An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England
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Title: An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England
Author: Edward Potts Cheyney
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An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England
[Illustration: New Sixteenth Century Manor House with Fields still
Open, Gidea Hall, Essex. Nichols: _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_.]
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND
by
EDWARD P. CHEYNEY
Professor of European History in the University of Pennsylvania
New York
The MacMillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1916
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1901,
By The MacMillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1901. Reprinted January,
October, 1905; November, 1906; October, 1907; July, 1908; February,
1909; January, 1910; April, December, 1910; January, August, December,
1911; July, 1912; January, 1913; February, August, 1914; January,
November, 1915; April, 1916.
PREFACE
This text-book is intended for college and high-school classes. Most
of the facts stated in it have become, through the researches and
publications of recent years, such commonplace knowledge that a
reference to authority in each case has not seemed necessary.
Statements on more doubtful points, and such personal opinions as I
have had occasion to express, although not supported by references,
are based on a somewhat careful study of the sources. To each chapter
is subjoined a bibliographical paragraph with the titles of the most
important secondary authorities. These works will furnish a fuller
account of the matters that have been treated in outline in this book,
indicate the original sources, and give opportunity and suggestions
for further study. An introductory chapter and a series of narrative
paragraphs prefixed to other chapters are given with the object of
correlating matters of economic and social history with other aspects
of the life of the nation.
My obligation and gratitude are due, as are those of all later
students, to the group of scholars who have within our own time laid
the foundations of the study of economic history, and whose names and
books will be found referred to in the bibliographical paragraphs.
EDWARD P. CHEYNEY.
University of Pennsylvania,
January, 1901.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Growth Of The Nation To The Middle Of The
Fourteenth Century Page
1. The Geography of England................................. 1
2. Prehistoric Britain...................................... 4
3. Roman Britain............................................ 5
4. Early Saxon England...................................... 8
5. Danish and Late Saxon England........................... 12
6. The Period following the Norman Conquest................ 15
7. The Period of the Early Angevin Kings, 1154-1338........ 22
CHAPTER II
Rural Life and Organization
8. The Mediæval Village.................................... 31
9. The Vill as an Agricultural System...................... 33
10. Classes of People on the Manor.......................... 39
11. The Manor Courts........................................ 45
12. The Manor as an Estate of a Lord........................ 49
13. Bibliography............................................ 52
CHAPTER III
Town Life And Organization
14. The Town Government..................................... 57
15. The Gild Merchant....................................... 59
16. The Craft Gilds......................................... 64
17. Non-industrial Gilds.................................... 71
18. Bibliography............................................ 73
CHAPTER IV
Mediæval Trade And Commerce
19. Markets and Fairs....................................... 75
20. Trade Relations between Towns........................... 79
21. Foreign Trading Relations............................... 81
22. The Italian and Eastern Trade........................... 84
23. The Flanders Trade and the Staple....................... 87
24. The Hanse Trade......................................... 89
25. Foreigners settled in England........................... 90
26. Bibliography............................................ 94
CHAPTER V
The Black Death And The Peasants' Rebellion
_Economic Changes of the Later Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth
Centuries_
27. National Affairs from 1338 to 1461...................... 96
28. The Black Death and its Effects......................... 99
29. The Statutes of Laborers............................... 106
30. The Peasants' Rebellion of 1381........................ 111
31. Commutation of Services................................ 125
32. The Abandonment of Demesne Farming..................... 128
33. The Decay of Serfdom................................... 129
34. Changes in Town Life and Foreign Trade................. 133
35. Bibliography........................................... 134
CHAPTER VI
The Breaking Up Of The Mediæval System
_Economic Changes of the Later Fifteenth and the Sixteenth
Centuries_
36. National Affairs from 1461 to 1603..................... 136
37. Enclosures............................................. 141
38. Internal Divisions in the Craft Gilds.................. 147
39. Change of Location of Industries....................... 151
40. The Influence of the Government on the Gilds........... 154
41. General Causes and Evidences of the Decay of the Gilds. 159
42. The Growth of Native Commerce.......................... 161
43. The Merchants Adventurers.............................. 164
44. Government Encouragement of Commerce................... 167
45. The Currency........................................... 169
46. Interest............................................... 171
47. Paternal Government.................................... 173
48. Bibliography........................................... 176
CHAPTER VII
The Expansion Of England
_Economic Changes of the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth
Centuries_
49. National Affairs from 1603 to 1760..................... 177
50. The Extension of Agriculture........................... 183
51. The Domestic System of Manufactures.................... 185
52. Commerce under the Navigation Acts..................... 189
53. Finance................................................ 193
54. Bibliography........................................... 198
CHAPTER VIII
The Period Of The Industrial Revolution
_Economic Changes of the Later Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth
Centuries_
55. National Affairs from 1760 to 1830..................... 199
56. The Great Mechanical Inventions........................ 203
57. The Factory System..................................... 212
58. Iron, Coal, and Transportation......................... 214
59. The Revival of Enclosures.............................. 216
60. Decay of Domestic Manufacture.......................... 220
61. The _Laissez-faire_ Theory............................. 224
62. Cessation of Government Regulation..................... 228
63. Individualism.......................................... 232
64. Social Conditions at the Beginning of the Nineteenth
Century................................................ 235
65. Bibliography........................................... 239
CHAPTER IX
The Extension Of Government Control
_Factory Laws, the Modification of Land Ownership, Sanitary
Regulations, and New Public Services_
66. National Affairs from 1830 to 1900..................... 240
67. The Beginning of Factory Legislation................... 244
68. Arguments for and against Factory Legislation.......... 249
69. Factory Legislation to 1847............................ 254
70. The Extension of Factory Legislation................... 256
71. Employers' Liability Acts.............................. 260
72. Preservation of Remaining Open Lands................... 262
73. Allotments............................................. 267
74. Small Holdings......................................... 269
75. Government Sanitary Control............................ 271
76. Industries Carried on by Government.................... 273
77. Bibliography........................................... 276
CHAPTER X
The Extension Of Voluntary Association
_Trade Unions, Trusts, and Coöperation_
78. The Rise of Trade Unions............................... 277
79. Opposition of the Law and of Public Opinion. The
Combination Acts....................................... 279
80. Legalization and Popular Acceptance of Trade Unions.... 281
81. The Growth of Trade Unions............................. 288
82. Federation of Trade Unions............................. 289
83. Employers' Organizations............................... 293
84. Trusts and Trade Combinations.......................... 294
85. Coöperation in Distribution............................ 295
86. Coöperation in Production.............................. 300
87. Coöperation in Farming................................. 302
88. Coöperation in Credit.................................. 306
89. Profit Sharing......................................... 307
90. Socialism.............................................. 310
91. Bibliography........................................... 311
An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of
England
INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
GROWTH OF THE NATION
To The Middle Of The Fourteenth Century
*1. The Geography of England.*--The British Isles lie northwest of the
Continent of Europe. They are separated from it by the Channel and the
North Sea, at the narrowest only twenty miles wide, and at the
broadest not more than three hundred.
The greatest length of England from north to south is three hundred
and sixty-five miles, and its greatest breadth some two hundred and
eighty miles. Its area, with Wales, is 58,320 square miles, being
somewhat more than one-quarter the size of France or of Germany, just
one-half the size of Italy, and somewhat larger than either
Pennsylvania or New York.
The backbone of the island is near the western coast, and consists of
a body of hard granitic and volcanic rock rising into mountains of two
or three thousand feet in height. These do not form one continuous
chain but are in several detached groups. On the eastern flank of
these mountains and underlying all the rest of the island is a series
of stratified rocks. The harder portions of these strata still stand
up as long ridges,--the "wolds," "wealds," "moors," and "downs" of the
more eastern and south-eastern parts of England. The softer strata
have been worn away into great broad valleys, furnishing the central
and eastern plains or lowlands of the country.
The rivers of the south and of the far north run for the most part by
short and direct courses to the sea. The rivers of the midlands are
much longer and larger. As a result of the gradual sinking of the
island, in recent geological periods the sea has extended some
distance up the course of these rivers, making an almost unbroken
series of estuaries along the whole coast.
The climate of England is milder and more equable than is indicated by
the latitude, which is that of Labrador in the western hemisphere and
of Prussia and central Russia on the Continent of Europe. This is due
to the fact that the Gulf Stream flows around its southern and western
shores, bringing warmth and a superabundance of moisture from the
southern Atlantic.
These physical characteristics have been of immense influence on the
destinies of England. Her position was far on the outskirts of the
world as it was known to ancient and mediæval times, and England
played a correspondingly inconspicuous part during those periods. In
the habitable world as it has been known since the fifteenth century,
on the other hand, that position is a distinctly central one, open
alike to the eastern and the western hemisphere, to northern and
southern lands.
[Illustration: Physiographic Map of *England And Wales*. Engraved by
Bormay & Co., N.Y.]
Her situation of insularity and at the same time of proximity to the
Continent laid her open to frequent invasion in early times, but after
she secured a navy made her singularly safe from subjugation. It made
the development of many of her institutions tardy, yet at the same
time gave her the opportunity to borrow and assimilate what she would
from the customs of foreign nations. Her separation by water from
the Continent favored a distinct and continuous national life, while
her nearness to it allowed her to participate in all the more
important influences which affected the nations of central Europe.
Within the mountainous or elevated regions a variety of mineral
resources, especially iron, copper, lead, and tin, exist in great
abundance, and have been worked from the earliest ages. Potter's clay
and salt also exist, the former furnishing the basis of industry for
an extensive section of the midlands. By far the most important
mineral possession of England, however, is her coal. This exists in
the greatest abundance and in a number of sections of the north and
west of the country. Practically unknown in the Middle Ages, and only
slightly utilized in early modern times, within the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries her coal supply has come to be the principal
foundation of England's great manufacturing and commercial
development.
The lowlands, which make up far the larger part of the country, are
covered with soil which furnishes rich farming areas, though in many
places this soil is a heavy and impervious clay, expensive to drain
and cultivate. The hard ridges are covered with thin soil only. Many
of them therefore remained for a long time covered with forest, and
they are devoted even yet to grazing or to occasional cultivation
only.
The abundance of harbors and rivers, navigable at least to the small
vessels of the Middle Ages, has made a seafaring life natural to a
large number of the people, and commercial intercourse comparatively
easy with all parts of the country bordering on the coast or on these
rivers.
Thus, to sum up these geographical characteristics, the insular
situation of England, her location on the earth's surface, and the
variety of her material endowments gave her a tolerably well-balanced
if somewhat backward economic position during the Middle Ages, and
have enabled her since the fifteenth century to pass through a
continuous and rapid development, until she has obtained within the
nineteenth century, for the time at least, a distinct economic
precedency among the nations of the world.
*2. Prehistoric Britain.*--The materials from which to construct a
knowledge of the history of mankind before the time of written records
are few and unsatisfactory. They consist for the most part of the
remains of dwelling-places, fortifications, and roadways; of weapons,
implements, and ornaments lost or abandoned at the time; of burial
places and their contents; and of such physical characteristics of
later populations as have survived from an early period. Centuries of
human habitation of Britain passed away, leaving only such scanty
remains and the obscure and doubtful knowledge that can be drawn from
them. Through this period, however, successive races seem to have
invaded and settled the country, combining with their predecessors, or
living alongside of them, or in some cases, perhaps, exterminating
them.
When contemporary written records begin, just before the beginning of
the Christian era, one race, the Britons, was dominant, and into it
had merged to all appearances all others. The Britons were a Celtic
people related to the inhabitants of that part of the Continent of
Europe which lies nearest to Britain. They were divided into a dozen
or more separate tribes, each occupying a distinct part of the
country. They lived partly by the pasturing of sheep and cattle,
partly by a crude agriculture. They possessed most of the familiar
grains and domestic animals, and could weave and dye cloth, make
pottery, build boats, forge iron, and work other metals, including
tin. They had, however, no cities, no manufactures beyond the most
primitive, and but little foreign trade to connect them with the
Continent. At the head of each tribe was a reigning chieftain of
limited powers, surrounded by lesser chiefs. The tribes were in a
state of incessant warfare one with the other.
*3. Roman Britain.*--This condition of insular isolation and barbarism
was brought to a close in the year 55 B.C. by the invasion of the
Roman army. Julius Cæsar, the Roman general who was engaged in the
conquest and government of Gaul, or modern France, feared that the
Britons might bring aid to certain newly subjected and still restless
Gallic tribes. He therefore transported a body of troops across the
Channel and fought two campaigns against the tribes in the southeast
of Britain. His success in the second campaign was, however, not
followed up, and he retired without leaving any permanent garrison in
the country. The Britons were then left alone, so far as military
invasion was concerned, for almost a century, though in the meantime
trade with the adjacent parts of the Continent became more common, and
Roman influence showed itself in the manners and customs of the
people. In the year 44 A.D., just ninety years after Cæsar's
campaigns, the conquest of Britain was resumed by the Roman armies and
completed within the next thirty years. Britain now became an integral
part of the great, well-ordered, civilized, and wealthy Roman Empire.
During the greater part of that long period, Britain enjoyed profound
peace, internal and external trade were safe, and much of the culture
and refinement of Italy and Gaul must have made their way even to this
distant province. A part of the inhabitants adopted the Roman
language, dress, customs, and manner of life. Discharged veterans from
the Roman legions, wealthy civil officials and merchants, settled
permanently in Britain. Several bodies of turbulent tribesmen who had
been defeated on the German frontier were transported by the
government into Britain. The population must, therefore, have become
very mixed, containing representatives of most of the races which had
been conquered by the Roman armies. A permanent military force was
maintained in Britain with fortified stations along the eastern and
southern coast, on the Welsh frontier, and along a series of walls or
dikes running across the island from the Tyne to Solway Firth.
Excellent roads were constructed through the length and breadth of the
land for the use of this military body and to connect the scattered
stations. Along these highways population spread and the remains of
spacious villas still exist to attest the magnificence of the wealthy
provincials. The roads served also as channels of trade by which goods
could readily be carried from one part of the country to another.
Foreign as well as internal trade became extensive, although exports
were mostly of crude natural products, such as hides, skins, and furs,
cattle and sheep, grain, pig-iron, lead and tin, hunting-dogs and
slaves. The rapid development of towns and cities was a marked
characteristic of Roman Britain. Fifty-nine towns or cities of various
grades of self-government are named in the Roman survey, and many of
these must have been populous, wealthy, and active, judging from the
extensive ruins that remain, and the enormous number of Roman coins
that have since been found. Christianity was adopted here as in other
parts of the Roman Empire, though the extent of its influence is
unknown.
During the Roman occupation much waste land was reclaimed. Most of the
great valley regions and many of the hillsides had been originally
covered with dense forests, swamps spread along the rivers and
extended far inland from the coast; so that almost the only parts
capable of tillage were the high treeless plains, the hill tops, and
certain favored stretches of open country. The reduction of these
waste lands to human habitation has been an age-long task. It was
begun in prehistoric times, it has been carried further by each
successive race, and brought to final completion only within our own
century. A share in this work and the great roads were the most
permanent results of the Roman period of occupation and government.
Throughout the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era the
Roman administration and society in Britain were evidently
disintegrating. Several successive generals of the Roman troops
stationed in Britain rose in revolt with their soldiers, declared
their independence of Rome, or passed over to the Continent to enter
into a struggle for the control of the whole Empire. In 383 and 407
the military forces were suddenly depleted in this way and the
provincial government disorganized, while the central government of
the Empire was so weak that it was unable to reëstablish a firm
administration. During the same period barbarian invaders were making
frequent inroads into Britain. The Picts and Scots from modern
Scotland, Saxon pirates, and, later, ever increasing swarms of Angles,
Jutes, and Frisians from across the North Sea ravaged and ultimately
occupied parts of the borders and the coasts. The surviving records of
this period of disintegration and reorganization are so few that we
are left in all but total ignorance as to what actually occurred. For
more than two hundred years we can only guess at the course of events,
or infer it from its probable analogy to what we know was occurring in
the other parts of the Empire, or from the conditions we find to have
been in existence as knowledge of succeeding times becomes somewhat
more full. It seems evident that the government of the province of
Britain gradually went to pieces, and that that of the different
cities or districts followed. Internal dissensions and the lack of
military organization and training of the mass of the population
probably added to the difficulty of resisting marauding bands of
barbarian invaders. These invading bands became larger, and their
inroads more frequent and extended, until finally they abandoned their
home lands entirely and settled permanently in those districts in
which they had broken the resistance of the Roman-British natives.
Even while the Empire had been strong the heavy burden of taxation and
the severe pressure of administrative regulations had caused a decline
in wealth and population. Now disorder, incessant ravages of the
barbarians, isolation from other lands, probably famine and
pestilence, brought rapid decay to the prosperity and civilization of
the country. Cities lost their trade, wealth, and population, and many
of them ceased altogether for a time to exist. Britain was rapidly
sinking again into a land of barbarism.
*4. Early Saxon England.*--An increasing number of contemporary records
give a somewhat clearer view of the condition of England toward the
close of the sixth century. The old Roman organization and
civilization had disappeared entirely, and a new race, with a new
language, a different religion, another form of government, changed
institutions and customs, had taken its place. A number of petty
kingdoms had been formed during the fifth and early sixth centuries,
each under a king or chieftain, as in the old Celtic times before the
Roman invasion, but now of Teutonic or German race. The kings and
their followers had come from the northwestern portions of Germany.
How far they had destroyed the earlier inhabitants, how far they had
simply combined with them or enslaved them, has been a matter of much
debate, and one on which discordant opinions are held, even by recent
students. It seems likely on the whole that the earlier races,
weakened by defeat and by the disappearance of the Roman control, were
gradually absorbed and merged into the body of their conquerors; so
that the petty Angle and Saxon kings of the sixth and seventh
centuries ruled over a mixed race, in which their own was the most
influential, though not necessarily the largest element. The arrival
from Rome in 597 of Augustine, the first Christian missionary to the
now heathen inhabitants of Britain, will serve as a point to mark the
completion of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the country. By this time
the new settlers had ceased to come in, and there were along the coast
and inland some seven or eight different kingdoms. These were,
however, so frequently divided and reunited that no fixed number
remained long in existence. The Jutes had established the kingdom of
Kent in the south-eastern extremity of the island; the South and the
West Saxons were established on the southern coast and inland to the
valley of the Thames; the East Saxons had a kingdom just north of the
mouth of the Thames, and the Middle Saxons held London and the
district around. The rest of the island to the north and inland
exclusive of what was still unconquered was occupied by various
branches of the Angle stock grouped into the kingdoms of East Anglia,
Mercia, and Northumbria. During the seventh and eighth centuries there
were constant wars of conquest among these kingdoms. Eventually, about
800 A.D., the West Saxon monarchy made itself nominally supreme over
all the others. Notwithstanding this political supremacy of the West
Saxons, it was the Angles who were the most numerous and widely
spread, and who gave their name, England, to the whole land.
