the indelicacy of Mistress Matilda--she of the many names. I suspect
that they would be shocked by a great many things in the domestic life
of England five centuries ago. Marrying for love has a sweet sound
about it, but the thing did not exist in the old days. When did it
exist? History is very hard upon romance; History, disdaining courtesy,
lifts one veil after another, opens closed doors, reveals long-buried
secrets, turns her bull's-eye upon the dark corners, and breaks the old
seals. She is very cynical, and will by no means side with this
appellant or with that. Beautiful theories crumble into dust when they
stand before her judgment-seat, and old dreams, offspring of brains
that were wrestling with slumber in the darkness, pass away as the dawn
comes, bringing with it, too often, such revelations as are not
altogether lovely to dwell on. In the fourteenth century an unmarried
woman was a chattel, and belonged to somebody who had the right to sell
her or to give her away. That is the naked truth. You may make a man an
offender for a word if you will, and object that "sell" is an incorrect
term; but the fact remains, however much some may--
leave the sense their learning to display,
And some explain the meaning quite away.
Hence, when a wretched woman was mourning alone over the husband who
had just been hustled into his grave, the men were after her like
wolves, every one of her neighbours knowing exactly what she was worth
even to the fraction of a rood of land, or the last lamb that had been
dropped, or the litter of pigs that were rootling up the beech-nuts in
the woods. They gave her short time to make up her mind. Sentiment? We
in the East--the land of the wise men since time was young--we know
nothing of sentiment. We can hate with a sullen tenacity of resentment
which knows no forgiveness; but love--nay we leave that for the
"intense" of other climes. And women in the good old times--positively
women--love one man more than another? What _they?_
"Whose love knows no distinction but of gender,
And ridicules the very name of choice!"
Why, where were you born?
The records of the marriages on the court rolls of the plague year are
hardly more startling than the deaths. Whether men and women paid less
to the lord for a license than they were compelled to pay if they
married without license I cannot tell; but that hundreds of widows must
have married only a few weeks or a few days after their husbands'
deaths is clear. Matilda's case was not a rare one. Alice Foghal, at
Lessingham, was another of those ladies who in a couple of months had
been the property successively of three husbands--the last was actually
a stranger. Where he came from is not stated, but he sate himself down
by the widow's hearth, claimed it as his own, and paid a double fee for
his successful gallantry. How he managed the matter remains
unexplained, but young brides were plentiful in the parish just about
that time; and at the same court where Alice's matrimonial alliances
were compounded for, no less than fifteen other young women paid their
fees for marrying without license from the lord. I have only noticed
one instance of anything like remission of _marriage fees_, though I
hope it was less uncommon than appears on the rolls. The lady in this
case was a butcher's widow, and it was too much to expect that she
could wait till the next court, wherefore the steward graciously
knocked off seventy-five per cent. of his due; and, in lieu of two
shillings, charged her only sixpence--_ratione temporis et in
misericordia_, as he sententiously observes. Magnanimous steward!
I have met with no evidence leading to the belief that anywhere in the
country villages there was anything approaching to a panic. Only a
novice would be led astray by what he might read occurred at
Coltishall. Five brothers named Gritlof and two other brothers named
Primrose, being _nativi_, i.e., _villeins born_, and so the property of
the lord, had decamped whither none could tell; the court solemnly
adjudicated upon the case, and decreed that the seven runaways should
be attached _per corpora_, whatever that may mean. But Coltishall is
barely five miles from Norwich, and from the villages round the great
city the _villeins_ were always running away in the hopes of getting
their freedom if they could keep in hiding within the city walls for a
year and a day. Oh, ye seven, had the yellow primrose less charm for
you, and the barley loaves that were sure for you in breezy
Coltishall--gritty though they might be--less charm than the garbage
that might be picked up in Norwich, in its noisome alleys reeking with
corruption, and all that flesh and blood revolts from? Ah! but to be
free--to be free! How that thought made their poor hearts throb!
That there was panic--mad, unreasoning, insensate panic--elsewhere than
in the country villages there is abundant evidence to prove, but it was
among the well-to-do classes--the traders and the moneyed men,
_bourgeoisie_ of the towns--that a stampede prevailed. Any one who
chooses may satisfy himself of this by looking into Rymer's _Faedera,_
to go no further.
* * * * * * *
Enough has been told in the foregoing pages to illustrate the
overwhelming violence with which the Great Plague ran its career in
East Anglia. Only a small part of the evidence still ready to our hands
has been examined; but if no more were scrutinized, the impression left
upon us of the severity of the visitation would be quite sufficiently
appalling. It is, however, when an attempt to estimate the immediate
effects and the remoter consequencs that followed that our difficulties
begin.
