Social Life in England Through the Centuries
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Title: Social Life in England Through the Centuries
Author: H. R. Wilton Hall
Release date: February 13, 2014 [eBook #44894]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND THROUGH THE CENTURIES ***
Transcriber's note:
Minor spelling inconsistencies, mainly hyphenated words, have been
harmonized. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
Obvious typos have been corrected. A "List of Illustrations and
Diagrams" has been added so as to include the illustrations and
diagrams not in the "List of Plates." Please see the end of this
book for further notes.
[Illustration: HEALTH AND BEAUTY IN MODERN TOWN PLANNING
A street in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, N.W.]
SOCIAL LIFE
IN ENGLAND
THROUGH THE CENTURIES
BY
H. R. WILTON HALL
Library Curator, Hertfordshire County Museum;
Sub-Librarian, St. Alban's Cathedral; Author of
"Hertfordshire: a Reading-book of the County"
&c.
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
50 OLD BAILEY LONDON
GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
1920
PREFACE
In the course of the last ten or twelve years there has been a
very marked development of interest in local history, and with it
a desire not merely to "know more about the past" but a desire to
appreciate intelligently the real value of those things, still to
be seen, which speak of the gradual building up of the social life
of the Nation, which rightly handled will play an important part in
the work of reconstruction pressing upon us now, with its enormous
difficulties and anxieties.
Much has been done in schools of all grades to utilize the
material at hand--the things which can be seen in the locality--as
an educational medium, opening out great possibilities for the
development of curiosity, interest, personality, and power of
initiative on the part of the children which, though it may not
seem to yield any immediate results which can be appraised by
examination methods on the lines of any "Syllabus", are "neither
barren nor unfruitful".
Just now there are a number of schemes in the air for the
institution of "Regional Survey" in schools, and a tendency amongst
enthusiasts to get it put into school time-tables as a Syllabus
Subject. However admirable the intention may be, and is, it is not
as a Subject, but rather as a method in education, that its real
value lies. "Regional Study" embraces so many subjects and they
cannot be enterprised all at once, either by children or by anybody
else.
This little book is intended to be suggestive, to stimulate
interest and an intelligent curiosity, but it may serve as
a foundation for conversational or more formal lessons and
investigations under the teacher's direction, as his personal
predilection, opportunities, taste, and judgment shall determine.
In the work of "Regional Study", where carried on with
discrimination and with a commonsense apprehension of "relative
values" it may be truly said:--
"Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show,
Strengthens and supports the rest".
H. R. W. H.
HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY MUSEUM,
ST. ALBAN'S, _September, 1919_.
CONTENTS
CHAP. Page
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. MEN WHO LIVED IN CAVES AND PITS 3
III. THE PIT-DWELLERS 6
IV. EARTHWORKS, MOUNDS, BARROWS, &C. 11
V. IN ROMAN TIMES 15
VI. EARLY SAXON TIMES 19
VII. EARLY SAXON VILLAGES 22
VIII. ANGLO-SAXON TUNS AND VILLS 26
IX. TYTHINGS AND HUNDREDS--SHIRES 29
X. THE EARLY ENGLISH TOWN 33
XI. IN EARLY CHRISTIAN TIMES 35
XII. MONASTERIES 37
XIII. TOWNS AND VILLAGES IN THE TIME OF CNUT
THE DANE 41
XIV. CHURCHES AND MONASTERIES IN DANISH AND
LATER SAXON TIMES 46
XV. LATER SAXON TIMES 50
XVI. IN NORMAN TIMES 52
XVII. IN NORMAN TIMES (_continued_) 54
XVIII. IN NORMAN TIMES: THE CHURCHES 56
XIX. CASTLES 58
XX. CASTLES AND TOWNS 61
XXI. IN NORMAN TIMES: THE MONASTERIES 64
XXII. EARLY HOUSES 69
XXIII. EARLY HOUSES (_continued_) 72
XXIV. EARLY TOWN HOUSES 75
XXV. LIFE IN THE TOWNS OF THE MIDDLE AGES 79
XXVI. THE GROWING POWER OF THE TOWNS 85
XXVII. THE VILLAGES, MANORS, PARISHES, AND PARKS 89
XXVIII. TRACES OF EARLY TIMES IN THE CHURCHES 93
XXIX. TRACES OF EARLY TIMES IN THE
CHURCHES (_continued_) 97
XXX. CLERKS 100
XXXI. FAIRS 104
XXXII. MARKETS 108
XXXIII. SCHOOLS 113
XXXIV. UNIVERSITIES 118
XXXV. CHANGES BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE
BLACK DEATH 122
XXXVI. WOOL 125
XXXVII. THE POOR 127
XXXVIII. CHANGES IN HOUSES AND HOUSE-BUILDING 131
XXXIX. THE RUINS OF THE MONASTERIES AND
THE NEW BUILDINGS 135
XL. THE NEW HOUSE OF THE TIME OF QUEEN
ELIZABETH 139
XLI. LARGER ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN HOUSES 142
XLII. CHURCHES AFTER THE REFORMATION 147
XLIII. BUILDING AFTER THE RESTORATION: HOUSES 149
XLIV. BUILDING AFTER THE RESTORATION: CHURCHES 154
XLV. SCHOOLS AFTER THE REFORMATION 159
XLVI. APPRENTICES 168
XLVII. PLAY 171
XLVIII. ROADS 175
XLIX. ROADS--RAILWAYS 182
L. GOVERNMENT 190
LI. SOME CHANGES 195
LIST OF PLATES
Page
HEALTH AND BEAUTY IN MODERN TOWN PLANNING
_Frontispiece_
IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS OF STONE, BRONZE, AND IRON
AGES 8
STONEHENGE 13
REMAINS OF A ROMAN HOUSE, EXCAVATED AT SILCHESTER 20
THE VILLAGE GREEN, EXTON, RUTLAND 28
CROSS AND CHURCH, GEDDINGTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 37
CHOIR OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL 57
THE OLD PALACE, HATFIELD 72
FACSIMILE OF A PORTION OF A NORMAN DOCUMENT 88
CASTLE AND BUTTER MARKET, DUNSTER, SOMERSETSHIRE 105
CLOISTER QUADRANGLE, MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD 120
WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 137
INTERIOR OF ST. MARY-LE-BOW, LONDON 157
A SCHOOL PLAYGROUND SCENE 164
CRICKET, 18TH CENTURY 172
THE NEW INN, GLOUCESTER 181
ILLUSTRATIONS AND DIAGRAMS
_Chipped Flint Weapons_ 5
_Lake-dwelling_ 10
_Round Barrow_ 12
_Long Barrow_ 12
_Dolmen at Plas Newydd, Anglesea. The scene of
Druidical religious rites_ 14
_Roman Pottery Kiln found at Castor, Hunts_ 18
_Saxon Brooch found at Abingdon, made of gold
encrusted with coloured glass_ 23
_Diagram of a Saxon Village Settlement_ 23
_Ploughing. From an old Saxon Calendar in the
British Museum_ 31
_Saxon Church at Bradford-on-Avon_ 40
_Agriculture. From an eleventh-century manuscript
in the British Museum_ 43
_Ploughing. From an eleventh-century manuscript in
the British Museum_ 45
_Wooden Church at Greenstead, Essex_ 47
_Consecration of a Saxon Church_ 49
_Saxon Doorway, Earl's Barton, Northampton_ 51
_Domesday Book_ 55
_Norman Capital, Buckland Church, Berks_ 56
_Norman Capital, Hanney Church, Berks_ 57
_Norman Capital, St. Bartholomew's Priory Church,
London_ 57
_Rochester Castle: The Keep_ 59
_The White Tower, Tower of London_ 60
_Norman Castle_ 63
_Ruins of Furness Abbey_ 65
_Foundation of a Minster_ 67
_Bath Abbey_ 68
_The Jew's House, Lincoln_ 71
_Diagram of the Shape of a House of a Villein_ 72
_Old House, Cleveland, Yorkshire_ 74
_Shop of the Middle Ages now standing in Foregate
Street, Chester_ 77
_A Cradle of the Fourteenth Century now in a
London Museum_ 78
_The Shambles, York; a street that preserves its
narrow, mediæval character_ 81
_Hospital of St. Cross, Winchester_ 84
_Seal of Guild Merchant, Gloucester, 1200_ 85
_Court-house of Godmanchester, Hunts_ 88
_Manor House, Thirteenth Century_ 91
_Saxon, Norman, and Later Architectural Features_ 93
_Effigy with Crossed Legs in the Temple Church,
London_ 96
_Spire of Norwich Cathedral Fourteenth Century_ 98
_A Scriptorium, from a miniature painted in an old
manuscript_ 101
_Writing before the Norman Conquest_ 103
_Morris Dancers, Fourteenth Century_ 107
_Market Cross and Portion of Shelter, Winchester_ 109
_Market Scene in the Middle Ages_ 111
_A School, Fourteenth Century_ 115
_Part of Winchester College, built in 1692_ 117
_Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College, Oxford,
founded 1283_ 119
_Gownsman of Fifteenth Century. From an old print
of Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford_ 121
_Labourers felling a Tree, Fourteenth Century_ 124
_Spinning Wheel, Fourteenth Century_ 126
_Wayfarers, Early Fourteenth Century_ 130
_The Moat House, Ightham, Kent_ 131
_Part of the House called Plas Mawr, Conway,
Wales_ 134
_Old Timbered House, at Presleigh, Radnorshire,
dated 1616_ 138
_Moreton Old Hall, Cheshire, built 1550-59_ 140
_Diagram of a Large House_ 142
_Hall and Staircase, Knole House, Kent, 1570_ 143
_A Room in an Elizabethan House_ 144
_Blickling Hall, Norfolk, built 1619_ 145
_Monument in Chelsea Church, London; date about
1630_ 148
_House at Rainham, Essex, built during the reign
of Queen Anne_ 150
_Doorway from a House in Gt. Ormond Street,
London_ 152
_Pews in a Church at Stokesay, Shropshire, rebuilt
1654_ 155
_King Edward VI's School and Alms Houses,
Stratford-on-Avon_ 159
_Charity School, Gravel Lane, London_ 162
_Bluecoat Boy_ 164
_Schoolmaster and Pupils, early Seventeenth
Century_ 166
_Richmond County School. A modern council school_ 167
_Apprentice, Sixteenth Century_ 169
_Apprentices, Eighteenth Century_ 170
_The Game of Bob-apple, Fourteenth Century_ 171
_Boys' Sports_ 173
_Diagrams of Layouts for a Boy's Game_ 174
_Cart, Fourteenth Century_ 176
_A Toll-gate, early Nineteenth Century_ 179
_Coach, early Nineteenth Century_ 180
_George Stephenson's Locomotive "The Rocket"_ 183
_Building a Railway in the early Nineteenth
Century_ 186
_Sankey Valley Viaduct_ 188
_The Town Hall, Carlisle, built in time of
Elizabeth_ 190
_Police Officer and Jailer, early Nineteenth
Century_ 192
_Hayes Barton Farm, Devonshire_ 197
_Modern Industry_ 200
SOCIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
Introduction
A little boy, who had been born in a log-cabin in the backwoods
of Canada, was taken by his father, when he was about eight years
old, to the nearest settlement, for the first time in his life. The
little fellow had never till then seen any other house than that
in which he had been born, for the settlement was many miles away.
"Father," he said, "what makes all the houses come together?"
Now that sounds a very strange and foolish question to ask; but it
is by no means as foolish a question as it seems. Here, in England,
there are towns and villages dotted about all over the country.
Some of them are near the sea, on some big bay or inlet; others
stand a little farther inland, on the banks of tidal rivers; others
are far away from the sea, in sheltered valleys or on the sunny
slopes of hills; some stand in the midst of broad fertile plains,
while others are on the verge of bleak lonely moorlands. What has
made all the houses in these towns and villages come together in
these particular spots? There must be a reason in every case why a
particular spot should have been chosen in the first instance.
In trying to find an answer to this question with reference to any
town or village in our country we have to go back, far back, into
the past. We may have to go back to ages long before there was any
written history. As we go back step by step into the past we learn
much of the people who have lived before us--of their ways and
their doings, and of the part they played in the life and work of
the country.
The little Canadian boy's question can be asked about every town
and village in the land. There are no two places exactly alike;
each one has its own history, which, however simple it may be, is
quite worth knowing. The busy manufacturing town, with its tens and
hundreds of thousands of people, where all is movement and bustle,
has its history; and the lonely country village, where everybody
knows everybody else, has often a history even more interesting
than that of the big town--if we only knew what to look for, and
where to look for it.
One summer day, years ago, a party of tourists was climbing
Helvellyn. One of the party was an elderly gentleman, who was
particularly active, and anxious to get to the top. After several
hours' stiff climbing the party reached the summit; and there,
spread out before them, was a lovely view of hills and dales,
of mountains and lakes. Most of the party gazed upon this fair
scene in quiet enjoyment; but our old gentleman, as soon as
he had recovered his breath, and mopped his red face with his
pocket-handkerchief, gave one look round, and then said in a
grieved tone: "Is that all? Nothing to see! Wish I hadn't come."
He saw nothing interesting, because he did not know what to look
for, and he might just as well have stopped at the bottom. He came
to see nothing, _and he saw it_.
CHAPTER II
Men who lived in Caves and Pits
Man is a very ancient creature. It is a curious fact that we have
learned most of what we know about the earliest men from the
rubbish which they have left behind them. Even nowadays, in this
twentieth century, without knowing much about a boy personally, we
can tell a good deal about his habits from the treasures he turns
out of his pockets. Hard-hearted mothers and teachers call these
treasures rubbish, but the contents of a lad's pockets are a pretty
sure indication of the boy's tastes, and in what things he is
interested.
The earliest traces of the existence of man in our part of the
world are found in some places which are now many feet above the
level of the sea. There, in the gravel, are the roughly-chipped
stone tools and weapons which those early men used, tools which
they lost or threw away. Almost every other trace has quite
disappeared. Remains belonging to the same period have been noticed
in caves in various parts of the world.
The illustration on p. 5 shows two of these very early stone
weapons. You will find collections of these, and also of later
weapons, in any good museum. These earliest sorts are usually
labelled "Palæolithic Stone Implements". The curator of such a
museum, we may almost certainly say, would be willing to help you
to see the specimens which he has under his care, and you would
learn more about them in that way than by just glancing at a
picture.
Here, in Britain, caves have been found where these early men have
left their stone implements and remains of their rubbish. Some of
the best known of such cave-dwellings in Britain are near Denbigh
and St. Asaph in North Wales, at Uphill in Somersetshire, at
King's Car and Victoria Cave near Settle, at Robin Hood's Cave and
Pinhole in Derbyshire, in Pembrokeshire, in King Arthur's Cave in
Monmouthshire, at Durdham Down near Bristol, near Oban, and in the
gravels in the valleys of the Rivers Trent, Nore, and Dove, in the
Irish River Blackwater, near Caithness, and in a good many other
places.
So, you see, the remains of these early men cover a pretty wide
area. In thinking of the life of those early days we must remember
that the aspect of Britain was very different then from what it is
now, for in that far-back time these islands were a part of the
Continent of Europe, and the North Sea and English Channel were
just valleys, with rivers flowing through them, tributaries of the
Rhine. There were no insurmountable obstacles to cross between the
Continent and these regions, and animals and early man gradually
roamed into this part of the world. Geology teaches us a good deal
concerning the changes the surface of the ground has undergone. The
land was very much higher than it is now--Snowdon, for instance,
was at least six hundred feet higher then--and the climate was very
much colder. That race of men, apparently, has quite died out. In
the course of ages rivers and seas have flowed over the places
where these stone tools had been dropped, and, year after year
throughout the ages, the drift brought down by the rivers covered
them inch by inch and foot by foot. Great changes have taken place
in the surface of the land, some suddenly, but most of them very,
very slowly. The land has risen, and sunk again, and long, long
ages of sunshine and storm, of ice and snow, of stormy wind and
tempest, have altered the surface of the country.
Those very ancient men, who lived in the Early Stone Age, are
called Cave-dwellers, because they lived apparently in caves, and
River-drift Men and Lake-dwellers, because the roughly chipped
tools are found in the _drift_ of various rivers and lakes.
The Cave-man's weapons and tools were made of chipped flint, which
he found broken on the surface of the ground, and these he chipped
into shape. They are usually more or less oval, sometimes roughly
in the form of a spear-head. Others are borers, or awls, for
piercing holes in skins. For rougher work he had hammer-stones,
with flat edges, and sharp bits of stone for scrapers. Amongst many
other places where these relics have been found in considerable
numbers is the Thames valley. They are met with in the higher
gravels, on levels now many feet higher than they were in the
Cave-man's day, for the surface has risen considerably; and we
conclude that there must have been a good many of these people in
that neighbourhood.
[Illustration: _Chipped Flint Weapons_]
CHAPTER III
The Pit-dwellers
Other remains, not so ancient as these oldest stone implements
but still very ancient, are found nearer the surface than the
remains of the River-drift Men. They are the remains of people
who, like the Drift-men, knew nothing of metals; and they, too,
used stone weapons and tools, but these were now better made. They
had learned to shape and finish their tools by rubbing, grinding,
and polishing them, and they were a much more advanced race of men
than the Cave-or Drift-men. These later men, Neolithic Men, did not
depend upon the broken and chipped flints which they found lying
about on the surface, but discovered that it was better to dig up
whole flints, and to select those which were best suited for their
purpose, grinding them into the shapes which they wanted, and then
polishing them into more shapely and finished weapons.
For the most part we have to go to somewhat desolate parts of
England to find traces of them now. In fact those traces would long
ago have disappeared had they not been in places which were so wild
and difficult to get at that it was not worth any man's while to
cultivate them. The spade and the plough would very soon remove
all traces of them. In fact, the plough _has_ removed many traces
of these ancient men, and most of the specimens of their tools and
weapons, which you can see in museums, were found by men whilst
employed in ploughing and preparing the land for crops.
You must not suppose that we can fix a date when these men first
appeared, as we can fix an exact date for the landing of Julius
Cæsar, or the sealing of Magna Carta. Neither can we say for how
many centuries they occupied land in what we now call Britain. It
was a long period, at any rate, and during that time their manners
and their customs changed very, very slowly.
The lowest forms of savage life seem very much alike all the world
over. Savages are hunters, and do not as a rule cultivate the soil.
Now hunters must follow their prey from place to place, so that
we should expect these early men to have no settled homes. But
even the earliest Pit-men had advanced beyond this lowest stage,
for they had flocks and herds, and dogs. They found out that they
could tame some of the animals which they came across, and that
they could use them in various ways which the earlier men had not
thought of. They need not always go a-hunting for their food, and
they could have a supply at hand if they looked after it. They
discovered that they had a use for the wool and the milk which
these animals yielded, and so they developed into being a pastoral
people, owning flocks and herds. Then, too, they hit upon the art
of making rough pottery from clay, shaping the various vessels
which they wanted by hand, and baking them in a fire to harden
them. It seems that they found out a way to spin thread from the
wool, and also discovered how to weave it into a kind of rough
cloth, although they used skins for garments. No doubt these folk
hunted as well; but they were mainly a pastoral people, and at
first did not till the soil. Races of men who did not till the soil
are called Non-Aryan. They chose for their settlements the tops of
hills, and avoided the narrow valleys and low-lying lands.
