people by the strong hand of power, but they are sure to be evaded
where they are not broken literally; and this law of forbidding
clergymen to marry _was_ evaded in many ways. Clergymen took to
themselves wives, and had families. Again and again their consciences
justified them in their course, whatever the Canon Law might forbid or
denounce. They married on the sly--if that may be called marriage which
neither the Church nor the State recognized as a binding contract, and
which was ratified by no formality or ceremony civil or religious: but
public opinion was lenient; and where a clergyman was living otherwise
a blameless life, his people did not think the worse of him for having
a wife and children, however much the Canon Law and certain bigoted
people might give the wife a bad name. And so it came to pass that
Peter Romayn of Rougham, cleric though he were, lost his heart one fine
day to a young lady at Rougham, and marry he would. The young lady's
name was Matilda. Her father, though born at Rougham, appears to have
gone away from there when very young, and made money somehow at
Leicester. He had married a Norfolk lady, one Agatha of Cringleford;
and he seems to have died, leaving his widow and daughter fairly
provided for; and they lived in a house at Rougham, which I dare say
Richard of Leicester had bought. I have no doubt that young Peter
Romayn was a young gentleman of means, and it is clear that Matilda was
a very desirable bride. But then Peter _couldn't_ marry! How was it to
be managed? I think it almost certain that no religious ceremony was
performed, but I have no doubt that the two plighted their troth either
to each, and that somehow they did become man and wife, if not in the
eyes of Canon Law, yet by the sanction of a higher law to which the
consciences of honourable men and women appeal against the immoral
enactments of human legislation.
Among the charters at Rougham I find eighteen or twenty which were
executed by Peter Romayn and Matilda. In no one of them is she called
his wife; in all of them it is stipulated that the property shall
descend to whomsoever they shall leave it, and in only one instance,
and there I believe by a mistake of the scribe, is there any mention of
their _lawful_ heirs. They buy land and sell it, sometimes separately,
more often conjointly, but in all cases the interests of both are kept
in view; the charters are witnessed by the principal people in the
place, including Sir Richard Butler himself, more than once; and in one
of the later charters Peter Romayn, as if to provide against the
contingency of his own death, makes over all his property in Rougham
without reserve to Matilda, and constitutes her the mistress of it all.
[Footnote: By the constitutions of Bishop Woodloke, any _legacies_ left
by a clergyman to his "concubine" were to be handed over to the
bishop's official, and distributed to the poor.--Wilkins' "Cone." vol.
ii. p. 296 b.]
Some year or two after this, Matilda executes her last conveyance, and
executes it alone. She sells her whole interest in Rougham--the house
in which she lives and all that it contains--lands and ground rents,
and everything else, for money down, and we hear of her no more. Did
she retire from the world, and find refuge in a nunnery? Did she go
away to some other home? Who knows? And what of Peter the Roman? I know
little of him, but I suspect the pressure put upon the poor man was too
strong for him, and I suspect that somehow, and, let us hope, with much
anguish and bitterness of heart--but yet somehow, he was compelled to
repudiate the poor woman to whom there is evidence to show he was true
and staunch as long as it was possible--and when it was no longer
possible I _think_ he too turned his back upon the Rougham home, and
was presented by the Prior of Westacre Monastery to the Rectory of
Bodney at the other end of the county, where, let us hope, he died in
peace.
It is a curious fact that Peter Romayn was not the only clergyman in
Rougham whom we know to have been married. As for Peter Romayn, I
believe he was an honourable man according to his light, and as far as
any men were honourable in those rough days. But for the other. I do
not feel so sure about him.
I said that the two prosperous men in Rougham six hundred years ago
were Peter Romayn and Thomas the Lucky, or, as his name appears in the
Latin Charters, Thomas Felix. When Archdeacon Middleton gave up living
at Rougham, Thomas Felix bought his estate, called the Lyng House; and
shortly after he bought another estate, which, in fact, was a manor of
its own, and comprehended thirteen free tenants and five villeins; and,
as though this were not enough, on September 24, 1292, he took a lease
of another manor in Rougham for six years, of one of the daughters of
Sir Richard le Butler, whose husband, I suppose, wanted to go
elsewhere. Before the lease expired he died, leaving behind him a widow
named Sara and three little daughters, the eldest of whom cannot have
been more than eight or nine years old. This was in the year 1294.
