English merchants to be transported to other English seaports. London
was a market town on the north side of the Thames River and the primary
port and trading center for foreign merchants. Streets that probably
date from this time include Milk, Bread, and Wood Streets, and Honey
Lane. There were open air markets such as Billingsgate. There were
wooden quays over much of the river front. Houses were made of wood,
with one sunken floor, or a ground floor with a cellar beneath. Some had
central stone hearths and earth latrines. There were crude pottery
cooking pots, beakers and lamps, wool cloth, a little silk, simple
leather shoes, pewter jewelry, looms, and quernstones (for grinding
flour). Wool, skins, hides, wheat, meal, beer, lead, cheese, salt, and
honey were exported. Wine (mostly for the church), fish, timber, pitch,
pepper, garlic, spices, copper, gems, gold, silk, dyes, oil, brass,
sulphur, glass, slaves, and elephant and walrus ivory were imported.
Goods from the continent were sold at open stalls in certain streets.
Furs and slaves were traded. There was a royal levy on exports by
foreigners merchants. Southwark, across the Thames River from London,was
reachable by a bridge. Southwark contained sleazy docks, prisons, gaming
houses, and brothels.
Guilds in London were first associations of neighbors for the purposes
of mutual assistance. They were fraternities of persons by voluntary
compact to assist each other in poverty, including their widows or
orphans and the portioning of poor maids, and to protect each other from
injury. Their essential features are and continue to be in the future:
1) oath of initiation, 2) entrance fee in money or in kind and a common
fund, 3) annual feast and mass, 4) meetings at least three times yearly
for guild business, 5) obligation to attend all funerals of members, to
bear the body if need be from a distance, and to provide masses for the
dead, 6) the duty of friendly help in cases of sickness, imprisonment,
house burning, shipwreck, or robbery, 7) rules for decent behavior at
meetings, and 8) provisions for settling disputes without recourse to
the law. Both the masses and the feast were attended by the women.
Frequently the guilds also had a religious ceremonial to affirm their
bonds of fidelity. They readily became connected with the exercise of
trades and with the training of apprentices. They promoted and took on
public purposes such as the repairing of roads and bridges, the relief
of pilgrims, the maintenance of schools and almshouses, and the periodic
performance of pageants and miracle plays telling scriptural history,
which could last for several days. The devil often was prominent in
miracle plays.
Many of these London guilds were known by the name of their founding
member. There were also Frith Guilds (peace guilds) and a Knights'
Guild. The Frith Guild's main object was to enforce the King's laws,
especially the prevalent problem of theft. They were especially
established by bishops and reeves. Members met monthly and contributed
about 4d. to a common fund, which paid a compensation for items stolen.
They each paid 1s. towards the pursuit of the thief. The members were
grouped in tens. Members with horses were to track the thief. Members
without horses worked in the place of the absent horse owners until
their return. When caught, the thief was tried and executed.
Overwhelming force was used if his kindred tried to protect him. His
property was used to compensate the victim for his loss and then divided
between the thief's wife, if she was innocent, the King, and the guild.
Owners of slaves paid into a fund to give one half compensation to those
who lost slaves by theft or escape, and recaptured slaves were to be
stoned to death or hanged. The members of the peace guild also feasted
and drank together. When one died, the others each sang a song or paid
for the singing of fifty psalms for his soul and gave a loaf.
The Knights' Guild was composed of thirteen military persons to whom
King Edgar granted certain waste land in the east of London, toward
Aldgate, and also Portsoken, which ran outside the eastern wall of the
city to the Thames, for prescribed services performed, probably defense
of the vulnerable east side of the city. This concession was confirmed
by King Edward the Confessor in a charter at the suit of certain
citizens of London, the successors of these knights. Edward granted them
sac and soke [cause and suit] jurisdiction over their men.
Edward the Confessor made these rules for London:
1. Be it known that within the space of three miles from all parts
outside of the city a man ought not to hold or hinder another, and also
should not do business with him if he wish to come to the city under its
peace. But when he arrives in the city, then let the market be the same
to the rich man as to the poor.