The Pit-dwellers are so called from the simple fact that they had
their homes in pits--not, however, dug anywhere and anyhow. The
hole in the ground is the simplest notion of a house. When in your
summer holiday by the sea you see the little boys and girls digging
deep holes in the sand to make "houses", they are doing in play
what the early Pit-dwellers did in real earnest.
The pits were usually some six or eight feet in diameter, and they
probably had cone-shaped roofs, formed by poles tied together
and covered with peat. In the centre of the hut was the hearth,
which was made of flints carefully placed together. The hut would
hold two or three people, and the fire on the hearth was its most
important feature. The hut in the centre of the group belonged to
the head of the family, and other huts were ranged round it.
Surrounding the group was an earthen rampart for further
protection, and these earthworks can still be traced in many parts
of the country. The huts have gone, of course, and all that can
be seen in most cases now is a number of circular patches in the
turf, slightly hollowed. People living in the neighbourhood will
very likely speak of them as "fairy rings". It is from a careful
examination of these hollows that learned men have been able to
gather much information concerning the habits of these Pit-dwellers.
We English folk speak proudly of "hearth and home"; they are the
centre of our social life, and the idea has come down to us through
all these long, long ages. The hearth and the fire upon it was the
centre of the life of these men, and the head of a family was also
its priest.
Some of the best known of these pit-dwellings are found
near Brighthampton, in Oxfordshire; at Worlebury, near
Weston-super-Mare; and along the Cotswolds, looking over the Severn
valley; and at Hurstbourne, in Hampshire.
At this last place "nine of these early habitations were
discovered, some of which were roughly pitched with flint-stones,
and had passages leading into the pit. A few flints irregularly
placed, together with wood ashes, showed the position of the
hearths, where cooking operations had been carried on. The sloping
entrance passages are peculiar and almost unique in England, though
several have been met with in France."[1]
[1] _English Villages_, P. H. Ditchfield.
[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS OF STONE, BRONZE, AND
IRON AGES
Older Stone Age: 1. Flint pick (Thames). 2. Bone pendant
(Devon). 3. Scraper (Kent). Later Stone Age: 4. Deer antler
pick (Norfolk). 5. Arrow-head (Yorkshire). 6. Flint and pyrites
for striking fire (Yorkshire). 7. Celt in original haft (Solway
Moss). 8. Bowl (Thames). Bronze Age: 9. Pin (Ireland). 10. Celt.
11. Drinking-cup (Berkshire). 12. Spear-head (Thames). 13. Pin
(Thames). Early Iron Age: 14. Iron currency-bars. 15. Brooch
(Dorset). 16. Hand comb for weaving (Hampshire).]
In the course of time this race seems to have learned something in
the way of cultivating the ground. The hill-tops, where they built
their huts, were only suited for their cattle, and in order to find
soil which they could till they had to go outside their earthwork,
and some distance down the hill-slope. By their way of digging the
ground, they gradually, in the course of many years, carved broad
terraces, one below the other, on the hill-sides. There are some
very marked traces of such terraces still to be seen near Hitchin
and Luton.[2]
[2] Also between Hitchin and Cambridge, at Clothall, in Herts,
on the Chiltern Hills, on the steep side of the Sussex Downs, in
Clun Forest, in Carmarthenshire, and in Wilts.
But Pit-dwellings were not the only habitations. There were
Lake-dwellings. One was found in the year 1892, near Glastonbury,
where sixty circular mounds were noted, each the remains of a
Lake-dwelling, in an area of three acres. There is another at
Hedsor, in Buckinghamshire; and such Lake-dwellings, of much later
periods, have been found in other parts of the world, and are met
with yet in some parts of South America on the big rivers there;
in the Island of Borneo, in the Caroline Islands, and on the Gold
Coast of Africa.
These dwelling-places of the Lake-dwellers were set up on sharpened
stakes, or piles, driven into the bed of the lake or river. On
these piles a platform was laid, upon which a wooden hut of wattle
and daub was built, and a rough kind of bridge connected the
dwelling with the shore.[3]
[3] See p. 10.
In the course of time--how long ago it is still quite impossible
to say--a race of men, more advanced than these early Pit-dwellers,
found their way to this part of the world. They were more
civilized, and were Aryans; that is, they were cultivators of the
soil. You may be pretty sure that fighting took place between the
two races.
The newer race preferred to make their settlements near running
streams. In the middle of each settlement there would be an open
space, or meeting-ground, usually a small hill or a mound, round
which their huts were built. Beyond this was the garden-ground,
then the ground where the grain was grown, and beyond that the
grazing-lands. These men began cultivating at the bottom of the
hill-sides and valleys, and, as they required more ground, they
would advance higher up the slopes.
Gradually to this race came the knowledge of metals, and at that
point we reach the Bronze Age. Although polished stone implements
were still in use, men had begun to make spear-heads, chisels, and
daggers of bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin. What a
great discovery that was, and how we should like to know how the
discovery came to be made! It shows a vast advance in intelligence,
power of observation, and perseverance in making experiments. This
advance gradually led them on to the discovery of the tougher
qualities of iron, and how to "get at it", and to make use of it.
Thus we reach the Iron Age.
[Illustration: _Lake-dwelling_]
CHAPTER IV
Earthworks, Mounds, Barrows, &c.
There are still remaining, in many parts of the country, curious
mounds and stones. We can say very little about them here; for,
though learned men have discovered much, there is still a good
deal to be explained concerning them. Old-world stories put most
of these strange objects down to the work of witches, fairies, or
giants; some ascribe them to the Romans, or to Oliver Cromwell,
others even to the devil. But most of them really belong to this
period of which we are speaking--the very early part of our
history, of which there is no written record.
Earthworks are of many kinds, but the very earliest are usually
found on hill-tops. There are some which enclose considerable
spaces of ground, bounded by an earthen rampart, with a ditch
outside. Sometimes there are two such ramparts. Frequently they
are spoken of as British Towns or British Camps. They appear to
have been enclosures into which the cattle were driven in time of
danger, and in which a whole tribe could take refuge and hold out
against their enemies.
Then there are big mounds or heaps, called Barrows. All over the
world, not only in Europe, but in northern Asia, in India, and in
America, burial-mounds of various sizes have been met with. Some of
these are oval in shape, and are called Long Barrows; others are
round, and are called Round Barrows. The Long Barrows are thought
to be the older kind, and were apparently the burial-places of
great leaders. The Round Barrows were also burial-places, but those
who raised them burned their dead. The great pyramids of Egypt are
barrows, only they are made of stone, not of earth.
At Silbury, in Wilts, there is a huge mound, covering about five
acres of ground and some one hundred and thirty feet in height.
Many interesting things have been brought to light when these many
varieties of barrows have been properly and scientifically explored
by men who have the knowledge and intelligence to "see" what there
is to see, and who do not attack these old earthworks with the idea
of coming upon some long-hidden hoard of gold or silver. Indeed,
much damage has been done by folk who, from time to time, have
rifled these mysterious old earthworks with that one, sordid idea.
There is much yet to be done in the way of scientific exploration,
and much to be learned.
[Illustration: _Round Barrow_]
[Illustration: _Long Barrow_]
The circles of stones at Stonehenge and Avebury seem to have been
connected with the worship of these early people.
A writer, who has given much attention and study to the subject,
gives us some idea as to how these huge stones were got into
position at Stonehenge. He thinks that they must have been dragged
thither by enormous numbers of men from the Marlborough Downs.
"Trunks of trees ... pierced with holes for levers would furnish
rollers to propel the stones to very near their destination. Then
it is necessary to suppose the site of Stonehenge occupied by a
mound, artificial or natural, the ascent being by an easy incline
from the quarter whence these stones were brought. On the top of
the mound we must suppose as many holes dug as there were upright
stones to be placed. On the arrival of each stone it would be
dropped into its hole; and, when all were thus placed, there would
only remain the more easy task of laying on the imposts, each end
of which has evidently been mortised on to the perpendiculars. The
earth would then be dug away, leaving the structure complete."[4]
[4] W. Long, in the _Wilts Arch. Mag._, p. 121.
[Illustration: STONEHENGE
[See page 12]]
In 1918 Stonehenge was given to the nation, and we may hope that
what is left of it will be carefully preserved in the time to come.
Avebury appears to have been made up of a vast circle of unhewn
stones enclosing two other separate double circles. They are in
ruins now, and more than six hundred and fifty of these huge stones
have been destroyed. There are now standing upright only fifteen;
sixteen have been overthrown, and eighteen are known to be buried.
It seems that folk, who did not understand or care about these very
ancient stones, broke them up and carried the pieces away to make
boundary walls or to mend roads, and for any other purpose as they
thought fit.
The remains at Avebury are believed to be much older than those at
Stonehenge, dating back a thousand years or so before Christ. Those
at Stonehenge, which covers a very much smaller area, seem to
belong to the Iron Age, some two hundred years before Christ.
There are many single stones, especially in Cornwall and Wales,
which also seem to have been connected with religious rites, but of
this we know nothing for certain. Some are Dolmens--flat stones,
each on four uprights. In later times they have served as boundary
marks.
In various parts of England there are deep lanes or cuttings,
which have received curious local names. There are no less than
twenty-two such cuttings in different parts of England all known
as Grim's Ditch. These, no doubt, formed boundaries, separating
various tribes.
The White Horse, cut out of the slope of Uffington Hill, and
several similar objects in Wiltshire, as well as the crosses--also
cut in the turf--at Whiteleaf and Bledlow, may also belong to this
period. Some learned men, however, have thought that they are of a
later date.
From these early men, then, the Ancient Britons appear to have
descended, and they were settled here a good many centuries before
the coming of the Romans. Many of the wild tales and legends still
told in country villages, about giants and fairies, have come down
to us from these early times.
[Illustration: _Dolmen at Plas Newydd, Anglesea. The scene of
Druidical religious rites_]
CHAPTER V
In Roman Times
Here, then, at the time the Romans first came to Britain, were
tribes of Britons who had been established in the country for
centuries, living their lives according to the customs of their
forefathers, and more or less cultivating the land. The Romans
invaded the country, and, in time, subdued the people. They
remained masters here for nearly four hundred years, but they did
not make such a permanent impression on this country as they did on
France and Spain.
We are to-day masters of India, but we have not made India English,
nor are we trying to do so. The natives there go on cultivating the
land according to their custom from time out of mind. They preserve
their own manners, customs, and religions. In places where they
come much in contact with our fellow-countrymen they are influenced
to a certain degree; but in India to-day the English and the
natives lead their own lives, each race quite apart from the others.
So it was with the Romans in Britain. They formed colonies in
various places and built towns all over the land; they had country
villas dotted here and there, some little distance from the chief
towns, and built strong military stations in suitable districts.
These posts were kept in communication by means of good roads.
To trace out the network of Roman roads is a study in itself, and
much has been learned therefrom. Some roads are still quite easy
to trace, as far as their course is concerned, for many of our
great main roads to-day run upon the top of them; and from time to
time, when excavations are being made for sewers, or for laying
water-pipes, or tubes for trunk lines of telephones, the actual
metal and foundations of the Roman tracks are found, many feet
below the present level of the road. It is sometimes stated that
the Roman roads were always straight, and that all obstacles were
cleared to make room for them. Whilst it is quite true that this
"straightness" and directness was one of the characteristics of
these roads, the makers of them were skilled engineers, and they
not infrequently found that some older trackway, not particularly
straight, was better suited for their purpose, as it avoided some
of the natural difficulties of the country. When they used these
older ways they took care to raise the surface and lay the metal on
firm foundations, so that the traffic along them could be as rapid
as along the new, straight roads--and the Romans were great people
for getting about rapidly from point to point. One of the most
frequent deposits of "rubbish" which the Romans have left behind
is "oyster shells", often met with in quantities. They are found
in places many miles away from the river-mouths where the oysters
were cultivated; so that the question arises: "How did these shells
get there?" Either they must have been brought very rapidly from
the coast far inland, or the eaters of them did not mind eating
them when they were very "high". At any rate, there the shells have
been found, showing that distance was no obstacle in the way of
getting, not only the things which they reckoned to be necessaries,
but expensive luxuries as well. Although the main Roman roads are
still in use, there are a great number of cross-roads, which for
centuries have been out of use, and their exact courses can only
be traced with difficulty, passing as they do through what are now
quiet, secluded places, long overgrown by grass and underwood and
cultivated fields.
Many Britons must in the course of time have adopted Roman ways
and Roman civilization; but the bulk of the Britons, living away
from the Roman centres, kept to their own customs, and cultivated
the ground in the way their ancestors had done. They prospered, on
the whole, as the Romans kept the various tribes from quarrelling
with one another.
No doubt, in districts such as that which we now call Hampshire,
and along the Thames valley, where wealthy Romans had their country
villas, Roman methods of farming were in use. The Britons would see
something of Roman ways of doing things, and perhaps tried to copy
them.
But the Romans have not left many marks upon our towns and
villages. It is quite true that a large number of our present
towns and cities are on the _sites_ of, or near, Roman towns;
but, in most cases, we have to dig down into the earth to find
Roman remains. The most important Roman city, Verulam, has quite
disappeared, and the most complete remains of a Roman town,
Silchester, are near to what is now a quiet country village. The
present cities of London, Winchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, Chester,
Carlisle, and the towns of Colchester and Leicester, and several
others, can hardly be said to have sprung from Roman towns, though
they stand on their sites.
Most of the Roman cities were built in districts where the Britons
had been strong, or where they were likely to give trouble.
Carlisle and Gloucester were, for instance, military towns because
they were on the borders of the Roman territory. London and
Winchester were trading cities, and they developed much in Roman
times.
But, when the Roman power was withdrawn, there was, in those
cities at any rate, a British population which had adopted very
extensively Roman customs and ideas. For a time things went on much
as they had done while the Romans were here; in fact, until the
struggles with the Saxons began.
As a matter of fact, the coming of the Saxons began a good while
before the Romans actually left. Various tribes of Saxons attacked
different parts of the coast, and with varying success. Colchester
had to keep a sharp look-out for them on the east coast; and the
Romans built Portchester Castle, in Hampshire, to guard the south
coast.
Christianity had found its way to Britain during Roman times, and
that helped in the work of civilizing the Britons. But we do not
know very much of the early British Church. Christianity probably
made more headway among the population in and near the Roman towns
than in the wilder districts. The foundations of an early Christian
church have been found at Silchester.
Silchester was a very important Roman town, although now, as we
have noted, but a small village stands on the spot. Much careful
excavation work has been carried on there, and more is known of
this Roman city than of any other in England. Other sites of Roman
cities are waiting a similar careful exploration, amongst them
Verulam, by the city of St. Alban.
[Illustration: _Roman Pottery Kiln found at Castor, Hunts_]
CHAPTER VI
Early Saxon Times
The conquest of South Britain by the Saxons took a long
time--considerably over one hundred and fifty years. A great many
people are born, and live their lives, and die, in such a period of
time as that. It was only little by little that the various tribes
of Saxons got a footing in England. They were the stronger and
fiercer race, and the Britons were gradually subdued or driven into
the mountainous regions by them.
Those early tribes of Saxons, who came to Britain, brought with
them, of course, their own special manners and customs. As they
settled down, the face of the country was gradually changed by
them. They disliked and suspected everything Roman, and destroyed
the towns and villas. They hated the idea of walled towns. These,
therefore, were left in ruins, and the great highways, being
neglected in most places, were, in the course of years, overgrown
with brushwood and hidden in thick forests.
In some parts of the country the Saxons seem to have completely
swept the Britons away, and almost all traces of them vanished;
but in other parts there certainly were some of them left, because
we have still their marks upon our language. Although most of the
place-names in use now are Saxon or Danish, there are still a good
many of British, or partly British, origin.
The names of many of our rivers are British or Celtic, such as
Axe, Exe, Stour, Ouse, and Yare. So are many names of hills;
and in some parts of the country the names of the villages are
partly British and partly Saxon. Take, for instance, such a common
name as Ashwell. Some learned men think that it is made up of
two words "Ash" and "Well", both meaning pretty much the same
thing, _ash_ being British for "water", and _well_ being Saxon
for "watering-place". Now, if the Saxons had quite got rid of the
Britons, they would not have known that a particular place was
called "Ash"--they learned to call it "Ash" from the natives, but
they did not know what it meant. They knew that there was a spring
of water there, which they called a "well"; and so, to distinguish
it from other wells in the neighbourhood, they got into the habit
of calling it "Ashwell"--and the name has stuck to the place. In
North America, in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa there
are many instances of English names being grafted on to original
native names, and often you find places with well-known English
names and others with picturesque and descriptive native names
almost side by side.
In some such way as this many other place-names, partly British
and partly Saxon, were formed; and they teach us this--that Saxons
and Britons must have lived near each other closely enough for the
Saxons to take up and use some British names.
There are some English counties in which you will hardly find one
place-name which is not Saxon. This shows us that the Britons
were either killed or completely driven away. That is the case in
Hertfordshire. But in Hampshire, while most of the names are Saxon,
there are many partly Saxon and partly British. The same thing can
be noticed in the county of Gloucester. The Britons, then, must
have been in these districts long enough for the Saxons to pick up
a good many place-names. They did not understand the meaning of
them, and so tacked on to them names which they _did_ understand,
much as British settlers have done in various parts of the world
during these last few centuries.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF A ROMAN HOUSE, EXCAVATED AT SILCHESTER
[See page 17]]
The place-names of the old towns and villages all had a
meaning, and when we can get to know what that meaning is it
tells us something of the history of the place. But we have to be
very careful in studying place-names not to jump to conclusions
as to what the name means. To get at the truth a knowledge of
the old language and the alterations it has undergone, and also
of the different ways in which the word was spelt, according to
the earliest documents that can be found, is necessary. In days
gone by, before the study of the old forms of the language was
properly grasped, antiquaries often made guesses at the meaning of
place-names which have turned out to be very misleading. So we must
not be in a hurry to jump to conclusions, and should be always on
the look-out for more and better information. We frequently meet
with the syllable _ing_ in a place-name. "Ing", amongst those early
Saxon settlers here, usually meant "the sons of". When they made a
new home in this strange land the little band naturally gave the
place the name of their family. Thus, the sons of a man named Offa
were known as Uffingas, and called the name of the place where they
settled Uffinggaston, or Uffington--and the name stuck to the place
long after the family itself had died out. The sons of Rede settled
at Reading; the sons of Billinge, the Billings, at Billingham; the
sons of Hôc at Woking and Wokingham; the Ardings at Ardington; the
Thurings at Thorington--and so on. You must not, however, conclude
that every name you come across with "ing" in it has the same
meaning; but it will be quite worth while to ask for information
about it from someone who knows, or who can put you in the way of
getting information upon the point.
We cannot go further here into other syllables found in a large
number of place-names, such as _feld_, _yard_, _stock_ or _stoke_,
or _ham_, but it is quite possible for you to find out first of all
what is the meaning of the name of the town or village in which
you live, and what that tells you about its history.