Agriculture was at this time almost the sole occupation of the people.
The trade and commerce that had centred in the towns and flowed along
the Roman roads and across the Channel had long since come to an end
with the Roman civilization of which it was a part. In Saxon England
cities scarcely existed except as fortified places of defence. The
products of each rural district sufficed for its needs in food and in
materials for clothing, so that internal trade was but slight.
Manufactures were few, partly from lack of skill, partly from lack of
demand or appreciation; but weaving, the construction of agricultural
implements and weapons, ship-building, and the working of metals had
survived from Roman times, or been brought over as part of the stock
of knowledge of the invaders. Far the greater part of the population
lived in villages, as they probably had done in Roman and in
prehistoric times. The village with the surrounding farming lands,
woods, and waste grounds made up what was known in later times as the
"township."
The form of government in the earlier separate kingdoms, as in the
united monarchy after its consolidation, gave limited though
constantly increasing powers to the king. A body of nobles known as
the "witan" joined with the king in most of the actions of government.
The greater part of the small group of government functions which were
undertaken in these barbarous times were fulfilled by local gatherings
of the principal men. A district formed from a greater or less number
of townships, with a meeting for the settlement of disputes, the
punishment of crimes, the witnessing of agreements, and other
purposes, was known as a "hundred" or a "wapentake." A "shire" was a
grouping of hundreds, with a similar gathering of its principal men
for judicial, military, and fiscal purposes. Above the shire came the
whole kingdom.
The most important occurrences of the early Saxon period were the
general adoption of Christianity and the organization of the church.
Between A.D. 597 and 650 Christianity gained acceptance through the
preaching and influence of missionaries, most of whom were sent from
Rome, though some came from Christian Scotland and Ireland. The
organization of the church followed closely. It was largely the work
of Archbishop Theodore, and was practically complete before the close
of the seventh century. By this organization England was divided into
seventeen dioceses or church districts, religious affairs in each of
these districts being under the supervision of a bishop. The bishop's
church, called a "cathedral," was endowed by religious kings and
nobles with extensive lands, so that the bishop was a wealthy landed
proprietor, in addition to having control of the clergy of his
diocese, and exercising a powerful influence over the consciences and
actions of its lay population. The bishoprics were grouped into two
"provinces," those of Canterbury and York, the bishops of these two
dioceses having the higher title of archbishop, and having a certain
sort of supervision over the other bishops of their province. Churches
were gradually built in the villages, and each township usually became
a parish with a regularly established priest. He was supported partly
by the produce of the "glebe," or land belonging to the parish church,
partly by tithe, a tax estimated at one-tenth of the income of each
man's land, partly by the offerings of the people. The bishops, the
parish priests, and others connected with the diocese, the cathedral,
and the parish churches made up the ordinary or "secular" clergy.
There were also many religious men and women who had taken vows to
live under special "rules" in religious societies withdrawn from the
ordinary life of the world, and were therefore known as "regular"
clergy. These were the monks and nuns. In Anglo-Saxon England the
regular clergy lived according to the rule of St. Benedict, and were
gathered into groups, some smaller, some larger, but always
established in one building, or group of buildings. These monasteries,
like the bishoprics, were endowed with lands which were increased from
time to time by pious gifts of kings, nobles, and other laymen.
Ecclesiastical bodies thus came in time to hold a very considerable
share of the land of the country. The wealth and cultivation of the
clergy and the desire to adorn and render more attractive their
buildings and religious services fostered trade with foreign
countries. The intercourse kept up with the church on the Continent
also did something to lessen the isolation of England from the rest of
the world. To these broadening influences must be added the effect
which the Councils made up of churchmen from all England exerted in
fostering the tardy growth of the unity of the country.
*5. Danish and Late Saxon England.*--At the end of the eighth century
the Danes or Northmen, the barbarous and heathen inhabitants of the
islands and coast-lands of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, began to make
rapid forays into the districts of England which lay near enough to
the coasts or rivers to be at their mercy. Soon they became bolder or
more numerous and established fortified camps along the English
rivers, from which they ravaged the surrounding country. Still later,
in the tenth and eleventh centuries, under their own kings as leaders,
they became conquerors and permanent settlers of much of the country,
and even for a time put a Danish dynasty on the throne to govern
English and Danes alike. A succession of kings of the West Saxon line
had struggled with varying success to drive the Danes from the country
or to limit that portion of it which was under their control; but as a
matter of fact the northern, eastern, and central portions of England
were for more than a century and a half almost entirely under Danish
rule. The constant immigration from Scandinavia during this time added
an important element to the population--an element which soon,
however, became completely absorbed in the mixed stock of the English
people.
The marauding Danish invaders were early followed by fellow-countrymen
who were tradesmen and merchants. The Scandinavian countries had
developed an early and active trade with the other lands bordering on
the Baltic and North seas, and England under Danish influence was
drawn into the same lines of commerce. The Danes were also more
inclined to town life than the English, so that advantageously
situated villages now grew into trading towns, and the sites of some
of the old Roman cities began again to be filled with a busy
population. With trading came a greater development of handicrafts, so
that the population of later Anglo-Saxon England had somewhat varied
occupations and means of support, instead of being exclusively
agricultural, as in earlier centuries.
During these later centuries of the Saxon period, from 800 to 1066,
the most conspicuous and most influential ruler was King Alfred. When
he became king, in 871, the Danish invaders were so completely
triumphant as to force him to flee with a few followers to the forest
as a temporary refuge. He soon emerged, however, with the nucleus of
an army and, during his reign, which continued till 901, defeated the
Danes repeatedly, obtained their acceptance of Christianity, forced
upon them a treaty which restricted their rule to the northeastern
shires, and transmitted to his son a military and naval organization
which enabled him to win back much even of this part of England. He
introduced greater order, prosperity, and piety into the church, and
partly by his own writing, partly by his patronage of learned men,
reawakened an interest in Anglo-Saxon literature and in learning which
the ravages of the Danes and the demoralization of the country had
gone far to destroy. Alfred, besides his actual work as king,
impressed the recognition of his fine nature and strong character
deeply on the men of his time and the memory of all subsequent times.
The power of the kingship in the Anglo-Saxon system of government was
strengthened by the life and work of such kings as Alfred and some of
his successors. There were other causes also which were tending to
make the central government more of a reality. A national taxation,
the Danegeld, was introduced for the purpose of ransoming the country
from the Danes; the grant of lands by the king brought many persons
through the country into closer relations with him; the royal judicial
powers tended to increase with the development of law and
civilization; the work of government was carried on by better-trained
officials.
On the other hand, a custom grew up in the tenth and early eleventh
century of placing whole groups of shires under the government of
great earls or viceroys, whose subjection to the central government of
the king was but scant. Church bodies and others who had received
large grants of land from the king were also coming to exercise over
their tenants judicial, fiscal, and probably even military powers,
which would seem more properly to belong to government officials. The
result was that although the central government as compared with the
local government of shires and hundreds was growing more active, the
king's power as compared with the personal power of the great nobles
was becoming less strong. Violence was common, and there were but few
signs of advancing prosperity or civilization, when an entirely new
set of influences came into existence with the conquest by the duke of
Normandy in the year 1066.
*6. The Period following the Norman Conquest.*--Normandy was a province
of France lying along the shore of the English Channel. Its line of
dukes and at least a considerable proportion of its people were of the
same Scandinavian or Norse race which made up such a large element in
the population of England. They had, however, learned more of the arts
of life and of government from the more successfully preserved
civilization of the Continent. The relations between England and
Normandy began to be somewhat close in the early part of the eleventh
century; the fugitive king of England, Ethelred, having taken refuge
there, and marrying the sister of the duke. Edward the Confessor,
their son, who was subsequently restored to the English throne, was
brought up in Normandy, used the French language, and was accompanied
on his return by Norman followers. Nine years after the accession of
Edward, in 1051, William, the duke of Normandy, visited England and is
said to have obtained a promise that he should receive the crown on
the death of Edward, who had no direct heir. Accordingly, in 1065,
when Edward died and Harold, a great English earl, was chosen king,
William immediately asserted his claim and made strenuous military
preparations for enforcing it. He took an army across the Channel in
1066, as Cæsar had done more than a thousand years before, and at the
battle of Hastings or Senlac defeated the English army, King Harold
himself being killed in the engagement. William then pressed on toward
London, preventing any gathering of new forces, and obtained his
recognition as king. He was crowned on Christmas Day, 1066. During the
next five years he put down a series of rebellions on the part of the
native English, after which he and his descendants were acknowledged
as sole kings of England.
The Norman Conquest was not, however, a mere change of dynasty. It led
to at least three other changes of the utmost importance. It added a
new element to the population, it brought England into contact with
the central and southern countries of the Continent, instead of merely
with the northern as before, and it made the central government of the
country vastly stronger. There is no satisfactory means of discovering
how many Normans and others from across the Channel migrated into
England with the Conqueror or in the wake of the Conquest, but there
is no doubt that the number was large and their influence more than
proportionate to their numbers. Within the lifetime of William, whose
death occurred in 1087, of his two sons, William II and Henry I, and
the nominal reign of Stephen extending to 1154, the whole body of the
nobility, the bishops and abbots, and the government officials had
come to be of Norman or other continental origin. Besides these the
architects and artisans who built the castles and fortresses, and the
cathedrals, abbeys, and parish churches, whose erection throughout the
land was such a marked characteristic of the period, were immigrants
from Normandy. Merchants from the Norman cities of Rouen and Caen came
to settle in London and other English cities, and weavers from
Flanders were settled in various towns and even rural districts. For a
short time these newcomers remained a separate people, but before the
twelfth century was over they had become for the most part
indistinguishable from the great mass of the English people amongst
whom they had come. They had nevertheless made that people stronger,
more vigorous, more active-minded, and more varied in their
occupations and interests.
King William and his successors retained their continental dominions
and even extended them after their acquisition of the English kingdom,
so that trade between the two sides of the Channel was more natural
and easy than before. The strong government of the Norman kings gave
protection and encouragement to this commerce, and by keeping down the
violence of the nobles favored trade within the country. The English
towns had been growing in number, size, and wealth in the years just
before the Conquest. The contests of the years immediately following
1066 led to a short period of decay, but very soon increasing trade
and handicraft led to still greater progress. London, especially, now
made good its position as one of the great cities of Europe, and that
preëminence among English towns which it has never since lost. The
fishing and seaport towns along the southern and eastern coast also,
and even a number of inland towns, came to hold a much more
influential place in the nation than they had possessed in the
Anglo-Saxon period.
The increased power of the monarchy arose partly from its military
character as based upon a conquest of the country, partly from the
personal character of William and his immediate successors, partly
from the more effective machinery for administration of the affairs of
government, which was either brought over from Normandy or developed
in England. A body of trained, skilful government officials now
existed, who were able to carry out the wishes of the king, collect
his revenues, administer justice, gather armies, and in other ways
make his rule effective to an extent unknown in the preceding period.
The sheriffs, who had already existed as royal representatives in the
shires in Anglo-Saxon times, now possessed far more extensive powers,
and came up to Westminster to report and to present their financial
accounts to the royal exchequer twice a year. Royal officials acting
as judges not only settled an increasingly large number of cases that
were brought before them at the king's court, but travelled through
the country, trying suits and punishing criminals in the different
shires. The king's income was vastly larger than that of the
Anglo-Saxon monarchs had been. The old Danegeld was still collected
from time to time, though under a different name, and the king's
position as landlord of the men who had received the lands confiscated
at the Conquest was utilized to obtain additional payments.
Perhaps the greatest proof of the power and efficiency of the
government in the Norman period was the compilation of the great body
of statistics known as "Domesday Book." In 1085 King William sent
commissioners to every part of England to collect a variety of
information about the financial conditions on which estates were held,
their value, and fitness for further taxation. The information
obtained from this investigation was drawn up in order and written in
two large manuscript volumes which still exist in the Public Record
Office at London. It is a much more extensive body of information than
was collected for any other country of Europe until many centuries
afterward. Yet its statements, though detailed and exact and of great
interest from many points of view, are disappointing to the student of
history. They were obtained for the financial purposes of government,
and cannot be made to give the clear picture of the life of the people
and of the relations of different classes to one another which would
be so welcome, and which is so easily obtained from the great variety
of more private documents which came into existence a century and a
half later.
The church during this period was not relatively so conspicuous as
during Saxon times, but the number of the clergy, both secular and
regular, was very large, the bishops and abbots powerful, and the
number of monasteries and nunneries increasing. The most important
ecclesiastical change was the development of church courts. The
bishops or their representatives began to hold courts for the trial of
churchmen, the settlement of such suits as churchmen were parties to,
and the decision of cases in certain fields of law. This gave the
church a new influence, in addition to that which it held from its
spiritual duties, from its position as landlord over such extensive
tracts, and from the superior enlightenment and mental ability of its
prominent officials, but it also gave greater occasion for conflict
with the civil government and with private persons.
After the death of Henry I in 1135 a miserable period of confusion and
violence ensued. Civil war broke out between two claimants for the
crown, Stephen the grandson, and Matilda the granddaughter, of William
the Conqueror. The organization of government was allowed to fall into
disorder, and but little effort was made to collect the royal revenue,
to fulfil the newly acquired judicial duties, or to insist upon order
being preserved in the country. The nobles took opposite sides in the
contest for the crown, and made use of the weakness of government to
act as if they were themselves sovereigns over their estates and the
country adjacent to their castles with no ruler above them. Private
warfare, oppression of less powerful men, seizure of property, went on
unchecked. Every baron's castle became an independent establishment
carried on in accordance only with the unbridled will of its lord, as
if there were no law and no central authority to which he must bow.
The will of the lord was often one of reckless violence, and there was
more disorder and suffering in England than at any time since the
ravages of the Danes.
In Anglo-Saxon times, when a weak king appeared, the shire moots, or
the rulers of groups of shires, exercised the authority which the
central government had lost. In the twelfth century, when the power of
the royal government was similarly diminished through the weakness of
Stephen and the confusions of the civil war, it was a certain class of
men, the great nobles, that fell heir to the lost strength of
government. This was because of the development of feudalism during
the intervening time. The greater landholders had come to exercise
over those who held land from them certain powers which in modern
times belong to the officers of government only. A landlord could call
upon his tenants for military service to him, and for the contribution
of money for his expenses; he held a court to decide suits between one
tenant and another, and frequently to punish their crimes and
misdemeanors; in case of the death of a tenant leaving a minor heir,
his landlord became guardian and temporary holder of the land, and if
there were no heirs, the land reverted to him, not to the national
government. These relations which the great landholders held toward
their tenants, the latter, who often themselves were landlords over
whole townships or other great tracts of land with their population,
held toward their tenants. Sometimes these subtenants granted land to
others below them, and over these the last landlord also exercised
feudal rights, and so on till the actual occupants and cultivators of
the soil were reached. The great nobles had thus come to stand in a
middle position. Above them was the king, below them these successive
stages of tenants and subtenants. Their tenants owed to them the same
financial and political services and duties as they owed to the king.
From the time of the Norman Conquest, all land in England was looked
upon as being held from the king directly by a comparatively few, and
indirectly through them by all others who held land at all. Moreover,
from a time at least soon after the Norman Conquest, the services and
payments above mentioned came to be recognized as due from all tenants
to their lords, and were gradually systematized and defined. Each
person or ecclesiastical body that held land from the king owed him
the military service of a certain number of knights or armed horse
soldiers. The period for which this service was owed was generally
estimated as forty days once a year. Subtenants similarly owed
military service to their landlords, though in the lesser grades this
was almost invariably commuted for money. "Wardship and marriage" was
the expression applied to the right of the lord to the guardianship of
the estate of a minor heir of his tenant, and to the choice of a
husband or wife for the heir when he came of proper age. This right
also was early turned into the form of a money consideration. There
were a number of money payments pure and simple. "Relief" was a
payment to the landlord, usually of a year's income of the estate,
made by an heir on obtaining his inheritance. There were three
generally acknowledged "aids" or payments of a set sum in proportion
to the amount of land held. These were on the occasion of the
knighting of the lord's son, of the marriage of his daughter, and for
his ransom in case he was captured in war. Land could be confiscated
if the tenant violated his duties to his landlord, and it "escheated"
to the lord in case of failure of heirs. Every tenant was bound to
attend his landlord to help form a court for judicial work, and to
submit to the judgment of a court of his fellow-tenants for his own
affairs.
In addition to the relations of landlord and tenant and to the power
of jurisdiction, taxation, and military service which landlords
exercised over their tenants, there was considered to be a close
personal relationship between them. Every tenant on obtaining his land
went through a ceremony known as "homage," by which he promised
faithfulness and service to his lord, vowing on his knees to be his
man. The lord in return promised faithfulness, protection, and justice
to his tenant. It was this combination of landholding, political
rights, and sworn personal fidelity that made up feudalism. It existed
in this sense in England from the later Saxon period till late in the
Middle Ages, and even in some of its characteristics to quite modern
times. The conquest by William of Normandy through the wholesale
confiscation and regrant of lands, and through his military
arrangements, brought about an almost sudden development and spread of
feudalism in England, and it was rapidly systematized and completed in
the reigns of his two sons. By its very nature feudalism gives great
powers to the higher ranks of the nobility, the great landholders.
Under the early Norman kings, however, their strength was kept in
tolerably complete check. The anarchy of the reign of Stephen was an
indication of the natural tendencies of feudalism without a vigorous
king. This time of confusion when, as the contemporary chronicle says,
"every man did that which was good in his own eyes," was brought to an
end by the accession to the throne of Henry II, a man whose personal
abilities and previous training enabled him to bring the royal
authority to greater strength than ever, and to put an end to the
oppressions of the turbulent nobles.
