forth the most current methods of arable farming, giving details
of tools and equipment, advice on capital outlay, methods of
manuring, draining, ploughing, and rick-building. It was used by
many constantly, and was often carried around in the pocket. This
began a new way to disseminate new methods in agriculture. He also
wrote a "Boke of Surveying", which relied on the perch rod and
compass dial, and gave instruction on how to set down the results
of a survey. In 1533, Gemma Frisius laid down the principles of
topographical survey by triangulation. This improved the quality
of surveys and produced accurate plots.
Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" was a popular book. Through
Chaucer, London English became a national standard and the notion
of "correct pronunciation" came into being.
The discoveries and adventures of Amerigo Vespucci, a Portuguese
explorer, were widely read. The North and South American
continents were named for him.
London merchant guilds began to be identified mainly with
hospitality and benevolence instead of being trading
organizations. Twelve great companies dominated city politics and
effectively chose the mayor and aldermen. They were, in order of
precedence, Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths,
Skinners, Tailors, Haberdashers, Ironmongers, Salters, Vintners,
and the Clothworkers (composed from leading fullers and shearmen).
The leading men of these guilds were generally aldermen and the
guilds acted like municipal committees of trade and manufactures.
Then they superintended the trade and manufactures of London much
like a government department. They were called Livery Companies
and categorized their memberships in three grades: mere
membership, livery membership, and placement on the governing
body. Livery members were distinguished by having the clothing of
the brotherhood [its livery] and all privileges, and proprietary
and municipal rights, in the fullest degree. They generally had a
right to a place at the Company banquets. They were invited by the
governing body, as a matter of favor, to other entertainments.
These liverymen were usually those who had bought membership and
paid higher fees because they were richer. Their pensions were
larger than those of mere members. Those with mere membership were
freemen who had only the simple freedom of the trade. The masters
were usually householders. The journeymen, yeomanry, bachelors
were simple freemen. Most of these companies had almshouses
attached to their halls for the impoverished, disabled, and
elderly members and their widows and children. For instance, many
members of the Goldsmiths had been blinded by the fire and smoke
of quicksilver and some members had been rendered crazed and
infirm by working in that trade. The freedom and rights of
citizenship of the city could only be obtained through membership
in a livery company.
A lesser guild, the Leathersellers, absorbed the Glovers, Pursers,
and Pouchmakers. These craftsmen then became wage earners of the
Leathersellers, but others of these craftsmen remained
independent. Before, the Whittawyers, who treated horse, deer, and
sheep hides with alum and oil, had become wage earners for the
Skinners.
Londoners went to the fields outside the city for recreation and
games. When farmers enclosed some suburban common fields in 1514,
a crowd of young men marched out to them and, crying "shovels and
spades", uprooted the hedges and filled in the ditches, thus
reclaiming the land for their traditional games. The last major
riot in London was aroused by a speaker on May Day in 1517 when a
thousand disorderly young men, mostly apprentices, defied the
curfew and looted shops and houses of aliens. A duke with two
thousand soldiers put it down in mid-afternoon, after which the
king executed fifteen of the rioters.
Many English migrated to London. There were ambitious young men
and women hopeful of betterment through employment,
apprenticeship, higher wages, or successful marriage. On the other
hand, there were subsistence migrants forced to leave their homes
for food, work, or somewhere to live. There was much social
mobility. For instance, between 1551 and 1553, of 881 persons
admitted as freemen of London, 46 were the sons of gentlemen, 136
the sons of yeomen, and 289 the sons of farm workers. London grew
in population about twice as fast as the nation. The fortunes of
landowners varied; some went into aristocratic debt by
ostentatiously spending on building, clothes, food, and drink, and
some became indebted by inefficient management. Some had to sell
their manors and dismiss their servants.
There are 26 wards of London as of 1550. This is the number for
the next four centuries. Each ward has an alderman, a clerk, and a
chief constable. There are also in each ward about 100 to 300
elected officials including prickers, benchers, blackbootmen,
fewellers [keepers of greyhounds], scribes, a halter-cutter,
introducers, upperspeakers, under speakers, butlers, porters,
inquestmen, scavengers, constables, watchmen, a beadle, jurymen,
and common councilmen. The wardmoot had inquest jurisdiction over
immorality or bad behavior such as vagrancy, delinquency,
illegitimacy, and disputes. This contributed greatly to social
stability. In 1546, Henry ordered the London brothels closed. A
small gaol was established in the Clink district of Southwark,
giving the name "clink" to any small gaol. London ordinances
required journeymen to work from 6 am to 6 pm in winter, with a
total of 90 minutes breaks for breakfast, dinner, and an afternoon
drink, for 7d. In the summer they had to work for two hours longer
for 8d. At its peak in the 1540s the court employed about 200
gentlemen, which was about half the peerage and one-fifth of the
greater gentry. Henry issued a proclamation ordering noblemen and
gentlemen in London not employed by the court to return to their
country homes to perform their service to the king.