The Saxons made their settlements at first away from the Roman
towns and British villages. In the course of time, in a good many
cases, they made settlements very close to these old sites, and we
know that Saxons lived in such places as Winchester, Gloucester,
and London. We find, especially in Hampshire and Gloucestershire,
that near, or in, certain villages with Saxon names, Roman remains
have from time to time been dug up.
CHAPTER VII
Early Saxon Villages
It is with the coming of the Saxons that the history of our towns
and villages really begins. For, though there are not a few places
which show some connection with Romans, Britons, and Pit-dwellers,
it is mainly from Saxon times that we can follow the history of the
places in which we live, with any certainty.
When the Saxons came to Britain they brought their own ideas with
them, of course. Nowadays, when English folk go to settle in a
distant land, they take their English notions with them. They find,
however, in the course of time, that they have to modify or alter
them somewhat, according to the circumstances in which they are
placed. They may find that roast beef and plum-pudding do not at
all suit them in the new climate. If they are wise, they will see
whether the food-stuffs used by the natives, and folk who have
lived out there for many years, are not more suitable, even though
they may be inclined to despise such food at first.
Now the Saxon tribes which first settled in England in the fifth
century belonged to a race of people bold, strong, fierce, and
free. But they could not make their new homes exactly what their
old ones had been in the land whence they had come.
Like those other Aryan people, who had made their way to Britain
in the Stone Age, they lived together in families. When the family
became too large, some of the members had to turn out, like bees
from a hive, though not in such great numbers, and set out on their
travels to form new settlements, or village communities.
This idea of a village community had come down to them through
many generations. The early Saxon idea of a village community was
something of this sort:--
All the men of the family had equal rights; though there was one
who was head of the family, and who took the lead. The affairs of
the family were discussed and settled at open-air meetings, called
folk-moots. The spot where these were held was regarded as a sacred
place. The tilling of their land, their marriages, their quarrels,
their joining with other villages to make war or peace, were all
settled at the folk-moot. The question whether the younger branches
of the family should leave the village and go out and form another
was fixed by the folk-moot also. In the course of time many such
little swarms left the parent hive, and settled farther away. But
they always looked back upon the old settlement as their home, and
the head of the family as their chief. They were all of one _kin_,
and in the course of time they began to look upon their chief as
their king.
[Illustration: _Saxon Brooch found at Abingdon, made of gold
encrusted with coloured glass_]
Now what was the nature of the old Saxon village settlement? In
its general arrangement it was very like the old Pit-dwellers'
settlement. There was the open space where the men of the village
met, the sacred mound where the folk-moot was held. The houses in
which the family dwelt were placed close together, round the hut of
the head of the family.
[Illustration: _Diagram of a Saxon Village Settlement_]
Outside these was a paling of some sort, so that all the houses
were within the enclosure, or "tun", as it was called; and here
calves and other young stock were reared near the houses. Beyond
the enclosure, or tun, was the open pasture-ground and the arable
land, or land under cultivation. Beyond these would be the
untouched forest-land, or open moorland.
Each man of the tun had a share in these lands; not to do with as
he liked, but to use according to the custom of his family. The
arable land was divided into strips, and shared amongst the men.
However many strips of land a man might have, he could not have
them for all time. The strips were apparently chosen by lot, and
changed from time to time, so that all had an equal chance in
having the best land. In the same way the number of cattle a man
might turn out to graze on the pasture-land was regulated. The
folk-moot, or meeting of the people, was a very important assembly,
and through it the little community was governed.
Such was the mode of life to which the Saxons who came to England
had been used; but they were not nearly as free when they landed
here as their ancestors had been. More and more power had come into
the hands of the chief or king, and to him the people looked for
protection and guidance. In times of war, or when the tribe was
invading new lands, the power of the king increased. By the time,
then, that the Saxon tribes began their settlement in England, they
were very much under the rule of their chiefs or kings. The kings
had rights and powers over their followers which had gradually
grown up by long custom, and none of those followers ventured to
dispute such rights and powers.
CHAPTER VIII
Anglo-Saxon Tuns and Vills
A good many Britons no doubt settled down with the Saxons as
slaves, and that probably accounts for so many of the natural
features of the country--the rivers and the hills--keeping their
old British names. The British villages must have had names, but
those villages were apparently destroyed, and the slaves would be
settled near the homesteads which the conquerors set up.
In fixing on a place for a "tun" the Saxons would choose a valley
rather than a hill, usually near a running stream, or a plentiful
supply of water. At the present time nearly all over England we can
find villages which have not been touched by modern improvements
and alterations, and most of these show something even now of their
Saxon origin.
For instance, in the county of Rutland there is a village named
Exton, which has for many centuries kept several features which
show its connection with Saxon days. Its name, Ex-ton, seems to
be compounded of the British word "ex", which means "water", and
the Saxon "ton" or "tun", which means the "enclosure"--"the tun
by the water". There, sure enough, flowing by the village, is a
stream, a tributary of the River Gwash; just such a stream as the
Saxons loved. In the middle of the village is the triangular open
space, or village green. Round it the houses are thickly clustered
together, with hardly any garden ground at the back or in front,
and most of them with none at all. Outside the ring of houses are
small grass fields or closes, where calves and cows feed, and
poultry run. These little fields form a kind of ring round the
village, and the hedges enclosing them represent the old fence
of Saxon days, which formed the "tun". Beyond this are wider
pasture-grounds and big plough-lands, stretching away in several
directions up the gentle slopes.
You will be able to find a good many villages which have some
resemblance to Exton; they answer very closely to the Anglo-Saxon
vill and the Anglo-Saxon town, for town and village were laid out
on the same principle.
Now look at some little sleepy country town, and you will see much
the same arrangement as in the village. The wide open space in the
middle, where the town pump stands, and where the market is held,
answers to the village green. Though this is often spoken of as the
Market Square, it is usually more like a triangle in shape than a
square.
The old houses round the market square are built very closely one
into the other, and with queer narrow alleys leading to houses
behind those in front; much in the same way as the houses are
clustered round the village green. Round the outskirts of the town,
at the back of the houses, are small green closes or paddocks.
Beyond them are the larger meadows and pastures; then the wide
corn-lands and woods; and, not far away, the heath or common.
The Saxon settlements, the "tuns" or "vills", whether they
afterwards became what we now understand as "towns" or "cities", or
remained what we call villages, had all the same chief features.
Just as ordinary schoolrooms and railway stations are all pretty
much alike, because they all have to serve much the same purpose,
so the Saxon settlements were very similar in their general plan.
There was the open place, where people met and the folk-moot was
held, surrounded by the houses of stone or wood in which the people
lived. Around these lay the grass yards or common homestead; and,
beyond them, the wide arable and pasture-lands, with patches of
moorland and forest.
But outside the actual "tun" there would be something connected
with the Saxon settlement which you would be sure to notice. After
you had passed the boundary to the tun, you would see no hedgerows
or walls dividing the land into fields. The arable land was one
huge field. Its position would depend, of course, upon the nature
of the soil and the lie of the land. You would not expect to find
it down in the water-meadows, through which the river flowed; it
would be higher up, out of the reach of floods; perhaps on the
hill-sides.
Then you would see the huge field, ploughed in long strips, about
a furlong in length, that is, a "furrow long",[5] and one or two
perches in breadth. Between the ploughed strips would be narrow
unploughed strips, on which, in places, brambles would grow.
The heath-lands and moorlands were uncultivated tracts, where
rough timber and underwood grew, which was cut and lopped by the
people of the vill under certain conditions. There were no formal
spinneys,[6] nor wide stretches of old timber, such as we nowadays
expect to see in a forest. In places the forests contained old
timber, and were thick with undergrowth, and infested with wild
animals, such as wolves and boars. The name forest was often given
to an uncultivated district, not much differing from a rough
common, where sheep, cattle, and swine could pick up a living.
[5] A furrow, or furlong, was, roughly speaking, the distance the
plough would travel up or down the field before it was turned.
[6] Spinneys are plantations of trees growing closely together.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE GREEN, EXTON, RUTLAND
[See page 26]]
CHAPTER IX
Tythings and Hundreds--Shires
Though the Saxons, as they settled down in England, formed "tuns",
which at first had very little to do with one another, that state
of things probably did not last a very long time. In fighting the
Britons they had to act together; and, for the sake of protection
and help, these separate communities had to combine. Somewhat in
this way ten families in a district would form a tything; and the
heads of the villages would, from time to time, meet together to
consult on various matters in which they were interested.
Then larger areas would need to be covered, as the country became
more settled. Ten tythings would make a hundred; and, from time to
time, men from all the places in the hundred would meet together
and hold hundred courts. The meeting-place for the hundred was
always some well-known spot, selected originally because of its
convenient situation--some particular tree was a favourite place;
and, as the folk met there regularly so many times in the year, the
spot was easily kept in mind from one generation to another. At the
meeting criminals were tried, disputes settled, and in the later
times, when monasteries had become common, some sort of record was
often made of the important matters decided upon, and kept with
the documents belonging to the monastery, as being a safe place in
which to keep them. Scraps of these ancient records have been met
with on old parchments which in later times have been used over
again for another purpose.
Most of the English counties are still divided into hundreds. In
those days the hundreds were not all of the same size, because,
owing to the nature of the soil, some tuns were far apart from one
another, and a tything might cover a wide district, and a hundred
a much larger area. If the hundred was small, that would show that
the tuns were pretty close together, and that the district was
populous. If, on the other hand, the tythings and hundreds were
large, that would show that the district was thinly peopled.
We have seen that new settlements were formed by portions of the
family leaving the old home, and making a new tun in the most
suitable place they could find. It would happen, no doubt, in
favourable districts, that new tuns would spring up not very far
from the mother tun; and, in the course of time, there would be a
good many more tuns in the tything than there were originally. The
fact seems to be, that when once the boundaries had been roughly
agreed upon, they were not often altered. From being a combination
of families, or tuns, the tything got to be a district; and it
kept its name of tything long after the number of tuns in it had
increased.
It was much the same with the hundreds. In time they were
represented by certain districts, whose borders were known to the
people living in them. The hundreds all over the country have
not altered their boundaries to any great extent until quite
recently. In Hampshire to-day there are thirty-seven hundreds; in
Hertfordshire there are only eight; and Middlesex has now the same
six hundreds which it had twelve centuries ago when a good part of
the county was forest land.
As to the time when the hundreds became grouped into shires we
cannot speak definitely; the change was brought about gradually
and quite naturally. It is not at all likely that all the various
kingdoms in England came together on some particular occasion and
said: "Now we'll divide all our kingdoms into shires". But the
hundreds did become grouped into shires, doubtless because it was
necessary that they might act together in matters which concerned
all.
[Illustration: _Ploughing. From an old Saxon Calendar in the
British Museum_]
There is nothing like a threatened danger from without to draw men
together. We have seen this in a most remarkable way during the
Great War. In the tun, no doubt, the villagers fell out with each
other; however fairly the strips of land were shared somebody was
sure to get what he did not like, and to grumble about it. Some
of his fellow-villagers would take his side, and say it was a
shame; and others would take the opposite side. But if the cattle
belonging to the tun over the hills, or on the other side of the
marsh, had been seen on the wrong side of the mark, or boundary
which separated the lands of the two tuns, the dispute about the
strips in the field would be forgotten, and away the people would
go in a body towards the offending tun "to see about it".
In much the same way, when the boundaries of a tything or hundred
were invaded by another tything or hundred, the differences between
the tuns would be dropped, in order to preserve the rights which
they had in common.
There was strife among the Saxon kingdoms which lasted for many
years, especially between the three great rivals, Wessex, Mercia,
and Northumbria. The lesser kingdoms were under the dominion,
sometimes of one, sometimes of another of these rivals. All this
fighting and settling down put more and more power into the hands
of the kings. Instead of each village fighting for itself, and
leaving all the others to fight for themselves, it was found to
be a much safer and wiser policy to join together for common
protection. Now if people join together, whether in peace or war,
to win a football match or to take a city, somebody must be in
authority to give the necessary orders. Hence the power of the
king, and the officers acting under him, grew up _by custom_, until
the overlordship of the king was so firmly established that no one
dared call it in question.
Apparently from the smaller Saxon kingdoms we get our older shires.
Whether the overlord happened to be the King of Mercia, or the King
of Wessex, the under-king continued to rule over his old kingdom,
or share. When, at length, in the ninth century, the King of
Wessex was acknowledged as the overlord or King of England, Wessex
and Mercia, and a part of Northumbria, were gradually divided
into _shares_, or shires, over each of which the King of England
appointed a reeve to look after his interests--the shire-reeve or
sheriff. The King of England still appoints the high sheriff of
each county. An eorlderman, who, in the case of the older shires,
was at first no doubt a descendant of the old under-king, looked
after the business of the shire itself.
Amongst the older shires we have Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Essex,
Middlesex; while the newer ones were all named after some important
central town, which in each case gave its name to the shire; such
are Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. You can easily pick these out
from a list of the counties of England at the present time.
CHAPTER X
The Early English Town
At first, as we have seen, the Saxons were an agricultural people,
and each village or tun produced all that it needed for its own
support. But in peaceful times a tun might produce more than it
needed; and by and by something like trade and exchange between
one place and another would begin. There were many places, as for
example London, which in Roman times had been great places for
commerce, to which ships had come bringing various kinds of goods.
In time, as the Saxons settled down, they began to have new wants,
and some of them began to be attracted towards places where there
were more people than in their native tuns. Some men found that
they could make certain articles of common use better than their
neighbours could. Thus certain trades took their rise. Those who
worked at them would gradually give up the agricultural labour
in which everybody else in the tun was employed. We do not know
the causes which led certain of these agricultural tuns to become
trading-places, but it is quite certain that they did gradually
grow to be what we now call towns.
We find Saxon towns springing up near the places where some of
the Roman towns had been, in some cases on the actual site of the
Roman city. In Gloucester and Lincoln, for instance, some of the
streets to-day follow the actual lines of the Roman streets. These
towns are, however, really Saxon towns, not old Roman towns turned
into Saxon towns. The men of these Saxon towns had lands on the
outskirts of the towns, just as the village men had. Even to-day
you will notice that there are many towns which possess lands
called by such names as the Townlands, Townfield, or Lammas Land.
The men in these towns were, from the very first, more inclined to
hold out against an overlord than the men in the villages were. In
the first place, their numbers were greater; and then they had more
varieties of occupation than the villagers, or, as we may say, had
wider interests. In the trading towns, like London and Southampton,
they came in contact with traders from other lands, and trade
brought them more wealth. They, too, had their folk-moots, and they
had more business to transact in them than the country villagers
had. They were very particular to keep a tight hold on their
rights, and were always on the look-out to gain fresh privileges if
they possibly could.
The fence or wall, which surrounded the town, was made much
stronger than that round the village; and men saw the use now of
the thick walls of the old Roman cities which their ancestors had
despised, for they had wealth and goods which needed protection.
We have seen that the power of the king gradually increased; and,
as it did so, the king and the town became more necessary to each
other. The town was wealthy; but it could not stand by itself
against all the rest of the country. The king had the power of the
country at his back, and could protect it if he would. The town had
to give something to the king in return for this protection. But we
shall presently see more of the relations between king and town.
CHAPTER XI
In Early Christian Times
One great and important factor in the making of Saxon England
was Christianity. The first Saxons who came were heathen, and
they wiped out the British Christianity, where they settled, as
completely as they wiped out Roman civilization. Towards the end of
the sixth century Christian missionaries were at work in the north
and in the south of what we now call England, and from that time
onwards the Church played an important part in the making of the
nation.
So, side by side with the development and political growth of the
country came the spread of Christianity and the organization of the
Church. We find that the folk in the Saxon kingdoms, following the
lead of their kings, became Christian as a matter of course. Over
and over again we find the kings giving up Christianity and going
back to paganism, and their people following them, also as a matter
of course. The conversion of England took many years to accomplish,
and mixed up with the Christianity was much paganism, which was not
overcome for many centuries. The dioceses[7] of the early Saxon
bishops were, roughly speaking, of the same extent as the early
kingdoms, and the bishops and their clergy travelled about as
missionaries.
[7] A diocese is the district over which a bishop rules.
As the lords or thanes of the various vills, following the example
of their kings, accepted Christianity, their people followed
their example. In the open places of the tuns and vills, where
the folk-moots were held, Christianity was preached and the cross
set up. That, probably, was the origin of most of the village
and market crosses. Then, in the course of time, in some cases,
a church was built on a part of the old sacred open spaces. You
cannot help noticing to-day how in many towns the chief church is
by the market-place, and in the villages by the village green. In
other cases we find the church and manor-house are outside the
present village. That may be because the thane's or lord's land
was outside the vill or tun, and he built the church on his own
land, not on the common public land in the middle of the tun. It
may have happened, also, that at the time the church was first
built the houses were there also; but, owing to changes many years
afterwards, the people have removed to another spot some distance
away--possibly to the side of a busy main road. Then the original
village has dwindled away; the houses, having fallen into ruin,
have been pulled down, and no trace of them is now left.
A priest would be appointed by the bishop, to work in a tun, and a
portion of land would be set apart in the common fields to maintain
him and to aid in carrying on the services of the church. In course
of time there were certain dues and fees given to him, the paying
of which became a recognized custom. Somewhat in this way glebe
lands and tithes took their rise, and became a part of the land
system of the Saxon people.
Along with the growth of churches in the tuns and vills was the
founding of monasteries. Small bodies of men bound themselves by
simple rules to live and work and worship together. Frequently
they made their settlements in lonely, desolate places, which they
worked to bring under cultivation. So there sprang up settlements,
or convents, of these religious people, living under their own
rules. Work and worship went side by side. It was a new kind of
life, different from the life in the "tun" which the early Saxons
were used to; but in time it had a mighty influence in the land,
and played an important part in the making of England.
[Illustration: CROSS AND CHURCH, GEDDINGTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
[See page 36]]
CHAPTER XII
Monasteries
The Saxons learned to respect the quiet simple lives of the early
monks. They saw them toiling hard in their fields, bravely facing
many difficulties and hardships, and turning the wilderness into a
garden. At first each monk, from the abbot downwards, had to take
his share in the toil, wherever it was, and the monastery, as well
as the vill, had to produce all that it needed.
Men who were not very good or very religious began to respect the
lives and works of the monks. We find thanes and kings not only
allowing monks to settle on some of their unoccupied land, but
making over to them some of their own land, on condition that
they and their children after them might always have a share in
the prayers of these good men. We see, too, that whole vills came
gradually into the hands of some monasteries; so that the convent
became the lord of the vill instead of a thane or a king.
Some convents made rapid progress, while others never prospered,
but in the course of time disappeared. We have seen that the vill
and the "town" grew up in much the same way, and were formed on
the same plan. There are, however, a good many towns which grew up
round monasteries in the first instance.
