In towns, those of the citizens who had large enough houses frequently made a practice of receiving guests, and taking money for their pains, thus adding the profession of a host to their other callings. Persons who practised this letting of lodgings were called _herbergeors_ (_i.e._, harbourers), to distinguish them from the hostelers or innkeepers; and a further extension of the use of coats-of-arms for signs was thus brought about, the herbergeor frequently taking as his sign the arms of his most frequent or most influential guest. The _Liber Albus_ mentions both classes of entertainers, and records that by the regulations of the City of London herbergeours and hostelers must be freemen of the City, and persons of a strange land desirous of being herbergeour or hosteler within the City must dwell in the heart of the City and not upon the waterside of the Thames.
Although hospitality was so freely exercised by the monks and great landowners, it must not be imagined that inns were unknown. Even in Saxon days, to go no further back, inns and village alehouses seem to have existed. Bracton tells us of a regulation of Edward the Confessor that if any man lay a third night in an inn he was called a _third-night-awn-hinde_, that is to say, he was looked upon in the same light as a servant of the house would be, and the host was answerable for him if he committed any offence—a curious illustration of that local and vicarious responsibility for crime which was so prominent a feature of our ancient polity. In much later times a similar regulation is to be found applying to “hostelers” in the City of London. The _Liber Albus_ gives, as { 186} one of the City rules, that no hosteler shall harbour a man beyond a day and a night, if he be not willing to produce such person to stand his trial, and in case such a person shall commit an offence, and absent himself, his host shall answer for him.
Goldsmith’s description of a village inn is probably as applicable to the old Saxon _eala-hus_ of a thousand years ago as it was to the alehouse of his own time, and as it is to many in the present day:—
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired, Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired; Where village statesmen talked with looks profound, And news, much older than the Ale, went round. Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour’s importance to a poor man’s heart,