THE PEOPLE IN COUNTRY AND TOWN
[Sidenote: Little known of the life of the people in the Middle Ages.]
92. Since the development of the rather new science of political
economy, historical writers have become much interested in the condition
and habits of the farmer, tradesman, and artisan in the Middle Ages.
Unfortunately no amount of research is likely to make our knowledge very
clear or certain regarding the condition of the people at large during
the five or six centuries following the barbarian invasions. It rarely
occurred to a mediæval chronicler to describe the familiar things about
him, such as the way in which the peasant lived and tilled his land.
Only the conspicuous personages and the startling events caught his
attention. Nevertheless enough is known of the mediæval manor and town
to make them very important subjects for the student of general history.
[Sidenote: Unimportance of town life in the early Middle Ages.]
There was little town life in western Europe before the twelfth century.
The Roman towns were decreasing in population before the German inroads.
The confusion which followed the invasions hastened their decline, and a
great number of them disappeared altogether. Those which survived and
such new towns as sprang up were, to judge from the chronicles, of very
little importance during the early Middle Ages. We may assume,
therefore, that during the long period from Theodoric to Frederick
Barbarossa by far the greater part of the population of England,
Germany, and northern and central France were living in the country, on
the great estates belonging to the feudal lords, abbots, and
bishops.[155]
[Sidenote: The manor, or vill.]
These mediæval estates were called _vills_, or _manors_, and closely
resembled the Roman villas described in an earlier chapter. A portion of
the estate was reserved by the lord for his own use; the rest of it was
divided up among the peasants,[156] usually in long strips, of which
each peasant had several scattered about the manor. The peasants were
generally serfs who did not own their fields, but could not, on the
other hand, be deprived of them so long as they worked for the lord and
paid him certain dues. They were attached to the land and went with it
when it changed hands. The serfs were required to till those fields
which the lord reserved for himself and to gather in his crops. They
might not marry without their lord's permission. Their wives and
children rendered such assistance as was necessary in the manor house.
In the women's buildings the daughters of the serfs engaged in spinning,
weaving, sewing, baking, and brewing, thus producing clothes, food, and
drink to be used by the whole community.
[Illustration: An English Manor House, Thirteenth Century]
[Sidenote: The obligations of the serfs.]
We get our clearest ideas of the position of the serfs from the ancient
descriptions of manors, which give an exact account of what each member
of a particular community owed to the lord. For example, we find that
the abbot of Peterborough held a manor upon which Hugh Miller and
seventeen other serfs, mentioned by name, were required to work for him
three days in each week during the whole year, except one week at
Christmas, one at Easter, and one at Whitsuntide. Each serf was to give
the lord abbot one bushel of wheat and eighteen sheaves of oats, three
hens and one cock yearly, and five eggs at Easter. If he sold his horse
for more than ten shillings, he was to give the said abbot four pence.
Five other serfs, mentioned by name, held but half as much land as Hugh
and his companions, by paying and doing in all things half as much
service.
There were sometimes a few people on the manor who did not belong to the
great body of cultivators. The limits of the manor and those of the
parish often coincided; in that case there would be a priest who had
some scattered acres and whose standing was naturally somewhat superior
to that of the people about him. Then the miller, who ground the flour
and paid a substantial rent to the lord, was generally somewhat better
off than his neighbors, and the same may be said of the blacksmith.
[Sidenote: The manor independent of the outside world.]
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the manor was its
independence of the rest of the world. It produced nearly everything
that its members needed and might almost have continued to exist
indefinitely without communication with those who lived beyond its
bounds. Little or no money was necessary, for the peasants paid what was
due to the lord in the form of labor and farm products. They also
rendered the needful help to one another and found little occasion for
buying and selling.
[Sidenote: The monotony and misery of the peasants' lives.]
There was almost no opportunity to better one's condition, and life, in
the greater part of the hamlets, must have gone on for generation after
generation in a weary routine. The life was not merely monotonous, it
was miserable. The food was coarse and there was little variety, as the
peasants did not even take pains to raise fresh vegetables. The houses
usually had but one room. This was ill-lighted by a single little window
and had no chimney.
[Sidenote: The manor court.]