Though there was much agreement on the faults of the church and
the need to reform it, there were many disagreements on what
philosophy of life should take the place of church teachings. The
humanist Thomas More was a university trained intellectual. His
book "Utopia", idealized an imaginary society living according to
the principles of natural virtue. In it, everything is owned in
common and there is no need for money. All believe that there is a
God who created the world and all good things and who guides men,
and that the soul is immortal. But otherwise people choose their
religious beliefs and their priests. From this perspective, the
practices of current Christians, scholastic theologians, priests
and monks, superstition, and ritual look absurd. He encouraged a
religious revival. Aristotle's position that virtuous men would
rule best is successfully debated against Plato's position that
intellectuals and philosophers would be the ideal rulers.
More believed the new humanistic studies should be brought to
women as well as to men. He had tutors teach all his children
Latin, Greek, logic, theology, philosophy, mathematics, and
astronomy from an early age. His eldest daughter Margaret became a
recognized scholar and translated his treatise on the lord's
prayer. Other high class women became highly educated. They voiced
their opinions on religious matters. In the 1530s, the Duchess of
Suffolk spoke out for reform of the clergy and against images,
relics, shrines, pilgrimmages, and services in Latin. She and the
countess of Sussex supported ministers and established seminaries
for the spread of the reformed faith.
More pled for proportion between punishment and crime. He urged
that theft no longer be punished by death because this only
encouraged the thief to murder his victim to eliminate evidence of
the theft. He opined that the purpose of punishment was to reform
offenders. He advocated justice for the poor to the standard of
justice received by the rich.
Erasmus, a former monk, visited the nation for a couple of years
and argued that reason should prevail over religious belief. He
wrote the book "In Praise of Folly", which noted man's elaborate
pains in misdirected efforts to gain the wrong thing. For
instance, it questioned what man would stick his head into the
halter of marriage if he first weighed the inconveniences of that
life? Or what woman would ever embrace her husband if she foresaw
or considered the dangers of childbirth and the drudgery of
motherhood? Childhood and senility are the most pleasant stages of
life because ignorance is bliss. Old age forgetfulness washes away
the cares of the mind. A foolish and doting old man is freed from
the miseries that torment the wise and has the chief joy of life:
garrulousness. The seekers of wisdom are the farthest from
happiness; they forget the human station to which they were born
and use their arts as engines with which to attack nature. The
least unhappy are those who approximate the naiveness of the
beasts and who never attempt what is beyond men. As an example, is
anyone happier than a moron or fool? Their cheerful confusion of
the mind frees the spirit from care and gives it many-sided
delights. Fools are free from the fear of death and from the pangs
of conscience. They are not filled with vain worries and hopes.
They are not troubled by the thousand cares to which this life is
subject. They experience no shame, fear, ambition, envy, or love.
In a world where men are mostly at odds, all agree in their
attitude towards these innocents. They are sought after and
sheltered; everyone permits them to do and say what they wish with
impunity. However, the usual opinion is that nothing is more
lamentable than madness. The Christian religion has some kinship
with folly, while it has none at all with wisdom. For proof of
this, notice that children, old people, women, and fools take more
delight than anyone else in holy and religious things, led no
doubt solely by instinct. Next, notice that the founders of
religion have prized simplicity and have been the bitterest foes
of learning. Finally, no people act more foolishly than those who
have been truly possessed with Christian piety. They give away
whatever is theirs; they overlook injuries, allow themselves to be
cheated, make no distinction between friends and enemies, shun
pleasure, and feast on hunger, vigils, tears, labors, and scorn.
They disdain life, and utterly prefer death. In short, they have
become altogether indifferent to ordinary interests, as if their
souls lived elsewhere and not in their bodies. What is this, if
not to be mad? The life of Christians is run over with nonsense.
They make elaborate funeral arrangements, with candles, mourners,
singers, and pallbearers. They must think that their sight will be
returned to them after they are dead, or that their corpses will
fall ashamed at not being buried grandly. Christian theologians,
in order to prove a point, will pluck four or five words out from
different places, even falsifying the sense of them if necessary,
and disregard the fact that their context was relevant or even
contradicted their points. They do this with such brazen skill
that our attorneys are often jealous of them.
Attorney Christopher St. German wrote the legal treatise "Doctor
and Student", in which he deems the law of natural reason to be
supreme and eternal. The law of God and the law of man, as
enunciated by the church and royalty, merely supplement the law of
natural reason and may change from time to time. Examples of the
law of reason are: It is good to be loved. Evil is to be avoided.
