counsel of the barons of the whole kingdom of England I have
been crowned king of this realm. And because the kingdom has
been oppressed by unjust exactions, I now, being moved by
reverence towards God and by the love I bear you all, make
free the Church of God; so that I will neither sell nor
lease its property; nor on the death of an archbishop or a
bishop or an abbot will I take anything from the demesne of
the Church or from its vassals during the period which
elapses before a successor is installed. I abolish all the
evil customs by which the kingdom of England has been
unjustly oppressed. Some of those evil customs are here set
forth.
[2.] If any of my barons or of my earls or of any other of
my tenants shall die his heir shall not redeem his land as
he was wont to do in the time of my brother [William II
(Rufus)], but he shall henceforth redeem it by means of a
just and lawful 'relief`. Similarly the men of my barons
shall redeem their lands from their lords by means of a just
and lawful 'relief`.
[3.] If any of my barons or of my tenants shall wish to give
in marriage his daughter or his sister or his niece or his
cousin, he shall consult me about the matter; but I will
neither seek payment for my consent, nor will I refuse my
permission, unless he wishes to give her in marriage to one
of my enemies. And if, on the death of one of my barons or
of one of my tenants, a daughter should be his heir, I will
dispose of her in marriage and of her lands according to the
counsel given me by my barons. And if the wife of one of my
tenants shall survive her husband and be without children,
she shall have her dower and her marriage portion [that
given to her by her father], and I will not give her in
marriage unless she herself consents.
[4.] If a widow survives with children under age, she shall
have her dower and her marriage portion, so long as she
keeps her body chaste; and I will not give her in marriage
except with her consent. And the guardian of the land, and
of the children, shall be either the widow or another of
their relations, as may seem more proper. And I order that
my barons shall act likewise towards the sons and daughters
and widows of their men.
[5.] I utterly forbid that the common mintage [a forced levy
to prevent loss to the King from depreciation of the
coinage], which has been taken from the towns and counties,
shall henceforth be levied, since it was not so levied in
the time of King Edward [the Confessor]. If any moneyer or
other person be taken with false money in his possession,
let true justice be visited upon him.
[6.] I forgive all pleas and all debts which were owing to
my brother [William II], except my own proper dues, and
except those things which were agreed to belong to the
inheritance of others, or to concern the property which
justly belonged to others. And if anyone had promised
anything for his heritage, I remit it, and I also remit all
'reliefs' which were promised for direct inheritance.
[7.] If any of my barons or of my men, being ill, shall give
away or bequeath his movable property, I will allow that it
shall be bestowed according to his desires. But if,
prevented either by violence or through sickness, he shall
die intestate as far as concerns his movable property, his
widow or his children, or his relatives or one his true men
shall make such division for the sake of his soul, as may
seem best to them.
[8.] If any of my barons or of my men shall incur a forfeit,
he shall not be compelled to pledge his movable property to
an unlimited amount, as was done in the time of my father
[William I] and my brother; but he shall only make payment
according to the extent of his legal forfeiture, as was done
before the time of my father and in the time of my earlier
predecessors. Nevertheless, if he be convicted of breach of
faith or of crime, he shall suffer such penalty as is just.
[9.] I remit all murder fines which were incurred before the
day on which I was crowned King; and such murder fines as
shall now be incurred shall be paid justly according to the
law of King Edward [by sureties].
[10.] By the common counsel of my barons I have retained the
forests in my own hands as my father did before me.
[11.] The knights, who in return for their estates perform
military service equipped with a hauberk [long coat] of
mail, shall hold their demesne lands quit of all gelds
[money payments] and all work; I make this concession as my
own free gift in order that, being thus relieved of so great
a burden, they may furnish themselves so well with horses
and arms that they may be properly equipped to discharge my
service and to defend my kingdom.
[12.] I establish a firm peace in all my kingdom, and I
order that this peace shall henceforth be kept.
[13.] I restore to you the law of King Edward together with
such emendations to it as my father [William I] made with
the counsel of his barons.