Yet the very dependence upon one another can hardly have failed to
produce a certain spirit of brotherhood and mutual assistance in the
community. It was not only separated from the outside world, but its
members were brought together constantly by their intermingled fields,
their attendance at one church, and their responsibility to one
proprietor. The men were all expected to be present at the "court" which
was held in each manor, where the business of the manor was transacted
under the supervision of a representative of the lord. Here, for
instance, disputes were settled, fines imposed for the violation of the
customs of the manor, and redistributions of the strips of land took
place.
[Sidenote: The serf an inferior farmer who could only exist when there
was plenty of land.]
The serf was ordinarily a bad farmer and workman. He cultivated the soil
in a very crude manner, and his crops were accordingly scanty and
inferior. Obviously serfdom could exist only as long as land was
plentiful. But in the twelfth and thirteenth century western Europe
appears to have been gaining steadily in population. Serfdom would,
therefore, naturally tend to disappear when the population so increased
that the carelessly cultivated fields no longer supplied the food
necessary for the growing numbers.
[Sidenote: Barter replaced by money transactions.]
The increased use of money in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
which came with the awakening trade and industry, also tended to break
up the manor. The old habit of bartering one thing for another without
the intervention of money began to disappear. As time went on, neither
the lord nor the serf was satisfied with the ancient primitive
arrangements, which had answered well enough in the time of Charlemagne.
The serfs, on the one hand, began to obtain money by the sale of their
products in the markets of neighboring towns. They soon found it more
profitable to pay the lord a certain sum instead of working for him, for
they could then turn their whole attention to their own farms. The
proprietors, on the other hand, found it to their advantage to accept
money in place of the services of their tenants. With this money the
landlord could hire laborers to cultivate his fields and could buy the
luxuries which were brought to his notice as commerce increased. So it
came about that the lords gradually renounced their control over the
peasants, and the serf was no longer easily distinguishable from the
freeman who paid a regular rent for his land.[157] A serf might also
gain his liberty by fleeing to a town. If he remained undiscovered, or
was unclaimed by his lord, for a year and a day, he became a freeman.
[Sidenote: Disappearance of serfdom.]
The slow extinction of serfdom in western Europe appears to have begun
as early as the twelfth century. A very general emancipation had taken
place in France by the end of the thirteenth century (and in England
somewhat later), though there were still some serfs in France when the
revolution came in 1789. Germany was far more backward in this respect.
We find the peasants revolting against their hard lot in Luther's time,
and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the
serfs were freed in Prussia.
[Sidenote: Importance of town life.]
93. It is hardly necessary to point out that the gradual reappearance of
town life in western Europe is of the greatest interest to the student
of history. The cities had been the centers of Greek and Roman
civilization, and in our own time they dominate the life, culture, and
business enterprise of the world. Were they to disappear, our whole
life, even in the country, would necessarily undergo a profound change
and tend to become primitive again like that of the age of Charlemagne.
[Sidenote: Origin of the mediæval towns.]
[Sidenote: Compactness of a mediæval town.]
A great part of the mediæval towns, of which we begin to have some
scanty records about the year 1000, appear to have originated on the
manors of feudal lords or about a monastery or castle. The French name
for town, _ville_, is derived from vill, the name of the manor. The need
of protection was probably the usual reason for establishing a town with
a wall about it, so that the neighboring country people might find
safety in it when attacked. The way in which a mediæval town was built
seems to justify this conclusion. It was generally crowded and compact
compared with its more luxurious Roman predecessors. Aside from the
market place there were few or no open spaces. There were no
amphitheaters or public baths as in the Roman cities. The streets were
often mere alleys over which the jutting stories of the high houses
almost met. The high, thick wall that surrounded it prevented its
extending easily and rapidly as our cities do nowadays.
[Sidenote: Townsmen originally serfs.]
All towns outside of Italy were evidently small in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, and, like the manors on which they had grown up, they
had little commerce as yet with the outside world. They produced almost
all that their inhabitants needed except the farm products which came
from the neighboring country. There was likely to be little expansion so
long as the town remained under the absolute control of the lord or
monastery upon whose land it was situated. The townspeople were scarcely
more than serfs, in spite of the fact that they lived within a wall and
engaged in industry instead of farming. They had to pay irritating dues
to their lord, just as if they had still formed a farming community. The
emancipation of the townsmen from their lords and the establishment of a
suitable form of government for their town were necessary preliminaries
to the free development of town life.