*7. The Period of the Early Angevin Kings, 1154-1338.*--The two
centuries which now followed saw either the completion or the
initiation of most of the characteristics of the English race with
which we are familiar in historic times. The race, the language, the
law, and the political organization have remained fundamentally the
same as they became during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. No
considerable new addition was made to the population, and the elements
which it already contained became so thoroughly fused that it has
always since been practically a homogeneous body. The Latin language
remained through this whole period and till long afterward the
principal language of records, documents, and the affairs of the
church. French continued to be the language of the daily intercourse
of the upper classes, of the pleadings in the law courts, and of
certain documents and records. But English was taking its modern form,
asserting itself as the real national language, and by the close of
this period had come into general use for the vast majority of
purposes. Within the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge grew up, and within the fourteenth took their
later shape of self-governing groups of colleges. Successive orders of
religious men and women were formed under rules intended to overcome
the defects which had appeared in the early Benedictine rule. The
organized church became more and more powerful, and disputes
constantly arose as to the limits between its power and that of the
ordinary government. The question was complicated from the fact that
the English Church was but one branch of the general church of Western
Christendom, whose centre and principal authority was vested in the
Pope at Rome. One of the most serious of these conflicts was between
King Henry II and Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, principally on the
question of how far clergymen should be subject to the same laws as
laymen. The personal dispute ended in the murder of the archbishop, in
1170, but the controversy itself got no farther than a compromise. A
contest broke out between King John and the Pope in 1205 as to the
right of the king to dictate the selection of a new archbishop of
Canterbury. By 1213 the various forms of influence which the church
could bring to bear were successful in forcing the king to give way.
He therefore made humble apologies and accepted the nominee of the
Pope for the office. Later in the thirteenth century there was much
popular opposition to papal taxation of England.
In the reign of Henry II, the conquest of Ireland was begun. In 1283
Edward I, great-grandson of Henry, completed the conquest of Wales,
which had remained incompletely conquered from Roman times onward. In
1292 Edward began that interference in the affairs of Scotland which
led on to long wars and a nominal conquest. For a while therefore it
seemed that England was about to create a single monarchy out of the
whole of the British Islands. Moreover, Henry II was already count of
Anjou and Maine by inheritance from his father when he became duke of
Normandy and king of England by inheritance from his mother. He also
obtained control of almost all the remainder of the western and
southern provinces of France by his marriage with Eleanor of
Aquitaine. It seemed, therefore, that England might become the centre
of a considerable empire composed partly of districts on the
Continent, partly of the British Islands. As a matter of fact, Wales
long remained separated from England in organization and feeling,
little progress was made with the real conquest of Ireland till in the
sixteenth century, and the absorption of Scotland failed entirely.
King John, in 1204, lost most of the possessions of the English kings
south of the Channel and they were not regained within this period.
The unification of the English government and people really occurred
during this period, but it was only within the boundaries which were
then as now known as England.
Henry II was a vigorous, clear-headed, far-sighted ruler. He not only
put down the rebellious barons with a strong hand, and restored the
old royal institutions, as already stated, but added new powers of
great importance, especially in the organization of the courts of
justice. He changed the occasional visits of royal officials to
different parts of the country to regular periodical circuits, the
kingdom being divided into districts in each of which a group of
judges held court at least once in each year. In 1166, by the Assize
of Clarendon, he made provision for a sworn body of men in each
neighborhood to bring accusations against criminals, thus making the
beginning of the grand jury system. He also provided that a group of
men should be put upon their oath to give a decision in a dispute
about the possession of land, if either one of the claimants asked for
it, thus introducing the first form of the trial by jury. The
decisions of the judges within this period came to be so consistent
and so well recorded as to make the foundation of the Common Law the
basis of modern law in all English-speaking countries.
Henry's successor was his son Richard I, whose government was quite
unimportant except for the romantic personal adventures of the king
when on a crusade, and in his continental dominions. Henry's second
son John reigned from 1199 to 1216. Although of good natural
abilities, he was extraordinarily indolent, mean, treacherous, and
obstinate. By his inactivity during a long quarrel with the king of
France he lost all his provinces on the Continent, except those in the
far south. His contest with the Pope had ended in failure and
humiliation. He had angered the barons by arbitrary taxation and by
many individual acts of outrage or oppression. Finally he had
alienated the affections of the mass of the population by introducing
foreign mercenaries to support his tyranny and permitting to them
unbridled excess and violence. As a result of this widespread
unpopularity, a rebellion was organized, including almost the whole of
the baronage of England, guided by the counsels of Stephen Langton,
archbishop of Canterbury, and supported by the citizens of London. The
indefiniteness of feudal relations was a constant temptation to kings
and other lords to carry their exactions and demands upon their
tenants to an unreasonable and oppressive length. Henry I, on his
accession in 1100, in order to gain popularity, had voluntarily
granted a charter reciting a number of these forms of oppression and
promising to put an end to them. The rebellious barons now took this
old charter as a basis, added to it many points which had become
questions of dispute during the century since it had been granted, and
others which were of special interest to townsmen and the middle and
even lower classes. They then demanded the king's promise to issue a
charter containing these points. John resisted for a while, but at
last gave way and signed the document which has since been known as
the "Great Charter," or Magna Carta. This has always been considered
as, in a certain sense, the guarantee of English liberties and the
foundation of the settled constitution of the kingdom. The fact that
it was forced from a reluctant king by those who spoke for the whole
nation, that it placed definite limitations on his power, and that it
was confirmed again and again by later kings, has done more to give it
this position than its temporary and in many cases insignificant
provisions, accompanied only by a comparatively few statements of
general principles.
The beginnings of the construction of the English parliamentary
constitution fall within the next reign, that of John's son, Henry
III, 1216-1272. He was a child at his accession, and when he became a
man proved to have but few qualities which would enable him to
exercise a real control over the course of events. Conflicts were
constant between the king and confederations of the barons, for the
greater part of the time under the leadership of Simon de Montfort,
earl of Leicester. The special points of difference were the king's
preference for foreign adventurers in his distribution of offices, his
unrestrained munificence to them, their insolence and oppression
relying on the king's support, the financial demands which were
constantly being made, and the king's encouragement of the high claims
and pecuniary exactions of the Pope. At first these conflicts took the
form of disputes in the Great Council, but ultimately they led to
another outbreak of civil war. The Great Council of the kingdom was a
gathering of the nobles, bishops, and abbots summoned by the king from
time to time for advice and participation in the more important work
of government. It had always existed in one form or another, extending
back continuously to the "witenagemot" of the Anglo-Saxons. During the
reign of Henry the name "Parliament" was coming to be more regularly
applied to it, its meetings were more frequent and its self-assertion
more vigorous. But most important of all, a new class of members was
added to it. In 1265, in addition to the nobles and great prelates,
the sheriffs were ordered to see that two knights were selected from
each of their shires, and two citizens from each of a long list of the
larger towns, to attend and take part in the discussions of
Parliament. This plan was not continued regularly at first, but
Henry's successor, Edward I, who reigned from 1272 to 1307, adopted it
deliberately, and from 1295 forward the "Commons," as they came to be
called, were always included in Parliament. Within the next century a
custom arose according to which the representatives of the shires and
the towns sat in a separate body from the nobles and churchmen, so
that Parliament took on its modern form of two houses, the House of
Lords and the House of Commons.
Until this time and long afterward the personal character and
abilities of the king were far the most important single factor in the
growth of the nation. Edward I was one of the greatest of English
kings, ranking with Alfred, William the Conqueror, and Henry II. His
conquests of Wales and of Scotland have already been mentioned, and
these with the preparation they involved and a war with France into
which he was drawn necessarily occupied the greater part of his time
and energy. But he found the time to introduce good order and control
into the government in all its branches; to make a great investigation
into the judicial and administrative system, the results of which,
commonly known as the "Hundred Rolls," are comparable to Domesday Book
in extent and character; to develop the organization of Parliament,
and above all to enact through it a series of great reforming
statutes. The most important of these were the First and Second
Statutes of Westminster, in 1275 and 1285, which made provisions for
good order in the country, for the protection of merchants, and for
other objects; the Statute of Mortmain, passed in 1279, which put a
partial stop to injurious gifts of land to the church, and the Statute
_Quia Emptores_, passed in 1290, which was intended to prevent the
excessive multiplication of subtenants. This was done by providing
that whenever in the future any landholder should dispose of a piece
of land it should be held from the same lord the grantor had held it
from, not from the grantor himself. He also gave more liberal charters
to the towns, privileges to foreign merchants, and constant
encouragement to trade. The king's firm hand and prudent judgment were
felt in a wide circle of regulations applying to taxes, markets and
fairs, the purchase of royal supplies, the currency, the
administration of local justice, and many other fields. Yet after all
it was the organization of Parliament that was the most important work
of Edward's reign. This completed the unification of the country. The
English people were now one race, under one law, with one Parliament
representing all parts of the country. It was possible now for the
whole nation to act as a unit, and for laws to be passed which would
apply to the whole country and draw its different sections continually
more closely together. National growth was now possible in a sense in
which it had not been before.
The reign of Edward II, like his own character, was insignificant
compared with that of his father. He was deposed in 1327, and his son,
Edward III, came to the throne as a boy of fourteen years. The first
years of his reign were also relatively unimportant. By the time he
reached his majority, however, other events were imminent which for
the next century or more gave a new direction to the principal
interests and energies of England. A description of these events will
be given in a later chapter.
For the greater part of the long period which has now been sketched in
outline it is almost solely the political and ecclesiastical events
and certain personal experiences which have left their records in
history. We can obtain but vague outlines of the actual life of the
people. An important Anglo-Saxon document describes the organization
of a great landed estate, and from Domesday Book and other early
Norman records may be drawn certain inferences as to the degree of
freedom of the masses of the people and certain facts as to
agriculture and trade. From the increasing body of public records in
the twelfth century can be gathered detached pieces of information as
to actual social and economic conditions, but the knowledge that can
be obtained is even yet slight and uncertain. With the thirteenth
century, however, all this is changed. During the latter part of the
period just described, that is to say the reigns of Henry III and the
three Edwards, we have almost as full knowledge of economic as of
political conditions, of the life of the mass of the people as of that
of courtiers and ecclesiastics. From a time for which 1250 may be
taken as an approximate date, written documents began to be so
numerous, so varied, and so full of information as to the affairs of
private life, that it becomes possible to obtain a comparatively full
and clear knowledge of the methods of agriculture, handicraft, and
commerce, of the classes of society, the prevailing customs and ideas,
and in general of the mode of life and social organization of the mass
of the people, this being the principal subject of economic and social
history. The next three chapters will therefore be devoted
respectively to a description of rural life, of town life, and of
trading relations, as they were during the century from 1250 to 1350,
while the succeeding chapters will trace the main lines of economic
and social change during succeeding periods down to the present time.
CHAPTER II
RURAL LIFE AND ORGANIZATION
*8. The Mediæval Village.*--In the Middle Ages in the greater part of
England all country life was village life. The farmhouses were not
isolated or separated from one another by surrounding fields, as they
are so generally in modern times, but were gathered into villages.
Each village was surrounded by arable lands, meadows, pastures, and
woods which spread away till they reached the confines of the similar
fields of the next adjacent village. Such an agricultural village with
its population and its surrounding lands is usually spoken of as a
"vill." The word "manor" is also applied to it, though this word is
also used in other senses, and has differed in meaning at different
periods. The word "hamlet" means a smaller group of houses separated
from but forming in some respects a part of a vill or manor.
The village consisted of a group of houses ranging in number from ten
or twelve to as many as fifty or perhaps even more, grouped around
what in later times would be called a "village green," or along two or
three intersecting lanes. The houses were small, thatch-roofed, and
one-roomed, and doubtless very miserable. Such buildings as existed
for the protection of cattle or the preservation of crops were closely
connected with the dwelling portions of the houses. In many cases they
were under the same roof. Each vill possessed its church, which was
generally, though by no means always, close to the houses of the
village. There was usually a manor house, which varied in size from
an actual castle to a building of a character scarcely distinguishable
from the primitive houses of the villagers. This might be occupied
regularly or occasionally by the lord of the manor, but might
otherwise be inhabited by the steward or by a tenant, or perhaps only
serve as the gathering place of the manor courts.
Connected with the manor house was an enclosure or courtyard commonly
surrounded by buildings for general farm purposes and for cooking or
brewing. A garden orchard was often attached.
[Illustration: Thirteenth Century Manor House, Millichope, Shropshire.
(Wright, _History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments_.)]
The location of the vill was almost invariably such that a stream with
its border meadows passed through or along its confines, the mill
being often the only building that lay detached from the village
group. A greater or less extent of woodland is also constantly
mentioned.
The vill was thus made up of the group of houses of the villagers
including the parish church and the manor house, all surrounded by a
wide tract of arable land, meadow, pasture, and woods. Where the lands
were extensive there might perhaps be a small group of houses forming
a separate hamlet at some distance from the village, and occasionally
a detached mill, grange, or other building. Its characteristic
appearance, however, must have been that of a close group of buildings
surrounded by an extensive tract of open land.
[Illustration: Thirteenth Century Manor House, Boothby Pagnell,
Lincolnshire. (Turner, _Domestic Architecture in England_.)]
*9. The Vill as an Agricultural System.*--The support of the vill was in
its agriculture. The plan by which the lands of the whole group of
cultivators lay together in a large tract surrounding the village is
spoken of as the "open field" system. The arable portions of this were
ploughed in pieces equalling approximately acres, half-acres, or
quarter-acres.
[Illustration: Village with Open Fields, Nörtershausen, near Coblentz.
Germany. (From a photograph taken in 1894.)]
The mediæval English acre was a long narrow strip forty rods in length
and four rods in width, a half-acre or quarter-acre being of the same
length, but of two rods or one rod in width. The rod was of different
lengths in different parts of the country, depending on local custom,
but the most common length was that prescribed by statute, that is to
say, sixteen and a half feet. The length of the acre, forty rods, has
given rise to one of the familiar units of length, the furlong, that
is, a "furrow-long," or the length of a furrow. A rood is a piece of
land one rod wide and forty rods long, that is, the fourth of an acre.
A series of such strips were ploughed up successively, being separated
from each other either by leaving the width of a furrow or two
unploughed, or by marking the division with stones, or perhaps by
simply throwing the first furrow of the next strip in the opposite
direction when it was ploughed. When an unploughed border was left
covered with grass or stones, it was called a "balk." A number of such
acres or fractions of acres with their slight dividing ridges thus lay
alongside of one another in a group, the number being defined by the
configuration of the ground, by a traditional division among a given
number of tenants, or by some other cause. Other groups of strips lay
at right angles or inclined to these, so that the whole arable land of
the village when ploughed or under cultivation had, like many French,
German, or Swiss landscapes at the present time, something of the
appearance of a great irregular checker-board or patchwork quilt, each
large square being divided in one direction by parallel lines.
Usually the cultivated open fields belonging to a village were divided
into three or more large tracts or fields and these were cultivated
according to some established rotation of crops. The most common of
these was the three-field system, by which in any one year all the
strips in one tract or field would be planted with wheat, rye, or some
other crop which is planted in the fall and harvested the next summer;
a second great field would be planted with oats, barley, peas, or some
such crop as is planted in the spring and harvested in the fall; the
third field would be fallow, recuperating its fertility. The next year
all the acres in the field which had lain fallow the year before might
be planted with a fall crop, the wheat field of the previous year
being planted with a spring crop, and the oats field in its turn now
lying uncultivated for a year. The third year a further exchange would
be made by which a fall crop would succeed the fallow of that year and
the spring crop of the previous year, a spring crop would succeed the
last year's fall crop and the field from which the spring crop was
taken now in its turn would enjoy a fallow year. In the fourth year
the rotation would begin over again.
[Illustration: Village with Open Fields, Udenhausen, near Coblentz,
Germany. (From a photograph taken in 1894.)]
Agriculture was extremely crude. But eight or nine bushels of wheat or
rye were expected from an acre, where now in England the average is
thirty. The plough regularly required eight draught animals, usually
oxen, in breaking up the ground, though lighter ploughs were used in
subsequent cultivation. The breed of all farm animals was small, carts
were few and cumbrous, the harvesting of grain was done with a sickle,
and the mowing of grass with a short, straight scythe. The distance of
the outlying parts of the fields from the farm buildings of the
village added its share to the laboriousness of agricultural life.
[Illustration: Modern Ploughing with Six Oxen in Sussex. (Hudson, W.
H.: _Nature in Downland_. Published by Longmans, Green & Co.)]
[Illustration: Open Fields of Hayford Bridge, Oxfordshire, 1607.
(Facsimile map published by the University of Oxford.)]
The variety of food crops raised was small. Potatoes were of course
unknown, and other root crops and fresh vegetables apparently were
little cultivated. Wheat and rye of several varieties were raised as
bread-stuff, barley and some other grains for the brewing of beer.
Field peas and beans were raised, sometimes for food, but generally as
forage for cattle. The main supply of winter forage for the farm
animals had, however, to be secured in the form of hay, and for this
reliance was placed entirely on the natural meadows, as no clover or
grasses which could be artificially raised on dry ground were yet
known. Meadow land was constantly estimated at twice the value of
arable ground or more. To obtain a sufficient support for the oxen,
horses, and breeding animals through the winter required, therefore, a
constant struggle. Owing to this difficulty animals that were to be
used for food purposes were regularly killed in the fall and salted
down. Much of the unhealthiness of medieval life is no doubt
attributable to the use of salt meat as so large a part of what was at
best a very monotonous diet.
Summer pasture for the horses, cattle, sheep, and swine of the village
was found partly on the arable land after the grain crops had been
taken off, or while it was lying fallow. Since all the acres in any
one great field were planted with the same crop, this would be taken
off from the whole expanse at practically the same time, and the
animals of the whole village might then wander over it, feeding on the
stubble, the grass of the balks, and such other growth as sprung up
before the next ploughing, or before freezing weather. Pasturage was
also found on the meadows after the hay had been cut. But the largest
amount of all was on the "common pasture," the uncultivated land and
woods which in the thirteenth century was still sufficiently
abundant in most parts of England to be found in considerable extent
on almost every manor. Pasturage in all these forms was for the most
part common for all the animals of the vill, which were sent out under
the care of shepherds or other guardians. There were, however,
sometimes enclosed pieces of pasture land in the possession of the
lord of the manor or of individual villagers.
The land of the vill was held and cultivated according to a system of
scattered acres. That is to say, the land held by any one man was not
all in one place, but scattered through various parts of the open
fields of the vill. He would have an acre or two, or perhaps only a
part of an acre, in one place, another strip not adjacent to it, but
somewhere else in the fields, still another somewhere else, and so on
for his whole holding, while the neighbor whose house was next to his
in the village would have pieces of land similarly scattered through
the fields, and in many cases probably have them adjacent to his. The
result was that the various acres or other parts of any one man's
holding were mingled apparently inextricably with those of other men,
customary familiarity only distinguishing which pieces belonged to
each villager.
