monasteries, and indeed in any religious house where there were
chaplains to do the routine work in the church, there was nothing to
prevent an absolutely illiterate man or woman from becoming monk or
nun. It was, however, impossible for a man to discharge the duties of
his calling as a parish priest without some education and without at
least a knowledge of Latin. I will not stop to argue that point; they
who dispute the assumption have much to learn. Moreover it is only what
we should expect, that while some were hardened and brutalized by the
scenes through which they had passed, some were softened and humbled.
The prodigious activity in church building--church _restoration_ is
perhaps the truer term-during the latter part of the fourteenth century
in East Anglia is one of many indications that the religious life of
the people at large had received a mighty stimulus. Here, again, the
evidence near at hand requires to be carefully looked into. In
historical no less than in physical researches, the microscope requires
to be used. As yet it has scarcely been used at all. History is in the
empirical stage. Meanwhile, such hints as that of Knighton's are
significant when he tells us that, as the parsons died, a vast
multitude of laymen whose wives had perished in the pestilence
presented themselves for holy orders. _Many,_ he says--not all--were
illiterate, save that they knew how to read their missals and go
through the services though unintelligently, they hardly understood
what they read. Were they, therefore, the worst of the new parsons? Men
bowed down by a great sorrow, bewildered by a bereavement for which
there is none but a make-shift remedy, men whose "life is read all
backwards and the charm of life undone," are not they whose sorrow
usually makes them void of sympathy for the distressed. Nay! their own
sadness makes them responsive to the cry of the needy, the lonely, and
the fallen. Experience proves to us every day that among such men you
may find, not the worst parish priests, but the best.
* * * * * * *
I wonder whether John Bonington, steward of the manor of Waltham, was
one of those whom Knighton alludes to.
Sometime during the year 1343 there had been a disastrous fire in the
house of one Roger Andrew; the dwelling, with all that it contained,
was burnt to the ground. Poor Roger lost all his household stuff and
furniture and much else besides; worse than all, he lost all his title
deeds, the evidences and charters whereby he held his little estate. As
for Roger himself, he either perished in the flames or his heart broke
and he died very shortly afterwards. He left a son behind him, young
Richard Andrew, who must have found himself in sorry plight when he
came to take up his patrimony and enter upon his inheritance. Those
were not the days when the weak man and the beaten man excited much
pity in England. No! they were _not,_ whatever sentimental people may
say who maunder about the ages of faith and refresh themselves with
other such lackadaisical phrases. So, poor Richard being down in his
luck, John Bonington, acting for Henry, Earl of Lancaster, [Footnote:
His son and heir, Henry, Earl of Derby, was created _Duke_ of Lancaster
in 1351.] the lord of the manor, put the screw on, and boldly claimed a
heriot from the young man as the right of the lord. Richard disputed
the right, and protested that his land was not _heriotable._ Bonington
pleaded his _might_ in a very effectual way, and took his heriot--to
wit, the best horse which Richard had in his stable, the best and
probably the only one. Then Richard appealed to the homage. The
homagers were afraid to give a verdict against the steward, and timidly
objected that all Richard's evidences had been burnt in the fire.
Bonington trotted off triumphant, leaving Richard to his bitter wrath.
Six years went by, and the plague came. It fell upon the district round
with terrific fury, and the people died in that dreadful April, 1349,
as the locusts die when the hurricane drives them seaward, and they rot
in piles upon the shore. The Roll of the Manor Court is a horrible
record of the suddenness and the force with which the Black Death smote
the wretched Essex people. When the steward's day's work was done, and
the long, long list of the dead had been written down, he added a note
wherein he gives us the facts which have come down to us; and then he
adds that, inasmuch as he, John Bonington, had come to see that the
aforesaid horse had been unrighteously taken from Richard Andrew six
years before, and that the conviction of his own iniquity had been
brought home to his contrite heart, _as well by the dreadful mortality
and horrible pestilence at that time raging as by the stirring of
religious emotion within his soul,_ therefore the full value of the
horse was to be restored to the injured Richard, and never again was
heriot to be levied on his land. After six years' hard riding and scant
feeding, peradventure Richard Andrew would rather have had the hard
cash than the poor brute, which by this time, probably, had died and
gone to the dogs! A shudder of penitence and remorse had thrilled
through John Bonington when the plague was stalking grimly up and down
the land; and this is what we learn about him--this and no more.
