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._]