In some manors there was total irregularity as to the number of acres
in the occupation of any one man; in others there was a striking
regularity. The typical holding, the group of scattered acres
cultivated by one man or held by some two or three in common, was
known as a "virgate," or by some equivalent term, and although of no
universal equality, was more frequently of thirty acres than of any
other number. Usually one finds on a given manor that ten or fifteen
of the villagers have each a virgate of a given number of acres,
several more have each a half virgate or a quarter. Occasionally, on
the other hand, each of them has a different number of acres. In
almost all cases, however, the agricultural holdings of the villagers
were relatively small. For instance, on a certain manor in Norfolk
there were thirty-six holdings, twenty of them below ten acres, eight
between ten and twenty, six between twenty and thirty, and two between
thirty and forty. On another, in Essex, there were nine holdings of
five acres each, two of six, twelve of ten, three of twelve, one of
eighteen, four of twenty, one of forty, and one of fifty. Sometimes
larger holdings in the hands of individual tenants are to be found,
rising to one hundred acres or more. Still these were quite
exceptional and the mass of the villagers had very small groups of
acres in their possession.
It is to be noted next that a large proportion of the cultivated
strips were not held in virgates or otherwise by the villagers at all,
but were in the direct possession and cultivation of the lord of the
manor. This land held directly by the lord of the manor and cultivated
for him was called the "demesne," and frequently included one-half or
even a larger proportion of all the land of the vill. Much of the
meadow and pasture land, and frequently all of the woods, was included
in the demesne. Some of the demesne land was detached from the land of
the villagers, enclosed and separately cultivated or pastured; but for
the most part it lay scattered through the same open fields and was
cultivated by the same methods and according to the same rotation as
the land of the small tenants of the vill, though it was kept under
separate management.
*10. Classes of People on the Manor.*--Every manor was in the hands of a
lord. He might be a knight, esquire, or mere freeman, but in the great
majority of cases the lord of the manor was a nobleman, a bishop,
abbot, or other ecclesiastical official, or the king. But whether the
manor was the whole estate of a man of the lesser gentry, or merely
one part of the possessions of a great baron, an ecclesiastical
corporation, or the crown, the relation between its possessor as lord
of the manor and the other inhabitants as his tenants was the same. In
the former case he was usually resident upon the manor; in the latter
the individual or corporate lord was represented by a steward or other
official who made occasional visits, and frequently, on large manors,
by a resident bailiff. There was also almost universally a reeve, who
was chosen from among the tenants and who had to carry on the demesne
farm in the interests of the lord.
[Illustration: Seal, with Representation of a Manor House. (Turner,
_Domestic Architecture in England_.)]
The tenants of the manor, ranging from holders of considerable amounts
of land, perhaps as much as a hundred acres, through various
gradations down to mere cotters, who held no more than a cottage with
perhaps a half-acre or a rood of land, or even with no land at all,
are usually grouped in the "extents" or contemporary descriptions of
the manors and their inhabitants into several distinct classes. Some
are described as free tenants, or tenants holding freely. Others, and
usually the largest class, are called villains, or customary tenants.
Some, holding only a half or a quarter virgate, are spoken of as half
or quarter villains. Again, a numerous class are described by some
name indicating that they hold only a dwelling-house, or at least that
their holding of land is but slight. These are generally spoken of as
cotters.
All these tenants hold land from the lord of the manor and make
payments and perform services in return for their land. The free
tenants most commonly make payments in money only. At special periods
in the year they give a certain number of shillings or pence to the
lord. Occasionally they are required to make some payment in kind, a
cock or a hen, some eggs, or other articles of consumption. These
money payments and payments of articles of money value are called
"rents of assize," or established rents. Not unusually, however, the
free tenant has to furnish _precariæ_ or "boon-works" to the lord.
That is, he must, either in his own person or through a man hired for
the purpose, furnish one or more days' labor at the specially busy
seasons of the year, at fall and spring ploughing, at mowing or
harvest time. Free tenants were also frequently bound to pay relief
and heriot. Relief was a sum of money paid to the lord by an heir on
obtaining land by inheritance. Custom very generally established the
amount to be paid as the equivalent of one year's ordinary payments.
Heriot was a payment made in kind or in money from the property left
by a deceased tenant, and very generally consisted by custom of the
best animal which had been in the possession of the man, or its
equivalent in value. On many manors heriot was not paid by free
tenants, but only by those of lower rank.
The services and payments of the villains or customary tenants were of
various descriptions. They had usually to make some money payments at
regular periods of the year, like the free tenants, and, even more
frequently than they, some regular payments in kind. But the fine paid
on the inheritance of their land was less definitely restricted in
amount, and heriot was more universally and more regularly collected.
The greater part of their liability to the lord of the manor was,
however, in the form of personal, corporal service. Almost universally
the villain was required to work for a certain number of days in each
week on the demesne of the lord. This "week-work" was most frequently
for three days a week, sometimes for two, sometimes for four;
sometimes for one number of days in the week during a part of the
year, for another number during the remainder. In addition to this
were usually the _precariæ_ or boon-works already referred to.
Sometimes as part of, sometimes in addition to, the week-work and the
boon-work, the villain was required to plough so many acres in the
fall and spring; to mow, toss, and carry in the hay from so many
acres; to haul and scatter so many loads of manure; carry grain to the
barn or the market, build hedges, dig ditches, gather brush, weed
grain, break clods, drive sheep or swine, or any other of the forms of
agricultural labor as local custom on each manor had established his
burdens. Combining the week-work, the regular boon-works, and the
extra specified services, it will be seen that the labor required from
the customary tenant was burdensome in the extreme. Taken on the
average, much more than half of the ordinary villain's time must have
been given in services to the lord of the manor.
The cotters made similar payments and performed similar labors, though
less in amount. A widespread custom required them to work for the lord
one day a week throughout the year, with certain regular payments, and
certain additional special services.
Besides the possession of their land and rights of common pasture,
however, there were some other compensations and alleviations of the
burdens of the villains and cotters. At the boon-works and other
special services performed by the tenants, it was a matter of custom
that the lord of the manor provide food for one or two meals a day,
and custom frequently defined the kind, amount, and value of the food
for each separate meal; as where it is said in a statement of
services: "It is to be known that all the above customary tenants
ought to reap one day in autumn at one boon-work of wheat, and they
shall have among them six bushels of wheat for their bread, baked in
the manor, and broth and meat, that is to say, two men have one
portion of beef and cheese, and beer for drinking. And the aforesaid
customary tenants ought to work in autumn at two boon-works of oats.
And they shall have six bushels of rye for their bread as described
above, broth as before, and herrings, viz. six herrings for each man,
and cheese as before, and water for drinking."
Thus the payments and services of the free tenants were principally of
money, and apparently not burdensome; those of the villains were
largely in corporal service and extremely heavy; while those of the
cotters were smaller, in correspondence with their smaller holdings of
land and in accordance with the necessity that they have their time in
order to make their living by earning wages.
The villains and cotters were in bondage to the lord of the manor.
This was a matter of legal status quite independent of the amount of
land which the tenant held or of the services which he performed,
though, generally speaking, the great body of the smaller tenants and
of the laborers were of servile condition. In general usage the words
_villanus_, _nativus_, _servus_, _custumarius_, and _rusticus_ are
synonymous, and the cotters belonged legally to the same servile
class.
The distinction between free tenants and villains, using this word, as
is customary, to include all those who were legally in servitude, was
not a very clearly marked one. Their economic position was often so
similar that the classes shaded into one another. But the villain was,
as has been seen, usually burdened with much heavier services. He was
subject to special payments, such as "merchet," a payment made to the
lord of the manor when a woman of villain rank was married, and
"leyr," a payment made by women for breach of chastity. He could be
"tallaged" or taxed to any extent the lord saw fit. He was bound to
the soil. He could not leave the manor to seek for better conditions
of life elsewhere. If he ran away, his lord could obtain an order from
a court and have him brought back. When permission was obtained to
remain away from the manor as an inhabitant of another vill or of a
town, it was only upon payment of a periodical sum, frequently known
as "chevage" or head money. He could not sell his cattle without
paying the lord for permission. He had practically no standing in the
courts of the country. In any suit against his lord the proof of his
condition of villainage was sufficient to put him out of court, and
his only recourse was the local court of the manor, where the lord
himself or his representative presided. Finally, in the eyes of the
law, the villain had no property of his own, all his possessions
being, in the last resort, the property of his lord. This legal
theory, however, apparently had but little application to real life;
for in the ordinary course of events the customary tenant, if only by
custom, not by law, yet held and bequeathed to his descendants his
land and his chattels quite as if they were his own.
Serfdom, as it existed in England in the thirteenth century, can
hardly be defined in strict legal terms. It can be described most
correctly as a condition in which the villain tenant of the manor was
bound to the locality and to his services and payments there by a
legal bond, instead of merely by an economic bond, as was the case
with the small free tenant.
There were commonly a few persons in the vill who were not in the
general body of cultivators of the land and were not therefore in the
classes so far described. Since the vill was generally a parish also,
the village contained the parish priest, who, though he might usually
hold some acres in the open fields, and might belong to the peasant
class, was of course somewhat set apart from the villagers by his
education and his ordination. The mill was a valued possession of the
lord of the manor, for by an almost universal custom the tenants were
bound to have their grain ground there, and this monopoly enabled the
miller to pay a substantial rent to the lord while keeping enough
profit for himself to become proverbially well-to-do.
There was often a blacksmith, whom we find sometimes exempted from
other services on condition of keeping the demesne ploughs and other
iron implements in order. A chance weaver or other craftsman is
sometimes found, and when the vill was near sea or river or forest
some who made their living by industries dependent on the locality. In
the main, however, the whole life of the vill gathered around the
arable, meadow, and pasture land, and the social position of the
tenants, except for the cross division of serfdom, depended upon the
respective amounts of land which they held.
*11. The Manor Courts.*--The manor was the sphere of operations of a
manor court. On every manor the tenants gathered at frequent periods
for a great amount of petty judicial and regulative work. The most
usual period for the meeting of the manor court was once every three
weeks, though in some manors no trace of a meeting is found more
frequently than three times, or even twice, a year. In these cases,
however, it is quite probable that less formal meetings occurred of
which no regular record was kept. Different kinds of gatherings of the
tenants are usually distinguished according to the authority under
which they were held, or the class of tenants of which they were made
up. If the court was held by the lord simply because of his feudal
rights as a landholder, and was busied only with matters of the
inheritance, transfer, or grant of lands, the fining of tenants for
the breach of manorial custom, or failure to perform their duties to
the lord of the manor, the election of tenants to petty offices on the
manor, and such matters, it was described in legal language as a court
baron. If a court so occupied was made up of villain tenants only, it
was called a customary court. If, on the other hand, the court also
punished general offences, petty crimes, breaches of contract,
breaches of the assize, that is to say, the established standard of
amount, price, or quality of bread or beer, the lord of the manor
drawing his authority to hold such a court either actually or
supposedly from a grant from the king, such a court was called a court
leet. With the court leet was usually connected the so-called view of
frank pledge. Frank pledge was an ancient system, according to which
all men were obliged to be enrolled in groups, so that if any one
committed an offence, the other members of the group would be obliged
to produce him for trial. View of frank pledge was the right to punish
by fine any who failed to so enroll themselves. In the court baron and
the customary court it was said by lawyers that the body of attendants
were the judges, and the steward, representing the lord of the manor,
only a presiding official; while in the court leet the steward was the
actual judge of the tenants. In practice, however, it is probable that
not much was made of these distinctions, and that the periodic
gatherings were made to do duty for all business of any kind that
needed attention, while the procedure was that which had become
customary on that special manor, irrespective of the particular form
of authority for the court.
[Illustration: Interior of Fourteenth Century Manor House, Sutton
Courtenay, Berkshire. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth
Century._)]
The manor court was presided over by a steward or other officer
representing the lord of the manor. Apparently all adult male tenants
were expected to be present, and any inhabitant was liable to be
summoned. A court was usually held in each manor, but sometimes a lord
of several neighboring manors would hold the court for all of these
in some one place. As most manors belonged to lords who had many
manors in their possession, the steward or other official commonly
proceeded from one manor or group of manors to another, holding the
courts in each. Before the close of the thirteenth century the records
of the manor courts, or at least of the more important of them, began
to be kept with very great regularity and fulness, and it is to the
mass of these manor court rolls which still remain that we owe most of
our detailed knowledge of the condition of the body of the people in
the later Middle Ages. The variety and the amount of business
transacted at the court were alike considerable. When a tenant had
died it was in the meeting of the manor court that his successor
obtained a regrant of the land. The required relief was there
assessed, and the heriot from the property of the deceased recorded.
New grants of land were made, and transfers, leases, and abandonments
by one tenant and assignments to another announced. For each of these
processes of land transfer a fine was collected for the lord of the
manor. Such entries as the following are constantly found: "John of
Durham has come into court and taken one bond-land which Richard Avras
formerly held but gave up because of his poverty; to have and hold for
his lifetime, paying and doing the accustomed services as Richard paid
and did them. He gives for entrance 6_s._ 8_d._;" "Agnes Mabeley is
given possession of a quarter virgate of land which her mother held,
and gives the lord 33_s._ 4_d._ for entrance."
Disputes as to the right of possession of land and questions of dowry
and inheritance were decided, a jury being granted in many cases by
the lord at the petition of a claimant and on payment of a fee.
Another class of cases consisted in the imposition of fines or
amerciaments for the violation of the customs of the manor, of the
rules of the lord, or of the requirements of the culprit's tenure;
such as a villain marrying without leave, failure to perform
boon-works or bad performance of work, failure to place the tenant's
sheep in the lord's fold, cutting of wood or brush, making unlawful
paths across the fields, the meadows, or the common, encroachment in
ploughing upon other men's land or upon the common, or failure to send
grain to the lord's mill for grinding. Sometimes the offence was of a
more general nature, such as breach of assize, breach of contract,
slander, assault, or injury to property. Still another part of the
work of the court was the election of petty manorial officers; a
reeve, a reaper, ale-tasters, and perhaps others. The duty of filling
such offices when elected by the tenants and approved by the lord or
his steward was, as has been said, one of the burdens of villainage.
However, when a villain was fulfilling the office of reeve, it was
customary for him to be relieved of at least a part of the payments
and services to which he would otherwise be subject. Finally the manor
court meetings were employed for the adoption of general regulations
as to the use of the commons and other joint interests, and for the
announcement of the orders of the steward in the keeping of the peace.
*12. The Manor as an Estate of a Lord.*--The manor was profitable to the
lord in various ways. He received rents in money and kind. These
included the rents of assize from free and villain land tenants, rent
from the tenant of the mill, and frequently from other sources. Then
came the profits derived from the cultivation of the demesne land. In
this the lord of the manor was simply a large farmer, except that he
had a supply of labor bound to remain at hand and to give service
without wages almost up to his needs. Finally there were the profits
of the manor courts. As has been seen, these consisted of a great
variety of fees, fines, amerciaments, and collections made by the
steward or other official. Such varied payments and profits combined
to make up the total value of the manor to the landowner. Not only the
slender income of the country squire or knight whose estate consisted
of a single manor of some ten or twenty pounds yearly value, but the
vast wealth of the great noble or of the rich monastery or powerful
bishopric was principally made up of the sum of such payments from a
considerable number of manors. An appreciable part of the income of
the government even was derived from the manors still in the
possession of the crown.
The mediæval manor was a little world in itself. The large number of
scattered acres which made up the demesne farm cultivated in the
interests of the lord of the manor, the small groups of scattered
strips held by free holders or villain tenants who furnished most of
the labor on the demesne farm, the little patches of ground held by
mere laborers whose living was mainly gained by hired service on the
land of the lord or of more prosperous tenants, the claims which all
had to the use of the common pasture for their sheep and cattle and of
the woods for their swine, all these together made up an agricultural
system which secured a revenue for the lord, provided food and the raw
material for primitive manufactures for the inhabitants of the vill,
and furnished some small surplus which could be sold.
[Illustration: Interior of Fourteenth Century Manor House, Great
Malvern, Worcestershire. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth
Century._)]
Life on the mediæval manor was hard. The greater part of the
population was subject to the burdens of serfdom, and all, both free
and serf, shared in the arduousness of labor, coarseness and lack of
variety of food, unsanitary surroundings, and liability to the rigor
of winter and the attacks of pestilence. Yet the average condition of
comfort of the mass of the rural inhabitants of England was probably
as high as at any subsequent time. Food in proportion to wages was
very cheap, and the almost universal possession of some land made it
possible for the very poorest to avoid starvation. Moreover, the great
extent to which custom governed all payments, services, and rights
must have prevented much of the extreme depression which has
occasionally existed in subsequent periods in which greater
competition has distinguished more clearly the capable from the
incompetent.
From the social rather than from the economic point of view the life
of the mediæval manor was perhaps most clearly marked by this
predominance of custom and by a second characteristic nearly related.
This was the singularly close relationship in which all the
inhabitants of the manor were bound to one another, and their
correspondingly complete separation from the outside world. The common
pasture, the intermingled strips of the holdings in the open fields,
the necessary coöperation in the performance of their daily labor on
the demesne land, the close contiguity of their dwellings, their
universal membership in the same parish church, their common
attendance and action in the manor courts, all must have combined to
make the vill an organization of singular unity. This self-centred
life, economically, judicially, and ecclesiastically so nearly
independent of other bodies, put obstacles in the way of change. It
prohibited intercourse beyond the manor, and opposed the growth of a
feeling of common national life. The manorial life lay at the base of
the stability which marked the mediæval period.
*13. BIBLIOGRAPHY*
GENERAL WORKS
Certain general works which refer to long periods of economic history
will be mentioned here and not again referred to, excepting in special
cases. It is to be understood that they contain valuable matter on the
subject, not only of this, but of succeeding chapters. They should
therefore be consulted in addition to the more specific works named
under each chapter.
Cunningham, William: _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, two
volumes. The most extensive and valuable work that covers the whole
field of English economic history.
Ashley, W. J.: _English Economic History_, two volumes. The first
volume is a full and careful analysis of mediæval economic conditions,
with detailed notes and references to the primary sources. The second
volume is a work of original investigation, referring particularly to
conditions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it does not
give such a clear analysis of the conditions of its period as the
first volume.
Traill, H. D.: _Social England_, six volumes. A composite work
including a great variety of subjects, but seldom having the most
satisfactory account of any one of them.
Rogers, J. E. T.: _History of Agriculture and Prices_; _Six Centuries
of Work and Wages_; _Economic Interpretation of History_. Professor
Rogers' work is very extensive and detailed, and his books were
largely pioneer studies. His statistical and other facts are useful,
but his general statements are not very valuable, and his conclusions
are not convincing.
Palgrave, R. H. I.: _Dictionary of Political Economy_. Many of the
articles on subjects of economic history are the best and most recent
studies on their respective subjects, and the bibliographies contained
in them are especially valuable.
