is dominated by war: the last half of the 100 year war with France,
which, with the help of Joan of Arc, took all English land on the
continent except the port of Calais, and the War of the Roses over the
throne in England. The ongoing border fights with Wales and Scotland
were fought by England's feudal army. But for fighting in France, the
king paid barons and earls to raise their own fighting forces. When they
returned to England, they fought to put their candidate on its throne,
which had been unsteady since its usurpation by Henry IV. All the great
houses kept bands of armed retainers. These retainers were given land or
pay or both as well as liveries [uniforms or badges] bearing the family
crest. In the system of "livery and maintenance", if the retainer was
harassed by the law or by enemies, the lord protected him. The liveries
became the badges of the factions engaged in the War of the Roses. The
white rose was worn by the supporters of the house of York, and the red
rose by supporters of the house of Lancaster. Great lords fought each
other for property and made forcible entries usurping private property.
Nobles employed men who had returned from fighting in war to use their
fighting skill in local defense.Henry IV was the last true warrior king.
In both wars, the musket was used as well as the longbow. To use it,
powder was put into the barrel, then a ball rammed down the barrel with
a rod, and then the powder lit by a hot rod held with one hand while the
other hand was used to aim the musket. Cannon were used to besiege
castles and destroy their walls, so many castles were allowed to
deteriorate. The existence of cannon also limited the usefulness of town
walls for defense. But townspeople did not take part in the fighting.
Since the power of the throne changed from one faction to another,
political and personal vindictiveness gave rise to many bills of
attainder that resulted in lords being beheaded and losing their lands
to the King. However, these were done by the form of law; there were no
secret executions in England. Families engaged in blood feuds. Roving
bands ravaged the country, plundering the people, holding the forests,
and robbing collectors of Crown revenue. Some men made a living by
fighting for others in quarrels. Individual life and property were
insecure. Whole districts were in a permanent alarm of riot and robbery.
The roads were not safe. There was fighting between lords and gangs of
ruffians holding the roads, breaking into and seizing manor houses, and
openly committing murders.
Peace was never well-kept nor was law ever well-executed, though
fighting was suspended by agreement during the harvest. Local
administration was paralyzed by party faction or lodged in some great
lord or some clique of courtiers. The elections of members to Parliament
was interfered with and Parliament was rarely held. Barons and earls
fought their disputes in the field rather than in the royal courts.
Litigation was expensive, so men relied increasingly on the protection
of the great men of their neighborhood and less on the King's courts for
the safety of their lives and land. Local men involved in court
functions usually owed allegiance to a lord which compromised the
exercise of justice. Men serving in an assize often lied to please their
lord instead of telling the truth. Lords maintained, supported, or
promoted litigation with money or aid supplied to one party to the
detriment of justice. It was not unusual for lords to attend court with
a great force of retainers behind them. Many Justices of the Peace wore
liveries of magnates and accepted money from them. Royal justices were
flouted or bribed. The King's writ was denied or perverted. For 6-8s., a
lord could have the king instruct his sheriff to impanel a jury which
would find in his favor. A statute against riots, forcible entries, and,
excepting the King, magnates' liveries of uniform, food, and badges to
their retainers, except in war outside the nation, was passed, but was
difficult to enforce because the offenders were lords, who dominated the
Parliament and the council.
With men so often gone to fight, their wives managed the household
alone. The typical wife had maidens of equal class to whom she taught
household management, spinning, weaving, carding wool with iron
wool-combs, heckling flax, embroidery, and making garments. There were
foot-treadles for spinning wheels. She taught the children. Each day she
scheduled the activities of the household including music, conversation,
dancing, chess, reading, playing ball, and gathering flowers. She
organized picnics, rode horseback and went hunting, hawking to get
birds, and hare-ferreting. She was nurse to all around her. If her
husband died, she usually continued to manage the household because most
men named their wife as executor of their will with full power to act as
she thought best. The wives of barons shared their right of immunity
from arrest by the processes of common law and to be tried by their
peers.
