which rang on the hour. Every Sunday, the villagers went to church,
which was typically the most elaborate and centrally located building in
the village. The parishioners elected churchwardens, who might be women.
This religion brought comfort and hope of going to heaven after judgment
by God at death if sin was avoided. On festival days, Bible stories,
legends, and lives of saints were read or performed as miracle dramas.
They learned to avoid the devil, who was influential in lonely places
like forests and high mountains. At death, the corpse was washed,
shrouded, and put into a rectangular coffin with a cross on its lid.
Priests sang prayers amid burning incense for the deliverance of the
soul to God while interring the coffin into the ground. Men who did not
make a will risked the danger of an intestate and unconfessed death. The
personal property of a man dying intestate now went to the church as a
trust for the dead man's imperiled soul instead of to the man's lord.
Unqualified persons entered holy orders thereby obtaining "benefit of
clergy", and then returned to secular employments retaining this
protection.
A villein could be forever set free from servitude by his lord as in
this example:
"To all the faithful of Christ to whom the present writing shall come,
Richard, by the divine permission, abbot of Peterborough and of the
Convent of the same place, eternal greeting in the Lord: Let all know
that we have manumitted and liberated from all yoke of servitude
William, the son of Richard of Wythington, whom previously we have held
as our born bondman, with his whole progeny and all his chattels, so
that neither we nor our successors shall be able to require or exact any
right or claim in the said William, his progeny, or his chattels. But
the same William, with his whole progeny and all his chattels, shall
remain free and quit and without disturbance, exaction, or any claim on
the part of us or our successors by reason of any servitude forever.
We will, moreover, and concede that he and his heirs shall hold the
messuages, land, rents, and meadows in Wythington which his ancestors
held from us and our predecessors, by giving and performing the fine
which is called merchet for giving his daughter in marriage, and tallage
from year to year according to our will, - that he shall have and hold
these for the future from us and our successors freely, quietly,
peacefully, and hereditarily, by paying to us and our successors yearly
40s. sterling, at the four terms of the year, namely: at St. John the
Baptist's day 10s., at Michaelmas 10s., at Christmas 10s., and at Easter
10s., for all service, exaction, custom, and secular demand; saving to
us, nevertheless, attendance at our court of Castre every three weeks,
wardship, and relief, and outside service of our lord the King, when
they shall happen. And if it shall happen that the said William or his
heirs shall die at any time without an heir, the said messuage, land
rents, and meadows with their appurtenances shall return fully and
completely to us and our successors. Nor will it be allowed to the said
William or his heirs to give, sell, alienate, mortgage, or encumber in
any way, the said messuage, land, rents, and meadows, or any part of
them, by which the said messuage, land, rents, and meadows should not
return to us and our successors in the form declared above. And if this
should occur later, their deed shall be declared null, and what is thus
alienated shall come to us and our successors...
Given at Borough, for the love of Lord Robert of good memory, once
abbot, our predecessor and maternal uncle of the said William, and at
the instance of the good man, Brother Hugh of Mutton, relative of the
said abbot Robert, A.D. 1278, on the eve of Pentecost."
Villeins who were released from the manorial organization by
commutation of their service for a money payment took the name of their
craft as part of their name, such as, for the manufacture of textiles,
Weaver, Draper, Comber, Fuller, Napper, Cissor, Tailor, Textor; for
metalwork, Faber, Ironmonger; for leatherwork, Tanner; for woodwork,
building and carpentry, Carpenter, Cooper, Mason, Pictor; for food
production, Baker, Pistor. Iron, tin, lead, salt, and even coal were
providing increasing numbers of people with a livelihood.