Had John Bonington lost _his_ wife; and was he meditating a life of
usefulness and penitence and prayer?
Infert se sæptus nebula (mirabile dictu)
Per medics miscetque viris, neque cernitur ulli,
A shadowy form looming out from the mists that have gathered over the
ages past, we see him for a moment, and he is gone.
Fill up the gaps and tell all the tale, poet with the dreamy eyes, eyes
that can pierce the gloom--poet with the mobile lips, lips that can
speak with rhythmic utterance the revelations of the future or the past.
All the lonely ones, and all the childless ones, did not turn parsons
we may be sure; yet it is good for us to believe that John Bonington's
was not a solitary instance of a man coming out of the furnace of
affliction softened, not hardened; purified, not merely blistered, by
the fire.
Was Thomas Porter at Little Cornard somewhat past his prime when the
plague came? It spared him and his old wife, it seems; but for his sons
and daughters, the hope of his eld and the pride of his manhood, where
were they? He and the good wife, cowering over the turf fire, did they
dare to talk with quivering lips and clouded eyes about the days when
the little ones had clambered up to the strong father's knee, or tiny
arms were held out to the rough yeoman as he reached his home? "Oh! the
desolation and the loneliness. No fault of thine dear wife--nor mine.
It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good!"
Thomas Porter had a neighbour, one John Stone, a man of small
substance: he owned a couple of acres under the lord; poor land it was,
hardly paying for the tillage, and I suppose the cottage upon it was
his own, so far as any man's copyhold dwelling was his own in those
days. The Black Death came to that cottage among the rest, and John
Stone and wife and children, all were swept away. Nay! not all: little
Margery Stone was spared; but she had not a kinsman upon earth. Poor
little maid, she was barely nine years old and absolutely alone! Who
cared? Thomas Porter and his weeping wife cared, and they took little
Margery to their home, and they comforted themselves for all that they
had lost, and the little maid became unto them as a daughter.
Henceforth life was less dreary for the old couple. But five years
passed, and Margery had grown up to be a sturdy damsel and very near
the marriageable age.
Oh, ho! friend Porter, what is it we have heard men tell? That when the
Black Death came upon us, your house was left unto you desolate and
there remained neither chick nor child. Who is this? Then some one told
the steward, or told the lord, and thereupon ensued inquiry. What right
had Thomas Porter to adopt the child? She belonged to the lord, and he
had the right of guardianship. Aye! and the right of disposing of her
in marriage too. Thomas Porter, with a heavy heart, was summoned before
the homage. He pleaded that the marriage of the girl did not belong to
the lord by right, and that on some ground or other, which is not set
down, she was not his property at all. That might have been very true
or it might not, but one thing was certain, Thomas Porter had no right
to her, and so the invariable result followed--he had to pay a fine.
What else ensued we shall never know.
The glimpses we get of the ways and doings of the old stewards of
manors are not pleasing; I am afraid that as a class they were hard as
nails. Perhaps they could not help themselves, but they certainly very
rarely erred on the side of mercy and forbearance. Is not that phrase
"making allowances for," a comparatively modern phrase? At any rate the
_thing_ is not often to be met with in the fourteenth century. Yet in
the plague year every now and then one is pleased to find instances
actually of consideration for the distress and penury of the homagers
at this place and that. Thus at Lessingham, when the worst was over and
a court was held on the 15th of January, 1350, the steward writes down
that only thirty shillings was to be levied from the customary tenants
by way of tallage, "Because the greater part of those tenants who were
wont to render tallage had died in the previous year by reason of the
deadly pestilence."
Here and there, too, we come upon heriots remitted because the heir was
so very poor, and here and there fines and fees are cancelled _causa
miseriæ propter pestilentiam._ Surely it is better to assume that this
kind of thing was done, as our friend Bonington puts it, _mero motu
pietatis suæ_ than because there was no money to be had. Better give a
man the benefit of the doubt, even though he has been dead five hundred
years, than kick him because he will never tell any more tales.