For ladies, close-fitting jackets came to be worn over close- fitting
long gowns with low, square-cut necklines and flowing sleeves, under
which was worn a girdle or corset of stout linen reinforced by stiff
leather or even iron. Her skirt was provocatively slit from knee to
ankle. All her hair was confined by a hair net. Headdresses were very
elaborate and heavy, trailing streamers of linen. Some were in the shape
of hearts, butterflies, crescents, double horns, steeples, or long
cones. Men also wore hats rather than hoods. They wore huge hats of
velvet, fur, or leather. Their hair was cut into a cap-like shape on
their heads, and later was shoulder-length. They wore doublets with
thick padding over the shoulders or short tunics over the trucks of
their bodies and tightened at the waist to emphasize the shoulders.
Their collars were high. Their sleeves were long concoctions of velvet,
damask, and satin, sometimes worn wrapped around their arms in layers.
Their legs and hips were covered with hosen, often in different colors.
Codpieces worn between the legs emphasized the sensuality of the age as
did ladies' tight and low- cut gowns. Men's shoes were pointed with
upward pikes at the toes that impeded walking. At another time, their
shoes were broad with blunt toes. Both men and women wore much jewelry
and ornamentation. But, despite the fancy dress, the overall mood was a
macabre preoccupation with mortality, despair, and a lack of confidence
in the future. Cannon and mercenaries had reduced the military
significance of knighthood, so its chivalric code deteriorated into
surface politeness, ostentation, and extravagance.
Master and servants ceased to eat together in the same hall, except for
great occasions, on feast days, and for plays. The lord, and his lady,
family, and guests took their meals in a great chamber, usually up
beneath the roof next to the upper floor of the great hall. The
chimney-pieces and windows were often richly decorated with paneled
stonework, tracery and carving. There was often a bay or oriel window
with still expensive glass. Tapestries, damask, and tablecloths covered
the tables. The standard number of meals was three: breakfast, dinner,
and supper. There was much formality and ceremonial ritual, more
elaborate than before, during dinners at manorial households, including
processions bringing and serving courses, and bowing, kneeling, and
curtseying. There were many courses of a variety of meats, fish, stews,
and soups, with a variety of spices and elaborately cooked. Barons,
knights, and their ladies sat to the right of the lord above the salt
and were served by the lord's sewer [served the food] and carver and
gentlemen waiters; their social inferiors such as "gentlemen of worship"
sat below the salt and were served by another sewer and yeomen. The
lord's cupbearer looked after the lord alone. A knights' table was
waited on by yeomen. The gentlemen officers, gentlemen servants and
yeomen officers were waited on by their own servants. The amount of food
dished out to each person varied according to his rank. The almoner said
grace and distributed the leftovers to the poor gathered at the gate.
The superior people's hands were washed by their inferiors. Lastly, the
trestle tables were removed while sweet wine and spices were consumed
standing. Then the musicians were called into the hall and dancing
began. The lord usually slept in a great bed in this room.
The diet of an ordinary family such as that of a small shopholder or
yeoman farmer included beef, mutton, pork, a variety of fish, both fresh
and salted, venison, nuts, peas, oatmeal, honey, grapes, apples, pears,
and fresh vegetables. Cattle and sheep were driven from Wales to English
markets. This droving lasted for five centuries.
Many types of people besides the nobility and knights now had property
and thus were considered gentry: female lines of the nobility, merchants
and their sons, attorneys, auditors, squires, and peasant-yeomen. The
burgess grew rich as the knight dropped lower. The great merchants lived
in mansions which could occupy whole blocks. In towns these mansions
were entered through a gate through a row of shops on the
street.Typically, there would be an oak-paneled great hall, with
adjoining kitchen, pantry, and buttery on one end and a great parlor to
receive guests, bedrooms, wardrobes, servants' rooms, and a chapel on
the other end or on a second floor. A lesser dwelling would have these
rooms on three floors over a shop on the first floor. An average
Londoner would have a shop, a storeroom, a hall, a kitchen, and a
buttery on the first floor, and three bedrooms on the second floor.
Artisans and shopkeepers of more modest means lived in rows of
dwellings, each with a shop and small storage room on the first floor,
and a combination parlor-bedroom on the second floor. The humblest
residents crowded their shop and family into one 6 by 10 foot room for
rent of a few shillings a year. All except the last would also have a
small garden. The best gardens had a fruit tree, herbs, flowers, a well,
and a latrine area. There were common and public privies for those
without their own. Kitchen slops and casual refuse continued to be
thrown into the street. Floors of stone or planks were strewn with
rushes. There was some tile flooring. Most dwellings had glass windows.