Sara, the widow, was for the time a rich woman, and she made up her
mind never to marry again, and she kept her resolve.
When her eldest daughter Alice came to the mature age of fifteen or
sixteen, a young man named John of Thrysford wooed and won her.
Mistress Alice was by no means a portionless damsel, and Mr. John seems
himself to have been a man of substance. How long they were married I
know not; but it could not have been more than a year or two, for less
than five years after Mr. Felix's death a great event happened, which
produced very momentous effects upon Rougham and its inhabitants in
more ways than one.
Up to this time there had been a rector at Rougham, and apparently a
good rectory-house and some acres of glebe land--how many I cannot say.
But the canons of Westacre Priory cast their eyes upon the rectory of
Rougham, and they made up their minds they would have it. I dare not
stop to explain how the job was managed--that would lead me a great
deal too far--but it _was_ managed, and accordingly, a year or two
after the marriage of little Alice, they got possession of all the
tithes and the glebe, and the good rectory-house at Rougham, and they
left the parson of the parish with a smaller house on the other side of
the road, and _not_ contiguous to the church, an allowance of two
quarters of wheat and two quarters of barley a year, and certain small
dues which might suffice to keep body and soul together but little
more. [Footnote: This appears from the following charter, which it
seems worth while to quote: "Pateat universis... quod nos Robertas de
Feletone, Miles, et Hawigia uxor mea concessimus ... Alicie filie Thome
de Rucham... Totum ius nostrum... in terris... dicte Alicie... in
Rucham, que ... habuimus de dono et dimissione Johannis filii Roberti
de Thyrsforde in Rucham _ante diuorstium_ (sic) _inter eundem Johannem
et dictam_ Aliciam factum... Omnia munimenta et scripta que de dicto
tenemento habuimus eidem Alicie quiete reddidimus... Datum apud Lucham
die Dom: prox: post Annunc: B Mar: Virg: Anno R. R. Edw: fit. Reg.
Henr: tricessimotertio" (28 March, 1305).--_Rougham Charter_, No. 157.]
John of Thyrsfordhad not been married more than a year or two when he
had had enough of it. Whether at the time of his marriage he was
already a _cleric_, I cannot tell, but I know that on October 10, 1301,
he was a priest, and that on that day he was instituted to the vicarage
of Rougham, having been already divorced from poor little Alice. As for
Alice--if I understand the case, she never could marry, however much
she may have wished it; she had no children to comfort her; she became
by-and-by the great lady of Rougham, and there she lived on for nearly
fifty years. Her husband, the vicar, lived on too--on what terms of
intimacy I am unable to say. The vicar died some ten years before the
lady. When old age was creeping on her she made over all her houses and
lands in Rougham to feoffees, and I have a suspicion that she went into
a nunnery and there died.
In dealing with the two cases of Peter Romayn and John of Thyrsford I
have used the term _cleric_ more than once. These two men were, at the
end of their career at any rate, what we now understand by clergyman;
but there were hosts of men six hundred years ago in Norfolk who were
_clerics,_ and yet who were by no means what we now understand by
clergymen. The _clerics_ of six hundred years ago comprehended all
those whom we now call the professional classes; all, _i.e._, who lived
by their brains, as distinct from those who lived by trade or the
labour of their hands.
Six hundred years ago it may be said that there were two kinds of law
in England, the one was the law of the land, the other was the law of
the Church. The law of the land was hideously cruel and merciless, and
the gallows and the pillory, never far from any man's door, were seldom
allowed to remain long out of use. The ghastly frequency of the
punishment by death tended to make people savage and bloodthirsty.
[Footnote: In 1293 a case is recorded of three men, one of them a
goldsmith, who had their right hands chopped off in the middle of the
street in London.-"Chron. of Edward I. and Edward II.," vol. i.
p.--102. Ed. Stubbs. Rolls Series.] It tended, too, to make men
absolutely reckless of consequences when once their passions were
roused. "As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb" was a saying that had a
grim truth in it. When a violent ruffian knew that if he robbed his
host in the night he would be sure to be hung for it, and if he killed
him he could be no more than hung, he had nothing to gain by letting
him live, and nothing to lose if he cut his throat. Where another knew
that by tampering with the coin of the realm he was sure to go to the
gallows for it, he might as well make a good fight before he was taken,
and murder any one who stood in the way of his escape. Hanging went on
at a pace which we cannot conceive, for in those days the criminal law
of the land was not, as it is now, a strangely devised machinery for
protecting the wrongdoer, but it was an awful and tremendous power for
slaying all who were dangerous to the persons or the property of the
community.