If it happened sometimes that the plague brought out the good in a man,
sometimes changed his life from one of covetous indifference or
grasping selfishness into a life of earnestness and devout
philanthropy, it happened at other times--and I fear it must be
confessed more frequently--that coarse natures, hard and cruel ones,
were made more brutal and callous by the demoralizing influences of
that frightful summer.
I am sure it will be very gratifying to some enlightened and chivalrous
people to learn that I have at least one bad story against a parson.
Here it is!
The rolls of the manor of Waltham show that the plague lingered about
there till late in the spring of 1350. As elsewhere, there must needs
have been much change in the benefices of the neighbourhood. Of course
some of the new parsons were scamps, the laity who survived being,
equally of course, models of all that was lovely and estimable. One of
these clerical impostors had got a cure somewhere in the
neighbourhood--where is not stated, but, inasmuch as his clerical
income had not come up to his expectations or his necessities, or his
own estimate of his deserts, he found it necessary to supplement that
income by somewhat unprofessional conduct. In fact, the Rev.
William--that was his name--seems actually to have thrown up his
clerical avocations and by his flagrant irregularities had got to
himself the notorious sobriquet of William the One-day priest. I should
not be surprised to find out that this worthy was captain of a band of
robbers who infested Epping Forest. In the end of January, 1351.
Matilda, wife of John Clement de Godychester, was quietly riding
homewards when, as she passed by the sheepfold of Plesset, out came the
Rev. William and bade the lady stand and deliver. Her attendants, it is
to be presumed, took to their heels, and the lady, being unable to help
herself, delivered up her purse--the account says the Rev. William cut
it off--and moreover surrendered a ring of some value, after which she
continued her journey. She raised the hue and cry to some purpose, and
the clerical king of the road was taken and... there is no more. No! It
is a story without an end.
But there were then, as there are now, other ways of preying upon our
fellow-creatures and levying blackmail from them, without going to the
length of highway robbery--cold work, and a little risky at times.
Henry Anneys, at Lessingham, could work upon the fears of Alice Bakeman
and extort a douceur from her without resorting to violence. Mrs.
Bakeman had succeeded to the property of some dead kinsman, and Mr.
Anneys heard of it. He called on the lady and informed her that for a
consideration he would save her from paying any heriot to the lord; he
had certain information which he could use either way. Finally, it was
agreed that Alice should give the rogue a cow as hush-money, and with
the cow Mr. Anneys departed. His triumph was brief. When the time for
holding the next court arrived, others came round the poor woman, and
made it quite evident that the lands she had succeeded to were not
heriotable at all, and that Henry Anneys was a swindler. So the case
was brought before the homage as usual, the cow was ordered to be
returned, and a substantial fine imposed upon Anneys.
Almost the first thing that strikes a novice who looks into the village
history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is the astounding
frequency of bloody quarrels among the rustics. In the records of the
Courts Leet for Norfolk it is very seldom indeed, that you can find a
court held at which one or more persons, male and female, are not
amerced for "drawing blood" from somebody. Whether it was by punching
their opponents on the nose, or whether they used their knives, I
hesitate to decide; but I suspect, from the frequent mention of knives
and daggers, that sticking one's enemy with cold steel was not so very
un-English a practice as popular prejudice is wont to assume it to be.
One thing is very certain, and that is--that all over East Anglia, five
hundred years ago, there was such an amount of bloodletting in village
frays as would hardly have disgraced the University of Heidelberg. In
Norfolk these sanguinary fights must have been a passion; but one would
have thought that, while the plague was raging and after it had begun
to subside, then, if ever, men and women would have become less savage
and ferocious. So far from it, such records of the years 1349 and 1350
as I have examined are fuller than ever of fights and quarrels At
Lessingham, about Christmas time, 1349, there was a free fight of a
most sanguinary character, men and women joining in it freely. It seems
to have arisen from some one finding a horse wandering about the
deserted fields. As a stray it belonged to the lord--the finder took a
different view, somebody cried "Halves!" and somebody else said, "Til
give information," and somebody else replied, "So will I," whereupon
arose a bloody battle as has been told. About the same time at
Hunstanton, Catherine Busgey, evil-disposed old hag that she was, had
stript a dead man of his leather jerkin. Did she proceed to wear the
manly attire that she might be dagger-proof for the next encounter?