Candles were used for lighting at night. Torches and oil-burning
lanterns were portable lights. Furnishings were still sparse. Men sat on
benches or joint stools and women sat on cushions on the floor. Hall and
parlor had a table and benches and perhaps one chair. Bedrooms had beds
that were surrounded by heavy draperies to keep out cold drafts. The
beds had pillows, blankets, and sheets. Clothes were stored in a chest,
sometimes with sweet-smelling herbs such as lavender, rosemary, and
southernwood. Better homes had wall hanging and cupboards displaying
plate. Laundresses washed clothes in the streams, rivers, and public
conduits. Country peasants still lived in wood, straw, and mud huts with
earth floors and a smoky hearth in the center or a kitchen area under
the eaves of the hut.
In 1442, bricks began to be manufactured in the nation and so there was
more use of bricks in buildings. Chimneys were introduced into manor
houses where stone had been too expensive. This was necessary if a
second floor was added, so the smoke would not damage the floor above it
and would eventually go out of the house.
Nobles and their retinue moved from manor to manor, as they had for
centuries, to keep watch upon their lands and to consume the produce
thereof; it was easier to bring the household to the estate than to
transport the yield of the estate to the household. Also, at regular
intervals sewage had to be removed from the cellar pits. Often a footman
walked or ran on foot next to his master or mistress when they rode out
on horseback or in a carriage. He was there primarily for prestige.
Jousting tournaments were held for entertainment purposes only and were
followed by banquets of several courses of food served on dishes of
gold, silver, pewter, or wood on a linen cloth covering the table. Hands
were washed before and after the meal. People washed their faces every
morning after getting up. Teeth were cleaned with powders. Fragrant
leaves were chewed for bad breath. Garlic was used for indigestion and
other ailments. Feet were rubbed with salt and vinegar to remove
calluses. Good manners included not slumping against a post, fidgeting,
sticking one's finger into one's nose, putting one's hands into one's
hose to scratch the privy parts, spitting over the table or too far,
licking one's plate, picking one's teeth, breathing stinking breath into
the face of the lord, blowing on one's food, stuffing masses of bread
into one's mouth, scratching one's head, loosening one's girdle to
belch, and probing one's teeth with a knife.
Fishing and hunting were reserved for the nobility rather than just the
King.
As many lords became less wealthy because of the cost of war, some
peasants, villein and free, became prosperous, especially those who also
worked at a craft, e.g. butchers, bakers, smiths, shoemakers, tailors,
carpenters, and cloth workers.
An agricultural slump caused poorer soils to fall back into waste. The
better soils were leased by peasants, who, with their families, were in
a better position to farm it than a great lord, who found it hard to
hire laborers at a reasonable cost. Further, peasants' sheep, hens,
pigs, ducks, goats, cattle, bees, and crop made them almost
self-sufficient in foodstuffs. They lived in a huddle of cottages,
pastured their animals on common land, and used common meadows for
haymaking. They subsisted mainly on boiled bacon, an occasional chicken,
worts and beans grown in the cottage garden, and cereals. They wore fine
wool cloth in all their apparel. Brimless hats were replacing hoods.
They had an abundance of bed coverings in their houses. And they had
more free time. Village entertainment included traveling jesters,
acrobats, musicians, and bear-baiters. Playing games and gambling were
popular pastimes.
Most villeins were now being called "customary tenants" or "copy-
holders" of land because they held their acres by a copy of the
court-roll of the manor, which listed the number of teams, the fines,
the reliefs, and the services due to the lord for each landholder. The
Chancery court interpreted many of these documents to include rights of
inheritance. The common law courts followed the lead of the Chancery and
held that copyhold land could be inherited as was land at common law.
Evictions by lords decreased.
The difference between villein and freeman lessened but landlords
usually still had profits of villein bondage, such as heriot, merchet,
and chevage.