Before a man is qualified to dogmatize upon those effects, he must have
gone some way towards making himself familiar with the social and
economic conditions of the country during at least the century before
the plague. Unfortunately the history of economics in England has never
been attempted by any one at all duly qualified for dealing with so
complex and difficult a subject, and the crudest theories have been
substituted for sound conclusions, then only to be accepted when based
upon the solid ground of ascertained fact. In the childhood of every
science dogmatism precedes induction, and in the absence of clear
knowledge, foolish and wild-eyed visionaries have posed as discoverers
again and again. Yet bluster and audacity have their use, if only to
stimulate the timid and the dilatory to quicken their pace and move
forwards. For my part, however, if it be necessary to choose between
the two, I should prefer to err with the slow and cautious rather than
with the rash and over-bold; the former may for a while serve as a drag
upon the chariot wheels of progress, the latter are sure to thrust us
out of the road and land us at last in some quagmire whence it will be
very hard to get back into the right track.
The great teacher who, with his transcendent genius, has done more to
create a school of English history than all who have gone before him,
who, in fact, has made English history, not what it is, but what it
will be, when his influence shall have permeated our literature, has
spoken on this subject of the Black Death with his usual profound
suggestiveness. The Bishop of Chester looks with grave distrust upon
any theory which ascribes to the Great Plague as a cause "nearly all
the social changes which take place in England down to the Reformation:
the depopulation of towns, the relaxation of the bonds of moral and
social law, the solution of the continuity of national development
caused by a sort of disintegration in society generally." [Footnote:
"Constitutional History," vol. ii. chap. xvi. p. 399, Section 259,
edit. 1875.] And yet this appalling visitation must have constituted a
very important factor in the working out of those social and political
problems with which the life of every great nation is concerned. Such
problems, however, are not simple ones; rather they are infinitely
complex; and he who would set himself to analyse the processes by which
the ultimate results are arrived at will blunder hopelessly if he takes
account of only a single unknown quantity.
I. It is obvious that the sudden exhaustion of the large reserve force
of clergy must have made itself felt at once in every parish in
England. In the diocese of Norwich a considerable number of the parsons
who died belonged to the gentry class. Then, as now, there were family
livings to which younger sons might hope to be presented, and were
presented, as vacancies occurred; but, in the face of the sudden and
widely extended mortality, it was inevitable that appointments should
be made with very little reference to a man's social grade or
intellectual proficiency. Patrons had to take whom they could get. This
of itself would tend to a deterioration in the character of the clergy;
but this was not all. The clergy died; but other holders of offices,
civil and ecclesiastical, were not spared. There was a sudden opening
out of careers in every direction for the ambitious and the unemployed:
young men who ten years before would never have dreamt of anything but
"resorting to holy orders," turned their eyes to other walks and
adopted other views; and it is plain that a large number of those who
presented themselves for admission to the clerical profession as we now
understand it, in many instances belonged to a lower class than their
predecessors. Some were devout and earnest, such country parsons as
Chaucer described--he does not turn aside to caricature _them_--but
others were mere adventurers, hirelings whose heart was not in their
work. These clerical scamps gave Archbishop Simon Islip a great deal of
trouble. The smaller livings were forsaken, the curate market rose, the
chaplains would neither take the country vicarages nor engage
themselves as regular helpers to the parish priests. London swarmed
with itinerants who preferred picking up a livelihood by occasional
duty, when they could make their own terms, to binding themselves to a
cure of souls. [Footnote: Compare Chaucer's words--"He sette not his
benefice to hire, And lette his sheep accombred in the mire, _And ran
unto London, into Seint Paules To seken him a chanterie for
Soules_"---with Wilkins' "Concilia," vol. iii. I.] The primate
denounced these greedy ones again and again, but it was all in vain;
the bishops found it impossible to draw the reins of discipline as
tightly as they wished, and found it equally impossible to prevent the
extortionate demands of such curates as could be got. The evil grew to
such a height that the faithful Commons took the matter up and
petitioned the King to interfere, inasmuch as "les chappeleins sont
devenuz si chers" that they actually demanded ten or even twelve marks
a year as their stipend--"a grant grevance & oppression du poeple." The
usual methods were resorted to, and if people could be made good by Act
of Parliament the evils complained of would have disappeared. They did
not disappear, and the evil grew. Unhappily the increased stipends did
not serve to produce a better article, and it is only too plain that
the religious convictions and the religious life of the people suffered
seriously. Ten years after the Black Death the Archbishop expresses his
deep sorrow at the neglect of Sunday, the desertion of the churches and
the decline in religious observances. Yet we must be cautious how we
attribute this break-up in the old habits of the people to the plague
exclusively, or even mainly. Some of the evils complained of had
already begun to be felt before the plague came, and may fairly be
attributed, not to the falling short of the numbers of the clergy, but
exactly the reverse.