Many new boroughs were founded as grants of market rights by the king
grew in number. These grants implied the advantage of the King's
protection. In fact, one flooded town was replaced with a new town
planned with square blocks. It was the charter which distinguished the
borough community from the other communities existing in the country. It
invested each borough with a distinct character. The privileges which
the charter conferred were different in different places. It might give
trading privileges: freedom from toll, a guild merchant, a right to hold
a fair. It might give jurisdictional privileges: a right to hold court
with greater or less franchises. It might give governmental privileges:
freedom from the burden of attending the hundred and county courts, the
return of writs, which meant the right to exclude the royal officials,
the right to take the profits of the borough, paying for them a fixed
sum to the Crown or other lord of the borough, the right to elect their
own officials rather than them being appointed by the king or a lord,
and the right to provide for the government of the borough. It might
give tenurial privileges: the power to make a will of lands, or freedom
from the right of a lord to control his tenants' marriages. It might
give procedural privileges: trial by combat is excluded, and trial by
compurgation is secured and regulated. These medieval borough charters
are very varied, and represent all stages of development and all grades
of franchise. Boroughs bought increasing rights and freedoms from their
lord, who was usually the King.
In the larger towns, where cathedrals and public building were built,
there arose a system for teaching these technical skills and elaborate
handicraft, wood, metal, stained glass, and stone work. A boy from the
town would be bound over in apprenticeship to a particular craftsman,
who supplied him with board and clothing. The craftsman might also
employ men for just a day. These journeymen were not part of the
craftsman's household as was the apprentice. After a few years of an
apprenticeship, one became a journeyman and perfected his knowledge of
his craft and its standards by seeing different methods and results in
various towns. He was admitted as a master of his trade to a guild upon
presenting an article of his work worthy of that guild's standard of
workmanship: his "masterpiece". Women, usually wives of brethren only,
could be admitted. The tailors' guild and the skinners' guild are extant
now.
When guilds performed morality plays based on Bible stories at town
festivals, there was usually a tie between the Bible story and the
guild's craft. For instance, the story of the loaves and fishes would be
performed by the Bakers' or Fishmongers' Guild. The theme of the
morality play was the fight of the Seven Cardinal Virtues against the
Seven Deadly Sins for the human soul, a life- long battle. The number
seven was thought to have sacred power; there were seven sacraments,
seven churches in the Biblical Apocalypse, seven liberal arts and seven
devilish arts. The seven sacraments were: baptism, confirmation, Lord's
Supper, penance, orders, matrimony, and extreme unction.
A borough was run by a mayor elected usually for life. By being members
of a guild, merchant-traders and craftsmen acquired the legal status of
burgesses and had the freedom of the borough. Each guild occupied a
certain ward of the town headed by an alderman. The town aldermen, who
were unpaid, made up the town council, which advised the mayor. The
Mayor of London received 40 pounds for hospitality, but in small towns,
20s. sufficed. Often there were town police, bailiffs, beadles
[messengers], a town crier, and a town clerk. London offices included
recorder, prosecutor, common sergeant, and attorneys. In the center of
town were the fine stone houses, a guildhall with a belfry tower, and
the marketplace - a square or broad street, where the town crier made
public announcements with bell or horn. Here too was the ducking stool
for scandalmongers and the stocks which held offenders by their legs and
perhaps their hands to be scorned and pelted by bystanders with, for
instance, rotten fruit and filth. No longer were towns dominated by the
local landholders.
In London there were 4 royal princes, 6 great earls, 17 barons, 26
knights, and 11 female representatives of the peerage (counted in 1319).
There was a wall with four towers surrounding the White Tower, and this
castle was known as the Tower of London. Another wall and a moat were
built around it and it has reached its final form. Hovels, shops, and
waste patches alternated with high walls and imposing gateways
protecting mansions. The mansions had orchards, gardens, stables,
brewhouses, bakeries, guardrooms, and chapels. London streets were paved
with cobbles and sand. Each citizen was to keep the street in front of
his tenement in good repair. Later, each alderman appointed four
reputable men to repair and clean the streets for wages. The repair of
Bishopsgate was the responsibility of the Bishop because he received one
stick from every cart of firewood passing through it. Rules as to tiled
roofs were enforced. A 1297 ordinance required all taverns to close at
curfew, an hour that fluctuated. Prostitutes were expelled from the city
because the street with their bawdy houses had become very noisy. Women
huckster-retailers, nurses, servants, and loose women were limited to
wearing hoods furred with lambskin or rabbitskin and forbidden to wear
hoods furred with vair or miniver [grey or white squirrel] in the guise
of good ladies. An infirmary for the blind was founded by a mercer, who
became its first prior.