For example, King Offa II, at the end of the eighth century,
founded the monastery of St. Alban, giving to it a wide extent of
land round the ruins of the old city of Verulam. The monastery was
built, and much land brought under cultivation. We find the sixth
abbot, Ulsinus, two centuries later, encouraging people to settle
round the walls of the monastery. That monastery lay near one of
the great roads of England; many people were coming and going; so
houses were built and a market was established. Churches, too, were
erected for the use of the people who settled in the town. The
abbot was the lord of this "town", and the people dwelling in it
were his tenants. He, like any other lord of a "tun", or "vill",
was responsible for the keeping of order and good government on his
land.
St. Edmund's Bury, or Bury St. Edmund's, grew up round a monastery
which had been established in a lonely place; and there, also,
arose in time a flourishing town, under the rule of the abbot.
A number of towns, which to-day are cathedral cities, grew up round
the churches where the bishop and his principal clergy had their
homes and chief centres of work.
These things only came about very gradually. The monks who settled
first at Bury, or those whom King Offa settled by the ruins of
Verulam, never dreamed that in the years to come their convents
would be great landowners, with many hundreds of tenants. But
it was so; and the monasteries at length formed one of the most
important classes of landowners in the country; their special
rights and privileges coming to them so gradually, and so
naturally, that no one realized exactly what was taking place.
Those who entered a monastery, or embraced "the religious life",
intended to keep out of the world, and apart from its cares and
worries as much as they could. But the lands left to them had to be
looked after and cultivated. These did not always lie close round
the monastery--very frequently they were tracts of land in distant
counties--and somebody had to look after them. New possessions
bring new responsibilities; and so we we find that the monasteries
had not only to attend to the daily round of worship and work
inside the walls of the monastery, but had to carry on all the
business belonging to great estates as well.
So in time a monastery had to use the services of many men besides
monks; the monks became great employers of labour one way and
another, and this attracted to their towns a good many skilled
workmen.
The times when the Danes ravaged the greater part of the country
were very trying to the life of English villages and towns. These
sea-rovers came, at first, as plunderers, and the destruction of
towns, churches, and monasteries was very great. Some monasteries,
like Crowland[8], suffered several times, and many were never
rebuilt. But gradually the invaders themselves settled in England.
They did not bring with them an entirely new land system. As they
settled down to farming and village life, we find that land was
held in almost exactly the same manner as under Saxon customs.
[8] In the Fens.
Of course there were some differences, and those who have studied
the subject closely can indicate a good many points in which the
Saxon and Danish land customs differed from each other. The dangers
to which the Saxons had been exposed by the attacks of the Danes
had put a great deal of power into the hands of the thanes and the
king. Thus, by the time the Danes had settled in England, every
vill and tun had got into the hands of some lord or thane, or was
in the king's hands. In Danish settlements there seems always to
have been an overlord, who led his people in war and ruled in time
of peace; though there was a class of freemen amongst them which
had special rights and privileges. You will remember that when
King Alfred came to terms with the Danes at the Peace of Wedmore,
in the year 880, it was agreed that the part of England east of
the old Roman road, Watling Street, which ran from London to
Chester, should be regarded as Danish territory. In that district
you will find a good many Danish place-names as well as the
older Saxon place-names--names which end in "by", "ey", "ness",
"wic", and "thorpe". A great many will be found in Lincolnshire,
Northamptonshire, and farther north. But some will also be found in
other parts of the country. For instance; there is in Hampshire,
in the valley of the River Meon, quite a little nest of Danish
place-names--a fact which shows that Danes settled in that district
even in the midst of what may be called a Saxon stronghold.
But the Danes were something more than tillers of the soil; they
were traders too, and "tuns" became in many places more like our
"towns" and trading-places than ever they had been before. In time
we find the largest towns in the Danish part of England--Leicester,
Lincoln, Derby, Nottingham, and Stamford--binding themselves
together to protect their trading interests.
[Illustration: _Saxon Church at Bradford-on-Avon_
_This little building, one of the earliest stone churches, lay
hidden for centuries, but was rediscovered in 1857. The monastery
once attached to it has long since perished._]
CHAPTER XIII
Towns and Villages in the Time of Cnut the Dane
Now let us see what an ordinary village was like in the time of
King Cnut, when Saxon and Dane were living pretty comfortably
together, side by side, under good government.
We find that each vill or tun had a lord, an eorl, or thane, who
practically owned the place and everything in it, though he could
not do entirely as he liked. There was the land which belonged to
him, and which was in his own hands, or occupation, as we say;
that was called his demesne. The rest of the land was also his,
but it was let out to people who had lived on the land from time
out of mind--the cheorls or villeins. The lord's house was on his
demesne. The villeins' houses were all together in the tun, with
the grass yards for the cattle close to them, and the open fields
and pasture-lands outside the tun, just as they had been in the
olden days.
There seems to have been two classes of villeins--geburs and
cottiers.
The geburs were the higher class. They appear very frequently to
have held about one hundred and twenty acres of land; they had to
work on the lord's home farm two or three days a week, or pay him
certain produce of the land as a rent; and they had to provide one
or more oxen for the village plough, when there was ploughing to be
done on the lord's farm, or in the common field.
In the Danish part of the country there appears to have been a
class of freeholders, in some places, called socmen, but there
were not very many of them. They, no doubt, had had their rights
granted to them for distinguished service in the Danish wars.
The cottiers held only about five acres of land. They had to work
for the thane or lord on certain days of the week; but, as they had
no oxen, they had no ploughing to do for him.
Below the geburs and the cottiers were the theows, thralls, or
slaves, who could be bought and sold. They were captives taken in
war, or men who, for their crimes, had been doomed to slavery.
We must remember that the overlord might be the king or a bishop, a
monastery or a thane. Their rights over their vills and tuns were
much the same in each case, and their duties to those vills and
tuns were also similar.
A very large number of vills and tuns were under the lordship of
the various bishops and monasteries. It was so with towns like
Winchester, Reading, Bury St. Edmund's, and St. Alban's. The custom
had grown up quite naturally and in the course of many years.
It is pretty clear that the overlord did not always reside in his
vill or tun. The tuns or vills of the bishopric of Winchester,
for instance, were scattered about in the various parts of the
diocese. It was the same with other overlords. But we find in every
place a steward, and in each town the king's reeve or the lord's
reeve. These acted for the overlord, whoever he was, and saw that
the villeins and cottiers did their proper proportion of work at
the right time; they saw that the lord's tolls at the markets,
fairs, and ferries, were properly enforced. The steward was a most
important officer in every town and village, and a great deal of
power was in his hands.
Then in the ordinary country vill there was the faber, or smith;
the mason; the pundar, or man who looked after the fences and
hedges and drove stray cattle into the pound. Then there was the
carpenter, and even the bee-keeper, for honey was an important
ingredient used in the making of the drink of the community. The
simple ordinary trades were found in the country villages then,
as they are now; but the craftsmen, the most skilled workmen, had
become for the most part dwellers in the towns. Even in very early
times we find craftsmen in towns formed into trades' unions or
guilds, to protect their special trades.
[Illustration: _Agriculture. From an eleventh-century manuscript
in the British Museum_
_Below are shown the workers carrying their burdens home at the
end of the day._]
Now the land was shared amongst the villeins and cottiers in
strips, usually containing an acre or halfacre, in the common
fields of which we have heard before. The villein did not have all
the strips belonging to his holding set out side by side--they
lay in different parts of the great open field. Crops had to be
sown according to the custom of the vill or tun, and according to
a fixed order. Wheat and rye would be sown one year on a part of
the great field; barley, oats, and beans the next year; and the
third year the land must be left fallow. The lord's land had to be
treated in the same way.
On the pasture-land and in the meadows the villein and cottier had
the right to turn out a certain number of cattle, according to the
size of their holdings. The crops, whether of hay or corn, had to
be cleared from the fields by certain fixed days, so that cattle
might be turned out to graze. You will still find, in some towns,
that certain of the freeholders, or burgesses, have the right to
turn a certain number of cattle on certain lands for a part of the
year between fixed dates.
Then, on the rough commons or heaths there were also grazing rights
for the lord and his tenants. The tenants might "top and lop" the
trees growing there at certain times, but they might not cut the
trees down--that was the lord's right. There were also rights of
cutting turf and heather, and the turning of hogs into the forest;
all these rights were ruled by "custom", which bound both the lord
and the tenants.
These "customs", although they were very similar, were not the same
in every place--each community had its own special "customs" which
were clung to most rigidly from generation to generation. However
much inclined the lord or his reeve might be to try to get rid of
the old "customs" in order to get more power into his own hands,
or to make more out of the tenants, he was forced to respect the
"custom" of the place or there would be grievous trouble. And it
was a good thing that both lords and tenants had thus to respect
each the right of the other, for it has helped to foster from the
very early days that spirit which makes for liberty, which we
value so highly, so that a man may live his life in security and
freedom.
The lord, or steward, or reeve, held courts or meetings at regular
intervals. At first these took place in the open air, like the old
folk-moots; but in time they came to be held in a court-house. The
court was a meeting, presided over by the lord or his steward, to
see that the customs of the place were kept up; to call to account
those tenants who had failed to do their share of the work; to put
new tenants into the places of those who had removed or died; and
to punish offenders.
[Illustration: _Ploughing. From an eleventh-century manuscript in
the British Museum_]
This last right, of punishing offenders, was one thought to be of
vast importance. In the early days the men of the tun were bound
together to keep the peace, and to see that it was kept; and they
were strong enough to keep evil-doers in check. In the trading
tuns or towns especially the right was valued very highly; but, at
the time we are now treating of, the right to exercise punishment
was in the hands of the overlord, though the men of the place had
still some voice in the government of their town. The right to have
a gallows was one eagerly sought for, and held very firmly; not
because people particularly wanted to hang one another, but because
the gallows represented to them the highest power of government.
The towns had lost most of their rights in this respect, but they
had never forgotten those they had had, and were always on the
alert to get back any lost right, or to gain a new one which should
help them to obtain the privilege of self-government.
CHAPTER XIV
Churches and Monasteries in Danish and Later Saxon Times
In speaking of our towns and villages we are obliged to make
mention frequently of churches and monasteries. At the time when
Cnut was king, each vill or tun had its church and its priest to
minister in it. There were parts of the land, in the common fields
and pasture, mixed up with the villeins' strips, set apart for
the support of the services of the Church, the maintenance of the
priest, and the care of the poor. In time various dues and customs
were also paid to the priest for certain things which he was
expected to do.
There are very few churches still standing which have any parts of
their structure dating from before the time of King Cnut. In the
early days churches were very simple buildings, built mainly of
wood, and in the Danish wars most of them were destroyed.
In the tenth century there was a very general belief that the
world was coming to an end at the end of the thousand years after
the establishment of Christianity; so there was not much actual
church-building going on. But in King Cnut's time a revival of
interest in church-building took place, and there are in a good
many of the old churches of England little bits of work in the
walls, or very rude carvings over the doorways, which belong to
this time. Unless such work is pointed out to you by one who
understands something about these matters, you will not be likely
to discover it for yourself, any more than you are likely to
discover the traces of the pit-dwellings, of which we spoke in an
early chapter.
These parish churches and parish priests were under the control of
the bishop, who had his chief church or cathedral in some important
place in his diocese. Those cathedrals were generally served by
colleges of clergy, called canons.
[Illustration: _Wooden Church at Greenstead, Essex. Built in 1013
as a temporary shelter for the body of St. Edmund during its
removal from London to Bury. The illustration is copied from an
engraving dated 1748, when the building was entire, though much
decayed_]
These were the public churches. But besides them there were
colleges and monasteries, which were private societies of men
living together. Some of the religious houses were in towns, as we
have seen, and others were in wild desolate places. Every religious
house, whether a monastery for men or a nunnery for women, had its
church, which was the private chapel of the house, and not open to
the public. In the course of years these private chapels were built
as huge churches, much larger than the parish church. Even now you
may see standing close to a big college church a much smaller
parish church; as, for example, St. Margaret's Church, which stands
by the side of Westminster Abbey. As more land came into the
possession of these religious houses, the monks had more business
with the outside world; for, as landlords, they had to see that
their lands were turned to good account, and cultivated according
to the notions of the day.
The monasteries, especially in their early days, were great centres
of good and useful work. Those who founded them, or gave them
lands, did so because they felt they were doing excellent service
for the people, and they wanted to have a share in the work, and to
be remembered in the prayers of the monks. Founders of religious
houses believed that they were getting something worth having in
return for the lands which they gave.
In the wild times of the Danish invasions the monasteries were
looked upon as places of safety for the weak and helpless. But
they were not always safe places. Sometimes, when the country was
in a disturbed state, people would send their valuables to the
nearest monastery. In time the Danes got to know of this, and many
a religious house was attacked and sacked by them on account of the
tales they had heard of the marvellous wealth hidden there.
A story is told of a worthy person living near St. Alban's
monastery at a time when a visit from marauding Danes was expected.
One market-day he sent a number of heavy iron-bound chests, guarded
by armed men, through the market to the monastery. Everybody, of
course, turned to look, and talked about the affair. As a matter of
fact the chests only contained stones; the treasure was carefully
hidden somewhere else, till all danger was thought to be over. That
plan was used to put the Danes "off the scent" as we should say.
All the land that did not go with the tuns and vills in early days
was apparently regarded as belonging to the people, and was called
the folk-land. There was a great deal of this unoccupied land, and
it was not regarded at the time as being of much use to anybody.
The king came to be regarded as the custodian or guardian of these
folk-lands. Little by little they became the property of the king,
until practically he could do what he pleased with them. It was
from these folk-lands--which in early times were probably scraps of
land which nobody thought to be worth very much, since the nearest
vills or tuns had never taken them in--that kings gave land to
bishoprics and monasteries. By and by these rough lands became very
valuable; but in most cases it was the labour, the skill, and the
brains of the monks in the early days which turned the waste lands
into fruitful fields.
[Illustration: _Consecration of a Saxon Church, from an ancient
manuscript of Caedmon's Poems_]
CHAPTER XV
Later Saxon Times
Every old town and village has got its oldest house, of course. You
will most likely have heard people trying to be funny about it, and
saying they think it must have been built in the year One. There
is, we may pretty safely say, no house now standing exactly as it
was in the days of King Cnut and the later Saxon times. But even
yet there are some buildings standing, and still in use, which have
certain parts which were erected in those times. These buildings
are mostly churches, and in various parts of the country, indeed in
almost every county, something belonging to this age can be pointed
out.
Churches built of stone in those days had very thick walls with
very small windows. The east end of the chancel was usually
semicircular, forming an apse. The wall between the chancel and
the nave was pierced by a narrow, low, round-headed arch. Most
of the windows had plain, round-headed arches, and in some of
them, dividing the opening into two parts or "lights", were stone
pillars with bulging stems. Some of the doorways had triangular
heads, others had round heads. There are some very curious bits
of sculpture over some of these doorways. The meaning of them was
quite plain, no doubt, to the people who carved them, but they are
very difficult for us to understand. They represent the ideas which
the Saxons had of good and evil, and of the strife continually
going on between them.
King Edward the Confessor had been brought up in Normandy,
where church-building was in advance of anything in England.
He encouraged Norman ideas in building, as well as in other
directions, and so prepared the way for the coming of the Normans.
Some parts of the buildings connected with Westminster Abbey were
built at that time.
We do not know much of Saxon castles, though the Saxons had their
strongholds and fortified places.
[Illustration: _Saxon Doorway, Earl's Barton, Northampton_]
The houses in which the people lived were most of them in those
days built of wood. There was not much difference, except in size,
between the house of the king, the thane, and the villein. There
was the hearth, on which was the fire; and the room or hall in
which it was placed was the chief building, close to which, very
gradually, other buildings arose. Apparently the buildings had a
framework of timber, filled in with wood wattled together like
hurdles. In the more important buildings stone gradually came into
use.
The monasteries and convents each had the buildings in which the
monks lived grouped round the church. After the Danish wars the
buildings improved, stone taking the place of wood.
Even in the towns wood was chiefly used for the ordinary houses;
though, as we should expect, stone was used in the more important
buildings and in the wall round the town.
What we understand by comfort in a house was absent. There was the
fire on the hearth in the middle of the floor; in this room the
people of the house, from the highest to the lowest, had their
meals; and there, on the floor, most of them slept at night.
Cooking was done almost entirely in the open air.
CHAPTER XVI
In Norman Times
When Duke William of Normandy became King of England, the power of
the Crown was greater than it had ever been before. All the old
folk-land had become king's land. Many knights had followed Duke
William from Normandy into England, and expected to be provided
for by their leader. The lands belonging to King Harold, and
those of the Saxon eorls who had died fighting at Senlac, King
William regarded as his own. These he granted to his followers,
on condition that they acknowledged him as their overlord, and
followed him in war when required. This was a stricter condition
than had ever before been required in England. The Normans were
used to it, and it did not seem at all strange to them.
Neither was it so very strange to the Saxon nobles and thanes. Most
of them were allowed to keep their estates if they took the oath of
allegiance to the king as the Normans did. Of course they grumbled:
it was only natural that they should do so; but if they did not
acknowledge the king in this way they were looked upon as rebels,
and lost their lands.
King William was very careful, in the grants which he made, not
to put too much power into the hands of his nobles. The old vills
of Saxon times were now pretty generally called manors. When the
king granted land, it was not given in huge slices--whole counties,
halves, and quarters of counties--to this great follower of his or
to that one. Between the old vills, or manors, there were often
wide stretches of the king's own land, the old folk-land. If he had
granted to a Norman knight a quarter of a county or so, he would
have been giving away much of his own land. Besides that, the king
did not mean his followers to become too powerful. He granted the
land in separate manors. It is quite true that in every county we
can, so to speak, put our finger on some Norman knight who came
over with William I, and say that he got the lion's share of the
manors in that county. Thus in Hampshire there was Hugh de Port,
and in Hertfordshire Eustace de Boulogne. But their manors did not
all lie side by side, nor were they conveniently close together.
Just as a villein's holding was spread out in various fields, so
the manors, or fiefs, which a knight held under King William were
often scattered over various counties.
At the time of the Conquest a very large number of manors belonged
to bishoprics and monasteries. Now the Normans were a Christian
race. The Norman Conquest was not like the Saxon or the Danish
Conquest--a rush of heathen, bent on plunder and bloodshed. Bitter
as the strife was, it was not as bad as those invasions had
been. There was something which the Normans and the later Saxons
both respected, and that was their religion. The Normans were a
particularly religious and devout people, stern and cruel as they
were. The lands of the Church and of the monasteries were not
interfered with to any extent. King William, however, took care
that they were in the hands of people whom he could trust.
The story is told that the Saxon abbot, Frederick of St. Alban's,
who did not love the Normans, once remarked to King William that he
owed his easy conquest of England to the fact that so many of the
manors were held by monks and clergy, who could not and would not
bring out their men to fight.
The king replied that that must be mended; for enemies might again
invade the land, and he must have men whom he could depend upon
to meet the foe. At that time a great tract of land between St.
Albans and London belonged to the Abbey, and the abbot allowed
Saxon outlaws to infest it, who were a great nuisance to the
Normans. As the land had been given by former kings, the king
at once took half of it back again, in order to clear out the
outlaws. Abbot Frederick had said too much. He fled away to the
Camp of Refuge at Ely, and King William would only accept as abbot
a Norman and a friend of his--Paul de Caen. That was a very good
appointment for St. Albans. The great tower of the Abbey Church,
still standing, was built by him--more than eight centuries ago.