2. Be it also known that a man who is from the court of the king or the
barons ought not to lodge in the house of any citizen of London for
three nights, either by privilege or by custom, except by consent of the
host. For if he force the host to lodge him in his house and there be
killed by the host, let the host choose six from his relatives and let
him as the seventh swear that he killed him for the said cause. And thus
he will remain quit of the murder of the deceased towards the king
and relatives and lords of the deceased.
3. And after he has entered the city, let a foreign merchant be lodged
wherever it please him. But if he bring dyed cloth, let him see to it
that he does not sell his merchandise at retail, but that he sell not
less than a dozen pieces at a time. And if he bring pepper, or cumin, or
ginger, or alum, or brasil wood, or resin, or incense, let him sell not
less than fifteen pounds at a time. But if he bring belts, let him sell
not less than a thousand at a time. And if he bring cloths of silk,
or wool or linen, let him see that he cut them not, but sell them whole.
But if he bring wax, let him sell not less than one quartanum. Also a
foreign merchant may not buy dyed cloth, nor make the dye in the city,
nor do any work which belongs by right to the citizens.
4. Also no foreign merchant with his partner may set up any market
within the city for reselling goods in the city, nor may he approach a
citizen for making a bargain, nor may he stop longer in the City.
Every week in London there was a folkmote at St. Paul's churchyard,
where majority decision was a tradition. By 1032, it had lost much of
its power to the husting [household assembly in Danish] court. The
folkmote then had responsibility for order and was the sole authority
for proclaiming outlaws. It met three times a year at St. Paul's
churchyard and there acclaimed the sheriff and justiciar, or if the king
had chosen his officer, heard who was chosen and listened to his charge.
It also yearly arranged the watch and dealt with risks of fire. It was
divided into wards, each governed by an alderman who presided over the
wardmote, and represented his ward at the folkmote. Each guild became a
ward. The chief alderman was the portreeve. London paid one-eighth of
all the taxes of England.
Later in the towns, merchant guilds grew out of charity associations
whose members were bound by oath to each other and got together for a
guild feast every month. Some traders of these merchant guilds became so
prosperous that they became landholders. Many market places were
dominated by a merchant guild, which had a monopoly of the local trade.
In the great mercantile towns all the land and houses would be held by
merchants and their dependents, all freeholders were connected with a
trade, and everyone who had a claim on public office or magistry would
be a member of the guild. The merchant guild could admit into their
guild country villeins, who became freemen if unclaimed by their lords
for a year and a day. Every merchant who had made three long voyages on
his own behalf and at his own cost ranked as a thegn. There were also
some craft guilds composed of handicraftsmen or artisans. Escaped bonded
agricultural workers, poor people, and traders without land migrated to
towns to live, but were not citizens.
Towns were largely self-sufficient, but salt and iron came from a
distance. The King's established in every shire at least one town with a
market place where purchases would be witnessed, and a mint where
reliable money was coined by a moneyer, who put his name on his coins.
There were eight moneyers in London. Coins were issued to be of value
for only a couple of years. Then one had to exchange them for newly
issued ones at a rate of about 10 old for 8 or 9 new. The difference
constituted a tax. Roughly 10% of the people lived in towns. Some took
surnames such as Tanner, Weaver, or Carpenter. Some had affectionate or
derisive nicknames such as clear-hand, fresh friend, soft bread, foul
beard, money taker, or penny purse. Craftsmen in the 1000s included
goldsmiths, embroiderers, illuminators of manuscripts, and armorers.
Edward the Confessor, named such for his piety, was a king of 24 years
who was widely respected for his intelligence, resourcefulness, good
judgment, and wisdom. His educated Queen Edith, whom he relied on for
advice and cheerful courage, was a stabilizing influence on him. They
were served by a number of thegns, who had duties in the household,
which was composed of the hall, the courtyard, and the bedchamber. They
were important men - thegns by rank. They were landholders, often in
several areas, and held leading positions in the shires. They were also
priests and clerics, who maintained the religious services and performed
tasks for which literacy was necessary. Edward was the first king to
have a "Chancellor". He kept a royal seal and was the chief royal
chaplain. He did all the secretarial work of the household and court,
drew up and sealed the royal writs, conducted the king's correspondence,
and kept all the royal accounts. The word "chancellor" signified a
screen behind which the secretarial work of the household was done. He
had the special duty of securing and administering the royal revenue
from vacant benefices. The most important royal officers were the
chamberlains, who took care of the royal bedchamber and adjoining
wardrobe used for dressing and storage of valuables, and the priests.