[Sidenote: Increase of trade promotes the growth of the towns.]
With the increase of trade came the longing for this freedom. For when
new and attractive commodities began to be brought from the East and the
South, the people of the towns were encouraged to produce goods with the
idea of exchanging them at some neighboring fair for the products of
distant lands. But no sooner did the townsmen begin to engage in
manufacturing and to enter into relations with the outside world, than
they became conscious that they were greatly hampered by their
half-servile condition and were subject to exactions and restrictions
which would render progress impossible. Consequently during the twelfth
century there were many insurrections of the towns against their lords
and a general demand that the lords should grant the townsmen _charters_
in which the rights of both parties should be definitely stated.
[Illustration: A Castle on the Rhine with a Village below it]
[Sidenote: The communes.]
In France the citizens organized themselves into what were called
_communes_, or unions for the purpose of gaining their independence.
This word _commune_ appeared a new and detestable one to the lords, for,
to their minds, it was merely another name for a company of serfs
leagued against their masters. The nobles sometimes put down the
insurrections of their townsmen with great cruelty. On the other hand,
the lords often realized that they would increase the prosperity of
their towns by granting them freedom from arbitrary taxation and the
right to govern themselves. In England the towns gained their privileges
more gradually by purchasing them from the lords.
[Sidenote: Town charters.]
The town charters were written contracts between the lord and the
commune or the guild of merchants of a town. The charter served at once
as the certificate of birth of the town and as its constitution. It
contained a promise on the part of the lord or king to recognize the
existence of the guild of merchants. It limited the rights of the lord
in calling the townsmen before his court and fining them, and enumerated
the taxes which he might exact from the townspeople. The old dues and
services were either abolished or changed into money payments.
King Henry II of England promised the inhabitants of Wallingford that
"wheresoever they shall go on their journeys as merchants through my
whole land of England and Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou, 'by water and
by strand, by wood and by land,' they shall be free from toll and
passage fees and from all customs and exactions; nor are they to be
troubled in this respect by anyone under penalty of ten pounds." In the
case of the town of Southampton he concedes "that my men of Hampton
shall have and hold their guild and all their liberties and customs, by
land and by sea, in as good, peaceable, just, free, quiet, and honorable
a manner as they had the same most freely and quietly in the time of
King Henry, my grandfather; and let no one upon this do them any injury
or insult."
[Sidenote: Customs revealed in the charters.]
The customs of the times, as revealed in the charters, seem to us very
primitive. We find in the charter of the French town of St. Omer, in
1168, provisions like the following: He who shall commit a murder in the
town shall not find an asylum anywhere within the walls. If he shall
seek to escape punishment by flight, his buildings shall be torn down
and his goods confiscated; nor may he come back into the town unless he
be first reconciled with the relations of his victim and pay ten pounds,
of which a half shall go to the lord's representatives and the other
half to the commune, to be spent on its fortifications. He who strikes
another one in the town shall pay one hundred sous; he who pulls out the
hair of another shall pay forty sous, etc.
[Illustration: A Mediæval Town, Siegen]
Many of the towns had, as a visible sign of their freedom, a belfry, a
high building with a watchtower, where a guard was kept day and night in
order that the bell might be rung in case of approaching danger. It
contained an assembly hall, where the commune held its meetings, and a
prison. In the fourteenth century the wonderful townhalls began to be
erected, which, with the exception of the cathedrals and other churches,
are usually the most remarkable buildings which the traveler sees to-day
in the old commercial cities of Europe.
[Sidenote: Craft guilds.]
The tradesmen in the mediæval towns were at once artisans and merchants;
they not only made, but offered for sale, the articles which they
produced in their shops. In addition to the original guild of merchants
which helped the towns to gain and preserve their privileges, many new
corporations of tradesmen grew up, the so-called _craft guilds_. The
oldest statutes of a guild in Paris are those of the candle makers,
which go back to 1061. The number of trades differed greatly in
different towns, but the guilds all had the same object,--to prevent
every one from practicing a trade who had not been duly admitted to the
corporation.
[Illustation: LINES OF TRADE AND MEDIÆVAL TOWNS]
[Sidenote: The guild system.]
