Why Stay at the Tabard? Public Inns and Their Amenities c. 1400

When geoffrey chaucer set the opening scene of the Canterbury Tales at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, he was describing a new phenomenon: the hosting of a large and very mixed group of travelers at a commercial inn. In Chaucer's day, public inns such as the Tabard were a comparatively new institution, one that was beginning to have a major impact on medieval society. The spread of inns influenced social behavior, concepts of hospitality and status, the mobility of women, building design, patterns of commerce and employment, and networks of transport and communication. In considering the rise of inns and their emerging role in Chaucer's England, this article will focus on three topics: defining what a public inn was, identifying when inns began to spread widely in England, and discussing some sources that offer exceptional information about what it was like to stay at an English inn in the years around 1400.

To begin with, what was an inn? In modern English, it is common to use terms such as "inn," "tavern," and "alehouse" as interchangeable synonyms for "pub." But in medieval England these words were not synonymous. Taverns and alehouses were drinking houses. Taverns sold wine, which was imported and expensive; they were like elite wine-bars today. Alehouses were small and often scruffy neighborhood boozers that sold ale but not wine. An inn—hospicium in Latin—was a large or elite urban house. The private townhouses of bishops, earls, and other magnates were known as "inns," as were the premises in London occupied by societies of lawyers and of apprentices at law, and the same word was also used of public hostelries.¹ In Chaucer's day, the primary function of public inns (hostelries) was to provide lodging and refreshment for travelers and their horses. In other words, they were hotels, not drinking-houses.²

Innkeeping as an occupation is recorded in England by the late twelfth century, but references to commercial inns and innkeeping are sparse before the fourteenth century, and English vocabulary relating to inns also seems to have developed after 1300. According to the Middle English Dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest uses of "inn" (MED in) meaning hotel, and of "herbergeour" or "herberwer" (MED; OED harbinger), "host," "hostess," and "hosteler" (MED hostiler) meaning innkeeper, all date from the fourteenth century, and it is Chaucer himself who provides the first recorded use of the word "hostelry" (MED hostelrie) to mean a public inn.

In London, the official regulation of innkeeping is first recorded in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). At that time, innkeepers were simply required to be freemen (i.e., citizens of London, not merely residents),³ or else to provide good character witnesses and sureties. As in later years, the major concern was to keep track of all guests—whether English or foreign, lay or clerical—who might cause disturbances or commit crimes in the city.⁴ Between 1312 and 1343 new regulations required innkeepers to register with the alderman of their ward; to be responsible for their guests, and to disarm them; to report all suspicious persons who arrived at their inns; to refuse to lodge evildoers; and to keep strict hours.⁵ This surge in London's innkeeping regulations had parallels in the general expansion of commercial and social regulation in the city, but it may also reflect an increase in the numbers of public inns. Outside London, the great rise of public inns seems to have begun after 1350: that is, after the Black Death.⁶ In Southwark, for example, the first clear reference to a public inn dates from 1338, but in 1381 twenty-two innkeepers were listed in the Southwark poll tax return.⁷ In Oxford, only one public inn is recorded before 1300. Some seven more occur between 1300 and 1349. In 1381 the Oxford poll tax return listed ten innkeepers, but by about 1400 Oxford had at least twenty-one commercial inns.⁸ Thus, during the course of the fourteenth century, Oxford went from having only one public inn to...