Social mobility was most possible in the towns, where distinctions were
usually only of wealth. So a poor apprentice could aspire to become a
master, a member of the livery of his company, a member of the council,
an alderman, a mayor, and then an esquire for life. The distance between
baron and a country knight and between a yeoman and knight was wider.
Manor custom was strong. But a yeoman could give his sons a chance to
become gentlemen by entering them in a trade in a town, sending them to
university, or to war. Every freeman was to some extent a soldier, and
to some extent a lawyer, serving in the county or borough courts. A
burgess, with his workshop or warehouse, was trained in warlike
exercises, and he could keep his own accounts, and make his own will and
other legal documents, with the aid of a scrivener or a chaplain, who
could supply an outline of form. But law was growing as a profession.
Old-established London families began to choose the law as a profession
for their sons, in preference to an apprenticeship in trade. Many
borough burgesses in Parliament were attorneys.
A class of laborers was arising who depended entirely on the wages of
industry for their subsistence. The cloth workers in rural areas were
isolated and weak and often at the mercy of middlemen for employment and
the amount of their wages. When rural laborers went to towns to seek
employment in the new industries, they would work at first for any rate.
This deepened the cleavage of the classes in the towns. The artificers
in the town and the cottagers and laborers in the country lived from
hand to mouth, on the edge of survival, but better off than the old, the
diseased, the widows, and the orphans. However, the 1400s were the most
prosperous time for laborers considering their wages and the prices of
food. Meat and poultry were plentiful and grain prices low.
In London, shopkeepers appealed to passersby to buy their goods,
sometimes even seizing people by the sleeve. The drapers had several
roomy shops containing shelves piled with cloths of all colors and
grades, tapestries, pillows, blankets, bed draperies, and "bankers and
dorsers" to soften hard wooden benches. A rear storeroom held more
cloth for import or export. Many shops of skinners were on Fur Row.
There were shops of leather sellers, hosiers, gold and silver cups, and
silks. At the Stocks Market were fishmongers, butchers, and poulterers.
London grocers imported spices, canvas, ropery, potions, unguents, soap,
confections, garlic, cabbages, onions, apples, oranges, almonds, figs,
dates, raisins, dyestuffs, woad, madder (plant for medicine and dye),
scarlet grains, saffron, iron, and a primitive steel. They were
retailers as well as wholesalers and had shops selling honey, licorice,
salt, vinegar, rice, sugar loaves, syrups, spices, garden seeds, dyes,
alum, soap, brimstone, paper, varnish, canvas, rope, musk, incense,
treacle of Genoa, and mercury. The Grocers did some money lending,
usually at 12% interest. The guilds did not restrict themselves to
dealing in the goods for which they had a right of inspection, and so
many dealt in wine that it was a medium of exchange. There was no sharp
distinction between retail and wholesale trading.
London grocers sold herbs for medicinal as well as eating purposes.
Breadcarts sold penny wheat loaves. Foreigners set up stalls on certain
days of the week to sell meat, canvas, linen, cloth, ironmongery, and
lead. There were great houses, churches, monasteries, inns, guildhalls,
warehouses, and the King's Beam for weighing wool to be exported. In
1410, the Guildhall of London was built through contributions, proceeds
of fines, and lastly, to finish it, special fees imposed on
apprenticeships, deeds, wills, and letters-patent. The Mercers and
Goldsmiths were in the prosperous part of town. The Goldsmiths' shops
sold gold and silver plate, jewels, rings, water pitchers, drinking
goblets, basins to hold water for the hands, and covered saltcellars.
The grain market was on Cornhill. Halfway up the street, there was a
supply of water which had been brought up in pipes. On the top of the
hill was a cage where riotous folk had been incarcerated by the night
watch and the stocks and pillory, where fraudulent schemers were exposed
to ridicule. No work was to be done on Sundays, but some did work
surreptitiously. The barbers kept their shops open in defiance of the
church. Outside the London city walls were tenements, the Smithfield
cattle market, Westminster Hall, green fields of crops, and some marsh
land.