Four single-volume text-books have been published on this general
subject:--
Cunningham, William, and McArthur, E. A.: _Outlines of English
Industrial History_.
Gibbins, H. de B.: _Industry in England_.
Warner, George Townsend: _Landmarks in English Industrial History_.
Price, L. L.: _A Short History of English Commerce and Industry_.
SPECIAL WORKS
Seebohm, Frederic: _The English Village Community_. Although written
for another purpose,--to suggest a certain view of the origin of the
medieval manor,--the first five chapters of this book furnish the
clearest existing descriptive account of the fundamental facts of
rural life in the thirteenth century. Its publication marked an era in
the recognition of the main features of manorial organization. Green,
for instance, the historian of the English people, seems to have had
no clear conception of many of those characteristics of ordinary rural
life which Mr. Seebohm has made familiar.
Vinogradoff, Paul: _Villainage in England_.
Pollock, Sir Frederick, and Maitland, F. W.: _History of English Law_,
Vol. 1.
These two works are of especial value for the organization of the
manor courts and the legal condition of the population.
SOURCES
Much that can be explained only with great difficulty becomes clear to
the student immediately when he reads the original documents. Concrete
illustrations of general statements moreover make the work more
interesting and real. It has therefore been found desirable by many
teachers to bring their students into contact with at least a few
typical illustrative documents. The sources for the subject generally
are given in the works named above. An admirable bibliography has been
recently published by
Gross, Charles: _The Sources and Literature of English History from
the Earliest Times to about 1485_. References to abundant material for
the illustration or further investigation of the subject of this
chapter will be found in the following pamphlet:--
Davenport, Frances G.: _A Classified List of Printed Original
Materials for English Manorial and Agrarian History_.
Sources for the mediæval period are almost all in Latin or French.
Some of them, however, have been more accessible by being translated
into English and reprinted in convenient form. A few of these are
given in C. W. Colby: _Selections from the Sources of English
History_, and G. C. Lee: _Source Book of English History_.
In the _Series of Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources
of European History_, published by the Department of History of the
University of Pennsylvania, several numbers include documents in this
field. Vol. III, No. 5, is devoted entirely to manorial documents.
DISCUSSIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE MANOR
The question of the origin of the mediæval manorial organization,
whether it is principally of native English or of Roman origin, or
hewn from still other materials, although not treated in this
text-book, has been the subject of much interest and discussion. One
view of the case is the thesis of Seebohm's book, referred to above.
Other books treating of it are the following:--
Earle, John: _Land Charters and Saxonic Documents_, Introduction.
Gomme, G. L.: _The Village Community_.
Ashley, W. J.: A translation of Fustel de Coulanges, _Origin of
Property in Land_, Introduction.
Andrews, Charles M.: _The Old English Manor_, Introduction.
Maitland, F. W.: _Domesday Book and Beyond_.
Meitzen, August: _Siedelung und Agrarwesen_, Vol. II, Chap. 7.
The writings of Kemble and of Sir Henry Maine belong rather to a past
period of study and speculation, but their ideas still lie at the base
of discussions on the subject.
CHAPTER III
TOWN LIFE AND ORGANIZATION
[Illustration: Town Wall of Southampton, Built in the Thirteenth
Century. (Turner: _Domestic Architecture in England_.)]
*14. The Town Government.*--In the middle of the thirteenth century
there were some two hundred towns in England distinguishable by their
size, form of government, and the occupations of their inhabitants,
from the rural agricultural villages which have just been described.
London probably had more than 25,000 inhabitants; York and Bristol may
each have had as many as 10,000. The population of the others varied
from as many as 6000 to less than 1000. Perhaps the most usual
population of an English mediæval town lay between 1500 and 4000. They
were mostly walled, though such protection was hardly necessary, and
the military element in English towns was therefore but slightly
developed. Those towns which contained cathedrals, and were therefore
the seats of bishoprics, were called cities. All other organized towns
were known as boroughs, though this distinction in the use of the
terms city and borough was by no means always preserved. The towns
differed widely in their form of government; but all had charters from
the king or from some nobleman, abbey, or bishopric on whose lands
they had grown up. Such a charter usually declared the right of the
town to preserve the ancient customs which had come to be recognized
among its inhabitants, and granted to it certain privileges,
exemptions, and rights of self-government. The most universal and
important of these privileges were the following: the town paid the
tolls and dues owed to the king or other lord by its inhabitants in a
lump sum, collecting the amount from its own citizens as the latter or
their own authorities saw fit; the town courts had jurisdiction over
most suits and offences, relieving the townsmen from answering at
hundred and county court suits which concerned matters within their
own limits; the townsmen, where the king granted the charter, were
exempt from the payment of tolls of various kinds throughout his
dominions; they could pass ordinances and regulations controlling the
trade of the town, the administration of its property, and its
internal affairs generally, and could elect officials to carry out
such regulations. These officials also corresponded and negotiated in
the name of the town with the authorities of other towns and with the
government. From the close of the thirteenth century all towns of
any importance were represented in Parliament. These elements of
independence were not all possessed by every town, and some had
special privileges not enumerated in the above list. The first charter
of a town was apt to be vague and inadequate, but from time to time a
new charter was obtained giving additional privileges and defining the
old rights more clearly. Nor had all those who dwelt within the town
limits equal participation in its advantages. These were usually
restricted to those who were known as citizens or burgesses; full
citizenship depending primarily on the possession of a house and land
within the town limits. In addition to the burgesses there were
usually some inhabitants of the town--strangers, Jews, fugitive
villains from the rural villages, or perhaps only poorer natives of
the town--who did not share in these privileges. Those who did possess
all civil rights of the townsmen were in many ways superior in
condition to men in the country. In addition to the advantages of the
municipal organization mentioned above, all burgesses were personally
free, there was entire exemption from the vexatious petty payments of
the rural manors, and burgage tenure was thee nearest to actual land
ownership existent during the Middle Ages.
[Illustration: Charter of Henry II to the Borough of Nottingham.
(_Records of Borough of Nottingham_. Published by the Corporation.)]
*15. The Gild Merchant.*--The town was most clearly marked off from the
country by the occupations by which its people earned their living.
These were, in the first place, trading; secondly, manufacturing or
handicrafts. Agriculture of course existed also, since most townsmen
possessed some lands lying outside of the enclosed portions of the
town. On these they raised crops and pastured their cattle. Of these
varied occupations, however, it was trade which gave character and,
indeed, existence itself to the town. Foreign goods were brought to
the towns from abroad for sale, the surplus products of rural manors
found their way there for marketing; the products of one part of the
country which were needed in other parts were sought for and purchased
in the towns. Men also sold the products of their own labor, not only
food products, such as bread, meat, and fish, but also objects of
manufacture, as cloth, arms, leather, and goods made of wood, leather,
or metal. For the protection and regulation of this trade the
organization known as the gild merchant had grown up in each town.
The gild merchant seems to have included all of the population of the
town who habitually engaged in the business of selling, whether
commodities of their own manufacture or those they had previously
purchased. Membership in the gild was not exactly coincident with
burgess-ship; persons who lived outside of the town were sometimes
admitted into that organization, and, on the other hand, some
inhabitants of the town were not included among its members.
Nevertheless, since practically all of the townsmen made their living
by trade in some form or another, the group of burgesses and the group
of gild members could not have been very different. The authority of
the gild merchant within its field of trade regulation seems to have
been as complete as that of the town community as a whole in its field
of judicial, financial, and administrative jurisdiction. The gild
might therefore be defined as that form of organization of the
inhabitants of the town which controlled its trade and industry. The
principal reason for the existence of the gild was to preserve to its
own members the monopoly of trade. No one not in the gild merchant of
the town could buy or sell there except under conditions imposed by
the gild. Foreigners coming from other countries or traders from other
English towns were prohibited from buying or selling in any way that
might interfere with the interests of the gildsmen. They must buy and
sell at such times and in such places and only such articles as were
provided for by the gild regulations. They must in all cases pay the
town tolls, from which members of the gild were exempt. At
Southampton, for instance, we find the following provisions: "And no
one in the city of Southampton shall buy anything to sell again in the
same city unless he is of the gild merchant or of the franchise."
Similarly at Leicester, in 1260, it was ordained that no gildsman
should form a partnership with a stranger, allowing him to join in the
profits of the sale of wool or other merchandise.
[Illustration: Hall of Merchants' Company of York. (Lambert: _Two
Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown & Sons, Hull.)]
[Illustration: Interior of Hall of Merchants' Company of York.
(Lambert: _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown &
Sons, Hull.)]
As against outsiders the gild merchant was a protective body, as
regards its own members it was looked upon and constantly spoken of as
a fraternity. Its members must all share in the common expenditures,
they are called brethren of the society, their competition with one
another is reduced to its lowest limits. For instance, we find the
provision that "any one who is of the gild merchant may share in all
merchandise which another gildsman shall buy."
[Illustration: Earliest Merchant Gild Roll of the Borough of
Leicester. (Bateson: _Records of the Borough of Leicester_. Published
by C. J. Clay & Sons, Cambridge.)]
The presiding officer was usually known as the alderman, while the
names given to other officials, such as stewards, deans, bailiffs,
chaplains, skevins, and ushers, and the duties they performed, varied
greatly from time to time.
Meetings were held at different periods, sometimes annually, in many
cases more frequently. At these meetings new ordinances were passed,
officers elected, and other business transacted. It was also a
convivial occasion, a gild feast preceding or following the other
labors of the meeting. In some gilds the meeting was regularly known
as "the drinking." There were likewise frequent sittings of the
officials of the fraternity, devoted to the decision of disputes
between brethren, the admission of new members, the fining or
expulsion of offenders against the gild ordinances, and other routine
work. These meetings were known as "morrowspeches".
The greater part of the activity of the gild merchant consisted in the
holding of its meetings with their accompanying feasts, and in the
enforcement of its regulations upon its members and upon outsiders. It
fulfilled, however, many fraternal duties for its members. It is
provided in one set of statutes that, "If a gildsman be imprisoned in
England in time of peace, the alderman, with the steward and with one
of the skevins, shall go, at the cost of the gild, to procure the
deliverance of the one who is in prison." In another, "If any of the
brethren shall fall into poverty or misery, all the brethren are to
assist him by common consent out of the chattels of the house or
fraternity, or of their proper own." The funeral rites, especially,
were attended by the man's gild brethren. "And when a gildsman dies,
all those who are of the gild and are in the city shall attend the
service for the dead, and gildsmen shall bear the body and bring it to
the place of burial." The gild merchant also sometimes fulfilled
various religious, philanthropic, and charitable duties, not only to
its members, but to the public generally, and to the poor. The time of
the fullest development of the gild merchant varied, of course, in
different towns, but its widest expansion was probably in the early
part of the period we are studying, that is, during the thirteenth
century. Later it came to be in some towns indistinguishable from the
municipal government in general, its members the same as the
burgesses, its officers represented by the officers of the town. In
some other towns the gild merchant gradually lost its control over
trade, retaining only its fraternal, charitable, and religious
features. In still other cases the expression gradually lost all
definite significance and its meaning became a matter for antiquarian
dispute.
*16. The Craft Gilds.*--By the fourteenth century the gild merchant of
the town was a much less conspicuous institution than it had
previously been. Its decay was largely the result of the growth of a
group of organizations in each town which were spoken of as crafts,
fraternities, gilds, misteries, or often merely by the name of their
occupation, as "the spurriers," "the dyers," "the fishmongers." These
organizations are usually described in later writings as craft gilds.
It is not to be understood that the gild merchant and the craft gilds
never existed contemporaneously in any town. The former began earlier
and decayed before the craft gilds reached their height, but there was
a considerable period when it must have been a common thing for a man
to be a member both of the gild merchant of the town and of the
separate organization of his own trade. The later gilds seem to have
grown up in response to the needs of handicraft much as the gild
merchant had grown up to regulate trade, though trading occupations
also were eventually drawn into the craft gild form of organization.
The weavers seem to have been the earliest occupation to be organized
into a craft gild; but later almost every form of industry which gave
employment to a handful of craftsmen in any town had its separate
fraternity. Since even nearly allied trades, such as the glovers,
girdlers, pocket makers, skinners, white tawyers, and other workers in
leather; or the fletchers, the makers of arrows, the bowyers, the
makers of bows, and the stringers, the makers of bowstrings, were
organized into separate bodies, the number of craft gilds in any one
town was often very large. At London there were by 1350 at least as
many as forty, at York, some time later, more than fifty.
[Illustration: Old Townhall of Leicester, Formerly Hall of Corpus
Christi Gild. (Drawing made in 1826.)]
The craft gilds existed usually under the authority of the town
government, though frequently they obtained authorization or even a
charter from the crown. They were formed primarily to regulate and
preserve the monopoly of their own occupations in their own town, just
as the gild merchant existed to regulate the trade of the town in
general. No one could carry on any trade without being subject to the
organization which controlled that trade. Membership, however, was not
intentionally restricted. Any man who was a capable workman and
conformed to the rules of the craft was practically a member of the
organization of that industry. It is a common requirement in the
earliest gild statutes that every man who wishes to carry on that
particular industry should have his ability testified to by some known
members of the craft. But usually full membership and influence in the
gild was reached as a matter of course by the artisans passing through
the successive grades of apprentice, journeyman, and master. As an
apprentice he was bound to a master for a number of years, living in
his house and learning the trade in his shop. There was usually a
signed contract entered into between the master and the parents of
the apprentice, by which the former agreed to provide all necessary
clothing, food, and lodging, and teach to the apprentice all he
himself knew about his craft. The latter, on the other hand, was bound
to keep secret his master's affairs, to obey all his commandments, and
to behave himself properly in all things. After the expiration of the
time agreed upon for his apprenticeship, which varied much in
individual cases, but was apt to be about seven years, he became free
of the trade as a journeyman, a full workman. The word "journeyman"
may refer to the engagement being by the day, from the French word
_journée_, or to the habit of making journeys from town to town in
search of work, or it may be derived from some other origin. As a
journeyman he served for wages in the employ of a master. In many
cases he saved enough money for the small requirements of setting up
an independent shop. Then as full master artisan or tradesman he might
take part in all the meetings and general administration of the
organized body of his craft, might hold office, and would himself
probably have one or more journeymen in his employ and apprentices
under his guardianship. As almost all industries were carried on in
the dwelling-houses of the craftsmen, no establishments could be of
very considerable size, and the difference of position between master,
journeyman, and apprentice could not have been great. The craft gild
was organized with its regular rules, its officers, and its meetings.
The rules or ordinances of the fraternity were drawn up at some one
time and added to or altered from time to time afterward. The approval
of the city authorities was frequently sought for such new statutes as
well as for the original ordinances, and in many towns appears to have
been necessary. The rules provided for officers and their powers, the
time and character of meetings, and for a considerable variety of
functions. These varied of course in different trades and in different
towns, but some characteristics were almost universal. Provisions were
always either tacitly or formally included for the preservation of the
monopoly of the crafts in the town. The hours of labor were regulated.
Night work was very generally prohibited, apparently because of the
difficulty of oversight at that time, as was work on Saturday
afternoons, Sundays, and other holy days. Provisions were made for the
inspection of goods by the officers of the gild, all workshops and
goods for sale being constantly subject to their examination, if they
should wish it. In those occupations that involved buying and selling
the necessities of life, such as those of the fishmongers and the
bakers, the officers of the fraternity, like the town authorities,
were engaged in a continual struggle with "regrators," "forestallers,"
and "engrossers," which were appellations as odious as they were
common in the mediæval town. Regrating meant buying to sell again at a
higher price without having made any addition to the value of the
goods; forestalling was going to the place of production to buy, or in
any other way trying to outwit fellow-dealers by purchasing things
before they came into the open market where all had the same
opportunity; engrossing was buying up the whole supply, or so much of
it as not to allow other dealers to get what they needed, the modern
"cornering of the market." These practices, which were regarded as so
objectionable in the eyes of mediæval traders, were frequently nothing
more than what would be considered commendable enterprise in a more
competitive age. Another class of rules was for mutual assistance, for
kindliness among members, and for the obedience and faithfulness of
journeymen and apprentices. There were provisions for assistance to
members of the craft when in need, or to their widows and orphans, for
the visitation of those sick or in prison, for common attendance at
the burial services of deceased members, and for other charitable and
philanthropic objects. Thus the craft gild, like the gild merchant,
combined close social relationship with a distinctly recognized and
enforced regulation of the trade. This regulation provided for the
protection of members of the organization from outside competition,
and it also prevented any considerable amount of competition among
members; it supported the interests of the full master members of the
craft as against those in the journeyman stage, and enforced the
custom of the trade in hours, materials, methods of manufacture, and
often in prices.
[Illustration: Table of Assize of Bread in Record Book of City of
Hull. (Lambert: _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A.
Brown & Sons, Hull.)]
The officers were usually known as masters, wardens, or stewards.
Their powers extended to the preservation of order among the master
members of the craft at the meetings, and among the journeymen and
apprentices of the craft at all times; to the supervision, either
directly or through deputies, of the work of the members, seeing that
it conformed to the rules and was not false in any way; to the
settlement, if possible, of disputes among members of the craft; to
the administration of its charitable work; and to the representation
of the organized body of the craft before town or other authorities.
Common religious observances were held by the craftsmen not only at
the funerals of members, but on the day of the saint to which the gild
was especially dedicated. Most fraternities kept up a shrine or chapel
in some parish church. Fines for the breach of gild rules were often
ordered to be paid in wax that the candles about the body of dead
brethren and in the gild chapel should never be wanting. All the
brethren of the gild, dressed in common suits of livery, walked in
procession from their hall or meeting room to the church, performed
their devotions and joined in the services in commemoration of the
dead. Members of the craft frequently bequeathed property for the
partial support of a chaplain and payment of other expenses connected
with their "obits," or masses for the repose of their souls and those
of their relatives.
Closely connected with the religious observances was the convivial
side of the gild's life. On the annual gild day, or more frequently,
the members all gathered at their hall or some inn to a feast, which
varied in luxuriousness according to the wealth of the fraternity,
from bread, cheese, and ale to all the exuberance of which the Middle
Ages were capable.