The London mayoral elections were hotly fought over until in 1285, when
the aldermen began to act with the aid of an elected council in each of
the twenty-four wards, which decentralized the government of the city.
Each ward chose certain of its inhabitants to be councilors to the
aldermen. This council was to be consulted by him and its advice to be
followed. In 1291, the aldermen for the first time included a
fishmonger. The Fishmongers were the only guild at this time, besides
the Weavers, which had acquired independent jurisdiction by the transfer
of control of their weekly hallmote from a public official to
themselves. Craftsmen began to take other public offices too. By the
reign of Edward II, all the citizens were obliged to be enrolled among
the trade guilds. A great quarrel between the weaver's guild and the
magistracy began the control of the city by the craft guilds or city
companies. Admission to freedom of the city [citizenship] was controlled
by the citizens, who decided that no man of English birth, and
especially no English merchant, who followed any specific mistery
[French word for a calling or trade] or craft, was to be admitted to the
freedom of the city except on the security of six reputable men of that
mistery or craft. No longer could one simply purchase citizenship.
Apprentices had to finish their terms before such admission, and often
could not afford the citizenship fee imposed on them. Only freemen could
sell wares in the city, a custom of at least two hundred years.
As economic activity in London became more complex and on a larger
scale in the 1200s, some craftsmen were brought under the control of
other crafts or merchants. The bakers fell under the control of the
wholesale grain dealers; the weavers became pieceworkers for rich cloth
merchants; the blademakers and shearers were employed by cutlers;
coppersmiths were controlled by girdlers; fullers were controlled by
entrepreneurial dyers; and the painters, joiners, and lorimers were
controlled by the saddlers. Guilds moved their meeting places from
churches, which were now too small, to guild halls. The controlling
officers of the large guilds met at the Guildhall, which became the seat
of mayoral authority. London streets in existence by this time include
Cordwainer, Silver, Cannon (Candlewick), and Roper. Lanes included
Ironmonger, Soper, Spurrier, Lad (ladles), Distaff, Needles, Mede,
Limeburner, and Hosier. Fighting among groups was common in London.
There was a street fight on a large scale in 1327 between the saddlers
and a coalition of joiners, painters, and lorimers (makers of metal work
of saddles). Much blood was shed in the street battle between the
skinners and the fishmongers in 1340. There was a city ordinance that no
one except royal attendants, baronial valets, and city officials were to
go about armed. Disputes among neighbors that were brought to court
included the use and upkeep of party walls, blocked and overflowing
gutters, cesspits too close to a neighbor's property, noisy tenants,
loss of light, and dangerous or overhanging structures.
In 1275, a goldsmith was chief assay-master of the King's mint and
keeper of the exchange at London. The king gave the Goldsmiths' Company
the right of assay [determination of the quantity of gold or silver in
an object] and required that no vessels of gold or silver should leave
the maker's hands until they had been tested by the wardens and stamped
appropriately. In 1279, goldsmith William Farrington bought the soke of
the ward containing the goldsmiths' shops. It remained in his family for
80 years. A patent of 1327 empowered the guild to elect a properly
qualified governing body to superintend its affairs, and reform subjects
of just complaint. It also prescribed, as a safeguard against a
prevailing fraud and abuse, that all members of the trade should have
their standing in Cheapside or in the King's exchange, and that no gold
or silver should be manufactured for export, except that which had been
bought at the exchange or of the trade openly.
