In medieval times Cook refers to a household servant rather than a craftsman, but a very important one. Later on we will take a look at a typical large household with servants of many kinds. We need not wonder that Cook is by far the most numerous of them, for every establishment of any size from a royal castle to the smallest manor house or inn, even a camp of outlaws in the forest, had a cook. There were many cooks in Duke William's army when he sailed from Normandy. We see them in the Bayeux tapestry busily roasting small bird over spits at very neat looking camp kitchens. His own special cooks were much favoured and given English manors to reward them for the tasty dishes he had enjoyed. No one need think that because methods of cooking at that time were somewhat crude beside our own, cooks were the less skilled. On the contrary they were probably more so. Human ingenuity is generally more inspired by difficult circumstances than by ease. The country produced an abundance of edible wild life, and the cooks used every possible herb and spice for sauces and flavouring.