CHAPTER XVII
In Norman Times (_Cont._)
The king, then, granted manors to his followers, and to such Saxon
eorls and thanes as were willing to hold their lands on the same
conditions as the Normans. If they objected, as from time to time a
good many of them did, they had to go.
Now, though every manor had a lord, where the lord held many manors
it was quite impossible for him to be living in the manor-house of
each of them, and looking after his estate himself. He could, if
he chose, let out some portions of these manors to a man beneath
him in rank, on exactly the same conditions as the king had
granted to him. The man must swear to be his vassal, and appear,
when required, with his proper number of men, to fight his lord's
battles. He, in his turn, might let parts of the lands to others
under him.
By this means the king could command a pretty large army. He would
summon his great vassals, they would summon their vassals, each of
whom would in turn summon his followers; and so from every manor
men would be called to fight. It was something like the old nursery
tale: "The fire began to burn the stick; the stick began to beat
the dog; the dog began to worry the pig; and so the pig began to
get over the stile".
[Illustration: _Domesday Book. From the original in the Public
Record Office, London._ (_1/8 original size._)]
If the lord was not living in the manor-house there was someone
there to represent him and to look after his interests. In scores
of manors the people never set eyes on their overlord; but they
felt the grip of his power through the steward of the manor. Now,
though the steward could not go against the customs of the manor
openly, there were many ways in which he could make himself very
disagreeable to the people under his care. He was there to grind
what he could out of the tenants for the lord, and he took care to
grind for himself too. It seems to have been quite an understood
thing that he was to get what he could out of the manor for
himself, so that very often villeins and tenants had anything but
an easy, pleasant life.
The Norman Conquest did not interfere with the customs of the
manors, and the life of an ordinary manor went on very much the
same in King William's reign as it had done under King Edward
the Confessor. About twenty years after King William I had come
to the throne, that great survey, recorded in Domesday Book, was
made. Learned men who have studied the Domesday Book closely have
discovered many things connected with the life of people in England
at this period. We can even see what parts of the country suffered
by opposing King William, and which districts had submitted quietly
to him.
CHAPTER XVIII
In Norman Times: The Churches
When we speak of Norman times we must bear in mind that they lasted
for over one hundred and thirty years--say from 1066 to 1200. That
period covers a good many years, and consequently a good many
changes took place. Now this period is marked by a particular style
of architecture known as Norman or Twelfth Century.
With the coming of William the Conqueror to England began a great
period of building in this country. There was what we may almost
call a "great rage" for founding or establishing religious houses
and churches, and for building castles. All the religious houses
have gone, and nearly all the castles, but in their ruins we can
see specimens of Norman work. In a large number of old churches we
can see very good examples of this style. In Hampshire especially
there is scarcely one old church, even in the most out-of-the-way
village, which has not some Norman work to show.
[Illustration: _Norman Capital, Buckland Church, Berks_]
You will expect to find that the style of building altered somewhat
during that long time. In the beginning it was very plain, but
gradually it became more ornamental. At first there were plain,
round-headed arches and heavy stone pillars, with boldly cut caps
to them. But in the time of King Henry II, and later, we find the
mouldings of the arches, and the caps of the pillars, ornamented
more and more with bold carvings. There is a vast difference
between the plain, almost ugly, Norman work, in St. Alban's
Cathedral, which was begun about the year 1077, and the Norman
work which can be seen in Durham Cathedral, or the west door of
Rochester Cathedral. The St. Albans builders had no stone at hand
to speak of, but any amount of Roman tiles from the ruins of
Verulam. They could not build anything very ornamental, but they
could and did build something vast and imposing. In most of the
cathedrals there are still to be seen very fine specimens of later
Norman work.
[Illustration: CHOIR OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL
The Transition work is to be seen especially in the columns and
arches on either side of the choir [See page 57]]
[Illustration: _Norman Capital, Hanney Church, Berks_]
We see, towards the end of the period, from the way in which the
Norman arches were used to intersect each other and form two
pointed arches within a round-headed arch, that a change in style
was showing itself. Towards the end of Norman times, in the reigns
of Richard I and John, we reach what architects call the Transition
Period, when the Norman style was gradually changing into the Early
English or Pointed Style. The choir of Canterbury Cathedral is one
of the best-known specimens of this Transition Period. Just as
changes took place in the style of the buildings, so, too, the life
of the nation changed. All the changes were not improvements; some,
indeed, were changes for the worse.
[Illustration: _Norman Capital, St. Bartholomew's Priory Church,
London_]
CHAPTER XIX
Castles
The passion for building castles in England had begun before the
Norman Conquest; but during the Norman period a great many castles
(about eleven hundred, it is said) were built in various parts
of the country. They were not all of the same size, strength, or
importance. Some were royal castles, belonging to the king, who
placed each one in charge of a constable or warden. These were
necessary for the defence of the country. We should expect to
find important castles, for instance, at such places as Carlisle,
Ludlow, Gloucester, Dover, and London. We can, too, trace lines of
castles along the Scottish and Welsh borders; and there were no
fewer than twenty-five in the county of Monmouth alone.
Many castles were placed on the sites of Saxon strongholds, and
of strongholds dating from still earlier times. Others were built
where the overlord thought they would be of service to him in
protecting his interests and keeping his tenants in order. So it
often came to pass that the castles were built close to, or in the
very heart of, a town or city. Frequently the castle was at once
the protection and the terror of the neighbourhood.
It is curious to note that some of the greatest castle-builders of
the time were bishops. There was Bishop Gundulph of Rochester, who
built the Keep of Rochester Castle and the White Tower in the Tower
of London. There was Bishop Henry de Blois of Winchester, who built
a number of castles on lands belonging to his bishopric. Strange as
it may seem to us that bishops should be great rulers and leaders
of armies, it did not strike the people of those days as at all
extraordinary or improper. A bishop was as much a ruler as the
king, and had territories to look after and keep in order. In those
days he was quite as able to carry out these duties as the boldest
baron of them all, and could give and take hard knocks with the
best of them.
[Illustration: _Rochester Castle: The Keep_
_Rochester Castle was built by Bishop Gundulf between 1077 and
1108, under the order of William Rufus. The magnificent Keep (70
feet square and 104 feet high) was added about 1126._]
The great castle-builders had no love for the traders in towns and
cities; indeed they looked down on that class. But they found them
very useful. Towns attracted traders by land and by water; and
every town, every bridge, and every ferry belonged to some lord or
other. No goods could be brought into or taken from a town, or
carried across bridge or ferry, without paying toll and custom to
the overlord. But he had certain duties to perform in return, in
protecting the town and its trade; and the better the protection
the more traders came to pay toll, and the better it was for
everybody concerned.
So we find, near many of our ancient towns and cities, a castle, or
its ruins--or perhaps only the site is left--where the lord of the
town kept a number of men to protect the town and district, even
when he was not there himself.
If there was no love lost between the lord of the castle and the
townsmen, there was still less between the latter and the soldiers.
The soldiers were inclined to take liberties, and to be insolent
and oppressive. As they had it in their power to "make trouble", if
not kept in good-humour, the townsmen put up with much for the sake
of peace and quietness.
[Illustration: _The White Tower, Tower of London, built by
Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, 1078. The exterior was restored by
Wren, but within the Norman work is little altered_]
CHAPTER XX
Castles and Towns
However useful a castle might be in protecting the overlord's
tenants and property, the sense of security was always a great
temptation to quarrel with other lords. With strong kings, like
William I and Henry I, the danger of disorder was not so great, as
these monarchs knew how to keep their great barons in check. But
in the time of King Stephen, during the long years of civil war,
the barons were divided into two parties, and each castle became a
centre of strife.
The baron in his castle had his men to keep. These he did not pay
in regular wages. He fed, clothed, and armed them after a fashion;
and, to give them something to do, would rake up some old grievance
with a neighbouring baron, make an attack upon his property, and
let his men plunder, burn, and kill to their hearts' content. Then
the other baron would retaliate.
It is easy to see that the conditions of life in England were most
unsettled in the reign of King Stephen. There was no safety in town
or village, and the dwellers on the manors must have suffered most
severely. Their own lord would send and gather in all their store
to victual his castle from time to time: his enemy would send _his_
men to seize what they could. It made very little real difference
to the villeins which side won; _they_ suffered, as they were
heavily oppressed by both parties. Their own lord expected his dues
just the same, war or no war, famine or no famine, whether he or
his enemy had carried off the best part of the corn and cattle or
not; and he would take his pick of the men on his manors to fill
the places of his men-at-arms who had been put out of action.
Many of the barons became little better than monsters of cruelty,
and their castles "nests of devils and dens of thieves". One
of the very worst of these was Geoffrey de Mandeville, who had
large estates in Essex and Hertfordshire. His castle of Anstey,
in Hertfordshire, was a den of fearful wickedness. He and his
men neither feared God nor regarded man; nothing was sacred to
them--they spared neither church nor monastery, town nor village.
Dreadful tales are still told of the cruel deeds done in the deep
dungeons of nearly all these old castles by the "bold bad barons"
of the time of King Stephen.
When Henry II became king he put a stop to these disorders, and
large numbers of the castles were pulled down; but the evils they
had caused lived long after, and were the source of much trouble.
It is said that "Everything comes to those who know how to wait",
and the townsmen, under the rule of a great lord, knew how to wait.
Great as the lord of the town was, whether he was baron, bishop, or
the king himself, he could not do without the town--and the town
knew it. People were sometimes short of ready money in those days
just at the very time when they needed it most urgently.
You will remember that the Crusades began in the reign of King
William I. Now and again the crusading "fever" took hold of
some of these Norman barons, and many wanted to go to fight the
Turk--especially when there was not much fighting going on at home.
But crusading was a costly business, and of course there was a good
deal of rivalry between these crusading knights as to who could
raise the best-furnished troop of men. The baron would be glad to
get together as much money as he could. So the chance came to many
a town to advance money to their lord. He, in return, would grant
to the town the right to collect the tolls and customs payable to
him for a term of years; or perhaps on condition that they allowed
him so much every year out of the tolls collected.
Bishops, too, were often in urgent need of money, for there were
many calls upon them. The monasteries were, at this period,
beginning to do so much expensive building, that often they, too,
were glad to get money by granting to the townsmen privileges for
which they were willing to pay.
[Illustration: _Norman Castle (based on that of Coucy in
the north of France). Coucy (built between 1230-1242) was a
magnificent example of a feudal fortress. The "keep" was round
instead of rectangular._]
Then there were other towns, not depending so closely on a baron
or bishop or monastery, which wanted to gain similar privileges
of levying toll and custom. These would petition the king for the
right to be given to them too, to levy dues, in return for a large
sum of money paid down, or for a yearly payment to the king.
The towns were becoming strong, and they gained considerable rights
during this Norman period. As far back as the time of King Cnut
we find, in some districts, towns banding themselves together
to protect their trade and interests. This was the case with
Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford, and Lincoln.
CHAPTER XXI
In Norman Times: The Monasteries
The hundred years after the Norman Conquest was a great period
of building. It was a time for establishing or _founding_ new
religious houses. Something like three hundred and ninety-eight
such houses were opened during this period, so that they played a
very important part in the history of the times. The Normans were
not very much interested in the English religious houses which
they found already established here. In fact, a good many of them,
since the times of the Danish invasion, two hundred years before,
had got into very bad order, and were in need of reform. Little
by little, as Norman bishops and abbots were appointed over these
Saxon religious houses, reforms did take place, but not always very
easily or quietly.
At the time of the Conquest the religious houses in Normandy were
in a far better state than those in England. Their members lived
better lives, did better work, and set a much better example
of godly living and working. There were several new orders or
societies of monks, which had their head-quarters on the continent
of Europe. These interested King William's companions more than the
old English monasteries, because they and their fathers had helped
to establish them.
So we find, as the Normans received lands here in England, and
founded religious houses, most of them were connected with the
monasteries across the sea, and were ruled by abbots who lived
across the sea. Such branch houses were generally called priories,
and the kings and barons who founded them gave them manors and
parts of manors, sometimes taking them from the older Saxon
monasteries and cathedrals.[9]
[9] The Cistercian houses here in England, however, were always
known as _abbeys_, though Citeaux, their head-quarters, was in
France.
[Illustration: _Ruins of Furness Abbey_
_Built about sixty years after the Norman Conquest. Much of it
was destroyed in the time of Henry VIII._]
Then, too, there were the old Saxon houses, St. Alban's Abbey,
Westminster Abbey, and Glastonbury Abbey: they were reformed and
improved, and to them, too, lands were given in various parts
of the country, often far away from the mother house. Thus St.
Alban's Monastery had important lands in the neighbourhood of the
River Tyne, and a daughter house was opened there called Tynemouth
Priory. So, you see, there were two kinds of priories in England:
one class attached to English religious houses, and the other to
Norman or foreign religious houses. In time the foreign priories
received the name of alien priories.
In time a good deal of ill-feeling arose towards these alien
priories, as the people in England did not like so much money going
out of the country, especially in war times. King John was the
first king to seize these priories when he fell out with France.
Later, King Edward I, in 1295, seized the property of about one
hundred of the alien priories in various parts of England to help
to pay his war expenses. There were several of these alien houses
in the Isle of Wight, and, thinking that the monks might be aiding
his enemies across the English Channel, the king sent the monks to
other houses on the mainland, a long way away from the coast, to
keep them out of mischief. When the war was over, the property was
restored to these priories, and the monks returned to them. This
kind of thing happened over and over again.
All these religious houses had some interest in the land, and all
of them, to a greater or lesser degree, were landlords. In some
cases the lands given to them were manors which had been managed
and tilled in the same way for hundreds of years. The only change
was that the lord of the manor might be a society or religious
house instead of a baron. Each of the manors had its steward, its
villeins, and so forth, like any other in the land. But a good deal
of the land given to these new religious houses had never been
occupied before.
Though some of the monasteries, like St. Alban's and St. Edmund's
Bury, were in towns, there were others, especially those founded
in these Norman times, far away from towns, in pathless woods or
deep dales, like Rievaulx, in Yorkshire. Others, like Ramsey and
Thorney, were in lonely fens and marshes. Here the monks themselves
set to work, as in the earlier days, and tilled the ground,
keeping up their regular services in their little churches most
carefully--praying and working. Gradually their lands improved;
other lands came to them; more labour was needed; and so, little by
little, tenants took holdings on their lands, and farmed them for
the "house", on much the same conditions as in the older manors.
[Illustration: _Foundation of a Minster_
_From a thirteenth-century drawing in the British Museum._]
We find that in many of the monasteries attention was given to
other occupations besides agriculture. Some, especially those in
towns, like St. Alban's, became in this period great seats of
learning. All of them copied the books they used, and some of them
were particularly famed for their writing and illuminating. In
fact, they were the book-producers of the age, and very little of
the work of learned ancient scholars could have come down to us had
it not been for the careful, painstaking work of simple monks quite
unknown to history.
Some of the abbeys in the west of England, like Bath Abbey, had a
good deal to do with opening up the wool trade, which in the Middle
Ages became the staple trade of the south and west of England.
Flaxley Abbey, in Gloucestershire, developed iron-smelting. The
iron mines in Furness were developed there by the monks, and
also in the neighbouring Walney Isle, off the Lancashire coast.
At Rievaulx, in Yorkshire, there were ironworks near the abbey,
and at Malvern Priory there was ornamental tile-making carried
on, specimens of the work done there remaining in a good many
Worcestershire churches still. Monks gave great attention to their
gardens, and were very clever in fish culture; and in many simple,
homely ways they showed men how to develop the natural resources of
the land.
In the monasteries men could quietly think and work, and use the
talents they had, without being called away to fight or do the
unskilled work of the world. In these early times there were no
other places where men could lead quiet, thoughtful lives, and
"think things out", and then put them into practice. The men in
the monasteries were not all equally good or religious or clever,
but the work done in and through these old institutions was most
important and most valuable to the country.
[Illustration: _Bath Abbey. Founded 676; rebuilt in the
Perpendicular style, 1499_]
CHAPTER XXII
Early Houses
When we go from a big modern manufacturing town into an old town
or village, we cannot help noticing the old buildings, the ancient
churches, the old town hall, the alms-houses, and the old houses
with their plastered fronts, tiled roofs, and huge chimney-stacks.
As years go by, the number of these old houses gets less and less.
In the course of time, many of the smaller ones especially, which
have been neglected and allowed to fall into bad repair, become
dangerous to live in. The sanitary inspector and the medical
officer of health condemn them as unfit for human habitation, and
the houses are shut up. Then, perhaps, they stand empty for some
years; mischievous boys throw stones and break the glass left
in the queer little windows; bill-posters paste notices of all
kinds on the doors, walls, and window-shutters; holes are knocked
in the plaster, bits of the woodwork are torn away, chalk-marks
are scrawled on the walls, and the buildings very shortly look
disgracefully untidy. Then some day the "house-breaker" appears
on the scene, and the houses, which have stood for centuries, are
cleared away, and modern buildings take their places.
Thoughtful people who know something of the history of the town or
village are always sorry to see old buildings disappear; because
there is much to be learned from them, and they help us to recall
many things of great value and importance which we very easily lose
sight of.
But, old as the houses in our streets and villages are, there are
very few of them which date back more than three hundred or three
hundred and fifty years. Most of them only date back to the time
of Queen Elizabeth--the latter part of the sixteenth century.
There are, however, a number of fine old houses which have work in
them of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and some people
can point out to you traces of work in some old houses of an
earlier date than that. There is at Lincoln, for instance, a fine
old stone house called "the Jew's House", which was built late in
the twelfth century. Of course, since it was built, it has, from
time to time, been altered to suit the needs and the fancies of the
various folk who have lived in it. But stone houses for ordinary
people, both in towns and villages, were very rare then--wood was
the common material. Of course in parts of the country where stone
was plentiful, and wood scarce, stone would be very largely used.
For instance, amongst the Cotswolds stone has always been the
handiest material for building walls, and for covering roofs. In
the course of centuries much of this stone has been used over and
over again, and has been "weathered" into a very beautiful tone,
such as only time can give. Such old buildings are much loved and
appreciated by folk who have an eye to see the beauty of colouring.
Nowadays, both in town and country, houses are commonly "bunches of
bricks". The Romans knew how to make bricks or tiles, and in places
near old Roman cities Roman tile is still to be seen, which has
been used up over and over again in the walls of old buildings. The
big tower of St. Alban's Cathedral is built of Roman tiles which
had been used centuries before in the walls of Roman houses in
Verulamium.[10] That tower has been standing as it is now for over
eight hundred years.
[10] Commonly called Verulam, but Verulamium was its Roman name.
But in Saxon times the _art_ of brick-making was lost, and Saxons
and Normans, it appears, were quite ignorant of it. There is an
old brick house--Little Wenham Hall, in Suffolk--which is believed
to have been built in the latter part of the thirteenth century.