[14.] If since the death of my brother, King William [II],
anyone shall have seized any of my property, or the property
of any other man, let him speedily return the whole of it.
If he does this no penalty will be exacted, but if he
retains any part of it he shall, when discovered, pay a
heavy penalty to me.
Witness: Maurice, bishop of London; William, bishop-elect of
Winchester; Gerard, bishop of Herefore; Henry the earl; Simon the
earl; Walter Giffard; Robert of Montfort-sur-Risle; Roger Bigot;
Eudo the steward; Robert, son of Haimo; and Robert Malet.
At London when I was crowned. Farewell."
Henry took these promises seriously, which resulted in peace and
justice. Royal justice became a force to be reckoned with by the
multiplication of justices. Henry had a great respect for legality
and the forms of judicial action. He became known as the "Lion of
Justice".
The payment of queen's gold, that is of a mark of gold to the
queen out of every hundred marks of silver paid, in the way of
fine or other feudal incident, to the king, probably dates from
Henry I's reign.
A woman could inherit a fief if she married. The primary way for a
man to acquire control of land was to marry an heiress. If a man
were in a lower station than she was, he had to pay for his new
social status as well as have royal permission. A man could also
be awarded land which had escheated to the King. If a noble woman
wanted to hold land in her own right, she had to make a payment to
the King. Many widows bought their freedom from guardianship or
remarriage from the King. Women whose husbands were at war also
ran the land of their husbands.
Barons were lords of large holdings of farmland called "manors".
Many of the lesser barons left their dark castles to live in semi-
fortified stone houses, which usually were of two rooms with rug
hangings for drafts, as well as the sparse furniture that had been
common to the castle. There were shuttered windows to allow in
light, but which also let in the wind and rain when open. The roof
was of thatch or narrow overlapping wood shingles. The stone floor
was strewn with hay and there was a hearth near the center of the
floor, with a louvered smoke hole in the timber roof for escape of
smoke. There were barns for grain and animals. Beyond this area
was a garden, orchard, and sometimes a vineyard. The area was
circumscribed by a moat over which there was a drawbridge to a
gatehouse.
The smaller room was the lord and lady's bedroom. It had a
canopied bed, chests for clothing, and wood frames on which
clothes could be hung. Life on the manor revolved around the
larger room, or hall, where the public life of the household was
passed. There, meals were served. The daily diet typically
consisted of milk, soup, porridge, fish, vegetables, and bread.
Open hospitality accompanied this communal living. There was
little privacy. Manor household villeins carried the lord's
sheaves of grain to the manor barn, shore his sheep, malted his
grain, and chopped wood for his fire. At night some slept on the
floor of the hall. Others, who were cottars and bordars, had their
own dwellings nearby.
The manor house of lesser lords or knights was still built of
wood, although it often had a stone foundation.
About 35% of the land was arable land, about 25% was common
pasture land (for grazing only) or meadow land (near a stream or
river and used for hay or grazing), and about 15% was woodland.
There were these types of land and wasteland on each manor. The
arable land was allotted to the villeins in strips to equalize the
best and worst land and their distance from the village where the
villeins lived. There was three-way rotation of wheat or rye, oats
or barley, and fallow land. Cows, pigs, sheep, and fowl were kept.
The meadow was allocated for hay for the lord's household and each
villein's. The villeins held land of their lord for various
services such as agricultural labor or raising domestic animals.
The villeins worked about half of their time on their lord's
fields [his demesne land], which was about a third of the
farmland. This work was primarily to gather the harvest and to
plough with oxen, using a yoke over their shoulders, and to sow in
autumn and Lent. They threshed grain on barn floors with flails
cut from holly or thorn, and removed the kernels from the shafts
by hand. Work lasted from sunrise to sunset and included women and
children. The older children could herd geese and pigs, and set
snares for rabbits. The young children could gather nuts and
berries in season and other wild edibles, and could pick up little
tufts of wool shed by sheep. The old could stay in the hut and
mind the children, keep the fire going and the black pot boiling,
sew, spin, patch clothes, and cobble shoes. The old often suffered
from rheumatism. Many people had bronchitis. Many children died of
croup [inflammation of the respiratory passages]. Life expectancy
was probably below thirty-five.