Some prices in London were: large wooden bedstead 18s., a small
bedstead 2s., a large chest for household items 2s., feather beds 2-3s.,
a table 1s., a chair 4-6d., cloth gown lined with fur 13- 20s., plain
coats and overcoats 2-8s., caps 2-8d., a pair of pen- cases with inkhorn
4d., a skin of parchment 1d., 24 sheets of paper 6d, a carcass of beef
15s., a pig 4s., a swan 5s., and a pheasant 4s. There was a problem with
malefactors committing offenses in London and avoiding its jurisdiction
by escaping to Southwark across the Thames. So Southwark was given a
royal charter which put it under the jurisdiction of London for peace
and order matters and allowed London to appoint its tax collector.
London forbade games being played because they had replaced practice in
archery, which was necessary for defense.
A royal inquiry into the state of the currency indicated much
falsification and coin-clipping by the Jews and others. About 280 Jews
and many Englishmen were found guilty and hanged. The rest of the Jews,
about 16,000, were expelled in 1290. This was popular with the public
because of the abuses of usury. There had been outbreaks of violence
directed at the Jews since about 1140. The king used Italian bankers
instead because he thought them more equitable in their dealings. The
lepers were driven out of London in 1276. Exports and imports were no
longer a tiny margin in an economy just above the subsistence level.
Exports were primarily raw wool and cloth, but also grain, butter, eggs,
herring, hides, leather goods such as bottles and boots, embroideries,
metalware, horseshoes, daggers, tin, coal, and lead. Imported were wine,
silk, timber, furs, rubies, emeralds, fruits, raisins, currents, pepper,
ginger, cloves, rice, cordovan leather, pitch, hemp, spars, fine iron,
short rods of steel, bow-staves of yew, tar, oil, salt, cotton (for
candlewicks), and alum (makes dyes hold). Ships which transported them
had one or two masts upon which sails could be furled, the recently
invented rudder, and a carrying capacity of up to 200 tuns [about one
ton]. Many duties of sheriffs and coroners were transferred to county
landholders by commissions. In coastal counties, there were such
commissions for supervising coastal defense and maintaining the beacons.
Each maritime county maintained a coast guard, which was under the
command of a knight. Ports had well-maintained harbors, quays, and
streets. By 1306 there was an office of admiral of the fleet of the
ships of the southern ports.
Women could inherit land in certain circumstances. Some tenants holding
land in chief of the king were women.
Regulation of trade became national instead of local. Trade was
relatively free; almost the only internal transportation tolls were
petty portages and viages levied to recoup the expense of a bridge or
road which had been built by private enterprise. Responsibility for the
coinage was transferred from the individual moneyers working in
different boroughs to a central official who was to become Master of the
Mint. The round half penny and farthing [1/4 penny] were created so that
the penny needn't be cut into halves and quarters anymore.
Edward I called meetings of representatives from all social and
geographic sectors of the nation at one Parliament to determine taxes
due to the Crown. He declared that "what touches all, should be approved
by all". He wanted taxes from the burgesses in the towns and the
clergy's ecclesiastical property as well as from landholders. He argued
to the clergy that if barons had to both fight and pay, they who could
do no fighting must at least pay. When the clergy refused to pay, he put
them outside the royal protection and threatened outlawry and
confiscation of their lands. Then they agreed to pay and to renounce all
papal orders contrary to the King's authority.
The Model Parliament of 1295 was composed of the three communities. The
first were the lords, which included seven earls and forty-one barons.
Because of the increase of lesser barons due to a long national peace
and prosperity, the lords attending were reduced in numbers and peerage
became dependent not on land tenure, but on royal writ of summons. The
great barons were chosen by the king and received a special summons in
their own names to the council or Parliament. Others were called by a
general summons. The second community was the clergy, represented by the
two archbishops, bishops from each of eighteen dioceses, and sixty-seven
abbots. The third community was the commons. It was composed of two
knights elected by the suitors who were then present at the county
court, two burgesses elected by principal burgesses of each borough, and
two representatives from each city. The country knights had a natural
affinity with the towns in part because their younger sons sought their
occupation, wife, and estate there. Also, great lords recruited younger
brothers of yeoman families for servants and fighting men, who
ultimately settled down as tradesmen in the towns. The country people
and the town people also had a community of interest by both being
encompassed by the county courts. The peasants were not represented in
the county courts nor in Parliament. One had to have land to be entitled
to vote because the landowner had a stake in the country, a material
security for his good behavior.
