Medieval Travel
Servants and Pack Horses
I wrote a post about horses in medieval England before: https://substack.com/@tlclarkauthor/p-168626251
But I wanted to look at travel a little bit more closely.
There were, of course, different forms of travel. I’m not looking at the military movements here - that’s a whole different kettle of fish.
And I’m excluding the glorified carts too - very very few people travelled in those. Although, if one was moving between houses, the lord of the manor may have a huge amount to convey, such as a bed and windows! In which case, they would have had a cart of stuff.
Then there are the excursions for hunting or visiting locally. I’m not talking about them either.
So much for what I’m not discussing here. And more of what I am…
Right, so your character is of a middling sort, maybe the lord/lady of a manor. And they’re visiting relatives. These relatives may live a long way away. In the case of my Christmastide Love folk, it took a week to get to Isabel’s parents’ house - Kent to Suffolk.
The lady would require assistance dressing etc. so would want her maid with her. And the lord may feasibly require his groom (the former version of a valet, not the horse carer).
The lord himself has a suitably expensive steed, and his wife probably a lesser one but still worthy of her rank. Let’s say a courser and a palfrey. The lady is quite probably riding astride.
Quick note: the side saddles of the Middle Ages were not great. They didn’t have a pommel yet, and offered little control over one’s horse. I don’t think they leant themselves to long distance riding
It was often referred to as riding en planchette - planchette meaning small board/plank, as this was what one’s feet would rest upon.
But what of their servants? Bah! Riffraff can walk. A horse’s walking pace is similar to that of a human, after all.
Ah, but the groom and the lady’s maid are household staff of rank. They are not your run-of-the-mill hedgeborn types. And it’s a flipping long way.
I was kind to mine. The groom rode a rouncey - the cheapest riding horse. And the maid rode pillion (behind him). The maid may have been sitting to the side or astride behind the male rider - yeah, the man had to be in control, of course. I would suggest that she would’ve been propped to the side, for modesty’s sake.
She would not have had a nice cosy saddle, though. The examples above are very much a lone rider situation, taking up a lot of room. No, she would have had a little cushion (see etymology below).
Fun fact: the word pillion seems to have entered the vocabulary from around 1500 i.e. not a medieval word. It seems to come from the Gaelic, pillin - a skin/pelt. But in the context of horse riding, it referred to a small, removable pad/cushion which could be placed behind the saddle.
As a biker chick, I confirm that riding behind the rider of a motorbike is still called ‘riding pillion’ today.
Wait, wait, wait. One had luggage. So, there would have been a pack horse (probably on a lead rope held by the groom).
Do you want to know exactly how nerdy I got with this? OMG it made my head hurt. I do not do maths!!! But I did work it out…
A pack horse could carry around 240lbs - that’s approx. 108kg or 17 stone. For scale, a baby elephant weighs around 100kg when born.
A luxury gown weighed around 15lbs. So, around 16 gowns per horse (not that you’d have that many!).
A linen tunic would weigh a few lbs.
Summary: one pack horse should be sufficient to carry a couple’s travelling wardrobe.
A reminder on distance/time taken.
A horse’s walking pace is around 3-5mph. They can travel up to 40 miles per day. However, one must factor in rest stops, and consider the conditions of the roads. So that really is a maximum daily distance. It’d likely be considerably less.
Generally, one may find some form of lodging, or at least refreshment every 15 miles or so.
If you plot in a route on something like Google Maps, avoiding motorways, set to ‘walk’, you should come somewhere close to mileage and time it’d take.
I hope this helped.
(*makes tongue clicky noises*) “Walk oooonnn!”.
Always in love and light,
TL