Already a strong reaction had set in against the friars, their
influence and their teaching had begun to be regarded as menacing to
the stability of existing creeds and existing institutions. Langland
hated them. Chaucer held them up to scorn. Wickliffe denounced them
with a righteous wrath. Fitz-Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, carried on
open war against them. All these leaders of the chosen bands that fight
the battles of God had arrived at man's estate when the Black Death
came, and all survived it. They certainly were not the product of the
great visitation; they were the spokesmen and representatives of a
generation that had begun to look at the world with larger, other eyes
than their fathers. That which was coming would have come if there had
been no plague at all, and so far from its being certain that that
calamity was in any great degree the cause of the upheaval that ensued,
it is at least as probable that the sudden decrease in the population
served to retard the action of forces already working mightily in the
direction of revolution--revolution it might be for the better, or it
might be for the worse.
2. Whoever else may have been losers or sufferers by the plague, there
was one class which emerged from that dreadful year very much richer
than before. The lords of the manors, the representatives of what we
now call the country gentry, were great gainers. Not only did the
extraordinary amount paid in heriots and fees make up an aggregate
which in itself constituted a very large percentage upon the capital
embarked in agriculture, but the extent of land which _escheated_ to
the lords was very considerable. Moreover, the manors themselves, or as
we should say, the landed property of the country, came into fewer
hands; the gentry became richer and their estates larger. Knighton
draws attention to the fact that in the towns a large number of houses
became ruinous for want of occupants, but he adds that in the hamlets
and villages the same effects followed, and that everywhere. Here
again, the rolls of Parliament corroborate the assertion and inform us
that not only the dwellings of the homagers but the capital mansions
themselves, were deserted and falling to decay. When, in the next
reign, the manor of Hockham came into the possession of Richard, Earl
of Arundel, in right of his wife, he took the precaution of having a
careful survey made of the condition of the estate as it came into his
hands. The manor-house had not been tenanted for thirty years. It had
been a mansion of considerable pretension and two stories high; on the
ground-floor the doors were all gone; on the upper floor the windows
were open to the air; the chamber "vocata ladyes chambre" was roofless,
the offices were too dilapidated to be worth repair. The enclosing
walls and the moat had been utterly neglected. The offices had formerly
been adapted for a large establishment; there had been extensive farm
buildings, and at least six substantial houses for the bailiff and
other farm servants. Among other buildings there were two _fishouses_
built of timber and _daubur_, in which apparently the keeper of the
fishponds lived, and some elaborate arrangements had existed for
keeping up the supply of fish in the ponds by methods of pisciculture
to us unknown. The windmill had long ceased to be used, its very
grinding stones had disappeared. Worse than all, there was no more any
gallows or pillory, or even stocks, _pro_ _libertate servanda_, as the
jurors quaintly remark. Yet the records show that at Hockham things had
gone on pretty much as before since the big house was deserted. The
courts were held with exemplary regularity, the fees had been exacted
with unwavering rigour, the homagers settled their own affairs in their
own way; but there was this difference, that for a generation the
tenants had been living under an absentee landlord, who so far from
being the poorer because the big house had been tumbling down, was the
richer, inasmuch as he had one mansion the less to keep up out of his
income. What happened at Hockham must have happened in hundreds of
other parishes; there must have been large tracts of country during the
latter half of the reign of Edward the Third where a resident landlord
was the exception to that which aforetime had been the rule.
* * * * * * *
3. In the present condition of our knowledge, any estimate of the
actual numbers who perished in the plague must be the merest guesswork.
It may be that two millions were carried off; it may be there were
three. It is undeniable that a very large proportion of the inhabitants
of this island died in a few months--employers and employed. We must,
however, remember that England in the fourteenth century was
incomparably more self-supporting than it is in the nineteenth century;
that there were no great centres of industry then; that the rural
population was largely in excess of the urban population; that we
exported the wool which the Flemings manufactured into cloth; and that
if there were fewer hands to till the soil, there were fewer mouths to
feed. No one can doubt that the labour market must have been seriously
disturbed, but it is very easy to exaggerate this disturbance; and
whether it were less or more than has been asserted, we shall certainly
err by attributing the rise in wages, which undoubtedly took place
after the Black Death, to it, and to it alone--_post hoc ergo propter
hoc_ is not a safe conclusion. Granted, as we must grant, that the
plague accelerated the rise in wages, it is certain the upward movement
had already begun before the population had been seriously lessened.