That is the oldest brick house in England. In the fifteenth century
the art of brick-making had been rediscovered, and it seems to have
been imported from Flanders. We find specimens of such brickwork in
places near the east coast, and this old brickwork is more pleasing
to the eye than our modern brick. Here, again, time has done its
work in beautifying. The old palace at Hatfield is one of the
brick buildings of this period; but brick did not come much into
use until quite a century later. In the county of Middlesex, where
there is found clay which is very suitable for brick-making, the
art was not used to any great extent till the time of King James I.
After the Great Fire of London, in the year 1666, there was a great
demand for bricks, and the use of that material has quite changed
the character of the houses in our towns and villages.
[Illustration: _The Jew's House, Lincoln_]
CHAPTER XXIII
Early Houses (_Cont._)
For many centuries the houses of the villeins and cottiers did not
alter very much in their general plan. You will remember that in
those old pit-dwellings the hearth and its fire were the centre
of the home. The room, or space round the fire, gradually became
larger, especially in the houses of the thanes and eorls, till we
get the hall, with the hearth in the middle and the hole in the
roof to let out the smoke.
All through the later Saxon and Danish times, and in the Norman
period, the hall was the most important part of the house. As
the years went on, and the style of building altered, the walls,
the windows, and the roof became more beautiful and ornamental,
becoming most magnificent in the fourteenth century, or Decorated
Period. Gradually other buildings were added to the hall for
comfort and convenience.
[Illustration: _Diagram of the Shape of a Villein's House_]
So far as we know, the house or hut of the villein was a very
simple affair before the time of the Norman Conquest. Two pairs of
poles were set up, sloped, and joined at the top, and connected by
a ridge pole as shown in the illustration. The space between was
then filled in by other poles and wattle-work. This was plastered
with clay, and covered with turf or rough thatch. There seems to
have been a pretty regular length for this building, which was long
enough to take four stalls for oxen. That required about sixteen
feet and was called a "bay". The villein and his oxen were all
housed under one roof at first. When another bay was added, the
size of the house was doubled, and so on. In the course of time the
houses were improved; side walls were raised of wood framing, and
the sides were filled in with wattle and covered with clay.
[Illustration: THE OLD PALACE, HATFIELD
[See page 71]]
As the years went on, these houses or huts grew out of date, and
were replaced by others in much the same style, but gradually
improving in comfort and workmanship. In the villages there was
not much alteration down to the fourteenth century. When a house
in a manor or village was pulled down, and was to be rebuilt, the
manor court kept a sharp eye upon the building operations to see
that the new walls did not encroach upon the highway, or upon the
lord's land. No addition could be made to the house without the
consent of the overlord. Customs in the villages changed very, very
slowly, and so it is that, though the houses in out-of-the-way
villages have been rebuilt over and over again, there are many
lath-and-plaster houses standing now round village greens, built
between two and three hundred years ago, on old foundations which
date back to Saxon times.
We gave as an instance on p. 26 the case of Exton, in Rutland.
There the houses even to-day, in spite of the fact that they
have often been rebuilt and somewhat modified in the course of
centuries, occupy the same sites as they did in Saxon times. No
one would dream of laying out a village on those lines to-day, and
in the great changes which we know are greatly needed in housing
all over the country, and which are bound to affect every village
in the land more or less and to change the whole aspect of these
old-world villages, it will be well if some _specimens_, at least,
can be preserved to us, so that those yet to come may be able to
see how our ancestors for many generations were housed. But the
health of the people will have to be safeguarded most carefully,
and much of that which is old will have to give place to that which
is new.
[Illustration: _Old House, Cleveland, Yorkshire_
_The remains of a common type of rural dwelling in the Middle
Ages. The wooden frame which supported the steep-pitched roof can
be seen._]
So for many hundreds of years an ordinary village house was, to
our way of thinking, a very wretched, comfortless place. Even as
late as the time of Queen Elizabeth a countryman's house is thus
described:--
"Of one bay's breadth, God wot, a silly cote,
Whose thatchèd spars are furred with sluttish soote
A whole inch thick, shining like blackmoor's brows
Through smoke that down the headlesse barrel blows.
At his bed's feete feaden[11] his stallèd teame,
His swine beneath, his pullen[12] o'er the beam."
[11] _feaden_, that is, feed.
[12] _pullen_, that is, poultry.
CHAPTER XXIV
Early Town Houses
Houses in towns have been more frequently rebuilt and altered in
various ways than those in the villages. The chief material used in
building was wood, as it was in the villages, and one of the great
dangers in the Middle Ages was that of fire. In the towns this
danger was greater than in the villages, and fires happened more
frequently.
The leading men in a town had more money to spend, and the increase
of business, or a desire for change, led them to improve their
houses. It was easier for a wealthy townsman to get leave from the
"corporation", or guild which ruled the town, to rebuild his house
than it was for the villein in the village to get the leave of the
manor court.
The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries all saw a great
growth in architecture; they were the Early English, the Decorated,
and the Perpendicular Periods of architecture. In most of the old
churches, and in many of the old mansions, we have specimens of
all these periods; but not very many of the town houses founded
in the Middle Ages, and still standing, are much earlier than
the fifteenth century. In that age there was a great development
of woodwork, and there is hardly one old town which has not some
woodwork of that time in some of its old houses.
The rich and prosperous townsman rebuilt his house according to
the fashion of his time; but through all the three centuries the
general arrangements of the dwelling-house did not alter very much.
In some parts of London, and in many country towns, you can see
that some of the very old-fashioned shops in the main street are
reached from the pavement by a little flight of steps. Below the
shop there is a big light cellar, and the small boy or girl who
wants to look in at the shop window has to "tiptoe" very much in
order to do so. Now, that arrangement is just a little relic of the
old town house of the Middle Ages.
The house was usually quite narrow, and had a gable facing the
street. It was built over a cellar of stone, often arched and
vaulted very much like a church. There were steps from the street
down to the cellar, and these steps had to be protected, or
accidents were certain to happen to careless foot-passengers. Then,
too, there were steps up to the room over the cellar, which formed
the shop and workroom in one. The front of the shop would be open,
like a stall, and there would probably be a passage through to the
back of the house.
Above the shop would be another room or rooms, over which, in the
open space under the roof, was the great attic running through the
house. This attic was often kept as a store-room, and goods were
hoisted from the street by a crane; but in later times it would be
formed most likely into little sleeping-rooms, very small, very,
dark, and very unhealthy. Very often they led one into the other,
and had no windows or means of proper ventilation.
Most of the work would be done in the shop, where the master, his
workmen, and apprentices all did their share. The apprentices would
sleep in the shop at night, and very probably the workmen as well.
It was quite a usual thing for all the establishment to work and
live and sleep on the premises. The rooms occupied by the master
and his family at first were few in number; separate bedrooms only
came into use very gradually indeed.
The walls of the house above the cellar were usually of wood, and
the front towards the street was often skilfully and beautifully
carved. In some English counties still there are very fine
specimens of these old town houses; those at Chester, Shrewsbury,
and Ludlow, for instance, are famed all over the world.
[Illustration: _Shop of the Middle Ages now standing in Foregate
Street, Chester_]
We must not suppose that all the houses were equally splendid, or
equally well built; there was then, no doubt, bad building as well
as good. In fact there must have been some very careless building
in early days, and especially so in Norman times. It is a curious
fact that almost every big Norman church tower tumbled down because
it was badly built, even though Norman work looked very massive and
substantial, and was very imposing.
Merchants and wealthy tradesmen took great pride in their houses,
and the woodwork and furniture in them were splendid. Kings and
nobles were no better housed than these wealthy townsmen, nor did
they have more of the comforts of life.
But the poor! There were always the poor and the outcast in every
town; but they did not exist in the enormous numbers of later
years, or of the present day. Their wretched little hovels were
huddled together in close alleys, and life in them must have been
very cheerless and unwholesome. It was, however, _somebody's_
business to look after them. The religious houses, the churches,
the colleges, all did their part in distributing food at their
gates daily. Many wealthy people, both nobles and citizens, did
likewise, and to give alms to the poor was a work of charity which
no self-respecting citizen thought of shirking. Then, too, the
guild or corporation kept a sharp look-out upon the poor; strangers
were turned out of the town, and the people punished who had taken
them into their houses without having the consent of the town
authorities. In old town records we often come across instances of
people being punished for "harbouring inmates".
[Illustration: _A Cradle of the Fourteenth Century now in a
London Museum_]
CHAPTER XXV
Life in the Towns of the Middle Ages
Disease was one of the great dangers always lurking in a town.
Plague of some kind or other was never very far away, and it
frequently made its presence felt. People had not realized the
sinfulness of dirt.
The best-drained buildings were the monasteries and colleges. Near
the ruins of every big monastery, from time to time, underground
passages have been discovered, many of them big enough for a man to
walk along upright, and leading nobody knows where. When these were
found, people shook their heads and said: "Ah, those old monks; you
don't know what they were up to! They made these secret passages,
going for miles and miles underground, so that they might get in
and out of the monastery, and be up to all sorts of mischief,
without anyone being the wiser."
Many wonderful tales have been told about these underground
passages; but, as a matter of fact, most, if not all of them,
have turned out to be sewers, which the monks made from their
monasteries to a watercourse some distance away, so that the sewage
might be safely got rid of. The monks were usually in advance of
the townsmen of those days in sanitary matters. No doubt a sanitary
engineer of the present day would be able to point out how much
better the drainage-works could have been carried out; but the
monks set an example in this matter which, bit by bit, the rest of
the nation began to follow.
The chief streets of the town and the market-place were paved with
huge lumps of stone, sloping towards the middle of the street from
the houses on each side of the way, a gutter or "denter" running
down the middle. All sorts of filth were flung into the gutter,
for there were no drains from the houses in early days. When a
heavy shower of rain fell, the water flushed the gutter more or
less. If the street happened to be pretty level, the gutter, or
denter, was just an open sewer all the year round; and it did its
deadly work in poisoning the worthy citizens, though they did not
realize it. Those towns were the best drained which were perched on
a steep slope, so that the contents of the gutter found their way
speedily to the nearest watercourse. By that means they got rid of
_some_ of the filth, but they did not improve the watercourse.
There were no great manufacturing towns in those days. Most of the
ordinary articles used by the townsfolk were manufactured in the
town itself, and much of the work went on in the open air. The
butcher killed his animals in the street, before his shop, and
that added to the horrors and stenches of the gutter. But then all
the butchers in a town were located in one part of it. Even now
most old towns have got a Shambles, or Butchers' Row, or Butchery
Street, or place of similar name, near the market-place. Other
trades had their own parts of the town, where they made and sold
their goods. Cordwinder Street or Shoemakers' Row are still common
street names. The smith and the armourer did much of their work out
in the open street; the joiner put together there any big piece of
woodwork which he had in hand; the wheel-wright "shut" his tyres;
the chandler melted fat and made candles. The streets of the town
must have been very noisy and very "smelly".
There were no footways for passengers. Wagons, drays, and
wheel-barrows there were, but carriages had hardly been invented,
and coaches and light-wheeled vehicles had not been dreamt of.
Travellers mostly went on horses or mules.
[Illustration: _The Shambles, York; a street that preserves its
narrow, mediæval character_]
No doubt the tradesmen were expected to clear up the mess they made
in front of their houses, and the apprentices had to sweep up. But
that usually meant only drawing the rubbish together to the great
refuse-heap close to the house, which the fowls and the pigs, to
say nothing of the children, speedily managed to scatter. Now
and then the town authorities would wake up and make a fuss, and
these heaps would be carted away to a spot outside the town; but
usually the street was looked upon as the handiest place into which
to fling any refuse from the houses. However clean the citizens'
houses might be inside, and however richly ornamented the woodwork
and the furniture, plague and pestilence were always very near.
Still, though many persons died, and were buried close by in the
little churchyard, where for hundreds of years the dead had been
buried, people lived, and throve, and did good work. For one thing,
they lived a great deal in the open air, and they were not so much
afraid of draughts in their houses as we are.
The water-supply of a town was a very important matter. Here,
again, the monasteries and colleges frequently led the way, and
showed how water might be brought by pipes from a distant spring.
It was not an uncommon thing for water to be brought in this way
to a "conduit" in the market-place, whence the people fetched it
as they needed. Many a good wealthy citizen has performed the
pious work of providing his town with a supply of water. Parts of
old water-pipes, some of wood and some of lead, laid for such a
purpose, have often been discovered in recent years.
Usually, however, a town had to depend upon wells for its
water-supply, and water drawn from the nearest stream; and with
open gutters running through the town it is very easy to see that
many of these wells supplied water which, at times, could not have
been pure, however bright and clear it may have looked, and it
could never be relied upon as really fit for drinking purposes.
In the villages the dangers arising from want of proper drainage
and from impure water were not quite so great as in the towns. Yet
even now, in this twentieth century, how to drain our villages
properly, and provide them with a good water-supply, is an urgent
problem in many places. For many years people have realized that
the evil exists, but we have been slow to apply the right remedy
because of the expense. And the nation has greatly suffered in
health in consequence. We have seen that the houses in the villages
were usually close together, and men had not realized that dirt
is one of the greatest enemies of mankind. There are a good many
people, even in our time, who see no great harm in having pigsties,
refuse-heaps, and manure-heaps close to their houses.
One of the most loathsome of the diseases common in Norman times
and later was leprosy. The lepers were kept out of the towns, but
at first very little was done for them. The refuse of the markets,
and the food that was so bad that it had to be carted outside the
town, was thought to be good enough for them. Gradually, however,
we find hospitals for lepers established. They were not what we
understand by hospitals, places where sick folk could be doctored
and nursed and cured; they were religious houses which poor lepers
might enter, and in which they might have safe shelter, care, and
attention for the rest of their sad lives. They were always built
outside the walls of the towns.
Other hospitals for poor and suffering people were also
established. They were not large buildings, with wards holding
scores of people. They were little religious houses, each with its
chapel and priests to carry on its services, providing homes for
small numbers--perhaps half a dozen or a dozen. Almost every town
had a number of these hospitals.
Kings, bishops, earls, and citizens all took part in this good
work. Every founder expected that every day "for ever" he and
his family should be prayed for by the inmates. Some hospitals
were "founded" or established as thank-offerings for escape from
some great danger; some to "make up" for some wrong that had been
done and could never be put right, and to show that the founder
was "really sorry"; some were built for good reasons, others for
selfish reasons. Nowadays we arrange fêtes and demonstration, whist
drives, entertainments, bazaars, sales of work, jumble sales,
dances, for our hospital funds, Red Cross funds, and orphan funds,
and we are asked to buy tickets because "it's a good cause". We get
some enjoyment for ourselves and help the hospital; thus, as it
were, doing good and receiving good at the same time. We need not
look down upon our ancestors as being merely selfish creatures.
[Illustration: _Hospital of St. Cross, Winchester, founded 1136.
Under the archway beneath the tower the wayfarers "dole" is still
distributed_]
CHAPTER XXVI
The Growing Power of the Towns
Back in early Saxon times we find that the inhabitants of a town
were banded together to keep the peace, thus forming a society
pledged to each other--the Peace or Frith Guild. It lost nearly all
its _real_ power in later Saxon and Norman times. But it did not
actually die out, and it appears that from this Frith Guild what
we now understand by a corporation took its rise. The guild was a
great power in some of the Saxon towns; only those belonging to it
could trade in the town, and its members were very slow to admit
outsiders to share in their privileges.
We have seen that the free, or nearly free, tuns gradually came
under the power of an overlord--the king, a bishop, a baron, or a
monastery, as the case might be--and very little real power was
left to the guild. The overlord appointed a reeve to look after his
interests, and the government of the place was in his hands. Yet
the old Frith Guild seems to have regulated matters connected with
the _customs_ of the town, which did not interfere with the lord's
rights.
[Illustration: _Seal of Guild Merchant, Gloucester, 1200. The
city gates are represented in the centre._]
When we reach Norman times we have come to a period during which
the towns improved their position. The Norman Conquest led to
increased trade with the Continent. The great building operations
here attracted skilled workmen and craftsmen to this country.
These men naturally found their way to the towns rather than to
the villages. They were protected and encouraged by the Norman
nobles, who preferred _their_ work to that of the Saxons. Although
they might be foreigners, these strangers had ideas of freedom
and liberty which fitted in very well with the town's ideas of
self-government. Then, too, these craftsmen were bound together in
trade societies or guilds, and that made them strong and worthy of
consideration in the places where they settled.
A charter to a town granted and secured to it certain privileges,
and a town with a charter became a borough town. The king granted a
good many charters to towns during the Norman period. A town which
wished to get a charter had to pay heavily for it. But it was quite
worth while for the town to secure the right which a charter gave
it--the right to manage its own affairs. What a town most desired
was to be free from the authority of the king's officer, to choose
its own port-reeve, who could preside over the court of the town,
so that the town might not have to appear before the hundred court.
By paying an annual rent to the king, however heavy the amount
might be, the town hoped to escape from the many extra fees and
taxes which the king's officers put upon it. It could then settle
its own disputes, raise its own taxes as it needed them, and punish
its own evil-doers.
In many cases bishops, barons, or religious houses were the
overlords of districts containing important towns, and those towns
managed to get charters from their overlords as other towns had
from the king. By so doing they could get out of the power of the
sheriff or shire-reeve. Charter or borough towns have most of them
been very particular to preserve their rights and privileges.
If you live in a small country borough town, or a city, you
will notice that two different benches of magistrates sit in
the town-hall to hear police cases; and there are two different
courts of justice, though held often in the same room. There
are first of all the Borough Sessions, at which the mayor of
the borough presides, and which deal with cases arising in the
borough, whether trifling or serious. Then, on another fixed day
in the week, in the very same building, another body or bench of
magistrates sits. These gentlemen usually come in from country
places outside the town, and the cases brought before them have to
do with the mischief done in the villages and country parishes.
These magistrates have nothing at all to do with offences committed
within the borough. These are the county magistrates, and their
court is called the Petty Sessions, or the County Sessions.
Some offences are too grave for the borough or county magistrates
to settle, and they have to be tried by a higher court of justice,
which has greater powers than the Court of Petty Sessions--the
Court of Quarter Sessions. The bench of this court is made up of
magistrates drawn from all parts of the county, and a jury of
twelve men, householders, from different parts of the county, has
to be sworn to hear the evidence in the cases to be tried. The
jury decides whether the man is proved to be guilty or not, when
they have heard all that can be urged for and against him, and the
magistrates decide what his punishment is to be, according to law.
There are some cases too grave or too complicated for the Court of
Quarter Sessions to decide, and these have to stand over to the
Assizes. These Assizes are held three times a year in the county
town of each county, and every prisoner in the county jail must be
accounted for. The court is presided over by one or more of the
king's judges. These are trained lawyers, and they attend in the
king's place, and are treated with much pomp and ceremony.
The sheriff of the county, properly attended, must meet the judge
or judges upon arrival. Formerly when judges on circuit travelled
by road from one county town to the next county town, the sheriff
of the assize town to which they were travelling met them some
distance from the town with a band of horsemen in quaint, old-time
uniforms, armed with javelins; and in a similar way attended them
for some distance out of the town when the assize was over. In most
places the javelin men have disappeared, or nearly disappeared, and
this guard of honour is supplied by mounted policemen. But there
are a good many quaint old customs and ceremonies still observed in
connection with the holding of the assizes.
