common folk have a saying ’when a varlet holds forth at table and a horse grazes in the ditch, it is time to take them away, for they have had their fill.’

In the evening, after their afternoon’s work, they are to have another hearty meal, and then in winter time they may warm themselves at the fire and take their ease.  Then she is to lock up the house and pack them all off to bed.

And arrange first that each have beside his bed a candlestick in which to put his candle, and have them wisely taught to extinguish it with the mouth or hand before getting into bed and by no means with their shirts.  And also have them admonished and taught each and all, that they must begin again the next day and that they must rise in the morning and each set to upon his own work.

The Menagier further advises his wife that chambermaids of fifteen to twenty years of age are foolish girls who do not know the world, and that she should always cause them to sleep near her in an antechamber, or a room without a skylight or a low window looking on to the street, and should make them get up and go to bed at the same time as herself.  ‘And you yourself,’ he adds, ’who, if God please, will be wise by this time, must keep them near to you.’  Moreover, if any of her servants fall ill, ’do you yourself, laying aside all other cares, very lovingly and charitably care for him or her, and visit him and study diligently how to bring about his cure’.[16]

But it is perhaps in his capacity as Mrs Beeton that the Menagier is most amusing.  His infinite variety of household knowledge is shown in the incidental recipes which he gives when he is describing the measures which a wife must take for her lord’s comfort, and the work of the servants.  There are elaborate instructions concerning the costly medieval garments, worn year after year for a lifetime and often bequeathed in their owner’s will, instructions for cleaning