Do onto others as you would have them do unto you. Do nothing
against the truth. Live peacefully with others. Justice is to be
done to every man. No one is to wrong another. A trespasser should
be punished. From these is deduced that a man should love his
benefactor. It is lawful to put away force with force. It is
lawful for every man to defend himself and his goods against an
unlawful power.
Like his father, Henry VIII dominated Parliament. He used this
power to reform the church of England in the 1530's. The
Protestant reformation cause, started in Germany in 1517 by Martin
Luther posting his thesis, had become identified with Henry's
efforts to have his marriage of eighteen years to the virtuous
Catherine annulled so he could marry a much younger woman: Anne.
His purported reason was to have a son. The end of his six
successive wives was: annuled, beheaded, died; annuled, beheaded,
survived. Henry VIII was egotistical, arrogant, and self-
indulgent. This nature allowed him to declare himself the head of
the church of England instead of the pope.
Henry used and then discarded officers of state e.g. by executing
them for supposed treason. One such was Thomas Wolsey, the son of
a town grazier and butcher, who was another supporter of classical
learning. He rose through the church, the gateway to advancement
in a diversity of occupations of clergy such as secretary,
librarian, teacher, attorney, doctor, author, civil servant,
diplomat, and statesman. He was a court priest when he aligned
himself with Henry, both of whom wanted power and glory and
dressed extravagantly. But he was brilliant and more of a
strategist than Henry. Wolsey called himself a reformer and
started a purge of criminals, vagrants and prostitutes within
London, bringing many before the council. But most of his
reforming plans were not brought to fruition, but ended after his
campaign resulted in more power for himself. Wolsey rose to be
Chancellor to the King and Archbishop of York. As the
representative of the pope for England, he exercised almost full
papal authority there. But he controlled the church in England in
the King's interest. He was second only to the King and he
strengthened the crown by consolidating power and income that had
been scattered among nobles and officeholders. He also came to
control the many courts. Wolsey centralized the church in England
and dissolved the smaller monasteries, the proceeds of which he
used to build colleges at Oxford and his home town. He was an
impartial and respected justice.
When Wolsey was not able to convince the pope to give Henry an
annulment of his marriage, Henry dismissed him and took his
property, shortly after which Wolsey died.
The King replaced Wolsey as Chancellor with Thomas More, after
whom he made Thomas Cromwell Chancellor. Cromwell, the son of a
clothworker/blacksmith/brewer/innkeeper, was a self-taught
attorney, arbitrator, merchant, and accountant. Like Wolsey, he
was a natural orator. He drafted and had passed legislation that
created a new church of England. He had all men swear an oath to
the terms of the succession statute. Thomas More was known for his
honesty and was a highly respected man. More did not yield to
Henry's bullying for support for his statute declaring the
succession to be vested in the children of his second marriage,
and his statute declaring himself the supreme head of the church
of England, instead of the pope. He did not expressly deny this
supremacy statute, so was not guilty of treason under its terms.
But silence did not save him. He was attainted for treason on
specious grounds and beheaded. His conviction rested on the
testimony of one perjured witness, who misquoted More as saying
that Parliament did not have the power to require assent to the
supremacy statute because it was repugnant to the common law of
Christendom.
Henry ruled with an iron fist. In 1536, he issued a proclamation
that "any rioters or those in an unlawful assembly shall return to
their houses" or "we will proceed against them with all our royal
force and destroy them and their wives and children." In 1538, he
proclaimed that anyone hurting or maiming an officer while trying
to make an arrest "shall lose and forfeit all their lands, goods,
and chattel" and shall suffer perpetual imprisonment. Moreover, if
one murdered such an officer, he would suffer death without
privilege of sanctuary or of clergy. In 1540, he proclaimed that
there would be no shooting by handgun except on a shooting range.
Henry had Parliament pass bills of attainder against many people.
For the first time, harsh treatment of prisoners in the Tower,
such as placement in dungeons with little food, no bed, and no
change of clothes, became almost a matter of policy. Through his
host of spies, Cromwell heard what men said to their closest
friends. Words idly spoken were distorted into treasonable
utterances. Fear spread through the people. Silence was a person's
only possibility of safety.
Cromwell developed a technique for the management of the House of
Commons which lasted for generations. He promulgated books in
defense of royal spiritual authority, which argued that canon law
was not divine but merely human and that clerical authority had no
foundation in the Bible. A reformed English Bible was put in all
parish churches. Reformers were licensed to preach. Cromwell
ordered sermons to be said which proclaimed the supremacy of the
King. He instituted registers to record baptisms, marriages, and
burials in every county, for the purpose of reducing disputes over
descent and inheritance. He dissolved all the lesser monasteries.