On the Thames River to London were large ships with cargoes; small
boats rowed by tough boatmen offering passage for a penny; small private
barges of great men with carved wood, gay banners, and oarsmen with
velvet gowns; the banks covered with masts and tackle; the nineteen arch
London Bridge supporting a street of shops and houses and a drawbridge
in the middle; quays; warehouses, and great cranes lifting bales from
ship to wharf. Merchant guilds which imported or exported each had their
own wharves and warehouses. Downstream, pirates hung on gallows at the
low-water mark to remain until three tides had overflowed their bodies.
A climate change of about 1 1/2 degree Celcius lower caused the Thames
to regularly freeze over in winter.
The large scale of London trade promoted the specialization of the
manufacturer versus the merchant versus the shipper. Merchants had
enough wealth to make loans to the government or for new commercial
enterprises. Local reputation on general, depended upon a combination of
wealth, trustworthiness of character, and public spirit; it rose and
fell with business success. Some London merchants were knighted by the
King. Many bought country estates thereby turning themselves into
gentry.
The king granted London all common soils, improvements, wastes,
streets, and ways in London and in the adjacent waters of the Thames
River and all the profits and rents to be derived therefrom. Later the
king granted London the liberty to purchase lands and tenements worth up
to 2,667s. yearly. With this power, London had obtained all the
essential features of a corporation: a seal, the right to make by-laws,
the power to purchase lands and hold them "to them and their successors"
(not simply their heirs, which is an individual and hereditary
succession only), the power to sue and be sued in its own name, and the
perpetual succession implied in the power of filling up vacancies by
election. Since these powers were not granted by charters, London is a
corporation by prescription. In 1446, the liverymen obtained the right
with the council to elect the mayor, the sheriff, and certain other
corporate officers.
Many boroughs sought and obtained formal incorporation with the same
essential features as London. This tied up the loose language of their
early charters of liberties. Often, a borough would have its own
resident Justice of the Peace. Each incorporation involved a review by a
Justice of the Peace to make sure the charter of incorporation rule
didn't conflict with the law of the nation. A borough typically had a
mayor accompanied by his personal sword- bearer and serjeants-at-mace
bearing the borough regalia, bailiffs, a sheriff, and chamberlains or a
steward for financial assistance. At many boroughs, aldermen, assisted
by their constables, kept the peace in their separate wards. There might
be coroners, a recorder, and a town clerk, with a host of lesser
officials including beadles [a messenger of a court], aletasters,
sealers, searchers [inspectors], weighers and keepers of the market,
ferrymen and porters, clock-keepers and criers [cries out public
announcements through the streets], paviors [maintained the roads],
scavengers and other street cleaners, gatekeepers and watchmen of
several ranks and kinds. A wealthy borough would have a chaplain and two
or three minstrels. The mayor replaced the bailiffs as the chief
magistracy.
In all towns, the wealthiest and most influential guilds were the
merchant traders of mercers, drapers, grocers, and goldsmiths. From
their ranks came most of the mayors, and many began to intermarry with
the country knights and gentry. Next came the shopholders of skinners,
tailors, ironmongers, and corvisors [shoemakers]. Thirdly came the
humbler artisans, the sellers of victuals, small shopkeepers,
apprentices, and journeymen on the rise. Lastly came unskilled laborers,
who lived in crowded tenements and hired themselves out. The first three
groups were the free men who voted, paid scot and bore lot, and belonged
to guilds. Scot was a ratable proportion in the payments levied from the
town for local or national purposes. Merchant guilds in some towns
merged their existence into the town corporation, and their guild halls
became the common halls of the town, and their property became town
property.
In London, the Cutlers' Company was chartered in 1415, the
Haberdashers' Company in 1417, the Grocers' Company in 1428, the
Drapers' and Cordwainers' companies in 1429, the Vintners' and Brewers'
companies in 1437, the Leathersellers' Company in 1444, the Girdlers'
Company in 1448, the Armourers' and Brassiers' companies in 1453, the
Barbers' Company in 1461, the Tallow Chandlers' Company in 1462, the
Ironmongers' Company in 1464, the Dyers' Company in 1471, the Musicians'
Company in 1472, the Carpenters' Company in 1477, the Cooks' Company in
1481, and the Waxchandlers' Company in 1483. The Fishmongers, which had
been chartered in 1399, were incorporated in 1433, the Cordwainers in
1439, and the Pewterers in 1468.