The law of the Church, on the other hand, was much more lenient. To
hurry a man to death with his sins and crimes fresh upon him, to
slaughter men wholesale for acts that could not be regarded as
enormously wicked, shocked those who had learnt that the Gospel taught
such virtues as mercy and longsuffering, and gave men hopes of
forgiveness on repentance. The Church set itself against the atrocious
mangling, and branding, and hanging that was being dealt out blindly,
hastily, and indiscriminately, to every kind of transgressor; and
inasmuch as the Church law and the law of the land six hundred years
ago were often in conflict, the Church law acted to a great extent as a
check upon the shocking ferocity of the criminal code. And this is how
the check was exercised.
A man who was a _cleric_ was only half amenable to the law of the land.
He was a citizen of the realm, and a subject of the king, but he was
_more_; he owed allegiance to the Church, and claimed the Church's
protection also. Accordingly, whenever a _cleric_ got into trouble, and
there was only too good cause to believe that if he were brought to his
trial he would have a short shrift and no favour, scant justice and the
inevitable gallows within twenty-four hours at the longest, he
proclaimed himself a _cleric_, and demanded the protection of the
Church, and was forthwith handed over to the custody of the ordinary or
bishop. The process was a clumsy one, and led, of course, to great
abuses, but it had a good side. As a natural and inevitable consequence
of such a privilege accorded to a class, there was a very strong
inducement to become a member of that class; and as the Church made it
easy for any fairly educated man to be admitted at any rate to the
lower orders of the ministry, any one who preferred a professional
career, or desired to give himself up to a life of study, enrolled
himself among the _clerics_, and was henceforth reckoned as belonging
to the clergy.
The country swarmed with these _clerics_. Only a small proportion of
them ever became ministers of religion; they were lawyers, or even
lawyers' clerks; they were secretaries; some few were quacks with
nostrums; and these all were just as much _clerics_ as the chaplains,
who occupied pretty much the same position as our curates do
now--clergymen, strictly so called, who were on the look out for
employment, and who earned a very precarious livelihood--or the rectors
and vicars who were the beneficed clergy, and who were the parsons of
parishes occupying almost exactly the same position that they do at
this moment, and who were almost exactly in the same social position as
they are now. Six hundred years ago there were at least seven of these
_clerics_ in Rougham, all living in the place at the same time besides
John of Thyrsford, the vicar. Five of them were chaplains, two were
merely _clerics_. If there were seven of these clerical gentlemen whom
I happen to have met with in my examination of the Rougham Charters,
there must have been others who were not people of sufficient note to
witness the execution of important legal instruments, nor with the
means to buy land or houses in the parish. It can hardly be putting the
number too high if we allow that there must have been at least ten or a
dozen _clerics_ of one sort or another in Rougham six hundred years ago.
How did they all get a livelihood? is a question not easy to answer;
but there were many ways of picking up a livelihood by these gentlemen.
To begin with, they could take an engagement as tutor in a gentleman's
family; or they could keep a small school; or earn a trifle by drawing
up conveyances, or by keeping the accounts of the lord of the manor. In
some cases they acted as private chaplains, getting their victuals for
their remuneration, and sometimes they were merely loafing about, and
living upon their friends, and taking the place of the country parson
if he were sick or past work. Then, too, the smaller monasteries had
one or more chaplains, and I suspect that the canons at Castle Acre
always would keep two or three chaplains in their pay, and it is not
unlikely that as long as Archdeacon Middleton kept on his big house at
Rougham he would have a chaplain, who would be attached to the place,
and bound to perform the service in the great man's chapel.