When Cromwell procured a foreign wife for Henry whom Henry found
unattractive, he was attainted and executed.
Henry now reconstructed his council to have a fixed membership, an
official hierarchy based on rank, a secretariat, an official
record, and formal powers to summon individuals before it by legal
process. Because it met in the King's Privy Lodgings, it was
called the "Privy Council". It met daily instead of just during
the terms of the Westminster courts from late autumn to early
summer. It communicated with the king through intermediaries, of
whom the most important was the King's Secretary. Because it was a
court council, part of it traveled with the king, while the other
part conducted London business. When Henry went to war in France,
part of the council went with him, and part of it stayed to attend
the Queen Regent.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote the first English
Common Book of Prayer. With its use beginning in 1549, church
services were to be held in English instead of Latin. The
celebration of the Lord's Supper was a communion among the
parishoners and minister all sharing the wine and bread. It
replaced the mass, in which the priests were thought to perform a
miraculous change of the substance of bread and wine into the body
and blood of Christ, which the priest then offered as a sacrifice
for remission of pain or guilt. This reflected the blood sacrifice
of Christ dying on the cross. In the mass, only the priests drank
the wine. The mass, miracles, the worship of saints, prayers for
souls in purgatory, and pilgrimages to shrines such as that of
Thomas Becket, were all to be discontinued. Imprisonment or exile
rather than death was made the penalty for heresy and blasphemy,
and also for adultery.
After the King dissolved the greater monasteries, he took and sold
their ornaments, silver plate and jewelry, lead from roofs of
their buildings, and finally much of the land itself. Three
monasteries were converted into the first three treating hospitals
in London, one for the diseased, one for the poor, and one,
Bethlehem (or "Bedlam" for short), for the mentally ill. But there
were still many poor, sick, blind, aged, and impotent people in
the streets since the closure of the monasteries. In 1552, there
were 2,100 people in need of relief, including 300 orphans, 600
sick or aged, 350 poor men overburdened with their children, 650
decayed householders, and 200 idle vagabonds. London then set up a
poor relief scheme. The Bridewell was established to set to work
the idle in making feather bed ticks and wool-cards, drawing of
wire, carding, knitting, and winding of silk. Parishes were
required to give money for the poor in 1563. Other towns followed
London's lead in levying a poor rate.
Henry used the proceeds from the sale of the monasteries for
building many new palaces and wood ships for his navy. In war,
these navy ships had heavy guns which could sink other ships. In
peace time, these ships were hired out to traders. Large ships
were constructed in docks, made partly by digging and partly by
building walls. In 1545, henry issued a proclamation ordering all
vagabonds, ruffians, masterless men, and evil-disposed persons to
serve him in his navy.
The former land of the monasteries, about 30% of the country's
land, was sold and resold, usually to great landowners, or leased.
Title deeds became important as attorneys sought the security that
title could give. Some land went to entrepreneurial cloth
manufacturers, who converted the buildings for the manufacture of
cloth. They bought the raw wool and hired craftsmen for every step
of the manufacturing process to be done in one continuous process.
This was faster than buying and selling the wool material between
craftsmen who lived in different areas. Also, it was more
efficient because the amount of raw wool bought could be adjusted
to the demand for cloth.
Many landowners now could live in towns exclusively off the rents
of their rural land. Rents were increased so much that tenants
could not pay and were evicted. They usually became beggars or
thieves. Much of their former land was converted from crop raising
to pasture for large herds of sheep. Arable farming required many
workers, whereas sheep farming required only one shepherd and
herdsman. There were exceptional profits made from the export of
wool cloth. But much raw wool was still exported. Its price went
up from 6s.8d. per tod [about 28 pounds] in 1340 to 20s.8d. in
1546.
Villeinage was now virtually extinct. A lord could usually claim a
small money-rent from the freeholder, sometimes a relief when his
land was sold or passed at death, and occasionally a heriot from
his heir.
There was steady inflation. Landlords made their leases short term
so that they could raise rents as prices rose. Copyholders
gradually acquired a valuable right in their holdings; their rent
became light - less that a shilling an acre.
At least 85% of the population still lived in the country. Rich
traders built town or country houses in which the emphasis was on
comfort and privacy. There was more furniture, bigger windows
filled with glass, thick wallpaper, and formal gardens. Use of
thick, insulating wallpaper rose with the rise of paper mills. It
was stenciled, hand-painted, or printed. Some floors were tiled
instead of stone or wood. They were still strewn with straw. The
owners ate in a private dining room and slept in their own rooms
with down quilts. Their soap was white. They had clothing of white
linen and white wool, leather slippers, and felt hats. Men wore
long tunics open at the neck and filled in with pleated linen and
enormous puffed sleeves.