The villein retained his customary rights, his house and land and
rights of wood and hay, and his right in the common land of his
township. Customary ways were maintained. The villeins of a manor
elected a reeve to communicate their interests to their lord,
usually through a bailiff, who directed the labor. Sometimes there
was a steward in charge of several of a lord's manors, who also
held the manorial court for the lord. The steward held his land of
the lord by serjeanty, which was a specific service to the lord.
Other serjeanty services were carrying the lord's shield and arms,
finding attendants and esquires for knights, helping in the lord's
hunting expeditions, looking after his hounds, bringing fuel,
doing carpentry, and forging irons for ploughs. The Woodward
preserved the timber. The Messer supervised the harvesting. The
Hayward removed any fences from the fields after harvest to allow
grazing by cattle and sheep. The Coward, Bullard, and Calvert
tended the cows, bulls, and calves; the Shepherd, the sheep; and
the Swineherds the pigs. The Ponder impounded stray stock. There
were varieties of horses: war horses, riding horses, courier
horses, pack horses, and plough horses.
The majority of manors were coextensive with a single village.
The villeins lived in the village in one-room huts enclosed by a
wood fence, hedge, or stone wall. In this yard was a garden of
onions, leeks, mustard, peas, beans, parsley, garlic, herbs, and
cabbage and apple, pear, cherry, quince, and plum trees, and
beehives. The hut had a high-pitched roof thatched with reeds or
straw and low eaves reaching almost to the ground. The walls are
built of wood-framing overlaid with mud or plaster. Narrow slits
in the walls serve as windows, which have shutters and are
sometimes covered with coarse cloth. The floor is dirt and may be
covered with straw or rushes for warmth, but usually no hearth. In
the middle is a wood fire burning on a hearthstone, which was lit
by making a spark by striking flint and iron together. The smoke
rose through a hole in the roof. At one end of the hut was the
family living area, where the family ate on a collapsible trestle
table with stools or benches. Their usual food was beans and peas,
oatmeal gruel, butter, cheese, vegetables, honey, rough bread made
from a mixture of wheat, barley, and rye flour, herrings or other
salt fish, and some salted or smoked bacon. Butter had first been
used for cooking and as a medicine to cure constipation and for
puny children it could be salted down for the winter. The bread
had been roasted on the stones of the fire; later there were
communal ovens set up in villages. Cooking was done over the fire
by boiling in iron pots hung from an iron tripod, or sitting on
the hot stones of the fire. They ate from wood bowls using a wood
spoon. When they had fresh meat, it could be roasted on a spit.
Liquids were heated in a kettle. With drinking horns, they drank
water, milk, buttermilk, apple cider, mead, ale made from barley
malt, and bean and vegetable broth. They used jars and other
earthenware, e.g. for storage of salt. They slept on straw
mattresses or sacks on the floor or on benches. The villein
regarded his bed area as the safest place in the house, as did
people of all ranks, and kept his treasures there, which included
his farm implements, as well as hens on the beams, roaming pigs,
and stalled oxen, cattle, and horses, which were at the other end
of the hut. Fires were put out at night to guard against fire
burning down the huts. The warmth of the animals then helped make
the hut warm. Around the room are a couple of chests to store
salt, meal, flour, a broom made of birch twigs, some woven
baskets, the distaff and spindle for spinning, and a simple loom
for weaving. All clothes were homemade. They were often coarse,
greasy wool and leather made from their own animals. The man wore
a tunic of coarse linen embroidered on the sleeves and breast,
around with he wore a girdle of rope, leather, or folded cloth.