Rash woman! The dead man's friends recognized the well-known coat, it
was forfeited and delivered over to the lord.
It might well be supposed that, while the whole executive machinery of
the country was being subject to a tremendous strain, there would be in
some districts a condition of affairs which differed very little from
downright anarchy. Yet here, again, the existing records are
surprisingly free from any evidence tending to support such an
assumption, England was not governed by the Home Secretary in those
days. Every parish was a living political unit with its own police and
its own local government. However desirable it may appear to some to
bring back such a state of things, the question nevertheless remains
how far it is ever possible to revivify an organization which has long
since died a natural death. That, in the fourteenth century, the
country districts governed themselves there can be no doubt at all;
with what results, as far as the greatest happiness of the greatest
number is concerned, this is not the time or the place to inquire or to
decide. Yet I cannot withhold my conviction that, if any such gigantic
calamity were to fall upon our people now as fell upon them when the
Black Death swept over the face of the land five centuries ago--a
calamity so sweeping, so overwhelming--its consequences upon the whole
social fabric would be incomparably more disastrous than it was in
times when centralization was almost unknown and practically
impossible. Be it as it may, since the days when the Roman Senate
passed a vote of confidence in a beaten general because he had not
despaired of the republic, I know nothing in history that impresses a
student more profoundly with a sense of the magnificent
self-possession, self-control, and self-respect of a suffering nation,
under circumstances of unexampled agony and horror, than the simple
prosaic annals which remain to us of the great plague year in England.
In only one district in Norfolk have I found evidence of any widespread
lawlessness. Even there one hears of it only to hear of vigorous
grappling with the ruffians, who were not allowed to have it all their
own way.
The hundred of Depwade, lying to the south of Norwich, contains
twenty-three parishes; and at the time we are concerned with had very
few resident gentry of any consideration. Then, as now, the country
parsons were the most important people in the district, and the
benefices were above the average in value. In the summer and autumn, at
least fifteen of these clergymen fell victims to the plague; among them
the rector of Bunwell and the vicar of Tibenham, adjoining parishes.
The vicarage was a poor one; it was worth no one's holding; the rectory
had been held by William Banyard, a near relative of Sir Robert
Banyard, lord of the manor; the plague carried him off in July, and his
successor was instituted on the 25th of the month, but does not seem to
have come into residence immediately. There had been a clean sweep of
the old incumbents from all the parishes for miles round; the poor
people, left to themselves, became demoralized; there seems to have
been a general scramble, and for a while no redress anywhere. It is
recorded that the cattle roamed at will over the standing corn with
none to tend them, and that there had been none to make the lord's hay;
that among others who had died there were five substantial men among
the homagers on whose lands heriots of more or less value were due; but
no heriot was recoverable, inasmuch as since the last court certain
persons unknown had plundered all that could be carried off--cattle and
sheep and horses and goods, and there was nothing to distrain upon but
the bare lands and the bare walls.
It may be presumed that where a scoundrel escaped the contagion
altogether, while others were dying all round him, or where another
recovered after being brought to death's door, in such cases the man
would, as a rule, be a person of exceptional strength and vigorous
constitution. Such fellows, when the evil spirit was upon them, would
be ugly customers to deal with. Gilbert Henry, of Tibenham, was a
somewhat audacious thief when he walked into John Smith's house, where
there was none alive to bar the door, and carried off certain bushels
of malt and barley, with other goods not specified; and, not content
therewith, stripped the dead man of his coat and waistcoat. The value
of these articles of apparel was not assessed very highly--only
sixpence each--and Master Gilbert, after paying the price of the
garments, seems to have gone away with them. It is hardly to be
wondered at that neither steward nor lord greatly coveted that coat and
waistcoat. At the same court, too, William Hessland was amerced for
appropriating the few trumpery chattels of Walter Cokstone, a _villein_
belonging to the lord. Another wretched pair--a man and his wife--had
deliberately cleared a crop of oats off an acre and a half of land, and
stacked it in their own barn. Their view was that it belonged to no
one; the steward took a different view, and reminded them that what
grew on no man's land was the property of some one other than the smart
man who ventured to lift it.