Somewhat later, we find the craft gilds taking entire charge of the
series or cycles of "mystery plays," which were given in various
towns. The words of the plays produced at York, Coventry, Chester, and
Woodkirk have come down to us and are of extreme interest as embryonic
forms of the drama and examples of purely vernacular language. It is
quite certain that such groups of plays were given by the crafts in a
number of other towns. They were generally given on Corpus Christi
day, a feast which fell in the early summer time, when out-door
pleasures were again enjoyable after the winter's confinement. A cycle
consisted of a series of dialogues or short plays, each based upon
some scene of biblical story, so arranged that the whole Bible
narrative should be given consecutively from the Creation to the
Second Advent. One of the crafts, starting early in the morning, would
draw a pageant consisting of a platform on wheels, to a regularly
appointed spot in a conspicuous part of the town, and on this
platform, with some rude scenery, certain members of the gild or men
employed by them would proceed to recite a dialogue in verse
representative of some early part of the Bible story. After they had
finished, their pageant would be dragged to another station, where
they repeated their performance. In the meantime a second company had
taken their former place, and recited a dialogue representative of a
second scene. So the whole day would be occupied by the series of
performances. The town and the craftsmen valued the celebration
because it was an occasion for strangers visiting their city and thus
increasing the volume of trade, as well as because it furnished an
opportunity for the gratification of their social and dramatic
instincts.
It was not only at the periodical business meetings, or on the feast
days, or in the preparation for the dramatic shows, that the gildsmen
were thrown together. Usually all the members of one craft lived on
the same street or in the same part of the town, and were therefore
members of the same parish church and constantly brought under one
another's observation in all the daily concerns of life. All things
combined to make the craft a natural and necessary centre for the
interest of each of its members.
*17. Non-industrial Gilds.*--Besides the gilds merchant, which included
persons of all industrial occupations, and the craft gilds, which were
based upon separate organizations of each industry, there were gilds
or fraternities in existence which had no industrial functions
whatever. These are usually spoken of as "religious" or "social"
gilds. It would perhaps be better to describe them simply as
non-industrial gilds; for their religious and social functions they
had in common, as has been seen, both with the gild merchant and the
craft organizations. They only differed from these in not being based
upon or interested in the monopoly or oversight of any kind of trade
or handicraft. They differed also from the craft gilds in that all
their members were on an equal basis, there being no such industrial
grades as apprentice, journeyman, and master; and from both of the
organizations already discussed in the fact that they existed in small
towns and even in mere villages, as well as in industrial centres.
In these associations the religious, social, and charitable elements
were naturally more prominent than in those fraternities which were
organized primarily for some kind of economic regulation. They were
generally named after some saint. The ordinances usually provided for
one or more solemn services in the year, frequently with a procession
in livery, and sometimes with a considerable amount of pantomime or
symbolic show. For instance, the gild of St. Helen at Beverly, in
their procession to the church of the Friars Minors on the day of
their patron saint, were preceded by an old man carrying a cross;
after him a fair young man dressed as St. Helen; then another old man
carrying a shovel, these being intended to typify the finding of the
cross. Next came the sisters two and two, after them the brethren of
the gild, and finally the officers. There were always provisions for
solemnities at the funerals of members, for burial at the expense of
the gild if the member who had died left no means for a suitable
ceremony, and for prayers for deceased members. What might be called
the insurance feature was also much more nearly universal than in the
case of the industrial fraternities. Help was given in case of theft,
fire, sickness, or almost any kind of loss which was not chargeable to
the member's own misdoing. Finally it was very customary for such
gilds to provide for the support of a certain number of dependents,
aged men or women, cripples, or lepers, for charity's sake; and
occasionally educational facilities were also provided by them from
their regular income or from bequests made for the purpose. The
social-religious gilds were extremely numerous, and seem frequently to
have existed within the limits of a craft, including some of its
members and not others, or within a certain parish, including some of
the parishioners, but not all.
Thus if there were men in the mediæval town who were not members of
some trading or craft body, they would in all probability be members
of some society based merely on religious or social feeling. The whole
tendency of mediæval society was toward organization, combination,
close union with one's fellows. It might be said that all town life
involved membership in some organization, and usually in that one into
which a man was drawn by the occupation in which he made his living.
These gilds or the town government itself controlled even the affairs
of private economic life in the city, just as the customary
agriculture of the country prevented much freedom of action there.
Methods of trading, or manufacture, the kind and amount of material to
be used, hours of labor, conditions of employment, even prices of
work, were regulated by the gild ordinances. The individual gildsman
had as little opportunity to emancipate himself from the controlling
force of the association as the individual tenant on the rural manor
had to free himself from the customary agriculture and the customary
services. Whether we study rural or urban society, whether we look at
the purely economic or at the broader social side of existence, life
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was corporate rather than
individual.
*18. BIBLIOGRAPHY*
Gross, Charles: _The Gild Merchant_, two volumes. The first volume
consists of a full account and discussion of the character and
functions of the gild merchant, with a number of appendices on cognate
subjects. The second volume contains the documents on which the first
is based.
Seligman, E. R. A.: _Two Chapters on Mediæval Gilds_.
Brentano, L.: _The History and Development of English Gilds_. An essay
prefixed to a volume of ordinances of English Gilds, edited by T.
Smith. Brentano's essay is only referred to because of the paucity of
works on the subject, as it is fanciful and unsatisfactory. No
thorough and scholarly description of the craft gilds exists. On the
other hand, a considerable body of original materials is easily
accessible in English, as in the following works:--
Riley: _Memorials of London and London Life_.
Smith, Toulmin: _English Gilds_.
Various documents illustrative of town and gild history will also be
found in Vol. II, No. 1, of the _Translations and Reprints_,
published by the Department of History of the University of
Pennsylvania.
Better descriptions exist for the position of the gilds in special
towns than for their general character, especially in London by
Herbert, in Hull by Lambert, in Shrewsbury by Hibbert, and in Coventry
by Miss Harris.
CHAPTER IV
MEDIÆVAL TRADE AND COMMERCE
*19. Markets and Fairs.*--Within the towns, in addition to the ordinary
trading described in the last chapter, much buying and selling was
done at the weekly or semi-weekly markets. The existence of a market
in a town was the result of a special grant from the king, sometimes
to the burgesses themselves, sometimes to a neighboring nobleman or
abbey. In the latter case the tolls paid by outsiders who bought or
sold cattle or victuals in the market did not go to the town or gild
authorities, but to the person who was said to "own" the market. Many
places which differed in scarcely any other way from agricultural
villages possessed markets, so that "market towns" became a
descriptive term for small towns midway in size between the larger
boroughs or cities and mere villages. The sales at markets were
usually of the products of the surrounding country, especially of
articles of food consumption, so that the fact of the existence of a
market on one or more days of the week in a large town was of
comparatively little importance from the point of view of more general
trade.
Far more important was the similar institution of periodical fairs.
Fairs, like markets, existed only by grant from the king. They
differed from markets, however, in being held only once a year or at
most semi-annually or quarterly, in being invariably in the possession
of private persons, never of town governments, and in the fact that
during their continuance as a rule all buying and selling except at
the fairs was suspended within a considerable circuit. Several hundred
grants of fairs are recorded on the rolls of royal charters, most of
them to abbeys, bishoprics, and noblemen; but comparatively few of
them were of sufficient size or importance to play any considerable
part in the trade and commerce of the country. Moreover, the
development of the towns with their continuous trade tended to draw
custom away from all the fairs except those which had obtained some
especial importance and an international reputation. Of these,
however, there was still a considerable number whose influence was
very great. The best known were those of Winchester, of Stourbridge
near Cambridge, of St. Ives belonging to the abbot of Ramsay, and of
Boston. In early times fairs were frequently held in the churchyards,
but this came to be looked upon as a scandal, and was prohibited by a
law of 1285. The fairs were in many cases held just beyond the limits
of a town in an open field or on a smooth hillside. Each year, some
time before the opening day of the fair, this ground was formally
occupied by the servants of the owner of the fair, wooden booths were
erected or ground set apart for those who should put up their own
tents or prefer to sell in the open. Then as merchants appeared from
foreign or English towns they chose or were assigned places which they
were bound to retain during the continuance of the fair. By the time
of the opening of the fair those who expected to sell were arranged in
long rows or groups, according to the places they came from, or the
kind of goods in which they dealt. After the opening had been
proclaimed no merchant of the nearby town could buy or sell, except
within the borders of the fair. The town authorities resigned their
functions into the hands of the officials whom the lord of the fair
had placed in charge of it, and for the time for which the fair was
held, usually from six to twelve days, everything within the enclosure
of the fair, within the town, and in the surrounding neighborhood was
under their control.
[Illustration: Location of Some of the Principal Fairs in the
Thirteenth Century.]
Tolls were collected for the advantage of the lord of the fair from
all goods as they were brought into or taken out from the bounds of
the fair, or at the time of their sale; stallage was paid for the rent
of booths, fees were charged for the use of space, and for using the
lord's weights and scales. Good order was preserved and fair dealing
enforced by the officials of the lord. To prevent offences and settle
disputes arising in the midst of the busy trading the officials of the
lord formed a court which sat continually and followed a summary
procedure. This was known as a court of "pie-powder," that is _pied
poudré_, or _dusty foot_, so called, no doubt, from its readiness to
hear the suits of merchants and wayfarers, as they were, without
formality or delay. At this court a great variety of cases came up,
such as disputes as to debts, failure to perform contracts of sale or
purchase, false measurements, theft, assault, defamation, and
misdemeanors of all kinds. Sometimes the court decided offhand,
sometimes compurgation was allowed immediately or on the next day,
sometimes juries were formed and gave decisions. The law which the
court of pie-powder administered was often referred to as the "law
merchant," a somewhat less rigid system than the common law, and one
whose rules were generally defined, in these courts and in the king's
courts, by juries chosen from among the merchants themselves.
At these fairs, even more than in the towns, merchants from a distance
gathered to buy the products peculiar to the part of England where the
fair was held, and to sell their own articles of importation or
production. The large fairs furnished by far the best markets of the
time. We find mention made in the records of one court of pie-powder
of men from a dozen or twenty English towns, from Bordeaux, and from
Rouen. The men who came from any one town, whether of England or the
Continent, acted and were treated as common members of the gild
merchant of that town, as forming a sort of community, and being to a
certain extent responsible for one another. They did their buying and
selling, it is true, separately, but if disputes arose, the whole
group were held responsible for each member. For example, the
following entry was made in the roll of the fair of St. Ives in the
year 1275: "William of Fleetbridge and Anne his wife complain of
Thomas Coventry of Leicester for unjustly withholding from them 55_s._
2-1/2_d._ for a sack of wool.... Elias is ordered to attach the
community of Leicester to answer ... and of the said community Allan
Parker, Adam Nose and Robert Howell are attached by three bundles of
ox-hides, three hundred bundles of sheep skins and six sacks of wool."
*20. Trade Relations between Towns.*--The fairs were only temporary
selling places. When the time for which the fair was held had expired
the booths were removed, the merchants returned to their native cities
or travelled away to some other fair, and the officials were
withdrawn. The place was deserted until the next quarter or year. But
in the towns, as has been already stated, more or less continuous
trade went on; not only petty retail trade and that of the weekly or
semi-weekly markets between townsmen or countrymen coming from the
immediate vicinity, but a wholesale trade between the merchants of
that town and those from other towns in England or on the Continent.
It was of this trade above all that the gild merchant of each town
possessed the regulation. Merchants from another town were treated
much the same, whether that town was English or foreign. In fact,
"foreigner" or "alien," as used in the town records, of Bristol, for
instance, may apply to citizens of London or Oxford just as well as to
those of Paris or Cologne. Such "foreign" merchants could deal when
they came to a town only with members of the gild, and only on the
conditions required by the gild. Usually they could buy or sell only
at wholesale, and tolls were collected from them upon their sales or
purchases. They were prohibited from dealing in some kinds of articles
altogether, and frequently the duration of their stay in the town was
limited to a prescribed period. Under such circumstances the
authorities of various towns entered into trade agreements with those
of other towns providing for mutual concessions and advantages.
Correspondence was also constantly going on between the officials of
various towns for the settlement of individual points of dispute, for
the return of fugitive apprentices, asking that justice might be done
to aggrieved citizens, and on occasion threatening reprisal.
Southampton had formal agreements with more than seventy towns or
other trading bodies. During a period of twenty years the city
authorities of London sent more than 300 letters on such matters to
the officials of some 90 other towns in England and towns on the
Continent. The merchants from any one town did not therefore trade or
act entirely as separate individuals, but depended on the prestige of
their town, or the support of the home authorities, or the privileges
already agreed upon by treaty. The non-payment of a debt by a merchant
of one town usually made any fellow-townsman liable to seizure where
the debt was owed, until the debtor could be made to pay. In 1285, by
a law of Edward I, this was prohibited as far as England was
concerned, but a merchant from a French town might still have his
person and property seized for a debt of which he may have had no
previous knowledge. External trade was thus not so much individual,
between some Englishmen and others; or international, between
Englishmen and Frenchmen, Flemings, Spaniards, or Germans, as it was
intermunicipal, as it has been well described. Citizens of various
towns, London, Bristol, Venice, Ghent, Arras, or Lubeck, for instance,
carried on their trade under the protection their city had obtained
for them.
*21. Foreign Trading Relations.*--The regulations and restrictions of
fairs and town markets and gilds merchant must have tended largely to
the discouragement of foreign trade. Indeed, the feeling of the body
of English town merchants was one of strong dislike to foreigners and
a desire to restrict their trade within the narrowest limits. In
addition to the burdens and limitations placed upon all traders not of
their own town, it was very common in the case of merchants from
abroad to require that they should only remain within the town for the
purpose of selling for forty days, and that they should board not at
an inn but in the household of some town merchant, who could thus keep
oversight of their movements, and who would be held responsible if his
guest violated the law in any way. This was called the custom of
"hostage."
The king, on the other hand, and the classes most influential in the
national government, the nobility and the churchmen, favored foreign
trade. A series of privileges, guarantees, and concessions were
consequently issued by the government to individual foreign merchants,
to foreign towns, and even to foreigners generally, the object of
which was to encourage their coming to England to trade. The most
remarkable instance of this was the so-called _Carta Mercatoria_
issued by Edward I in 1303. It was given according to its own terms,
for the peace and security of merchants coming to England from
Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Navarre, Lombardy, Tuscany,
Provence, Catalonia, Aquitaine, Toulouse, Quercy, Flanders, Brabant,
and all other foreign lands. It allowed such merchants to bring in and
sell almost all kinds of goods, and freed them from the payment of
many tolls and payments habitually exacted by the towns; it gave them
permission to sell to strangers as well as to townsmen, and to retail
as well as sell by wholesale. It freed them from the necessity of
dwelling with native merchants, and of bringing their stay to a close
within a restricted time. Town and market authorities were required by
it to give prompt justice to foreigners according to the law merchant,
and it was promised that a royal judge would be specially appointed to
listen to appeals. It is quite evident that if this charter had been
enforced some of the most familiar and valued customs of the merchants
of the various English towns would have been abrogated. In consequence
of vigorous protests and bitter resistance on the part of the townsmen
its provisions were partly withdrawn, partly ignored, and the position
of foreign merchants in England continued to depend on the tolerably
consistent support of the crown. Even this was modified by the steady
policy of hostility, limitation, and control on the part of the native
merchants.
With the exception of some intercourse between the northern towns and
the Scandinavian countries, the foreign trade of England was carried
on almost entirely by foreigners. English merchants, until after the
fourteenth century, seem to have had neither the ability, the
enterprise, nor the capital to go to continental cities in any numbers
to sell the products of their own country or to buy goods which would
be in demand when imported into England. Foreigners were more
enterprising. From Flemish, French, German, Italian, and even Spanish
cities merchants came over as traders. The product of England which
was most in demand was wool. Certain parts of England were famous
throughout all Europe for the quality and quantity of the wool raised
there. The relative good order of England and its exemption from civil
war made it possible to raise sheep more extensively than in countries
where foraging parties from rival bodies of troops passed frequently
to and fro. Many of the monasteries, especially in the north and west,
had large outlying wastes of land which were regularly used for the
raising of sheep. The product of these northern and western pastures
as well as the surplus product of the demesnes and larger holdings of
the ordinary manors was brought to the fairs and towns for sale and
bought up readily by foreign merchants. Sheepskins, hides, and tanned
leather were also exported, as were certain coarse woven fabrics. Tin
and lead were well-known products, at that time almost peculiar to
England, and in years of plentiful production, grain, salt meat, and
dairy products were exported. England was far behind most of the
Continent in industrial matters, so that there was much that could be
brought into the country that would be in demand, both of the natural
productions of foreign countries and of their manufactured articles.
Trade relations existed between England and the Scandinavian
countries, northern Germany, southern Germany, the Netherlands,
northeastern, northwestern, and southern France, Spain and Portugal,
and various parts of Italy. Of these lines of trade the most important
were the trade with the Hanse cities of northern Germany, with the
Flemish cities, and with those in Italy, especially Venice.
*22. The Italian and Eastern Trade.*--The merchandise which Venice had
to offer was of an especially varied nature. Her prosperity had begun
with a coastwise trade along the shores of the Adriatic. Later,
especially during the period of the Crusades, her training had been
extended to the eastern Mediterranean, where she obtained trading
concessions from the Greek Emperor and formed a half commercial, half
political empire of her own among the island cities and coast
districts of the Ionian Sea, along the Dardanelles and the Sea of
Marmora, and finally in the Black Sea. From these regions she brought
the productions peculiar to the eastern Mediterranean: wines, sugar,
dried fruits and nuts, cotton, drugs, dyestuffs, and certain kinds of
leather and other manufactured articles.
[Illustration: Trade Routes between England and the Continent in the
Fourteenth Century. Engraved by Bormay and Co., N.Y.]
Eventually Venice became the special possessor of a still more distant
trade, that of the far East. The products of Arabia and Persia, India
and the East Indian Islands, and even of China, all through the Middle
Ages, as in antiquity, made their way by long and difficult routes to
the western countries of Europe. Silk and cotton, both raw and
manufactured into fine goods, indigo and other dyestuffs, aromatic
woods and gums, narcotics and other drugs, pearls, rubies, diamonds,
sapphires, turquoises, and other precious stones, gold and silver, and
above all the edible spices, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and
allspice, could be obtained only in Asia. There were three principal
routes by which these goods were brought into Europe: first, along the
Red Sea and overland across Egypt; second, up the Persian Gulf to its
head, and then either along the Euphrates to a certain point whence
the caravan route turned westward to the Syrian coast, or along the
Tigris to its upper waters, and then across to the Black Sea at
Trebizond; third, by caravan routes across Asia, then across the
Caspian Sea, and overland again, either to the Black Sea or through
Russia to the Baltic. A large part of this trade was gathered up by
the Italian cities, especially Venice, at its various outlets upon the
Mediterranean or adjacent waters. She had for exportation therefore,
in addition to her own manufactures, merchandise which had been
gathered from all parts of the then known world. The Venetian laws
regulated commerce with the greatest minuteness. All goods purchased
by Venetian traders must as a rule be brought first to the city and
unloaded and stored in the city warehouses. A certain amount of
freedom of export by land or water was then allowed, but by far the
greater proportion of the goods remained under the partial control of
the government. When conditions were considered favorable, the Senate
voted a certain number of government galleys for a given voyage. There
were several objective points for these voyages, but one was regularly
England and Flanders, and the group of vessels sent to those countries
was known as the "Flanders Fleet." Such an expedition was usually
ordered about once a year, and consisted of two to five galleys. These
were put under the charge of an admiral and provided with sailing
masters, crews of rowers, and armed men to protect them, all at the
expense of the merchants who should send goods in the vessels.