Sometimes he also wore breeches reaching below the knee. The woman
wore a loose short-sleeved gown, under which was a tight fitting
garment with long loose sleeves, and which was short enough to be
clear of the mud. If they wore shoes, they were clumsy and
patched. Some wore a hood-like cap. For really bad weather, a man
wore on his head a hood with a very elongated point which could be
wrapped around his neck. Sometimes a short cape over the shoulders
was attached. Linen was too expensive for commoners.
The absence of fresh food during the winter made scurvy prevalent;
in the spring, people eagerly sought "scurvy grass" to eat.
Occasionally there would be an outbreak of a nervous disorder due
to the ergot fungus growing in the rye used for bread. This
manifested itself in apparent madness, frightening hallucinations,
incoherent shouting, hysterical laughing, and constant scratching
of itching and burning sensations.
The villein and his wife and children worked from daybreak to dusk
in the fields, except for Sundays and holydays. He had certain
land to farm for his own family, but had to have his grain milled
at his lord's mill at the lord's price. He had to retrieve his
wandering cattle from his lord's pound at the lord's price. He was
expected to give a certain portion of his own produce, whether
grain or livestock, to his lord. However, if he fell short, he was
not put off his land. The villein, who worked the farm land as his
ancestor ceorl had, now was so bound to the land that he could not
leave or marry or sell an ox without his lord's consent. If the
manor was sold, the villein was sold as a part of the manor. When
his daughter or son married, he had to pay a "merchet" to his
lord. He could not have a son educated without the lord's
permission, and this usually involved a fee to the lord. His best
beast at his death, or "heriot", went to his lord. If he wanted
permission to live outside the manor, he paid "chevage" yearly.
Woodpenny was a yearly payment for gathering dead wood. Sometimes
a "tallage" payment was taken at the lord's will. The villein's
oldest son usually took his place on his land and followed the
same customs with respect to the lord. For an heir to take his
dead ancestor's land, the lord demanded payment of a "relief",
which was usually the amount of a year's income but sometimes as
much as the heir was willing to pay to have the land. The usual
aids were also expected to be paid.
A large village also had a smith, a wheelwright, a millwright, a
tiler and thatcher, a shoemaker and tanner, a carpenter wainwright
and carter.
Markets were about twenty miles apart because a farmer from the
outlying area could then carry his produce to the nearest town and
walk back again in the daylight hours of one day. In this local
market he could buy foodstuffs, livestock, household goods, fuels,
skins, and certain varieties of cloth.
The cloth was crafted by local weavers, dyers, and fullers. The
weaver lived in a cottage with few and narrow windows with little
furniture. He worked in the main, and sometimes the only, room.
First the raw wool was washed with water at the front door to
remove the grease. Then its fibers were disentangled and made fine
with hand cards with thistle teeth, usually by the children. Then
it was spun by a spinning wheel into thread, usually by the wife.
On a double frame loom, a set of parallel threads was strung
lengthwise. A device worked by a pedal lifted half of these threads
--every other thread--while the other half remained in place.
Between the lifted threads and the stationary threads a shuttle was
thrown by the weaver from one hand to another. Then the threads
which had remained stationary were raised by a second pedal and the
shuttle thrown back. The shuttle carried a spool so that, as it
moved, it left a thread behind it running crosswise or at right
angles to the lengthwise threads and in and out between them. The
lengthwise threads were called the "warp"; the shuttle thread was
the "woof" or the "weft".
In making cloth, it was the warp which, as the loom moved, took the
worst beating. With the constant raising and lowering, these treads
would wear and break, whereas the weft on which there was little
strain remained intact. None of the cotton yarn which the
old-fashioned wheels had spun was strong enough for warp. So it was
necessary to use linen thread for the warp.
Since one loom could provide work for about six spinners, the
weaver had his wool spun by other spinners in their cottages.
