Free Bible and Sword by Barbara W. Tuchman

The ships, according to an anonymous account, were always “full stuffed with people,” so that “the air therein waxeth soon contrarious and groweth alway from evil to worse.” The discomforts of the crowded sea voyage, which took four to six weeks, must have been considerable, for the English traveler William Wey advises future pilgrims that a berth on the open upper deck, despite wind and spray, is preferable to the “right smolderynge hote and stynkynge” accommodations in the hold.
    The Venetian galleys usually stopped at Cyprus and Rhodes, where the pilgrims could take in the sights, and again at Beirut, the port for Damascus. From there they sailed down the coast to Jaffa, the port for Jerusalem, where the average pilgrim debarked, took a guided three weeks’ tour, and returned to Venice on the same ship.Transportation, for those who could afford it, on mules or camel-back with hired Arab guides was arranged for by the master of the pilgrim galley, who doubled as a tourist agent. Guides were Franciscan monks, sole custodians of the holy places after 1230, who recited the history and traditions associated with each town or monument or site of Biblical events to parties of visitors as they arrived.
    More ambitious travelers began their tour in Egypt, sailing from Venice to Alexandria, from where, following the route of the Exodus, they crossed the Sinai desert and entered Palestine from the south. Thomas Swinburne, English mayor of Bordeaux and personage of importance at the court of Richard II, led a party in 1392–93 by this route, covered the length of Palestine, and departed from Damascus and Beirut in the north. A daily itinerary kept by the squire of the party, Thomas Brigg, is stuffed with details of traveling expenses, transportation, guides, fees, imposts, tips, foods, and lodging. Apparently he was kept too busy adding up accounts to record much of what he saw. In the same year the ambitious young cousin of the King, Henry of Bolingbroke, then aged twenty-five, came to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage with one donkey carrying his provisions. Many years later, after he had deposed King Richard and reigned in his stead as Henry IV, the dying King, remembering a prophecy that his life would end in Jerusalem, had himself carried into the “Jerusalem Chamber” at Westminster, where he died.
    The fullest record of the average fifteenth-century pilgrimage is the manuscript of William Wey, who went twice to Jerusalem, in 1458 and 1462, and set himself to write a handy travel guide that is touched with the genius of Baedeker. In prose and in rhymed couplets, in English and in Latin, Wey provides the prospective journeyer to Jerusalem with all the information he might need. He gives the rates of exchange in terms of a noble or a ducat along the route he took through Calais, Brabant, Cologne, Lombardy, Venice, Rhodes, and Cyprus to Jaffa, so that hisreaders may understand the “diversitie of moneys as from England unto Surrey in the holy lande.” He advises what kind of contract the traveler should make with the Venetian shipmaster to ensure that it covers food and drink, he suggests extra provisions that the traveler should carry for himself, including “laxitives and restoratives,” cooking and eating utensils, and bedding. He tells where a feather bed with a mattress, two pillows, a pair of sheets, and a quilt can be purchased in Venice and resold after use in Palestine for half the purchase price. He cautions the traveler to take only fresh food and drink, only good wine and fresh water, and to keep a careful eye on all his belongings, “for the Sarcenes will go talkyng wyth yow and make good chere, but they wyl stele from yow that ye have and they may.”
    Wey, who had been appointed one of the original fellows of Eton college on its foundation in 1440, required special permission from the King, Henry VI, to make the journey in order that he might resume his fellowship when he returned. “Wee, having tendre