A young man had to spend several years in learning his trade. He lived
in the house of a master workman, but received no remuneration. He then
became a "journeyman" and could earn wages, although he could still work
only for master workmen and not directly for the public. A simple trade
might be learned in three years, but to become a goldsmith one must be
an apprentice for ten years. The number of apprentices that a master
workman might employ was strictly limited, in order that the journeymen
might not become too numerous. The way in which each trade was to be
practiced was carefully regulated, as well as the time that should be
spent in work each day. The system of guilds discouraged enterprise but
maintained a uniform efficiency everywhere. Had it not been for these
unions, the defenseless, isolated workmen, serfs as they had formerly
been, would have found it impossible to secure freedom and municipal
independence from the feudal lords who had formerly been their masters.
[Sidenote: Practical disappearance of commerce in the early Middle
Ages.]
94. The chief reason for the growth of the towns and their increasing
prosperity was a great development of trade throughout western Europe.
Commerce had pretty much disappeared with the decline of the Roman roads
and the general disorganization produced by the barbarian invasions.
There was no one in the Middle Ages to mend the ancient Roman roads. The
great network of highways from Persia to Britain fell apart when
independent nobles or poor local communities took the place of a world
empire. All trade languished, for there was little demand for those
articles of luxury which the Roman communities in the North had been
accustomed to obtain from the South. There was little money and scarcely
any notion of luxury, for the nobility lived a simple life in their
dreary and rudely furnished castles.
[Sidenote: Italian cities trade with the Orient.]
In Italy, however, trade does not seem to have altogether ceased.
Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, and other towns appear to have developed a
considerable Mediterranean commerce even before the Crusades. Their
merchants, as we have seen, supplied the destitute crusaders with the
material necessary for the conquest of Jerusalem. The passion for
pilgrimages offered inducements to the Italian merchants for expeditions
to the Orient, whither they transported the pilgrims and returned with
the products of the East. The Italian cities established trading
stations in the East and carried on a direct traffic with the caravans
which brought to the shores of the Mediterranean the products of Arabia,
Persia, India, and the Spice Islands. The southern French towns and
Barcelona entered also into commercial relations with the Mohammedans in
northern Africa.
[Illustration: Street in Frankfort-on-the-Main]
[Sidenote: Commerce stimulates industry.]
This progress in the South could not but stir the lethargy of the rest
of Europe. The new commerce encouraged a revolution in industry. So long
as the manor system prevailed and each man was occupied in producing
only what he and the other members of his group needed, there was
nothing to send abroad and nothing to exchange for luxuries. But when
merchants began to come with tempting articles, the members of a
community were encouraged to produce a surplus of goods above what they
themselves needed, and to sell or exchange this surplus for commodities
coming from a distance. Merchants and artisans gradually directed their
energies toward the production of what others wished as well as what was
needed by the little group to which they belonged.
[Sidenote: The luxuries of the East introduced into Europe.]
The romances of the twelfth century indicate that the West was
astonished and delighted by the luxuries of the East,--the rich fabrics,
Oriental carpets, precious stones, perfumes, drugs (like camphor and
laudanum), silks and porcelains from China, spices from India, and
cotton from Egypt. Venice introduced the silk industry from the East and
the manufacture of those glass articles which the traveler may still buy
in the Venetian shops. The West learned how to make silk and velvet as
well as light and gauzy cotton and linen fabrics. The eastern dyes were
introduced, and Paris was soon imitating the tapestries of the Saracens.
In exchange for those luxuries which they were unable to produce, the
Flemish towns sent their woolen cloths to the East, and Italy its wines.
But there was apparently always a considerable cash balance to be paid
to the Oriental merchants, since the West could not produce enough to
pay by exchange for all that it demanded from the Orient.
[Sidenote: Some of the important commercial centers.]
The northern merchants dealt mainly with Venice and brought their wares
across the Brenner Pass and down the Rhine, or sent them by sea to be
exchanged in Flanders. By the thirteenth century important centers of
trade had come into being, some of which are still among the great
commercial towns of the world. Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen carried on
active trade with the countries on the Baltic and with England. Augsburg
and Nuremberg, in the south of Germany, became important on account of
their situation on the line of trade between Italy and the North.
Bruges and Ghent sent their manufactures everywhere. English commerce
was relatively unimportant as yet compared with that of the great ports
of the Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: Restrictions on trade.]