But besides the clerics and the chaplains and the rector or vicar,
there was another class, the members of which just at this time were
playing a very important part indeed in the religious life of the
people, and not in the religious life alone; these were the Friars. If
the monks looked down upon the parsons, and stole their endowments from
them whenever they could, and if in return the parsons hated the monks
and regarded them with profound suspicion and jealousy, both parsons
and monks were united in their common dislike of the Friars.
Six hundred years ago the Friars had been established in England about
sixty years, and they were now by far the most influential Religionists
in the country. The Friars, though always stationed in the towns, and
by this time occupying large establishments which were built for them
in Lynn, Yarmouth, Norwich, and elsewhere, were always acting the part
of itinerant preachers, and travelled their circuits on foot, supported
by alms. Sometimes the parson lent them the church, sometimes they held
a camp meeting in spite of him, and just as often as not they left
behind them a feeling of great soreness, irritation, and discontent;
but six hundred years ago the preaching of the Friars was an immense
and incalculable blessing to the country, and if it had not been for
the wonderful reformation wrought by their activity and burning
enthusiasm, it is difficult to see what we should have come to or what
corruption might have prevailed in Church and State.
When the Friars came into a village, and it was known that they were
going to preach, you may be sure that the whole population would turn
out to listen. Sermons in those days in the country were very rarely
delivered. As I have said, there were no pulpits in the churches then.
A parson might hold a benefice for fifty years, and never once have
written or composed a sermon. A preaching parson, one who regularly
exhorted his people or expounded to them the Scriptures, would have
been a wonder indeed, and thus the coming of the Friars and the revival
of pulpit oratory was all the more welcome because the people had not
become wearied by the too frequent iteration of truths which may be
repeated so frequently as to lose their vital force. A sermon was an
event in those days, and a preacher with any real gifts of oratory was
looked upon as a prophet sent by God. Never was there a time when the
people needed more to be taught the very rudiments of morality. Never
had there been a time when people cared less whether their acts and
words were right or wrong, true or false. It had almost come to this,
that what a man thought would be to his profit, that was good; what
would entail upon him a loss, that was evil.
And this brings me to another point, viz., the lawlessness and crime in
country villages six hundred years ago. But before I can speak on that
subject it is necessary that I should first try to give you some idea
of the every-day life of your forefathers. What did they eat and drink?
what did they wear? what did they do from day to day? Were they happy?
content? prosperous? or was their lot a hard and bitter one? For
according to the answer we get to questions such as these, so shall we
be the better prepared to expect the people to have been peaceable
citizens, or sullen, miserable, and dangerous ruffians, goaded to
frequent outbursts of ferocious savagedom by hunger, oppression,
hatred, and despair.
Six hundred years ago no parish in Norfolk had more than a part of its
land under tillage. As a rule, the town or village, with its houses,
great and small, consisted of a long street, the church and parsonage
being situated about the middle of the parish. Not far off stood the
manor house, with its hall where the manor courts were held, and its
farm-buildings, dovecote, and usually its mill for grinding the corn of
the tenants. No tenant of the manor might take his corn to be ground
anywhere except at the lord's mill; and it is easy to see what a
grievance this would be felt to be at times, and how the lord of the
manor, if he were needy, unscrupulous, or extortionate, might grind the
faces of the poor while he ground their corn. Behind most of the houses
in the village might be seen a croft or paddock, an orchard or a small
garden. But the contents of the gardens were very different from the
vegetables we see now; there were, perhaps, a few cabbages, onions,
parsnips, or carrots, and apparently some kind of beet or turnip. The
potato had never been heard of.
As for the houses themselves, they were squalid enough for the most
part. The manor house was often built of stone, when stone was to be
had, or where, as in Norfolk, no stone was to be had, then of flint, as
in so many of our church towers. Usually, however, the manor house was
built in great part of timber. The poorer houses were dirty hovels, run
up "anyhow," sometimes covered with turf, sometimes with thatch. None
of them had chimneys. Six hundred years ago houses with chimneys were
at least as rare as houses heated by hot-water pipes are now. Moreover,
there were no brick houses. It is a curious fact that the art of making
bricks seems to have been lost in England for some hundreds of years.