These royal officers had at first been responsible only for domestic
duties, but gradually came to assume public administrative tasks.
Edward wanted to avoid the pressures and dangers of living in the rich
and powerful City of London. So he rebuilt a monastic church, an abbey,
and a palace at Westminster about two miles upstream. He started the
growth of Westminster as a center of royal and political power; kings'
councils met there. Royal coronations took place at the abbey. Since
Edward traveled a lot, he established a storehouse-treasury at
Winchester to supplement his traveling wardrobe. At this time, Spanish
stallions were imported to improve English horses. London came to have
the largest and best trained army in England.
The court invited many of the greatest magnates and prelates [highest
ecclesiastical officials, such as bishops] of the land to the great
ecclesiastical festivals, when the king held more solemn courts and
feasted with his vassals for several days. These included all the great
earls, the majority of bishops, some abbots, and a number of thegns and
clerics. Edward had a witan of wise men to advise him, but sometimes the
King would speak in the hall after dinner and listen to what comments
were made from the mead-benches. As the court moved about the country,
many men came to pay their respects and attend to local business. Edward
started the practice of King's touching people to cure them of scrofula,
a disease which affected the glands, especially in the head and neck. It
was done in the context of a religious ceremony.
The main governmental activities were: war, collection of revenue,
religious education, and administration of justice. For war, the shires
had to provide a certain number of men and the ports quotas of ships
with crews. The king was the patron of the English church. He gave the
church peace and protection. He presided over church councils and
appointed bishops. As for the administration of justice, the public
courts were almost all under members of Edward's court, bishops, earls,
and reeves. Edward's mind was often troubled and disturbed by the threat
that law and justice would be overthrown, by the pervasiveness of
disputes and discord, by the raging of wicked presumption, by money
interfering with right and justice, and by avarice kindling all of
these. He saw it as his duty to courageously oppose the wicked by taking
good men as models, by enriching the churches of God, by relieving those
oppressed by wicked judges, and by judging equitably between the
powerful and the humble. He was so greatly revered that a comet was
thought to accompany his death.
The king established the office of the Chancery to draft documents and
keep records. It created the writ, which was a small piece of parchment
[sheep skin] addressed to a royal official or dependent commanding him
to perform some task for the King. By the 1000s A.D., the writ contained
a seal: a lump of wax with the impress of the Great Seal of England
which hung from the bottom of the document. Writing was done with a
sharpened goose-wing quill. Ink was obtained from mixing fluid from the
galls made by wasps for their eggs on oak trees, rainwater or vinegar,
gum arabic, and iron salts for color.
A King's grant of land entailed two documents: a charter giving
boundaries and conditions and a writ, usually addressed to the shire
court, listing the judicial and financial privileges conveyed with the
land. These were usually sac and soke [possession of jurisdiction of a
private court of a noble or institution to execute the laws and
administer justice over inhabitants and tenants of the estate], toll
[right to have a market and to collect a payment on the sale of cattle
and other property on the estate] and team [probably the right to hold a
court to determine the honesty of a man accused of illegal possession of
cattle or of buying stolen cattle by inquiring of the alleged seller or
a warrantor, even if an outsider], and infangenetheof [the authority to
hang and take the chattels of a thief caught on the estate].
The town of Coventry consisted of a large monastery estate and a large
private estate headed by a lord. The monastery was granted by Edward the
Confessor full freedom and these jurisdictions: sac and soke, toll and
team, hamsocne [the authority to fine a person for breaking into and
making entry by force into the dwelling of another], forestall [the
authority to fine a person for robbing others on the road], bloodwite
[the authority to impose a forfeiture for assault involving bloodshed],
fightwite [the authority to fine for fighting], weordwite [the authority
to fine for manslaughter, but not for willful murder], and mundbryce
[the authority to fine for any breach of the peace, such as trespass on
lands].
