And now we can return to our _White Hart_ inns. They were the first inns to be built by the corporations, or at least under their licence. Secure in the possession of their charter, proud of their ever-increasing commerce, hopeful of the future privileges and reforms that were likely to be obtained by their burgesses in Parliament, the towns began to provide new inns of a superior kind for the merchants who came regularly to their markets. They were held direct from the King, and to the reigning king alone they looked for any future marks of favour. Hence these inns almost invariably bear the badge of the reigning king. When Richard II was deposed the White Hart gave place to the White Swan of Henry IV, and this latter is nearly as common on the signboards. Barons and earls might dispute and make war on one another as to who was the sovereign _de jure_; the concern of the towns was with the king _de facto_. The Commons regarded each change of dynasty from Plantagenet to red rose and from red rose to white rose with the complacency of the Vicar of Bray. The old aristocracy ruined themselves and died out amid these political disputes; meanwhile the burghers grew rich and their posterity formed the nucleus of a new aristocracy of English race and of more patriotic instincts.
The signboards tell the same tale all through the fifteenth century. The Antelope of Henry VI, the White Lion of Edward IV, and the White Boar of Richard III each take their turn. The changes they represented meant little more than incidental gossip to the burghers. All the real life of the citizens was in their home and trade, in their craft guilds, in treaties with neighbouring towns, or in the little controversies of the town council.
We know only a few incidental details about the internal comforts of the White Hart inns. The majority of the guests slept in large rooms, on couches or wooden bedsteads. Only a few very important grandees were accorded a private _camera_. The bed was a long sack-like mattress stuffed with straw or hay; great folk would carry with them their own bed on their journeys. Most people lay in their ordinary clothes on the bed, though counterpanes and linen were just coming into use. Carpets were chiefly employed like tapestry for hanging on the walls and diminishing the continual draughts. The women had their special apartments; the serving men slept on the rushes of the hall, while the grooms were left to make the best of stable and barn. Meals were taken at fixed hours, at a long movable table on trestles in the hall, guests and servants sitting down together, but placed according to rank. Some of the dishes would not commend themselves to fastidious moderns, but at least, there was never any lack of good wholesome fare; loaves, joints and meat pasties all on a gargantuan scale. Wines of British as well as foreign extraction competed with the nut brown ale. Essex was in those days the vineyard of England.