The number of clergy, to be sure, was largely in excess of the needs of
the country; the clerical profession had become "choked" by the influx
of young men presumably with _some_ private means to fall back upon;
among them there must have been, and there was, serious competition for
every vacant post. When the reserve of supernumeraries became absorbed,
the competition turned the other way, and the surviving clergy could
make their own terms. It was otherwise with the masses, especially with
the peasantry. If there were an insufficient number of labourers to
till the land heretofore in cultivation, the worst land fell out of
cultivation, and no one was much the worse. It was all very well for
some landlords to complain that their rents had fallen off. Yes!
Then--as now, as always--the small proprietors suffered severely, and
needy men are wont to be clamorous. Then--as now, as always--the
sufferers looked about them for a cause of their distress, and found it
in any event that was nearest at hand. But we know that the style of
living after the plague was incomparably more luxurious and extravagant
than it was before. The country was producing less, it may be; but the
people, man for man, were much richer than before.
When we find ourselves confronted with the rhetorical stuff which the
literature of preambles and parliamentary petitions in the fourteenth
century flaunts so liberally before our eyes, we must learn to accept
the statements of draughtsmen _cum grano_, and to read between the
lines. The Commons were quite equal to making the most of any calamity
that occurred. When the Parliament, which had not met since mid Lent,
1348, assembled once more in February, 1350, the plague was not
forgotten. In the petitions presented to the King, the havoc wrought is
dwelt upon and deplored, _not_ with a view to remedy any of the
distress that had ensued, but in the hope that the arrears of taxation
due from the dead might be excused to the survivors who had succeeded
to the others' property. If they complain of the scarcity and dearness
of corn, this is to give point to their protest against the King's
servants taking it for the victualling of his army and the town of
Calais. If, again, they sound a note of alarm at the outrageous
insolence of the labourers who presumed to demand a large increase of
wage, and would not work at the old scale of pay, there is no pretence
that the employers could not afford to accede to the increased demand;
the "grand meschief du poeple" consisted in this, that the tillers of
the soil should have dreamt of asserting themselves in any way
whatever. Moreover, when it came to legislating against the mutinous
labourers, King and Parliament, while sternly setting their faces
against the rise in wages, _do not take the twenty-third year of the
King as the standard year_ by which to settle what the normal rate of
wages should be. They go back to the twentieth year, _ou cynk ou sis
ans devans_. That is to say, the wages had been steadily rising for ten
years before the plague; the labourers had been getting their share of
the increased prosperity of the country; and the Statute of Labourers
was only one of the clumsy attempts to interfere with the action of a
great economical law which had been working silently for the advantage
of the operatives long before the Black Death had come to perplex and
confuse men's minds and disturb their calculations.
* * * * * * *
Some of us remember when the science of geology was young--and we were
young too--we remember how there was a certain romance and fascination
about those fearless and richly imaginative theories which explained
all the great changes in the crust of the earth by magnificent
cataclysms, upheaving, exploding, overwhelming. The crack of doom meant
something after all! What had been should be again. Old times had
stories to tell of sublime catastrophes, the crash of systems, and the
swallowing up of chains of cloud-capped mountains in the yawning
abysses of a world that might at any moment turn itself inside out.
Alas! the cataclysm theories had to die the death, and we had to
comfort ourselves with a dull prosaic dream of forces acting with
infinite slowness, grinding, and evolving through unnumbered ages, the
great laws working themselves out without haste or any tendency to
those picturesque paroxysms which have a certain charm for us in our
nonage. When Sociology shall have risen to the dignity of a
science--and that day may come--I think she too will be chary of
resorting to the cataclysm theory; she and her handmaid History will
hardly smile approval upon pretenders who are anxious to discover a
single efficient cause for results which a million influences have
combined to bring about, or who assume that every new phenomenon must
disturb the equilibrium of the world. To take up with theories first in
the hope, and sometimes with the determination, that facts shall be
found to support them at last, is the vice--I had almost said the
crime--of too many of those who now are styled historians.
* * * * * * *
If at this point I leave to others the further pursuit of a subject
which deserves a more comprehensive treatment than it has yet received,
it is not because I have not much more that I could tell. If it be true
that the proper study of mankind is man, it is at least as true that
the proper study of Englishmen is the history of England; that,
however, means a great deal more than is usually understood by the
words. It means the history of English institutions, of the social, the
intellectual, and the religious life of our forefathers--it means a
great deal more than the life of our sovereigns, their wars, their
virtues or their follies. Unhappily historic studies in England,
notwithstanding the splendid impetus that has been given to them of
late by the brilliant achievements of some philosophic enquirers,
receive but scant encouragement, and for the most part a man's labour
must be his own reward. In our elementary schools History is almost
utterly ignored. A whole people is rapidly breaking with the past from
sheer ignorance that there is any past that is worth knowing. Who shall
estimate the immeasurable harm that must be wrought to a nation that
has lost touch with the past? Let men but believe, to their shame, that
The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things,