Every man was expected to have a lord to whom he gave fealty. He swore
by this fealty oath: "By the Lord, before whom this relic is holy, I
will be to faithful and true, and love all that he loves, and shun all
that he shuns, according to God's law, and according to the world's
principle, and never, by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do
ought of what is loathful to him; on condition that he keep me as I am
willing to deserve, and all that fulfill that our agreement was, when I
to him submitted and chose his will." If a man was homeless or lordless,
his brothers were expected to find him such, e.g. in the folkmote.
Otherwise, he was to be treated as a fugitive and could be slain, and
anyone who had harbored him would pay a penalty. Brothers were also
expected to protect their minor kinsmen.
Marriages were determined by men asking women to marry them. If a woman
said yes, he paid a sum to her kin for her "mund" [jurisdiction or
protection over her] and gave his oath to them to maintain and support
the woman and any children born. As security for this oath, he gave a
valuable object or "wed". The couple were then betrothed. Marriage
ceremonies were performed by priests in churches. The groom had to bring
friends to his wedding as sureties to guarantee his oath to maintain and
support his wife and children. Those who swore to take care of the
children were called their "godfathers". The marriage was written into
church records. After witnessing the wedding, friends ate the great
loaf, or first bread made by the bride. This was the forerunner of the
wedding cake. They drank special ale, the "bride ale" (from hence the
work "bridal"), to the health of the couple.
Women could own land, houses, and furniture and other property. They
could even make wills that disinherited their sons. This marriage
agreement with an Archbishop's sister provides her with land, money, and
horsemen:
"Here in this document is stated the agreement which Wulfric and the
archbishop made when he obtained the archbishop's sister as his wife,
namely he promised her the estates at Orleton and Ribbesford for her
lifetime, and promised her that he would obtain the estate at Knightwick
for her for three lives from the community at Winchcombe, and gave her
the estate at Alton to grant and bestow upon whomsoever she pleased
during her lifetime or at her death, as she preferred, and promised her
50 mancuses of gold and 30 men and 30 horses.
The witnesses that this agreement was made as stated were Archbishop
Wulfstan and Earl Leofwine and Bishop AEthelstan and Abbot AElfweard and
the monk Brihtheah and many good men in addition to them, both
ecclesiastics and laymen. There are two copies of this agreement, one in
the possession of the archbishop at Worcester and the other in the
possession of Bishop AEthelstan at Hereford."
This marriage agreement provided the wife with money, land, farm
animals and farm laborers; it also names sureties, the survivor of whom
would receive all this property:
"Here is declared in this document the agreement which Godwine made with
Brihtric when he wooed his daughter. In the first place he gave her a
pound's weight of gold, to induce her to accept his suit, and he granted
her the estate at Street with all that belongs to it, and 150 acres at
Burmarsh and in addition 30 oxen and 20 cows and 10 horses and 10
slaves.
This agreement was made at Kingston before King Cnut, with the
cognizance of Archbishop Lyfing and the community at Christchurch, and
Abbot AElfmaer and the community at St. Augustine's, and the sheriff
AEthelwine and Sired the old and Godwine, Wulfheah's son, and AElfsige
cild and Eadmaer of Burham and Godwine, Wulfstan's son, and Carl, the
King's cniht. And when the maiden was brought from Brightling AElfgar,
Sired's son, and Frerth, the priest of Forlstone, and the priests
Leofwine and Wulfsige from Dover, and Edred, Eadhelm's son, and
Leofwine, Waerhelm's son, and Cenwold rust and Leofwine, son of Godwine
of Horton, and Leofwine the Red and Godwine, Eadgifu's son, and Leofsunu
his brother acted as security for all this. And whichever of them lives
the longer shall succeed to all the property both in land and everything
else which I have given them. Every trustworthy man in Kent and Sussex,
whether thegn or commoner, is cognizant of these terms.
There are three of these documents; one is at Christchurch, another at
St. Augustine's, and Brihtric himself has the third."