[Illustration: _Court-house of Godmanchester, Hunts_
_An open court in which law proceedings were conducted in the
Middle Ages._]
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A PORTION OF A NORMAN DOCUMENT
Part of the accounts of the sheriffs (who acted as the king's
bailiffs) of London and the various counties for the year 1130-1.
The portion shown refers to Middlesex, and was photographed from
the original in the Public Record Office, London
[See page 92]]
CHAPTER XXVII
The Villages, Manors, Parishes, and Parks
We have seen that in Norman times the whole country was, so to
speak, the king's. There were the great lords who held "fiefs" or
possessions directly from the king, which consisted of manors in
various parts of the country--sometimes a number of manors pretty
close together, but often with big stretches of unoccupied land
between them over which the king had full control. Out of these
unused districts the king could, and often did make new grants of
land.
As years rolled on, the manors became more valuable, and new manors
were formed. In the earlier days the manor and the parish meant
much the same thing; but in course of time, though the boundaries
of the parish did not alter much, the number of manors increased in
some parishes from one to two or three, or even more.
In many cases the mode of life on these manors went on unchanged
for centuries, the tenants of these different manors going to the
original parish church and the parish priest ministering to the
people in all the manors in his parish. In other cases daughter
churches, or chapels of ease, were built in the newer manors, and
provision was made for the support of a priest to minister to them.
These have in some instances been erected in the course of time
into separate parishes; but many remained as parts of the mother
parish, though they might be several miles away from the parish
church.
All through the Norman times there was a tendency to make new
manors, and this gave rise to so many difficulties that the
practice was stopped in the time of King Edward I.
In all parts of England to-day we have parks belonging to big
mansions; and our big towns and cities have their parks too; but
these are usually recreation-grounds for the people, and most of
them are quite modern, with bandstands and sports' grounds, clumps
of shrubs, flower-beds, and stretches of greensward. A park in
Norman and in Early English times was very different in appearance
from our parks, whether in town or country. Just as the king had
his great forests for hunting wild beasts, so in the later Norman
times the great lords were anxious to enclose pieces of waste and
forest land for the same purpose.
As we have seen, there were in early times vast tracts of wild,
uncultivated, unenclosed land, partly wooded and partly heath land,
between the manors, which belonged to the king. The king alone
could give leave to make a park. In the reign of King Henry III
especially we find many such parks were "empaled". Of course the
nobles had to give something to the king for this privilege.
Many of the old parks in England, now celebrated for their fine
timber and beautiful scenery, date back to this period; but they
were at first much wilder, and the trees then were neither so many
nor so fine as they are now. The deer remaining in some of them
to-day just serve to remind us of the "wild beasts" with which they
were stocked.
The laws for preserving the wild beasts and the game in these
parks and forests and chases were very strict, harsh, and severe.
Many of these new parks took away from the villeins, who lived
in the neighbourhood, certain rights and privileges which their
forefathers had had "time out of mind".
Though the land could not be bought and sold outright, manors
became divided and subdivided, let and underlet, for various terms
of years, and in many curious ways, so that in time the profits,
or the income, of a manor, instead of going straight to the lord
of the manor, might be going to half a dozen different persons and
places. For instance, the half of a manor might be divided amongst
several people for, say, twenty years, or for the lives of three or
four people; but at the end of the twenty years, or on the death
of the last of those persons, it must go back to the lord of the
manor, who could keep it in his hands or let it out in other ways
to quite a different set of people.
[Illustration: _Manor House, Thirteenth Century_
_Built by Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath, and Chancellor to
Edward I at Acton Burnell, Shropshire._]
It is not very difficult to understand that the management of an
estate of many manors, broken up into many small portions, became
very complicated. Records of all these various transactions had to
be made in writing: and carefully kept, and copied and re-copied
time after time. People who understood all the "ins and outs" of
the laws relating to the possession of land became very important
and very busy.
There are immense numbers of documents, some of them dating back
to Norman and even earlier times, still in existence. The Record
Office, in London, has many thousands of documents connected
with the king's business; the borough towns and cities and the
monasteries each had their own records, but most of these latter
records disappeared in the sixteenth century; every old estate
has such documents; and many of the old manors have still records
going back many centuries. Of course thousands more of these old
documents have been lost, some destroyed purposely, and others
through carelessness and ignorance. Some have been burnt in times
of danger, when their owner, knowing that there were documents
amongst them which might get him into trouble and cost him his
head, set fire to bundles of papers and parchments. Others have
been stored away in dark, damp cellars and forgotten for years and
years, and rats and mice have nibbled them away, or mildew and damp
have caused them to rot.
Those that we have left can still be read, and it is surprising to
find in many cases how well they have been preserved all through
the centuries. The letters are very often beautifully formed, and
the whole clear and distinct. They were written in Norman French
and Latin, the latter being the language in which law business was
carried on for many centuries.[13]
[13] Notice a fine specimen, written before the Conquest, given
on p. 103, and the illustration facing p. 88.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Traces of Early Times in the Churches
In most villages the church is the chief old building in the place,
and it is a good thing to be able to tell the time to which its
different parts belong. It will help us to fix in our minds the
different periods, or steps, in the history of our country.
A little party of holiday-makers were one day strolling through
a country churchyard in which was a very old church. They were
not much interested until one of the party saw in the wall of the
church a slab to "an honest carpenter", dated 1765. "How very, very
old!" he exclaimed, and called the attention of his companions to
it, and they all wondered and marvelled. Yet in that same wall were
bits of work which belonged to a past age, not just a hundred or so
years back, but a thousand years back. They had not been trained to
read "the signs of the times".
Never be ashamed to ask questions about an old building. It will
be a very strange thing indeed if you cannot find, in every town
and village, _somebody_ who has a keen interest in old buildings
and who will delight in pointing them out to you. Nearly every
local newspaper in the country, from time to time, prints odds and
ends connected with the history of the neighbourhood. If there is
anything about an old building that you want explained, you can
easily write a short letter to the editor of the paper, and there
is sure to be someone who will take the trouble to answer your
question, and help you to understand, and to distinguish between
things "that differ".
[Illustration: _Saxon, Norman, and Later Architectural Features_]
An old parish church has a good deal to tell us about the history
of the parish and its people, and if you know something of the
history of the place in which you live you will know something
_worth knowing_ of the history of your country, which will help
you to be a good citizen. But this knowledge can only be picked up
little by little, and you cannot learn "all about it" in the course
of a few days.
There are, as we said in a former chapter, some few churches which
have little bits of Saxon work left in their walls and windows.
In a great many more we shall see some Norman work, especially in
pillars and arches and doorways. That Norman Period takes in the
reigns of all the kings from William I to the time of King John,
from the middle of the eleventh century to the end of the twelfth,
down to the time of Magna Carta.
When we come to the time of Magna Carta we are in the thirteenth
century, when pointed arches came into use. Through the reigns of
King Henry III and King Edward I a great deal of building in that
style went on. In almost every parish some alteration was made in
the church in that century; and probably in the chancel there are
one or two old window's which will be pointed out to you as having
been first put in during that century.[14]
[14] In the "Lancet Windows", shown in the illustration on p. 94,
you have a specimen of that thirteenth-century or Early-English
style.
You may perhaps find a very old battered figure of a man in chain
armour, the sort of armour in which King Edward I went fighting in
the Third Crusade, in Wales, and in Scotland; in which Simon de
Montfort and Wallace and the Bruce fought. Some of these effigies
have the legs crossed--some at the ankles, some at the knees, and
some at the thighs. It used to be said that these represented
crusaders; but nobody seems really to know what was the meaning of
the cross-legged effigies.
Then there are some flat stones, lying in the pavement, with
inscriptions running round the edge in strange worn letters, with
perhaps an ornamental cross also cut the whole length of the
stones. These are the cover-stones of the graves where some great
baron or landowner was buried, and they belong to the thirteenth
century, and some are even of earlier date. They are called incised
slabs.
In this same century another kind of cover-stone for a grave came
into use, especially in the southern and eastern parts of England.
Metal was fixed in the incised slabs, and the portrait of the
knight and his lady, the merchant or the lawyer, the bishop or
priest, was engraved on the metal, showing the person in the kind
of dress worn during life. It is said that there are about four
thousand of these brasses still left in England. Some of them
have been sadly damaged and worn. They do not all belong to the
thirteenth century, as this kind of memorial of the dead was used
during several centuries--in fact, well on into Queen Elizabeth's
reign, at the end of the sixteenth century. The oldest brass in
England, showing a man in armour, is in Surrey, in Stoke D'Abernon
church. Brasses are very valuable, as they show us the kinds of
armour and dress worn in particular centuries.
[Illustration: _Effigy with Crossed Legs in the Temple Church,
London_
_The feet are placed upon a lion, indicating, it is said, that
the knight took part in the Crusades and was killed in action._]
CHAPTER XXIX
Traces of Early Times in the Churches (_Cont._)
The fourteenth century is covered by the reigns of King Edward
II, King Edward III, and King Richard II. The architecture
became much more ornamental, and there is a good deal of fine
stone-carving.[15] Many beautiful window-heads and doorways belong
to this period. A good many aisles were added to the old naves;
many of the old Norman towers were rebuilt and crowned with
graceful spires; but the work is not all equally good.
[15] See "Fourteenth-century Doorway", on p. 94, for a specimen
of this style.
It will be noticed that the most beautiful spires are very
frequently met with in districts that are flat and destitute of the
natural beauty which mountains and hills, valleys and woodlands,
give to a landscape; and it looks as if the people in different
parishes had tried to outdo their neighbours in erecting graceful
spires on their church towers.
There are a great many tombs in the churches in various parts of
the country, and much money was spent upon them in this and in
the next century. They are raised some two or three feet from the
ground; the sides are divided into panels and ornamented with rich
carvings and shields of arms, brilliantly coloured and gilded. On
the top of the tombs are to be seen effigies carved in stone of the
man and his wife, lying on their backs, with hands clasped. The men
are usually in armour, and their wives in the dress of the time,
with strange-looking head-dresses. Many of the effigies are much
defaced and battered, but there are others of them well preserved
still. It was in the latter part of the fourteenth century that
great attention began to be paid to shields of arms, and heraldry
became an important science.
But in the middle of the fourteenth century, during the reign of
King Edward III, there came a time of great distress. There were
the long years of war with France, years of famine and the Black
Death. That meant a period of great distress for the country; all
classes suffered, and there was much discontent and disorder. These
bad times left their marks upon the buildings, especially upon the
churches. In some churches work can be pointed out to you which
was begun before the time of the Black Death on a grand scale, but
finished off in a much plainer manner--apparently years after it
was begun. The work had been started, but bad times stopped it, and
it had to wait. Those who had begun it never saw it finished, for
the pestilence carried them away; and, long afterwards, those who
did finish it were not well enough off to carry out the design as
it was at first intended.
Still, all through these centuries much was spent on the churches,
not only by the great nobles, not only in monastery buildings
and the cathedral churches, but on the ordinary town and village
churches as well.
[Illustration: _Spire of Norwich Cathedral Fourteenth Century_]
The wealthy wool-merchants, especially in the fourteenth century,
spent much on the building and decoration of churches. Some of the
finest churches in the eastern and western counties of England
owe much to them. Then, too, it was quite a common thing for the
various trade guilds in a town to have a little chapel, or an
aisle, or an altar in the parish church, which the guild undertook
to keep up. One guild tried to outdo the others in this matter. All
the craftsmen of those days belonged to a trade guild of some sort,
and much good artistic work was done, which found a place in the
churches.
People took a keen interest in their churches, and we find them
leaving money towards their upkeep, towards making a statue, or
doing some carving, or even keeping a light burning. Whatever may
have been their reasons for so doing, the fact that they did so is
very clear.
They used their churches in ways that may seem strange to us; but
they looked upon them as their own, and were evidently in many
cases proud of them. Each parish annually chose its churchwardens,
who had charge of the buildings and the furniture, and these were
responsible to the bishop, as well as to the people of the parish.
Every now and then the bishop visited the parish, or sent someone
to do so in his name. Enquiry was made as to how the priest and the
people carried out their duties towards each other. Complaints were
heard, and attempts made to set matters right. Some of the reports
which were made on such occasions have come down to us, and show
often much disorder, and at times much that was evil. But we must
not forget that good was also being done then, which was not talked
much about.
"The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones."
CHAPTER XXX
Clerks
Changes took place much more slowly in the Middle Ages than they
do now. First of all, the population was very much smaller, and
hundreds and hundreds of acres now covered by big manufacturing
towns were then unoccupied land.
At the time of the Norman Conquest the whole population of England
only numbered about two million people; and in the time of King
Henry VII it was only four millions; so that in the course of four
hundred years the population had only doubled itself.
The people were not crowded into the towns. For instance, in the
time of King Edward III, Colchester was one of the large towns, yet
it had only three hundred and fifty houses, in which three thousand
people lived, all told. There were only nine larger towns in the
country at that time.
The bulk of the people were living in the villages, in the various
manors, not in the towns. Many things prevented the population from
growing very rapidly--disease, famine, and war kept it down. Death
was the punishment for a very large number of offences, so that it
is not to be wondered at that the population did not increase very
fast.
The population was divided into two distinct classes--those who
were clergy, or clerks, and those who were not. By "clergy" we
understand, in these days, "ministers of religion"; but the word
had a very different meaning in the Middle Ages.
In early Saxon times religion and learning were very closely
related. Colleges and monasteries were centres of learning, and
bishops, abbots, priests, and monks took the lead in matters in
which a knowledge of reading and writing was required. Folk who had
a leaning towards learning naturally became connected with colleges
or monasteries. They began as scholars, and then were admitted, or
ordained, to one of the lower orders of the ministry--often when
they were still only boys.
[Illustration: _A Scriptorium, from a miniature painted in an old
manuscript (written in 1456) in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It
depicts a clerk writing._]
There are many thousands of boys to-day who are choir-boys. In
early times those admitted to such an office as that had to be
ordained, or set apart for the purpose, by the bishop. That
ordaining made them clerks or clergy; and they were then under the
authority of the bishop or his officers. If they did wrong, they
were tried and punished in the bishop's court.
In the course of years there grew up, side by side, two different
set of courts of justice, the Church Courts and the King's Courts,
which were each guided by different laws. The laws which ruled the
Church Courts were much more merciful than those which ruled the
civil or King's Courts. Death was the punishment for almost every
offence tried in the King's Courts and in the Manor Courts; but in
the Church Courts the punishments were much less severe, and the
culprit had a much better chance of "turning over a new leaf".
If a man was brought before the King's Court charged with a crime,
he could call for a book. If he could read a few sentences, that
was taken to show that he was a clerk, and he could claim to be
tried by the Church Court. That is, he could claim "benefit of
clergy".
You can readily see that such a state of things, however good it
may have been at the first, was dreadfully abused in the course
of time. What at first had been merciful and just became in time
mischievous and dangerous. The great struggle between King Henry II
and Archbishop Thomas à Becket had to do with the power of these
two sets of courts, the King's Courts and the Church Courts--it had
to do with government, _not_ with religion and religious matters.
Clerks, or the clergy, were drawn from all classes of society, from
the royal family down to the serfs on the manors. In fact, before
the time of the Black Death, the only way in which a serf could
become a freeman was by buying his freedom or by becoming a clerk.
A serf who wanted his son to rise to a better position than his
own would try to get him made a clerk; for the moment he became a
clerk he was a free man. But to attain his purpose the serf must
first have the permission of his master or overlord. All overlords
were not tyrants by any means. The serf might do his master a good
turn--save his life, for instance--and in return his master would
set him free, or allow his son to be taught by the priest and
ordained; or he might let him join a college or monastery.
Many and many a priest, clerk, or monk rose from being a serf or a
villein in this way; so many, in fact, that a writer in the twelfth
century complains that villeins were attempting "to educate their
ignoble offspring". Later still, Piers Plowman complains that
"bondsmen's bairns could be made bishops".
There was a very sharp line of division between clerks and those
who were not clerks, and the privileges which clerks had, led to
much squabbling and many disorders.
Kings and nobles employed clerks on their business, for the simple
reason that they were able men, and had some "book learning", and
so, in that way, were better educated than most of those who were
not clerks. From the clerks, too, were drawn the men whom we now
call lawyers. We have seen that there was a vast deal of writing to
be done in those days in connection with the towns and the manors.
Among these clerks were good men and bad men: some who loved
learning for its own sake; some who found that it paid better than
anything else; and others who misused their privileges, did much
evil, and brought the name of "clerk" into sad disgrace.
[Illustration: _Writing before the Norman Conquest. From a
charter of Cnut (1018) now in the British Museum_]
CHAPTER XXXI
Fairs
The word "Fair" calls up to our minds all sorts of wonderful
sights and sounds--the stalls with their wonderful "fairings"
and "goodies"; the shows and the shooting-galleries; the "flying
horses", the "conjurors", the performing dogs, and Punch and Judy;
the wonderful caravans and coco-nuts; the musical instruments of
all sorts, from the mouth-organ and "squeaker" to the steam-organ
of the roundabout.
Many such fairs are still held in every county and they connect the
present day very closely with the life of bygone days. It is "all
the fun of the fair" which draws people to them mostly nowadays,
but in some of them there is still important business done; people
are attracted to them for trade as well as for pleasure.
Some of these fairs are held in big towns, such as Lincoln
and Carlisle. At Barnet a great horse fair is held every year
in September. But some big fairs are held away from any large
town, such as the big sheep fair at Weyhill, in Hampshire. At
Stourbridge, in Cambridgeshire, a fair is still held; it is quite
an ordinary one now, but in the Middle Ages it was one of the
most important fairs, not only in England, but in Europe--a great
gathering, where East and West met to do business with each other.
In some places the business part of the fair has quite died out,
and a few stalls, a roundabout, a shooting-gallery, and swings are
all that can be seen on a fair-day.
The word "fair" comes from an old word which means a "feast" or
festival. There are many villages which still have their annual
village feast, more important to the village than Christmas or
a "Bank Holiday". Houses are turned out and cleaned from top to
bottom; everything must be made fit to be seen "for the feast". It
is a great meeting-time for families, and the boys and girls who
have gone away to work in some big town try to get back for a few
hours to their native village, to "the old house at home".
[Illustration: CASTLE AND BUTTER MARKET, DUNSTER, SOMERSETSHIRE]
In the beginning the village feast was connected with the parish
church--it was the festival of the saint after whom the church
was named. That day was a holiday, and all the people went to
church as a matter of course. The church was the gathering-place,
and, in the porch and the churchyard, and on the village green,
friends, neighbours, and relatives met and had a time of
rejoicing.
So many people coming together attracted pedlars and hawkers,
who spread out their goods on the green, in the churchyard, and
in the church porch itself. People who met but seldom used the
chance of doing a little business with each other. Little by
little, then, the "feast" became a "fair", and in many cases was
a very important business and trading meeting.
Now it did not suit the ideas of people in those days that
outsiders should come into their village and buy and sell as they
chose. You know how the boys living in one street even nowadays
object to the boys from another street coming to play in their
street--"You go and play in your own street". So in very early
times the lord of the manor began to regulate these things.