Parliaments without knights and burgesses still met with the king. But
it was understood that no extraordinary tax could be levied without the
knights and burgesses present. Ordinary taxes could be arranged with
individuals, estates, or communities. The lower clergy ceased to attend
Parliament and instead considered taxes to pay to the king during their
national church convocations, which were held at the same time as
Parliament. For collection purposes, their diocesan synod was analogous
to the count court. The higher clergy remained in Parliament because
they were feudal vassals of the king.
Edward's council was the highest tribunal. It comprised the chancellor,
treasurer and other great officers of state, the justices of the three
courts, the master or chief clerks of the chancery, and certain selected
prelates and barons. The council assisted the king in considering
petitions. Most petitions to the King were private grievances of
individuals, including people of no social rank, such as prisoners.
Other petitions were from communities and groups, such as religious
houses, the two universities, boroughs, and counties. These groups
sometimes formed alliances in a common cause. Women sometimes
petitioned. From 1293, the petitions were placed in four stacks for
examination by the King and council, by the Chancery, by the Exchequer,
or by the justices. Many hours were spent hearing and answering
petitions. From 1305, the petitions were presented to the king in full
Parliament.
The king still exercised a power of legislation without a full
Parliament. He might in his council issue proclamations. The Chief
Justices still had, as members of the king's council, a real voice in
the making of laws. The king and his justices might, after a statute has
been made, put an authoritative interpretation upon it. Royal
proclamations had the same force as statutes while the king lived;
sometimes there were demands that certain proclamations be made
perpetual by being embodied in statutes, e.g. fixing wages. There was no
convention that agreement or even the presence of representatives was
required for legislation. The idea that the present can bind the absent
and that the majority of those present may outvote the minority was
beginning to take hold. Edward I's councilors and justices took an oath
to give, expedite, and execute faithful counsel; to maintain, recover,
increase, and prevent the diminution of, royal rights; to do justice,
honestly and unsparingly; to join in no engagements which may present
the councilor from fulfilling his promise; and to take no gifts in the
administration of justice, save meat and drink for the day. These were
in addition to other matters sworn to by the councilors.
Parliament soon was required to meet at least once a year at the Great
Hall at Westminster located beside the royal palace. London paid its
representatives 10s. per day for their attendance at Parliament. From
the time of Edward II, the counties paid their knight- representatives
4s. daily, and the boroughs paid their burgess- representatives 2s.
daily. When it convened, the Chancellor sat on the left and the
Archbishop of Canterbury on the right of the king. Just below and in
front of the king his council sits on wool sacks brought in for their
comfort from wool stored nearby. It answers questions. Behind them on
the wool sacks sit the justices, who may be called upon to give legal
advice, e.g. in framing statutes. Then come the spiritual and lay
barons, then the knights, and lastly the elected burgesses and citizens.
Lawmaking became a function of Parliament, of which the King's council
is a part, instead of a function of the king with his council and
justices. The common people now had a voice in lawmaking, though
legislation could be passed without their consent. The first legislation
proposed by the commons was alteration of the forest laws governing the
royal pleasure parks. Such a statute was passed in a bargain for taxes
of a percentage of all movables, which were mostly foodstuffs and
animals. The king offered to give up the royal right to tax merchandise
for a new tax: customs on exports. The barons and knights of the county
agreed to pay an 11th, the burgesses, a 7th, and the clergy a 10th on
their other movables. In time, several boroughs sought to be included in
the county representation so they could pay the lower rate. This new
system of taxation began the decline of the imposition of feudal aids,
knights' fees, scutages, carucage, and tallage, which had been
negotiated by the Exchequer with the reeves of each town, the sheriff
and county courts of each county, and the bishops of each diocese.