Nuns and monks lived in segregated nunneries and monasteries on church
land and grew their own food. The local bishop usually was also an abbot
of a monastery. The priests and nuns wore long robes with loose belts
and did not carry weapons. Their life was ordered by the ringing of the
bell to start certain activities, such as prayer; meals; meetings; work
in the fields, gardens, or workshops; and copying and illuminating
books. They chanted to pay homage and to communicate with God or his
saints. They taught justice, piety, chastity, peace, and charity; and
cared for the sick. Caring for the sick entailed mostly praying to God
as it was thought that only God could cure. They bathed a few times a
year. They got their drinking water from upstream of where they had
located their latrines over running water. The large monasteries had
libraries, dormitories, guesthouses, kitchens, butteries to store wine,
bakehouses, breweries, dairies, granaries, barns, fishponds, orchards,
vineyards, gardens, workshops, laundries, lavatories with long stone or
marble washing troughs, and towels. Slavery was diminished by the church
by excommunication for the sale of a child over seven. The clergy taught
that manumission of slaves was good for the soul of the dead, so it
became frequent in wills. The clergy were to abstain from red meat and
wine and were to be celibate. But there were periods of laxity.
Punishment was by the cane or scourge.
The Archbishop of Canterbury began anointing new kings at the time of
coronation to emphasize that the king was ruler by the grace of God. As
God's minister, the king could only do right. From 973, the new king
swore to protect the Christian church, to prevent inequities to all
subjects, and to render good justice, which became a standard oath.
It was believed that there was a celestial hierarchy, with heavenly
hosts in specific places. The heavenly bodies revolved in circles around
the earthly world on crystal spheres of their own, which were serene,
harmonious, and eternal. This contrasted with the change, death, and
decay that occurred in the earthly world. Also in this world,
Aristotle's four elements of earth, air, fire, and water sought their
natural places, e.g. bubbles of air rising through water. The planets
were called wanderers because their motion did not fit the circular
scheme.
God intervened in daily life, especially if worshipped. Saints such as
Bede and Hilda performed miracles, especially ones of curing. Their
spirits could be contacted through their relics, which rested at the
altars of churches. When someone was said to have the devil in him,
people took it quite literally. A real Jack Frost nipped noses and
fingers and made the ground too hard to work. Little people, elves,
trolls, and fairies inhabited the fears and imaginings of people. The
forest was the mysterious home of spirits. People prayed to God to help
them in their troubles and from the work of the devil. Since natural
causes of events were unknown, people attributed events to wills like
their own. Illness was thought to be caused by demons. People hung
charms around their neck for cure and treatments of magic and herbs were
given. Some had hallucinogenic effects, which were probably useful for
pain. For instance, the remedy for "mental vacancy and folly" was a
drink of "fennel, agrimony, cockle, and marche". Blood- letting by
leeches and cautery were used for most maladies, which were thought to
be caused by imbalance of the four bodily humors: sanguine, phlegmatic,
choleric, and melancholic. These four humors reflected the four basic
elements air, water, fire, and earth. Blood was hot and moist like air;
phlegm was cold and moist like water; choler or yellow bile was hot and
dry like fire; and melancholy or black bile was cold and dry like earth.
Bede had explained that when blood predominates, it makes people joyful,
glad, sociable, laughing, and talking a great deal. Phlegm renders them
slow, sleepy, and forgetful. Red cholic makes them thin, though eating
much, swift, bold, wrathful, and agile. Black cholic makes them serious
of settled disposition, even sad. To relieve brain pressure and/or maybe
to exorcise evil spirits, holes were made in skulls by a drill with a
metal tip that was caused to turn back and forth by a strap wrapped
around a wooden handle. A king's daughter Edith inspired a cult of holy
wells, whose waters were thought to alleviate eye conditions. Warmth and
rest were also used for illness. Agrimony boiled in milk was thought to
relieve impotence in men.
It was known that the liver casted out impurities in the blood. The
stages of fetal growth were known. The soul was not thought to enter a
fetus until after the third month, so presumably abortions within three
months were allowable.