Stringent regulations were also imposed upon them by the government,
defining the length of their stay and appointing a series of stopping
places, usually as follows: Capo d'Istria, Corfu, Otranto, Syracuse,
Messina, Naples, Majorca, certain Spanish ports, Lisbon; then across
the Bay of Biscay to the south coast of England, where usually the
fleet divided, part going to Sluys, Middleburg, or Antwerp, in the
Netherlands; the remainder going to Southampton, Sandwich, London, or
elsewhere in England. At one or other of the southern ports of
England the fleet would reassemble on its return, the whole outward
and return voyage usually taking about a year.
The merchants who had come with the fleet thereupon proceeded to
dispose of their goods in the southern towns and fairs of England and
to buy wool or other goods which might be taken back to Venice or
disposed of on the way. A somewhat similar trade was kept up with
other Italian cities, especially with Genoa and Florence, though these
lines of trade were more extensive in the fifteenth century than in
the fourteenth.
*23. The Flanders Trade and the Staple.*--A trade of greater bulk and
greater importance, though it did not include articles from such a
distance as that of Italy, was the trade with the Flemish cities. This
was more closely connected with English wool production than was that
with any other country. Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Courtrai, Arras, and a
number of other cities in Flanders and the adjacent provinces of the
Netherlands and France had become populous and rich, principally from
their weaving industry. For their manufacture of fine fabrics they
needed the English wool, and in turn their fine woven goods were in
constant demand for the use of the wealthier classes in England.
English skill was not yet sufficient to produce anything more than the
crudest and roughest of textile fabrics. The fine cloths, linens,
cambrics, cloth of gold and silver, tapestries and hangings, were the
product of the looms of the Flemish cities. Other fine manufactured
goods, such as armor and weapons, glass and furniture, and articles
which had been brought in the way of trade to the Netherlands, were
all exported thence and sold in England.
The Flemish dealers who habitually engaged in the English trade were
organized among themselves in a company or league known as the
"Flemish Hanse of London." A considerable number of towns held such
membership in the organization that their citizens could take part in
the trade and share in the benefits and privileges of the society, and
no citizen of these towns could trade in England without paying the
dues and submitting himself to the rules of the Hanse. The export
trade from England to the Netherlands was controlled from the English
side by the system known as the "Staple." From early times it had been
customary to gather English standard products in certain towns in
England or abroad for sale. These towns were known as "staples" or
"staple towns," and wool, woolfells, leather, tin, and lead, the goods
most extensively exported, were known as "staple goods." Subsequently
the government took control of the matter, and appointed a certain
town in the Netherlands to which staple goods must be sent in the
first place when they were exported from England. Later certain towns
in England were appointed as staple towns, where all goods of the
kinds mentioned above should be taken to be registered, weighed, and
taxed before exportation. Just at the close of the period under
discussion, in 1354, a careful organization was given to the system of
staple towns in England, by which in each of the ten or twelve towns
to which staple goods must be brought for exportation, a Mayor of the
Staple and two Constables were elected by the "merchants of the
staple," native and foreign. These officials had a number of duties,
some of them more particularly in the interest of the king and
treasury, others in the interest of the foreign merchants, still
others merely for the preservation of good order and the enforcement
of justice. The law merchant was made the basis of judgment, and every
effort made to grant protection to foreigners and at the same time
secure the financial interests of the government. But the policy of
the government was by no means consistent. Both before and after this
date, the whole system of staples was repeatedly abolished for a time
and the whole trade in these articles thrown open. Again, the location
of the staple towns was shifted from England to the continent and
again back to England. Eventually, in 1363, the staple came to be
established at Calais, and all "staplers," or exporters of staple
goods from England, were forced to give bonds that their cargoes would
be taken direct to Calais to be sold.
*24. The Hanse Trade.*--The trade with Germany was at this time almost
all with the group of citizens which made up the German Hanse or
League. This was a union of a large number of towns of northern
Germany, such as Lubeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Dantzig, Brunswick, and
perhaps sixty or eighty others. By a series of treaties and agreements
among themselves, these towns had formed a close confederation which
acted as a single whole in obtaining favorable trading concessions and
privileges in various countries. There had been a considerable trade
between the merchants of these towns and England from an early time.
They brought the products of the Baltic lands, such as lumber, tar,
salt, iron, silver, salted and smoked fish, furs, amber, certain
coarse manufactures, and goods obtained by Hanseatic merchants through
their more distant trade connections, such as fine woven goods, armor
and other metal goods, and even spices and other Eastern goods,
obtained from the great Russian fairs. The Hanse cities had entered
into treaties with the English government, and possessed valuable
concessions and privileges, and imported and exported quite
extensively. The term "sterling," as applied to standard English
money, is derived from the word "Easterling," which was used as
synonymous with "German," "Hansard," "Dutch," and several other names
descriptive of these traders.
The trade with the cities of northwestern France was similar to that
with the neighboring towns of Flanders. That with northwestern France
consisted especially of salt, sail-cloth, and wine. The trade with
Poitou, Gascony, and Guienne was more extensive, as was natural from
their long political connection with England. The chief part of the
export from southern France was wine, though a variety of other
articles, including fruits and some manufactured articles, were sent
to England. A trade of quite a varied character also existed between
England and the various countries of the Spanish Peninsula, including
Portugal. Foreign trade with all of these countries was destined to
increase largely during the later fourteenth and the fifteenth
century, but its foundations were well laid within the first half of
the fourteenth. Vessels from all these countries appeared from time to
time in the harbors of England, and their merchants traded under
government patronage and support in many English towns and fairs.
*25. Foreigners settled in England.*--The fact that almost all of the
foreign trade of England was in the hands of aliens necessarily
involved their presence in the country temporarily or permanently in
considerable numbers. The closely related fact that the English were
distinctly behind the people of the Continent in economic knowledge,
skill, and wealth also led foreigners to seek England as a field for
profitable exercise of their abilities in finance, in trade, and
manufactures. The most conspicuous of these foreigners at the close of
the thirteenth century and during the early part of the fourteenth
were the Italian bankers. Florence was not only a great trading and
manufacturing city, but a money centre, a capitalist city. The Bardi,
Peruzzi, Alberti, Frescobaldi, and other banking companies received
deposits from citizens of Florence and other Italian cities, and
loaned the money, as well as their own capital, to governments, great
nobles, and ecclesiastical corporations in other countries. When the
Jews were expelled from England in 1290, there being no considerable
amount of money among native Englishmen, the Italian bankers were the
only source from which the government could secure ready money. When a
tax had been authorized by Parliament, but the product of it could be
obtained only after a year or more spent in its collection, the
Florentines were at hand to offer the money at once, receiving
security for repayment when the receipts from the tax should come in.
Government monopolies like the Cornwall tin mines were leased to them
for a lump sum; arrangements were made by which the bankers furnished
a certain amount of money each day during a campaign or a royal
progress. The immediate needs of an impecunious king were regularly
satisfied with money borrowed to be repaid some months afterward. The
equipment for all of the early expeditions of the Hundred Years' War
was obtained with money borrowed from the Florentines. Payments abroad
were also made by means of bills of exchange negotiated by the same
money-lenders. Direct payment of interest was forbidden by law, but
they seem to have been rewarded by valuable government concessions, by
the profits on exchange, and no doubt by the indirect payment of
interest, notwithstanding its illegality.
The Italian bankers evidently loaned to others besides the king, for
in 1327 the Knights Hospitallers in England repaid to the Society of
the Bardi £848 5_d._, and to the Peruzzi £551 12_s._ 11_d._ They
continued to loan freely to the king, till in 1348 he was indebted to
one company alone to the extent of more than £50,000, a sum equal in
modern value to about $3,000,000. The king now failed to repay what he
had promised, and the banking companies fell into great straits.
Defalcations having occurred in other countries also, some of them
failed, and after the middle of the century they never held so
conspicuous a place, though some Italians continued to act as bankers
and financiers through the remainder of the fourteenth and fifteenth
century. Many Italian merchants who were not bankers, especially
Venetians and Genoese, were settled in England, but their occupation
did not make them so conspicuous as the financiers of the same nation.
[Illustration: The Steelyard in the Seventeenth Century. (Herbert:
_History of London Livery Companies_.)]
The German or Hanse merchants had a settlement of their own in London,
known as the "Steelyard," "Gildhall of the Dutch," or the
"Easterling's House." They had similar establishments on a smaller
scale in Boston and Lynn, and perhaps in other towns. Their
permission to own property and to live in their own house instead of
in the houses of native merchants, as was the usual custom, was
derived, like most privileges of foreigners, from the gift of the
king. Little by little they had purchased property surrounding their
original grants until they had a great group of buildings, including a
meeting and dining hall, tower, kitchen, storage house, offices and
other warehouses, and a considerable number of dwelling-houses, all
enclosed by a wall and fences. It was located immediately on the
Thames just above London Bridge so that their vessels unloaded at
their own wharf. The merchants or their agents lived under strict
rules, the gates being invariably closed at nine o'clock, and all
discords among their own nation were punished by their own officers.
Their trade was profitable to the king through payment of customs, and
after the failure of the Italian bankers the merchants of the
Steelyard made considerable loans to the English government either
directly or acting for citizens at home. In 1343, when the king had
been granted a tax of 40_s._ a sack on all wool exported, he
immediately borrowed the value of it from Tiedemann van Limberg and
Johann van Wolde, Easterlings. Similarly in 1346 the Easterlings
loaned the king money for three years, holding his second crown as
security. Like the Florentines, at one time they took the Cornwall tin
mines at farm. They had many privileges not accorded generally to
foreigners, but were exceedingly unpopular alike with the population
and the authorities of the city of London. There were some other
Germans domiciled in England, but nowhere else were they so
conspicuous or influential as at the Steelyard.
[Illustration: Ground Plan of the Steelyard in the Seventeenth
Century. (Lappenberg. _Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes_.)]
The trade with Flanders brought Flemish merchants into England
temporarily, but they do not seem to have formed any settlement or
located permanently in any one place. Flemish artisans, on the other
hand, had migrated to England from early times and were scattered here
and there in several towns and villages. In the early part of the
fourteenth century Edward III made it a matter of deliberate policy to
encourage the immigration of Flemish weavers and other handicraftsmen,
with the expectation that they would teach their art to the more
backward native English. In 1332 he issued a charter of protection and
privilege to a Fleming named John Kempe, a weaver of woollen cloth,
offering the same privilege and protection to all other weavers,
dyers, and fullers who should care to come to England to live. In 1337
a similar charter was given to a body of weavers coming from Zealand
to England. It is believed that a considerable number of immigrants
from the Netherlands came in at this period, settled largely in the
smaller towns and rural villages, and taking English apprentices
brought about a great improvement in the character of English
manufactures. Flemings are also met with in local records in various
occupations, even in agriculture.
There were other foreigners resident in England, especially Gascons
from the south of France, and Spaniards; but the main elements of
alien population in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were those
which have just been described, Italians, Germans from the Hanse
towns, and Flemings. These were mainly occupied as bankers, merchants,
and handicraftsmen.
*26. BIBLIOGRAPHY*
Dr. Cunningham's _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_ is
particularly full and valuable on this subject. He has given further
details on one branch of it in his _Alien Immigrants in England_.
Schanz, Georg: _Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende des Mittelalters_.
This work refers to a later period than that included in this chapter,
but the summaries which the author gives of earlier conditions are in
many cases the best accounts that we have.
Ashley, W. J.: _Early History of the Woolen Industry in England_.
Pauli, R.: _Pictures from Old England_. Contains an interesting
account of the Steelyard.
Pirenne, Henri: _La Hanse flamande de Londres_.
Von Ochenkowski, W.: _England's Wirthsschaftliche Entwickelung im
Ausgange des Mittelalters_.
CHAPTER V
THE BLACK DEATH AND THE PEASANTS' REBELLION
Economic Changes Of The Later Fourteenth And Early Fifteenth Centuries
*27. National Affairs from 1338 to 1461.*--For the last century or more
England had been standing with her back to the Continent. Deprived of
most of their French possessions, engaged in the struggle to bring
Wales, Scotland, and Ireland under the English crown, occupied with
repeated conflicts with their barons or with the development of the
internal organization of the country, John, Henry III, and the two
Edwards had had less time and inclination to interest themselves in
continental affairs than had Henry II and Richard. But after 1337 a
new influence brought England for the next century into close
connection with the rest of Europe. This was the "Hundred Years' War"
between England and France. Several causes had for years combined to
make this war unavoidable: the interference of France in the dispute
with Scotland, the conflicts between the rising fishing and trading
towns on the English and the French side of the Channel, the desire of
the French king to drive the English kings from their remaining
provinces in the south of France, and the reluctance of the English
kings to accept their dependent position in France. Edward III
commenced the war in 1338 with the invasion of France, and it was
continued with comparatively short intervals of peace until 1452.
During its progress the English won three of the most brilliant
military victories in their history, at Crécy, Poitiers, and
Agincourt, in 1346, 1356, and 1415. But most of the campaigns were
characterized by brutality, destructive ravaging, and the reduction of
cities by famine. The whole contest indeed often degenerated into
desultory, objectless warfare. A permanent settlement was attempted at
Bretigny in 1360. The English required the dismemberment of France by
the surrender of almost one-third of the country and the payment by
the French of a large ransom for their king, who had been captured by
the English. In return King Edward withdrew any other claims he might
have to territory, or the French crown. These terms were, however, so
humiliating to the French that they did not adhere to them, the war
soon broke out again, and finally terminated in the driving out of the
English from all of France except the city of Calais, in the middle
years of the next century.
The many alliances, embassies, exchanges of visits, and other
international intercourse which the prosecution of the Hundred Years'
War involved brought England into a closer participation in the
general life of Europe than ever before, and caused the ebb and flow
of a tide of influences between England and the Continent which deeply
affected economic, political, and religious life on both sides of the
Channel.
The Universities continued to flourish during almost the whole of this
period. It was from Oxford as a centre, under the influence of John
Wycliffe, a lecturer there, that a great revival and reforming
movement in the church emanated. From about 1370 Wycliffe and others
began to agitate for a more earnest religious life. They translated
the Bible into English, wrote devotional and polemic tracts, preached
throughout the country, spoke and wrote against the evils in the
church at the time, then against its accepted form of organization,
and finally against its official teachings. They thus became heretics.
Thousands were influenced by their teachings, and a wave of religious
revival and ecclesiastical rebellion spread over the country. The
powers of the church and the civil government were ultimately brought
to bear to crush out the "Lollards," as those who held heretical
beliefs at that time were called. New and stringent laws were passed
in 1401 and 1415, several persons were burned at the stake, and a
large number forced to recant, or frightened into keeping their
opinions secret. This religious movement gradually died out, and by
the middle of the fifteenth century nothing more is heard of
Lollardry.
Wycliffe had been not only a religious innovator, but a writer of much
excellent English. Contemporary with him or slightly later were a
number of writers who used the native language and created permanent
works of literature. _The Vision of Piers Plowman_ is the longest and
best of a number of poems written by otherwise unknown men. Geoffrey
Chaucer, one of England's greatest poets, wrote at first in French,
then in English; his _Canterbury Tales_ showing a perfected English
form, borrowed originally, like so much of what was best in England at
the time, from Italy or France, but assimilated, improved, and
reconstructed until it seemed a purely English production. During the
reign of Edward III English became the official language of the courts
and the usual language of conversation, even among the higher classes.
Edward III lived until 1377. Through his long reign of half a century,
during which he was entirely dependent on the grants of Parliament for
the funds needed to carry on the war against France, this body
obtained the powers, privileges, and organization which made it
thereafter such an influential part of the government. His successor,
Richard II, after a period of moderate government tried to rule with a
high hand, but in 1399 was deposed through the influence of his
cousin, Henry of Lancaster, who was crowned as Henry IV. Henry's title
to the throne, according to hereditary principles, was defective, for
the son of an older brother was living. He was, however, a mere child,
and there was no considerable opposition to Henry's accession. Under
the Lancastrian line, as Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI, who now
reigned successively, are called, Parliament reached the highest
position which it had yet attained, a position higher in fact than it
held for several centuries afterward. Henry VI was a child at the
death of his father in 1422. On coming to be a man he proved too mild
in temper to control the great nobles who, by the chances of
inheritance, had become almost as powerful as the great feudal barons
of early Norman times. The descendants of the older branch of the
royal family were now represented by a vigorous and capable man, the
duke of York. An effort was therefore made about 1450 by one party of
the nobles to depose Henry VI in favor of the duke of York. A number
of other nobles took the side of the king, and civil war broke out.
After a series of miserable contests known as the "Wars of the Roses"
the former party was successful, at least temporarily, and the duke of
York became king in 1461 as Edward IV.
*28. The Black Death and its Effects.*--During the earlier mediæval
centuries the most marked characteristic of society was its stability.
Institutions continued with but slight changes during a long period.
With the middle of the fourteenth century changes become more
prominent. Some of the most conspicuous of these gather around a
series of attacks of epidemic disease during the latter half of the
century.
[Illustration: Distribution of Population According to the Poll-tax of
1377. Engraved by Bormay & Co., N.Y.]
From the autumn of 1348 to the spring of 1350 a wave of pestilence
was spreading over England from the southwest northward and eastward,
progressively attacking every part of the country. The disease was new
to Europe. Its course in the individual case, like its progress
through the community, was very rapid. The person attacked either died
within two or three days or even less, or showed signs of recovery
within the same period. The proportion of cases which resulted fatally
was extremely large; the infectious character of the disease quite
remarkable. It was, in fact, an extremely violent epidemic attack, the
most violent in history, of the bubonic plague, with which we have
unfortunately become again familiar within recent years.
