noxious and dangerous.  There was legislation on the subject, for the evil was already notorious in the fourteenth century.  The first parliamentary attempt to restrain people in towns generally from thus corrupting and infecting the air is dated 1388.  The many visits of distinguished people and public processions always conferred an incidental boon on the city, for one of the essentials of preparation was giving the main streets a good cleaning.  There is no wonder that plagues perpetually harassed the people of mediaeval times and reduced the population miserably.  The plague never disappeared till towns were largely rebuilt on a more commodious scale in the next great building era, which began in 1666 in London and in the early years of the eighteenth century elsewhere.  No advance was made in sanitation till the Victorian Age, when town sanitation was completely revolutionised and, for the first time, efficiently organised.

The house fire was of wood and peat, though coal was also used.  For artificial lighting oil-lamps (wicks in oil) and candles were used.  A light was obtained from flint and tinder, the latter being ignited by a spark got from striking the flint with a piece of metal.

Rooms were furnished with chairs, tables, benches, chests, bedsteads, and, in some cases, tub-shaped baths.  Carpets were to be found only in the houses of the very wealthy.  The floors of ordinary houses, like those of churches, were covered with rushes and straw, among which it was the useful custom to scatter fragrant herbs.  This rough carpet was pressed by the clogs of working people and the shoes of the fashionable.  The spit was a much used cooking utensil.  Table-cloths, knives, and spoons were in general use, but not the fork before the fifteenth century.  At one time food was manipulated by the fingers.  York was advanced in table manners, for it is known that a fork was used in the house of a citizen family here in 1443.  The richer members of the middle class owned a large number of silver tankards, goblets, mazer-bowls, salt-cellars and similar utensils and ornaments of silver, for this was a common form in which they held their wealth.

Beer, which was largely brewed at home, was the general beverage, but French and other wines were plentiful.  The water supply came from wells, the water being drawn up by bucket and windlass, or from the river when the wells were low.  The drinking water of the twentieth-century city is taken entirely from the River Ouse, but now the water is carefully treated and purified before reaching the consumer.

There were not many inns, as is shown in records by the number of innholders, who formed a trade company.  There were also wine-dealers.  Typical inn-signs were The Bull in Coney Street, and The Dragon.  There is no reason to believe that in this century there was a really large amount of drinking and drunkenness, such as there was in the eighteenth century.  An ordinance of the Marshals of 1409—­“No man of the craft shall go to inns but if he is sent after, under pain of 4d.”—­may be quoted.