The labourer's dwelling had no windows; the hole in the roof which let
out the smoke rendered windows unnecessary, and, even in the houses of
the well-to-do, glass windows were rare. In many cases oiled linen
cloth served to admit a feeble semblance of light, and to keep out the
rain. The labourer's fire was in the middle of his house; he and his
wife and children huddled round it, sometimes grovelling in the ashes;
and going to bed meant flinging themselves down upon the straw which
served them as mattress and feather bed, exactly as it does to the
present day in the gipsy's tent in our byways. The labourer's only
light by night was the smouldering fire. Why should he burn a rushlight
when there was nothing to look at? and reading was an accomplishment
which few labouring men were masters of.
As to the food of the majority, it was of the coarsest. The fathers of
many a man and woman in every village in Norfolk can remember the time
when the labourer looked upon wheat-bread as a rare delicacy; and those
legacies which were left by kindly people a century or two ago,
providing for the weekly distribution of so many _white_ loaves to the
poor, tell us of a time when the poor man's loaf was as dark as mud,
and as tough as his shoe-leather. In the winter-time things went very
hard indeed with all classes. There was no lack of fuel, for the brakes
and waste afforded turf which all might cut, and kindling which all had
a right to carry away; but the poor horses and sheep and cattle were
half starved for at least four months in the year, and one and all were
much smaller than they are now. I doubt whether people ever fatted
their hogs as we do. When the corn was reaped, the swine were turned
into the stubble and roamed about the underwood; and when they had
increased their weight by the feast of roots and mast and acorns, they
were slaughtered and salted for the winter fare, only so many being
kept alive as might not prove burdensome to the scanty resources of the
people. Salting down the animals for the winter consumption was a very
serious expense. All the salt used was produced by evaporation in
_pans_ near the seaside, and a couple of bushels of salt often cost as
much as a sheep. This must have compelled the people to spare the salt
as much as possible, and it must have been only too common to find the
bacon more than rancid, and the ham alive again with maggots. If the
salt was dear and scarce, sugar was unknown except to the very rich.
The poor man had little to sweeten his lot. The bees gave him honey;
and long after the time I am dealing with people left not only their
hives to their children by will, but actually bequeathed a summer
flight of bees to their friends; while the hive was claimed by one, the
next swarm might become the property of another.
As for the drink, it was almost exclusively water, beer, and cider.
[Footnote: On a court roll of the manor of Whissonsete, of the date
July 22, 1355, I find William Wate fined "iiij botell cideri quia fecit
dampnum in bladis domini."] Any one who pleased might brew beer without
tax or license, and everybody who was at all before the world did brew
his own beer according to his own taste. But in those days the beer was
very different stuff from that which you are familiar with. To begin
with, people did not use hops. Hops were not put into beer till long
after the time we are concerned with. I dare say they flavoured their
beer with horehound and other herbs, but they did not understand those
tricks which brewers are said to practise now-a-days for making the
beer "heady" and sticky and poisonous. I am not prepared to say the
beer was better, or that you would have liked it; but I am pretty sure
that in those days it was easier to get pure beer in a country village
than it is now, and if a man chose to drink bad beer he had only
himself to thank for it. There was no such monopoly as there is now. I
am inclined to think that there were a very great many more people who
sold beer in the country parishes than sell it now, and I am sorry to
say that the beer-sellers in those days had the reputation of being
rather a bad lot. [Footnote: The presentments of the beer-sellers seem
to point to the existence of something like a licensing system among
the lords of manors. I know not how otherwise to explain the frequency
of the fines laid upon the whole class. Thus in a court-leet of the
manor of Hockham, held the 20th of October, 1377, no less than fourteen
women were fined in the aggregate 30s. 8d., who being _brassatores
vendidere servisiam_ (sic) _contra assisam_, one of these brewsters was
fined as much as four shillings.
The earliest attempt to introduce uniformity in the measures of ale,
&c., is the assize of Richard I., bearing date the 20th of November,
1197. It is to be found in "Walter of Coventry," vol. ii. p. 114 (Rolls
Series). On the importance of this document see Stubbs' "Const. Hist.,"
vol. i. pp. 509, 573. On the _tasters_ of bread and ale cf. "Dep.
Keeper's 43rd Report," p. 207.] It is quite certain that they were very
often in trouble, and of all the offences punished by fine at the manor
courts none is more common than that of selling beer in false measures.