From much careful examination of several kinds of contemporary
evidence it seems almost certain that as each locality was
successively attacked in 1348 and 1349 something like a half of the
population died. In other words, whereas in an ordinary year at that
time perhaps one-twentieth of the people died, in the plague year
one-half died. Such entries as the following are frequent in the
contemporary records. At the abbey of Newenham, "in the time of this
mortality or pestilence there died in this house twenty monks and
three lay brothers, whose names are entered in other books. And
Walter, the abbot, and two monks were left alive there after the
sickness." At Leicester, "in the little parish of St. Leonard there
died more than 380, in the parish of Holy Cross more than 400, in that
of St. Margaret more than 700; and so in every parish great numbers."
The close arrangement of houses in the villages, the crowding of
dwellings along narrow streets in the towns, the promiscuous life in
the monasteries and in the inns, the uncleanly habits of living
universally prevalent, all helped to make possible this sweeping away
of perhaps a majority of the population by an attack of epidemic
disease. It had devastated several of the countries of Europe before
appearing in England, having been introduced into Europe apparently
along the great trade routes from the far East. Within a few months
the attack in each successive district subsided, the disease in the
southwestern counties of England having run its course between August,
1348, and May, 1349, in and about London between November, 1348, and
July, 1349, in the eastern counties in the summer of 1349, and in the
more northern counties through the last months of that year or within
the spring of 1350. Pestilence was frequent throughout the Middle
Ages, but this attack was not only vastly more destructive and general
than any which had preceded it, but the disease when once introduced
became a frequent scourge in subsequent times, especially during the
remainder of the fourteenth century. In 1361, 1368, and 1396 attacks
are noticed as occurring more or less widely through the country, but
none were so extensive as that which is usually spoken of as the
"Black Death" of 1348-1349. The term "Black Death" was not used
contemporaneously, nor until comparatively modern times. The
occurrence of the pestilence, however, made an extremely strong
impression on men's minds, and as "the great mortality," "the great
pestilence," or "the great death," it appears widely in the records
and the literature of the time.
Such an extensive and sudden destruction of life could not take place
without leaving its mark in many directions. Monasteries were
depopulated, and the value of their property and the strictness of
their discipline diminished. The need for priests led to the
ordination of those who were less carefully prepared and selected. The
number of students at Oxford and Cambridge was depleted; the building
and adornment of many churches suspended. The war between England and
France, though promptly renewed, involved greater difficulty in
obtaining equipment, and ultimately required new devices to meet its
expense. Many of the towns lost numbers and property that were never
regained, and the distribution of population throughout England was
appreciably changed.
But the most evident and far-reaching results of the series of
pestilences occurring through the last half of the fourteenth century
were those connected with rural life and the arrangement of classes
described in Chapter II.
The lords of manors might seem at first thought to have reaped
advantage from the unusually high death rate. The heriots collected on
the death of tenants were more numerous; reliefs paid by their
successors on obtaining the land were repeated far more frequently
than usual; much land escheated to the lord on the extinction of the
families of free tenants, or fell into his hands for redisposal on the
failure of descendants of villains or cotters. But these were only
temporary and casual results. In other ways the diminution of
population was distinctly disadvantageous to the lords of manors. They
obtained much lower rents for mills and other such monopolies, because
there were fewer people to have their grain ground and the tenants of
the mills could therefore not make as much profit. The rents of assize
or regular periodical payments in money and in kind made by free and
villain tenants were less in amount, since the tenants were fewer and
much land was unoccupied. The profits of the manor courts were less,
for there were not so many suitors to attend, to pay fees, and to be
fined. The manor court rolls for these years give long lists of
vacancies of holdings, often naming the days of the deaths of the
tenants. Their successors are often children, and in many cases whole
families were swept away and the land taken into the hands of the
lord of the manor. Juries appointed at one meeting of the manor court
are sometimes all dead by the time of the next meeting. There are
constant complaints by the stewards that certain land "is of no value
because the tenants are all dead;" in one place that a water-mill is
worthless because "all the tenants who used it are dead," in another
that the rents are £7 14_s._ less than in the previous year because
fourteen holdings, consisting of 102 acres of land, are in the hands
of the lord, in still another that the rents of assize which used to
be £20 are now only £2 and the court fees have fallen from 40 to 5
shillings "because the tenants there are dead." There was also less
required service performed on the demesne lands, for many of the
villain holdings from which it was owed were now vacant. Last, and
most seriously of all, the lords of manors suffered as employers of
labor. It had always been necessary to hire additional labor for the
cultivation of the demesne farm and for the personal service of the
manor, and through recent decades somewhat more had come to be hired
because of a gradual increase of the practice of commutation of
services. That is, villain tenants were allowed to pay the value of
their required days' work in money instead of in actual service. The
bailiff or reeve then hired men as they were wanted, so that quite an
appreciable part of the work of the manor had come to be done by
laborers hired for wages.
After the Black Death the same demesne lands were to be cultivated,
and in most cases the larger holdings remained or descended or were
regranted to those who would expect to continue their cultivation.
Thus the demand for laborers remained approximately as great as it had
been before. The number of laborers, on the other hand, was vastly
diminished. They were therefore eagerly sought for by employers.
Naturally they took advantage of their position to demand higher
wages, and in many cases combined to refuse to work at the old
accustomed rates. A royal ordinance of 1349 states that, "because a
great part of the people, especially of workmen and servants, have
lately died in the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters
and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive
excessive wages." A contemporary chronicler says that "laborers were
so elated and contentious that they did not pay any attention to the
command of the king, and if anybody wanted to hire them he was bound
to pay them what they asked, and so he had his choice either to lose
his harvest and crops or give in to the proud and covetous desires of
the workmen." Thus, because of this rise in wages, at the very time
that many of the usual sources of income of the lords of manors were
less remunerative, the expenses of carrying on their farming
operations were largely increased. On closer examination, therefore,
it becomes evident that the income of the lords of manors, whether
individuals or corporations, was not increased, but considerably
diminished, and that their position was less favorable than it had
been before the pestilence.
The freeholders of land below lords of manors were disadvantageously
affected in as far as they had to hire laborers, but in other ways
were in a more favorable position. The rent which they had to pay was
often reduced. Land was everywhere to be had in plenty, and a threat
to give up their holdings and go to where more favorable terms could
be secured was generally effective in obtaining better terms where
they were.
The villain holders legally of course did not have this opportunity,
but practically they secured many of its advantages. It is probable
that many took up additional land, perhaps on an improved tenure.
Their payments and their labor, whether done in the form of required
"week-work," or, if this were commuted, done for hire, were much
valued, and concessions made to them accordingly. They might, as they
frequently did, take to flight, giving up their land and either
obtaining a new grant somewhere else or becoming laborers without
lands of their own.
This last-named class, made up of those who depended entirely on
agricultural labor on the land of others for their support, was a
class which had been increasing in numbers, and which was the most
distinctly favored by the demand for laborers and the rise of wages.
They were the representatives of the old cotter class, recruited from
those who either inherited no land or found it more advantageous to
work for wages than to take up small holdings with their burdens.
But the most important social result of the Black Death and the period
of pestilence which followed it was the general shock it gave to the
old settled life and established relations of men to one another. It
introduced many immediate changes, and still more causes of ultimate
change; but above all it altered the old stability, so that change in
future would be easy.
*29. The Statutes of Laborers.*--The change which showed itself most
promptly, the rise in the prevailing rate of wages, was met by the
strenuous opposition of the law. In the summer of 1349, while the
pestilence was still raging in the north of England, the king, acting
on the advice of his Council, issued a proclamation to all the
sheriffs and the officials of the larger towns, declaring that the
laborers were taking advantage of the needs of their lords to demand
excessive wages, and prohibiting them from asking more than had been
due and accustomed in the year before the outbreak of the pestilence
or for the preceding five or six years. Every laborer when offered
service at these wages must accept it; the lords of manors having the
first right to the labor of those living on their manors, provided
they did not insist on retaining an unreasonable number. If any
laborers, men or women, bond or free, should refuse to accept such an
offer of work, they were to be imprisoned till they should give bail
to serve as required. Commissioners were then appointed by the king in
each county to inquire into and punish violations of this ordinance.
[Illustration: The Stocks at Shalford, near Guildford. Present State.
(Jusserand: _English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century_.
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.)]
When Parliament next met, in February, 1351, the Commons sent a
petition to the king stating that his ordinance had not been obeyed
and that laborers were claiming double and treble what they had
received in the years before the pestilence. In response to the
petition what is usually called the "First Statute of Laborers" was
enacted. It repeated the requirement that men must accept work when it
was offered to them, established definite rates of wages for various
classes of laborers, and required all such persons to swear twice a
year before the stewards, bailiffs, or other officials that they would
obey this law. If they refused to swear or disobeyed the law, they
were to be put in the stocks for three days or more and then sent to
the nearest jail till they should agree to serve as required. It was
ordered that stocks should be built in each village for this purpose,
and that the judges should visit each county twice a year to inquire
into the enforcement of the law. In 1357 the law was reënacted, with
some changes of the destination of the fines collected for its breach.
In 1361 there was a further reënactment of the law with additional
penalties. If laborers will not work unless they are given higher
wages than those established by law, they can be taken and imprisoned
by lords of manors for as much as fifteen days, and then be sent to
the next jail to await the coming of the justices. If any one after
accepting service leaves it, he is to be arrested and sued before the
justices. If he cannot be found, he is to be outlawed and a writ sent
to every sheriff in England ordering that he should be arrested, sent
back, and imprisoned till he pays his fine and makes amends to the
party injured; "and besides for the falsity he shall be burnt in the
forehead with an iron made and formed to this letter F in token of
Falsity, if the party aggrieved shall ask for it." This last
provision, however, was probably intended as a threat rather than an
actual punishment, for its application was suspended for some months,
and even then it was to be inflicted only on the advice of the
judges, and the iron was to remain in the custody of the sheriff. The
statute was reënacted with slight variations thirteen times within the
century after its original introduction; namely, in addition to the
dates already mentioned, in 1362, 1368, 1378, 1388, 1402, 1406, 1414,
1423, 1427, 1429, and 1444.
[Illustration: Laborers Reaping. From a Fourteenth Century Manuscript.
(Jusserand: _English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century_.
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.)]
The necessity for these repeated reissues of the statutes of laborers
indicates that the general rise of wages was not prevented. Forty
years after the pestilence the law of 1388 is said to be passed,
"because that servants and laborers are not, nor by a long time have
been willing to serve and labor without outrageous and excessive
hire." Direct testimony also indicates that the prevailing rate of
wages was much higher, probably half as much again, as it had been
before the pestilence. Nevertheless, the enforcement of the law in
individual cases must have been a very great hardship. The fines which
were collected from breakers of the law were of sufficient amount to
be estimated at one time as part payment of a tax, at another as a
valuable source of income to the lords of manors. Their enforcement
was intrusted at different times to the local justices of the peace,
the royal judges on circuit, and special commissioners.
The inducement to the passage of the laws prohibiting a rise in wages
was no doubt partly the self-interest of the employing classes who
were alone represented in Parliament, but partly also the feeling that
the laboring class were taking advantage of an abnormal condition of
affairs to change the well established customary rates of remuneration
of labor. The most significant fact indicated by the laws, however,
was the existence of a distinct class of laborers. In earlier times
when almost all rural dwellers held some land this can hardly have
been the case; it is quite evident that there was now an increasing
class who made their living simply by working for wages. Another fact
frequently referred to in the laws is the frequent passage of laborers
from one district to another; it is evident that the population was
becoming somewhat less stationary. Therefore while the years following
the great pestilence were a period of difficulty for the lords of
manors and the employing classes, for the lower classes the same
period was one of increasing opportunity and a breaking down of old
restrictions. Whether or not the statutes had any real effect in
keeping the rate of wages lower than it would have otherwise become is
hard to determine, but there is no doubt that the efforts to enforce
the law and the frequent punishment of individuals for its violation
embittered the minds of the laborers and helped to throw them into
opposition to the government and to the upper classes generally. The
statutes of laborers thus became one of the principal causes of the
growth of that hostility which culminated in the Peasants' Rebellion.
*30. The Peasants' Rebellion of 1381.*--From the scanty contemporary
records still remaining we can obtain glimpses of a widespread
restlessness among the masses of the English people during the latter
half of the fourteenth century. According to a petition submitted to
Parliament in 1377 the villains were refusing to pay their customary
services to their lords and to acknowledge the requirements of their
serfdom. They were also gathering together in great bodies to resist
the efforts of the lords to collect from them their dues and to force
them to submit to the decisions of the manor courts. The ready
reception given to the religious revival preached by the Lollards
throughout the country indicates an attitude of independence and of
self-assertion on the part of the people of which there had been no
sign during earlier times. The writer who represents most nearly
popular feeling, the author of the _Vision of Piers Plowman_, reflects
a certain restless and questioning mysticism which has no particular
plan of reform to propose, but is nevertheless thoroughly dissatisfied
with the world as it is. Lastly, a series of vague appeals to revolt,
written in the vernacular, partly in prose, partly in doggerel rhyme,
have been preserved and seem to testify to a deliberate propaganda of
lawlessness. Some of the general causes of this rising tide of
discontent are quite apparent. The efforts to enforce the statutes of
laborers, as has been said, kept continual friction between the
employing and the employed class. Parliament, which kept petitioning
for reënactments of these laws, the magistrates and special
commissioners who enforced them, and the landowners who appealed to
them for relief, were alike engaged in creating class antagonism and
multiplying individual grievances. Secondly, the very improvement in
the economic position of the lower classes, which was undoubtedly in
progress, made them doubly impatient of the many burdens which still
pressed upon them. Another cause for the prevalent unrest may have
lain in the character of much of the teaching of the time. Undisguised
communism was preached by a wandering priest, John Ball, and the
injustice of the claims of the property-holding classes was a very
natural inference from much of the teachings of Wycliffe and his "poor
priests." Again, the corruption of the court, the incapacity of the
ministers, and the failure of the war in France were all reasons for
popular anger, if the masses of the people can be supposed to have had
any knowledge of such distant matters.
[Illustration: Adam and Eve. From a Fourteenth Century Manuscript.
(Jusserand: _English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century_.
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.)]
But the most definite and widespread cause of discontent was probably
the introduction of a new form of taxation, the general poll tax.
Until this time taxes had either been direct taxes laid upon land and
personal property, or indirect taxes laid upon various objects of
export and import. In 1377, however, Parliament agreed to the
imposition of a tax of four pence a head on all laymen, and
Convocation soon afterward taxed all the clergy, regular and secular,
the same amount. Notwithstanding this grant and increased taxes of the
old forms, the government still needed more money for the expenses of
the war with France, and in April, 1379, a graduated poll tax was laid
on all persons above sixteen years of age. This was regulated
according to the rank of the payer from mere laborers, who were to pay
four pence, up to earls, who must pay £4. But this only produced some
£20,000, while more than £100,000 were needed; therefore in November
of 1380 a third poll tax was laid in the following manner. The tax was
to be collected at the rate of three groats or one shilling for each
person over fifteen years of age. But although the total amount
payable from any town or manor was to be as many shillings as there
were inhabitants over fourteen years of age, it was to be assessed in
each manor upon individuals in proportion to their means, the more
well-to-do paying more, the poorer paying less; but with the limits
that no one should have to pay more than £1 for himself and his wife,
and no one less than four pence for himself and his wife.
The poll tax was extremely unpopular. In the first place, it was a new
tax, and to all appearances an additional weight given to the burden
of contributing to the never ending expenses of the government of
which the people were already weary. Moreover, it fell upon everybody,
even upon those who from their lack of property had probably never
before paid any tax. The inhabitants of every cottage were made to
realize, by the payment of what amounted to two or three days' wages,
that they had public and political as well as private and economic
burdens. Lastly, the method of assessing the tax gave scope for much
unfairness and favoritism.
In addition to this general unpopularity of the poll tax there was a
special reason for opposition in the circumstances of that imposed in
1380. As the returns began to come in they were extremely
disappointing to the government. Therefore in March, 1381, the king,
suspecting negligence on the part of the collectors, appointed groups
of commissioners for a number of different districts who were directed
to go from place to place investigating the former collection and
enforcing payment from any who had evaded it before. This no doubt
seemed to many of the ignorant people the imposition of a second tax.
The first rumors of disorder came in May from some of the villages of
Essex, where the tax-collectors and the commissioners who followed
them were driven away violently by the people. Finally, during the
second week in June, rioting began in several parts of England almost
simultaneously. In Essex those who had refused to pay the poll tax and
driven out the collectors now went from village to village persuading
or compelling the people to join them. In Kent the villagers seized
pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and forced them to take an oath to
resist any tax except the old taxes, to be faithful to "King Richard
and the Commons," to join their party when summoned, and never to
allow John of Gaunt to become king. A riot broke out at Dartford in
Kent, then Canterbury was overrun and the sheriff was forced to give
up the tax rolls to be destroyed. They proceeded to break into
Maidstone jail and release the prisoners there, and subsequently
entered Rochester. These Kentish insurgents then set out toward
London, wishing no doubt to obtain access to the young king, who was
known to be there, but also directed by an instinctive desire to
strike at the capital of the kingdom. By Wednesday, the 12th of June,
they had formed a rendezvous at Blackheath some five miles below the
city. Some of the Essex men had crossed the river and joined them,
others had also taken their way toward London, marching along the
northern side of the Thames. At the same time, or by the next day,
another band was approaching London from Hertfordshire on the north.
The body of insurgents gathered at Blackheath, who were stated by
contemporary chroniclers, no doubt with the usual exaggeration, to
have numbered 60,000, succeeded in communicating with King Richard, a
boy of fourteen years, who was residing at the Tower of London with
his mother and principal ministers and several great nobles, asking
him to come to meet them. On the next day, Corpus Christi day, June
12th, he was rowed with a group of nobles to the other bank of the
river, where the insurgents were crowding to the water side. The
confusion and danger were so great that the king did not land, and the
conference amounted to nothing. During the same day, however, the
rebels pressed on to the city, and a part of the populace of London
having left the drawbridge open for them, they made their way in. The
evening of the same day the men from Essex entered through one of the
city gates which had also been opened for them by connivance from
within. There had already been much destruction of property and of
life. As the rebels passed along the roads, the villagers joined them
and many of the lower classes of the town population as well. In
several cases they burned the houses of the gentry and of the great
ecclesiastics, destroyed tax and court rolls and other documents, and
put to death persons connected with the law. When they had made their
way into London they burned and pillaged the Savoy palace, the city
house of the duke of Lancaster, and the houses of the Knights
Hospitallers at Clerkenwell and at Temple Bar. By this time leaders
had arisen among the rebels. Wat Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw were
successful in keeping their followers from stealing and in giving some
semblance of a regular plan to their proceedings. On the morning of
Friday, the 14th, the king left the Tower, and while he was absent the
rebels made their way in, ransacked the rooms, seized and carried out
to Tower
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