Outsiders who brought their goods for sale had to pay a "due" or
"toll" to the lord of the manor to be allowed to trade; and the
right of receiving tolls for fairs became one of an overlord's
privileges.
The people in the towns, who were more interested in trade than
the people in the villages, saw how very important and profitable
a fair was--that it was something "with money in it"--and the
towns were very anxious to get the right to hold one or more
annual fairs. But the overlord, the king, had a voice in the
matter, because each stall set up, and each bale of goods,
brought in "by right" an income.
The king had the right to grant, almost to whom he pleased, the
privilege of holding a fair; and the privilege was much sought
after. Towns, as we saw in a former chapter, got charters from
the king, which very often gave to them this right. But it was
quite a common thing for the king to make a grant of an annual
fair to a religious house which he wanted to benefit without much
cost to himself, and the profits of the fair went to support the
house. The king's nobles did the same kind of thing in their own
domains.
All the shops in the place where the fair was held had to be shut
while the fair was on, and nothing could be bought or sold except
in the fair. The tradesmen of the place had to pay their tolls to
the person or public body to whom the fair had been granted, just
as the strangers coming into the town did.
Fairs lasted in some cases for only one day; in others for two,
three, or more days, and sometimes as long as a fortnight, during
which time, whether the inhabitants liked it or not, all trade
had to be carried on only in the fair. That was one of the things
which caused jealousy between the trading class and the religious
houses, and often led to much ill-feeling and disorder.
Then, too, the king could grant to any person the right to go to
any fair in the country without paying toll and duty. Of course
those persons to whom the king granted this right had to pay him
very heavily for this privilege, but you can see that it was
quite worth their while. Foreign merchants and Jews[16] often had
such privileges granted to them, and that partly accounts for
the great dislike there was to these classes of people.
[16] The Jews were expelled from England A.D. 1290.
Many of the religious houses had entered into trade too, and very
often the same privilege of putting their goods on the market was
granted to them. Members of a religious house could often travel
from place to place without having to pay any of the tolls and
duties which other folk had to pay. That might be quite right and
reasonable when they were on some religious duty or errand of
mercy, but when it was connected with buying and selling the goods
produced or manufactured on the monastery lands it was "rather
hard", as we should say, on the traders. The grievance grew up
gradually, but it caused very often a bitter feeling between the
towns and the religious houses in them, which over and over again
led to riots and bloodshed.
[Illustration: _Morris Dancers, Fourteenth Century_
_From an illuminated manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford._]
CHAPTER XXXII
Markets
One of the pleasantest sights, to a Londoner at any rate, is the
market-place of an old-fashioned country town on a market-day.
In many such towns the weekly market is held, in the open air,
in the same place where it has been held for centuries. Probably
none of the houses round the market-square is as old as the
market, but the buildings, altered and rebuilt as they have been,
take us back several centuries, and speak of days long gone by.
A good many towns have built covered markets. Some of them are
near the old market-place, but in other cases the market is now
held in quite another part of the town. Cattle-markets, which
used to be held in the open street in a busy thoroughfare, are
now often held in places more suitable for that purpose some
distance away from their old quarters.
Corn-markets are held in most market-towns, frequently on the
same day as the general market, and many towns now boast a
corn-exchange. Then, too, in some places there are markets held
in connection with the chief trade of the neighbourhood.
The market-house is often a curious building. You may almost
speak of it as "a big room on legs". There is a large room
standing on stone or wooden arches. The open space underneath
serves to shelter some of the market-stalls, and a staircase
leads up from the street to the room above, where the town
council holds its meetings. On the roof of this building is
a turret containing a clock, and perhaps a fire-bell and a
market-bell. There is such a quaint old market-house still
standing at Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, but so many of these
old buildings have been pulled down to make way for larger
structures, in which the town can carry on its business, and
where the various officers can have their offices, that the town
hall is mostly now a smart modern building.
[Illustration: _Market Cross and Portion of Shelter, Winchester_]
The stalls set up on the market-day are of the same simple kind
as those which have been used for centuries. It is curious to
notice how the different trades keep to different parts of the
market-place--butchers in one place, greengrocers in another,
and fishmongers in another. Just as the trades had their special
quarters in the town, so they had in the market. Things have
altogether changed as far as the shops are concerned, but the
setting out of the market is almost exactly the same to-day as it
was five hundred years ago.
The market cross still remains in some towns, but the cross
itself has in many cases disappeared long ago. In some places the
steps and the lower part of the cross still remain, but there is
a kind of open shed built round it to form a shelter. Some of
these shelters are very ornamental, like those at Chichester and
Winchester.[17] It is not an uncommon thing for such a cross as
that to be called the Butter Cross,[18] from the fact that around
the cross was held the butter-market. Some of these shelters are
quaint rather than beautiful, and cover the town pump, which is
now carefully locked up. In some places a drinking-fountain stands
where once the cross stood. At the cross a good deal of business
was done. The mayor or his officers would read out public notices
there on the market-day, that everybody might hear. Not far from
the cross was the cage, where folk who had been "taken up" were set
for a time. The stocks, the pillory, and the whipping-post, in the
seventeenth century, were usually here in the market-place, not far
from the cross.
[17] This was built in the fifteenth century; but of course
it has been restored since then. At the end of the eighteenth
century the authorities of the city actually sold it to a
gentleman who proposed to place it in his own pleasure-ground;
but the people of the city drove away the workmen who were sent
to remove it, and so it had to remain in its ancient place.
[18] Such a Butter Cross is seen in the view of Dunster, facing
p. 105.
There is much to see in a market-place on a market-day. If the
market-day is Saturday, you will find the place thronged with
people, especially at night; and even quite small towns are then so
crowded that you wonder where the people come from.
Fairs, in the Middle Ages, provided for much of the wholesale trade
of the country, and markets for the retail trade. The two were very
much alike, and the rights to hold an annual fair and a weekly
market mostly went together.
[Illustration: _Market Scene in the Middle Ages. The market cross
is taken from an old print of the market cross at Malmesbury_
(_Note the Pillory, the Whipping-post, and the Stocks._)]
Some places had, and still have, more than one market a week. In
many places the market has quite died out now, but in the early
days one of the first steps of a "tun" towards becoming a "town"
was to obtain the right to hold a market. There are many of our
modern towns which have grown up in manufacturing districts,
near great railway centres, or near docks and railway stations,
which have no market. Nearly all of our old towns have, or at one
time _had_, the right of holding markets.
Nobody can set up a stall in a market as he pleases. On the
market-day you will see the beadle going about from stall to
stall taking the toll from each stall-holder. In many cases he
wears an old-fashioned dress trimmed with gold lace. He reminds
us of the time when no one except a freeman of the town could
trade freely. The stall-holders were "foreigners", and had to pay
to the town a toll for permission to sell in the town. In our day
you can go and settle in any town you please, and open a shop
just as you like, but you cannot so easily take a stall and sell
in the market: you must pay the market toll even now. Such tolls
go towards the expenses of the town.
In the market the town and the country meet. In these days, when
the produce of the country can be quickly sent into the heart of
the largest town, the country provision-markets are not of as
much importance as they once were, but they are very useful and
very popular still.
There are many places where the market beadle rings a hand-bell,
or a bell in the clock-tower, to give notice of the opening and
closing of the market. In former days, if a man dared to sell
anything before the bell was rung in the morning, or after it had
rung in the evening, he was very severely punished. Even now,
goods may not be sold in the market before or after the regular
market hours.
There were proper town officers appointed by the mayor and
corporation to look after the markets, and to see that goods were
sold at the proper market price, and that there was no cheating
in weight and measure, and in the quality of the goods sold.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Schools
The earliest schools in England were held in the monasteries,
and were intended for boys and young men who were to be trained
as priests, missionaries, or monks. There were famous schools at
Canterbury, York, and Jarrow in the seventh and eighth centuries.
In King Alfred's time, at the end of the ninth century, great
attention was paid to the teaching of both boys and girls. Later
still, in the tenth century, we find the teaching of the young
attracting great attention.
Latin was taught in these schools, and many of the scholars
became famous students and deep thinkers. In the course of time
others, besides those intending to become monks and priests, were
also taught, and became clerks and found various employments, as
we have seen, in civil business.
Gradually other schools sprang up, outside the monasteries and
cathedrals, which were not meant for monks or priests, though
they were at first connected with monasteries, colleges, and
cathedrals. For instance, in Norman times, not very long after
the Conquest, there were grammar-schools at Derby, St. Alban's,
and Bury St. Edmund's.
When we think of these schools we must not picture to ourselves
great buildings to hold two or three hundred boys, such as
we see now; nor must we suppose that there was a great rush
of pupils to them. Boys did not go to school from nine till
twelve, and from two till four, with plenty of time for cricket,
football, and sports of all descriptions. School work was very
hard, and was regarded as a serious business. There was a great
deal of learning by heart to be done. You see, books were few
and costly, and a man's best reference library was his own
well-stored memory. No doubt this hard work helped to train the
memory, and was good discipline for the scholar.
In the monasteries and colleges, where boys were trained to sing
in the choir, they had to learn their services by heart; for
books were not provided for them--a book was much too valuable in
days when they were all written by hand, and when printing first
came into use they were still far too costly for ordinary monks
and choir-boys to have one apiece, or even enough for several
to "look over". In the ordinary services there were long psalms
and passages of Scripture attached to them which differed for
every day, and the boys had to know these perfectly in Latin. For
hours and hours every day the little fellows were drilled in the
services till they were word-perfect. There were something like
seven services to be learned for each of the three hundred and
sixty-five days of the year.
We talk of Latin nowadays as a dead language, but it was anything
but a dead language in the Middle Ages. School was held all day
long from quite early in the morning; and during school-hours woe
betide the lads if they talked in any other language but Latin.
Choir-boys had to be taught in the song-school as well, how to
sing their services, and the music was just as difficult as the
words and had also to be learned by heart.
In the parish churches the priest and the parish clerk had boys
whom they trained to help in the services. The services were much
simpler and shorter than those in the monasteries; but they were
in Latin, and had to be known by heart.
In the grammar and other schools the boys were drilled in the
works of old Latin scholars in much the same way, and in
some cases in Greek authors as well, with a certain amount of
arithmetic and science.
[Illustration: _A School, Fourteenth Century_
_From an illuminated manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford._]
There were no long weeks of holidays to look forward to at
Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, and in the summer; but during
the year there were many holy days kept, which were holidays, on
which neither schoolboys nor villeins did their ordinary work.
Thus, no doubt, schoolboys managed to get a fair amount of play,
and found time for getting into mischief.
For instance, at St. Alban's we read that in the year 1310 the
boys were forbidden to wander or run about the streets and roads
without reasonable cause. If a lad did so, he was to be sought
for and punished by the master "in the accustomed way"; and every
boy knows what that was. Then, too, the scholars must not bear
arms, either in school or out of school. That was to prevent them
from fighting with the townspeople. It is very curious to notice
that even nowadays there is often no love lost between "grammar
boys" and "town boys"; they can get up a quarrel almost as easily
in the twentieth century as they did in the thirteenth. It shows
itself whenever there happens to be a heavy fall of snow, and
sometimes tempers get "lost, or mislaid".
Boys took part in acting the earliest plays that were represented
in England. At first the plays dealt with religious subjects,
and were called "Mysteries" and "Miracles"; and these plays and
shows became very popular in England. Geoffrey de Gorham, in
early Norman days, taught a school at Dunstable, and wrote one of
these plays called St. Catherine. He borrowed vestments from St.
Alban's Abbey, in which to dress some of his characters; but on
the following night his house somehow caught fire, and his books
and the borrowed vestments were destroyed in the flames.
In the cloisters of some of our old cathedral churches and
colleges, such as Gloucester and Westminster, on some of the old
stone benches, there are holes and scratches still to be seen
where schoolboys of long ago played games with marbles and stones.
By the thirteenth century there seem to have been schools in
all the chief towns. Though they may not have held very many
scholars, they were not intended for the sons of well-to-do
people only; they were for poor scholars as well. Thus, at St.
Alban's, provision was made for sixteen poor scholars, and the
same kind of provision was quite common. There was some chance,
even in those days, for a lad with "brains" to get on in the
world. In fact, we know that in those Middle Ages a good many
men rose "from the ranks" to hold high office in the state.
There was, for instance, Thomas à Becket. He was born in London,
and not ashamed to be known as Thomas of London. Then there was
Thomas Scot, who rose to be Archbishop of York and Chancellor
of England in the fifteenth century, who was known as Thomas
of Rotherham, after the place where he was born. William of
Wykeham, that great founder of schools, is still known by the
name of the little out-of-the-way Hampshire village where he
was born--Wykeham. Winchester College, the first of our public
schools, was founded by him. His real surname was Longe, and the
motto he chose--"Manners Makyth Man"--is worth putting up in
every school in the land. We need to live up to that motto as
much in these days as ever.
But there were dunces in those days too, who made little or no
use of their opportunities, and others who turned them to bad
purposes, even as there are in this twentieth century.
[Illustration: _Part of Winchester College, built in 1692_]
CHAPTER XXXIV
Universities
Now, just as the tide flows and ebbs, so in England did interest in
learning rise and fall during the Middle Ages. Schools of all kinds
had their good times and their bad times. Sometimes we find the
thirst for learning being shown in one direction; then it almost
died away for a time, revived again, and took another direction.
At first we see it going in the direction of making monks and
priests and missionaries; then in that of making able men who could
take part in the civil business of the manor, the town, and the
country; and then, in the thirteenth century, it began again to
take a turn towards learning for learning's sake.
As we get near to the thirteenth century, we find the beginnings of
our English universities. A university was a corporation or body of
learned men who bound themselves together to teach, and who got the
sole right of appointing teachers in their districts. A man could
only have leave to teach after his knowledge and ability had been
well tried by them; and when that leave was given he was said to
take his degree.
The opportunity of getting wider knowledge and higher teaching
attracted scholars, lads and young men who had had their early
teaching in the small colleges and grammar-schools. They were
encouraged and in many ways helped to go to the university. Gifts
were left to their old schools to help the likely boys to go to the
university; many of the monasteries and colleges sent their pupils
there, and it was looked upon as a pious work and a work of mercy
to help poor scholars in this way.
Scholars flocked in hundreds to various universities, and we find
Oxford and Cambridge rising as university towns. We cannot say
exactly when this began, but we read that in King John's reign, in
the year 1209, there was a great "town and gown" riot at Oxford.
Three of the gownsmen were hanged as a punishment; so about three
thousand of the rest left Oxford and went to other universities,
and Oxford was deserted for a time. These facts show that by the
beginning of the thirteenth century, just when the Early English
style of architecture was coming into fashion, universities, with
their "higher education", were very important institutions.
[Illustration: _Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College, Oxford,
founded 1283_
_From a drawing made in 1673, when a considerable portion of the
thirteenth-century building still remained little altered._]
At first it seems that the scholars at the university lived in the
town, where they chose or where they could, attending the various
lecture-halls. Then various people seem to have hit upon the plan
of setting up houses in the town, and letting the rooms to the
scholars, so that a number of them might live together. Thus they
were divided up into different sets. These houses were called
hostels, and we find them at Cambridge in the beginning of the
thirteenth century.
Early, too, in this same century a new religious order found its
way to England--the Friars. The Dominican Friars were a very
learned teaching order, and when they settled at Oxford they
greatly strengthened the work of the university and kept it alive
and active.
A Surrey man, Walter de Merton, Chancellor and Bishop of Rochester,
was the inventor or founder of colleges at the universities such as
we know them to-day. In the hostels the scholars did pretty much as
they pleased, chose their own officers, and made their own rules.
There was much disorder after a while; many quarrels and fights
took place between one hostel and another, as well as with the
townsfolk. Merton spent twelve years in thinking out his plan, and
at last, in the year 1264, he founded or established the first of
the Oxford Colleges.
The old monasteries and colleges in the early times had been
founded to keep up a continual round of worship, work, and
learning; the special work of these new colleges was to promote
learning and fellowship. In many ways they were like the older
convents; but the work of education was the chief object of these
new foundations, and we find teachers and taught, governors and
pupils, living under the same roof, under rule and order.
[Illustration: CLOISTER QUADRANGLE, MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD]
Merton's idea was soon afterwards followed at Cambridge, where
Peterhouse was opened in the year 1284. During this century, too,
we find a rival university springing up at Stamford; in fact in
the year 1333 a number of masters and scholars left Oxford for
Stamford; but, owing to the opposition of Oxford and Cambridge,
it was gradually snuffed out, though there are still standing
some interesting buildings which were connected with it. College
after college, at both Oxford and Cambridge, has been founded since
then; each one has its own special laws and government, which have
been altered from time to time. For many centuries now Oxford and
Cambridge have been cities of colleges, and these "ancient seats of
learning" are quite unlike any other places in the country.
[Illustration: _Gownsman of Fifteenth Century. From an old print
of Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford_]
Many old customs are kept up still at Oxford and Cambridge; the
scholars and officials of the colleges and universities go about in
their gowns, as they have done for centuries, and each university
has still rights and privileges in the government of the town which
have naturally come to it in the course of time. The town and the
townsfolk have their special interests and government; so that
there are two authorities, side by side, responsible for law and
order. The gown and the town depend upon each other; and in days
gone by they have, times without number, misunderstood each other,
and quarrelled, and fought.
In the reign of King Edward III Oxford was the most famous seat of
learning in Europe. Many of its students were foreigners, but, as
everyone could talk Latin as well as he could his native language,
they had no real difficulty in making themselves understood.
Within the last hundred years, in order to meet modern
requirements, universities have been founded at Durham, London,
Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and Bristol.
CHAPTER XXXV
Changes Brought About by the Black Death
In the middle of the fourteenth century, in the reign of King
Edward III, came the Black Death. It carried off half the
population of the country at least, and all classes of society felt
its effects.
We have said that in some of the old parish churches you can
see, by some of the work done just after this time, that the
builders were very much poorer than they had been, and had to
finish off in a very plain fashion work begun on a grand scale.
You must remember, too, that there were several different kinds
of landowners or overlords--the king, the great lords, bishops,
colleges, and monasteries. The manors, of which these estates were
made up, in the course of centuries were divided and subdivided
in many ways as the land became more valuable. Many people might
thus have an interest in one manor which a couple of hundred years
before had been in the hands of one person only. That made law
business very complicated when these little parcels of land changed
hands.
Though manors could not be bought and sold outright, little by
little money was paid to have bits of manors and the various
rights in manors let out, or leased, for a term of years. This
was especially the case with property in towns, and with lands
belonging to corporations, like colleges and monasteries, which
were often scattered about in various parts of the country.
On the manors in the country districts the same thing was going
on, though perhaps more slowly than in the towns. It became much
more convenient for the villeins and cottiers, and other tenants of
a manor, to pay a rent to the lord instead of actually working on
the lord's land. At first this rent was paid in the produce of the
land--a few hens or eggs, a calf or a lamb, or so much corn, till
by and by we find actual payments in money as rent.
Then, too, a class of labourers had gradually sprung up on the
manors. As the tenants and villeins began to pay
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