[Sidenote: Idea of a 'just' price.]
95. A word must be said of the numerous and almost incredible obstacles
in the way of commerce in the Middle Ages. There was very little of that
freedom which we now regard as essential to successful business. Our
wholesale dealers would have been considered an abomination in the
Middle Ages. Those who bought up a quantity of a commodity in order to
sell it at a high rate were called by the ugly name of _forestallers_.
It was universally believed that everything had a "just" price, which
was merely enough to cover the cost of the materials used in its
manufacture and remunerate the maker for the work he had put upon it. It
was considered outrageous to sell a thing for more than the just price,
no matter how anxious the purchaser might be to obtain it. Every
manufacturer was required to keep a shop in which he offered at retail
all that he made. Those who lived near a town were permitted to sell
their products in the market place within the walls on condition that
they sold directly to the consumers. They might not dispose of their
whole stock to one dealer, for fear that if he had all there was of a
commodity he might raise the price above a just one.
[Sidenote: Payment of interest on money forbidden.]
Akin to these prejudices against wholesale trade was that against
interest. Money was believed to be a dead and sterile thing, and no one
had a right to demand any return for lending it. Interest was wicked,
since it was exacted by those who took advantage of the embarrassments
of others. Usury, as the taking of even the most moderate and reasonable
rate of interest was then called, was strenuously forbidden by the laws
of the Church. We find church councils ordering that impenitent usurers
should be refused Christian burial and have their wills annulled. So
money-lending, necessary to all great commercial and industrial
undertakings, was left to the Jews, from whom Christian conduct was not
expected.
[Sidenote: The Jews as money-lenders.]
This ill-starred people played a most important part in the economic
development of Europe, but they were terribly maltreated by the
Christians, who held them guilty of the supreme crime of putting Christ
to death. The active persecution of the Jews did not, however, become
common before the thirteenth century, when they first began to be
required to wear a peculiar cap, or badge, which made them easily
recognized and exposed them to constant insult. Later they were
sometimes shut up in a particular quarter of the city, called the Jewry.
Since they were excluded from the guilds, they not unnaturally turned to
the business of money-lending, which no Christian might practice.
Undoubtedly their occupation had much to do in causing their
unpopularity. The kings permitted them to make loans, often at a most
exorbitant rate; Philip Augustus allowed them to exact forty-six per
cent, but reserved the right to extort their gains from them when the
royal treasury was empty. In England the usual rate was a penny a pound
for each week.
[Sidenote: The 'Lombards' as bankers.]
In the thirteenth century the Italians--"Lombards"--began to go into a
sort of banking business and greatly extended the employment of bills of
exchange. They lent for nothing, but exacted damages for all delay in
repayment. This appeared reasonable and right even to those who
condemned ordinary interest. Capitalists, moreover, could contribute
money towards an enterprise and share the profits as long as no interest
was exacted. In these and other ways the obstacles offered by the
prejudice against interest were much reduced, and large commercial
companies came into existence, especially in Italy.
[Sidenote: Tolls, duties, and other annoyances to which merchants were
subjected on land.]
96. Another serious disadvantage which the mediæval merchant had to face
was the payment of an infinite number of tolls and duties which were
exacted by the lords through whose domains his way passed. Not only were
duties exacted on the highways, bridges, and at the fords, but those
barons who were so fortunate as to have castles on a navigable river
blocked the stream in such a way that the merchant could not bring his
vessel through without a payment for the privilege. The charges were
usually small, but the way in which they were exacted and the repeated
delays must have been a serious source of irritation and loss to the
merchants. For example, a certain monastery lying between Paris and the
sea required that those hastening to town with fresh fish should stop
and let the monks pick out what they thought worth three pence, with
little regard to the condition in which they left the goods. When a boat
laden with wine passed up the Seine to Paris, the agent of the lord of
Poissy could have three casks broached, and, after trying them all, he
could take a measure from the one he liked best. At the markets all
sorts of dues had to be paid, such, for example, as payments for using
the lord's scales or his measuring rod. Besides this, the great variety
of coinage which existed in feudal Europe caused infinite perplexity and
delay.
[Sidenote: Dangers by sea.]
[Sidenote: Pirates.]
[Sidenote: Strand laws.]