It was at Bunwell, too, that William Sigge was by way of becoming a
terror to his neighbours. It was laid to his charge, generally, that he
had from time to time during the pestilence carried off and
appropriated various articles of property _(diversa catalla)_ too
numerous to specify. They must have been a very miscellaneous lot, for
they included several hurdles and the lead stripped off a dead man's
roof, not to mention such trifles as garments and pots and pans. Sigge
was a very successful plunderer, and, his success rather turned his
head. When the autumn of 1350 came, he refused to do his autumn
service, protested that there was none to do, and was fined
accordingly; not only so, but he was found to have stubbed up a hedge
which had been the boundary of the land of Robert Attebrigge, who had
died with no one to represent him. The women were as bad as the men;
they had their rights in those days. One of these beldames was caught
walking away with a couple of handmills from a plague-struck dwelling,
and another had looted a tenement where John Rucock's corpse lay; she
too had stripped the dead!
It is not a little curious to notice how that love of going to law
which old Fuller two hundred years ago remarked upon as a
characteristic of Norfolk men comes out again when the confusion had
begun to subside. The plague is no sooner at an end than the local
courts are resorted to for the hearing of every kind of odd question
which the complications arising from the abnormal mortality had
occasioned.
When Edward Burt died at Lessingham, he left his widow Egidia all he
had; but he owed Margery Brown the sum of thirty shillings. Egidia at
once provided herself with a second husband, and surrendered herself
and her belongings to Edward Bunting. Mrs. Brown applied for her little
bill. Egidia, now no longer a widow, but lawful wife of Mr. Bunting,
repudiated the debt; she was widow no longer, she had become the
property of another man; the debt, she pleaded, was buried in her first
husband's grave. That little quibble was soon overruled. But there were
often cases which were by no means so easily disposed of. Robert
Bokenham was lord of the manor of Tibenham, and Robert Tate was one of
his tenants. Tate died; then Bokenham died. Bokenham's son was only
nine years old, and no guardian had been appointed when Tate's son
died. Then followed a dispute as to who was guardian of young Bokenham,
and of whom Tate's land was held, and who was the true heir. A pleasant
little brief there for a rising barrister to hold.
A complication of much the same kind arose at Croxton. William Galion,
a man of some consideration, died in July, leaving his wife Beatrix
with two sons; but he died intestate..Beatrix had just time to pay a
heavy fine to the lord for the privilege of being her eldest son's
guardian when the plague took her. Before she died she left the
guardianship of her first-born son John to her husband's brother Adam;
a few days afterwards the boy John died, and his brother Robert alone
remained; the guardianship of the boy John is of course at an end, and
uncle Adam applies for the guardianship of the surviving nephew; but by
this time he is unable to find the money; whereupon the child's estate
is taken into the hands of the lord till such time as the uncle can pay
the fees demanded.
Walter Wyninge had a wise woman for his wife, and her name was Matilda.
The Black Death left her & widow, but she speedily married without any
license from the lord to William Oberward. The second husband had a
very brief enjoyment of his married life; in a few days he too died,
and Matilda married a third husband, one Peter the carpenter. At this
point Matilda's turn came and she died. All this had happened in the
interval of two months since the last manor court was held. The steward
of the manor claimed a heriot from Wyninge's land and another from
Oberward's. But the astute Peter was equal to the occasion: he pleaded
that, according to the custom of the manor, no heriot could be levied
from a widow till she had survived her husband a year and a day, and he
demanded that the court rolls should be searched to confirm or correct
his assertion. I suspect he knew his business, and no heriot came to
that grasping steward. Who pities him?