Commerce by sea had its own particular trials, by no means confined to
the hazards of wind and wave, rock and shoal. Pirates were numerous in
the North Sea. They were often organized and sometimes led by men of
high rank, who appear to have regarded the business as no disgrace. Then
there were the so-called _strand laws_, according to which a ship with
its cargo became the property of the owner of the coast upon which it
might be wrecked or driven ashore. Lighthouses and beacons were few and
the coasts dangerous. Moreover, natural dangers were increased by false
signals which wreckers used to lure ships to shore in order to plunder
them.
[Sidenote: The Hanseatic League.]
With a view to mitigating these manifold perils, the towns early began
to form unions for mutual defense. The most famous of these was that of
the German cities, called the _Hanseatic League_. Lübeck was always the
leader, but among the seventy towns which at one time and another were
included in the confederation, we find Cologne, Brunswick, Dantzig, and
other centers of great importance. The union purchased and controlled
settlements in London,--the so-called _Steelyard_ near London
Bridge,--at Wisby, Bergen, and the far-off Novgorod in Russia. They
managed to monopolize nearly the whole trade on the Baltic and North
Sea, either through treaties or the influence that they were able to
bring to bear.
The League made war on the pirates and did much to reduce the dangers of
traffic. Instead of dispatching separate and defenseless merchantmen,
their ships sailed out in fleets under the protection of a man-of-war.
On one occasion the League undertook a successful war against the king
of Denmark, who had interfered with their interests. At another time it
declared war on England and brought her to terms. For two hundred years
before the discovery of America, the League played a great part in the
commercial affairs of western Europe; but it had begun to decline even
before the discovery of new routes to the East and West Indies
revolutionized trade.
[Sidenote: Trade regulated by the towns (thirteenth to fifteenth
century), not by nations or individuals.]
It should be observed that, during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth centuries, trade was not carried on between nations, but by
the various towns, like Venice, Lübeck, Ghent, Bruges, Cologne. A
merchant did not act or trade as an independent individual but as a
member of a particular merchant guild, and he enjoyed the protection of
his town and of the treaties it arranged. If a merchant from a certain
town failed to pay a debt, a fellow-townsman might be seized where the
debt was due. At the period of which we have been speaking, an
inhabitant of London was considered a foreigner or an alien in Bristol,
just as was the merchant from Cologne or Antwerp. Only gradually did the
towns merge into the nations to which their people belonged.[158]
[Sidenote: The burghers, or commons, become an influential class.]
The increasing wealth of the merchants could not fail to raise them to a
position of importance in society which they had not hitherto enjoyed.
Their prosperity enabled them to vie with the clergy in education and
with the nobility in the luxury of their dwellings and surroundings.
They began to give some attention to reading, and as early as the
fourteenth century many of the books appear to have been written with a
view of meeting their tastes and needs. Representatives of the towns
were called into the councils of the king, who was obliged to take their
advice along with their contributions to the support of the government.
The rise of the burgher class alongside the older orders of the clergy
and nobility, which had so long dominated the life of western Europe, is
one of the most momentous changes of the thirteenth century.
General Reading.--GIBBINS, _History of Commerce in Europe_ (The
Macmillan Company, 90 cents), the best short account of the
subject, with good maps of trade routes. INGRAM, _History of
Slavery and Serfdom_ (Black, London, $2.00), especially Chapters IV
and V. CUNNINGHAM, _Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects_,
Vol. II, Mediæval and Modern Times (The Macmillan Company, $1.25),
is very suggestive. There are several excellent accounts of the
economic situation in England in the Middle Ages, which, in many
respects, was similar to the conditions on the continent. CHEYNEY,
_Industrial and Social History of England_ (The Macmillan Company,
$1.40); GIBBINS, _The Industrial History of England_ (Methuen,
$1.00), and a more elaborate treatise by the same writer, _Industry
in England_ (Methuen, $3.00); CUNNINGHAM, _Outlines of English
Industrial History_ (The Macmillan Company, $1.50), and much fuller
by the same writer, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce during
the Middle Ages_ (The Macmillan Company, $4.00). All these give
excellent accounts of the manor, the guilds, the fairs, etc. See
also JESSOPP, _Coming of the Friars_, second essay, "Village Life
Six Hundred Years Ago."