Sometimes the master weaver had an apprentice or workman working
and living with him, who had free board and lodging and an annual
wage. Then a fuller made the cloth thick and dense by washing,
soaping, beating, and agitating it, with the use of a community
watermill which could be used by anyone for a fixed payment. The
cloth dried through the night on a rack outside the cottage. The
weaver then took his cloth, usually only one piece, to the weekly
market to sell. The weavers stood at the market holding up their
cloth. The cloth merchant who bought the cloth then had it dyed or
dressed according to his requirements. Its surface could be raised
with teazleheads and cropped or sheared to make a nap. Some cloth
was sold to tailors to make into clothes. Often a weaver had a
horse for travel, a cow for milk, chickens for eggs, perhaps a few
cattle, and some grazing land. Butchers bought, slaughtered, and
cut up animals to sell as meat. Some was sold to cooks, who sold
prepared foods. The hide was bought by the tanner to make into
leather. The leather was sold to shoemakers and glovemakers.
Millers bought harvested grain to make into flour. Flour was sold
to bakers to make into breads. Wood was bought by carpenters and by
coopers, who made barrels, buckets, tubs, and pails. Tilers,
oilmakers and rope makers also bought raw material to make into
finished goods for sale. Wheelwrights made ploughs, harrows, carts,
and later wagons. Smiths and locksmiths worked over their hot
fires.
Games with dice were sometimes played. In winter, youths ice-
skated with bones fastened to their shoes. They propelled
themselves by striking the ice with staves shod with iron. On
summer holydays, they exercised in leaping, shooting with the bow,
wrestling, throwing stones, and darting a thrown spear. The
maidens danced with timbrels. Since at least 1133, children's toys
included dolls, drums, hobby horses, pop guns, trumpets, and
kites.
The cold, indoors as well as outdoors, necessitated that people
wear ample and warm garments. Men and women of position dressed in
long full cloaks reaching to their feet, sometimes having short
full sleeves. The cloak generally had a hood and was fastened at
the neck with a brooch. Underneath the cloak was a simple gown
with sleeves tight at the wrist but full at the armhole, as if
cut from the same piece of cloth. A girdle or belt was worn at the
waist. When the men were hunting or working, they wore gown and
cloak of knee length. Men wore stockings to the knee and shoes.
The fashion of long hair on men returned.
The nation grew with the increase of population, the development
of towns, and the growing mechanization of craft industries. There
were watermills for crafts and for supplying and draining water in
all parts of the nation. In flat areas, slow rivers could be
supplemented by creating artificial waterfalls, for which water was
raised to the level of reservoirs. There were also some iron-
smelting furnaces. Coal mining underground began as a family
enterprise. Stone bridges over rivers could accommodate one person
traveling by foot or by horseback and were steep and narrow. The
wheelbarrow came into use to cart materials for building castles
and cathedrals.
Merchants, who had come from the low end of the knightly class or
high end of the villein class, settled around the open market
areas, where main roads joined. They had plots narrow in frontage
along the road and deep. Their shops faced the road, with living
space behind or above their stores. Town buildings were typically
part stone and part timber as a compromise between fire
precautions and expense.
Towns, as distinct from villages, had permanent markets. As towns
grew, they paid a fee to obtain a charter for self-government from
the king giving the town judicial and commercial freedom. They
were literate enough to do accounts. So they did their own
valuation of the sum due to the crown so as not to pay the sheriff
any more than that. These various rights were typically expanded
in future times, and the towns received authority to collect the
sum due to the crown rather than the sheriff. This they did by
obtaining a charter renting the town to the burghers at a fee farm
rent equal to the sum thus deducted from the amount due from the
county. Such a town was called a "borough" and its citizens or
landholding freemen "burgesses". To be free of something meant to
have exclusive rights and privileges with respect to it. Selling
wholesale could take place only in a borough. Burgesses were free
to marry. They were not subject to defense except of the borough.
They were exempt from attendance at county and hundred courts. The
king assessed a tallage [ad hoc tax] usually at ten per cent of
property or income. In the boroughs, merchant and manufacturing
guilds controlled prices and assured quality. The head officer of
the guild usually controlled the borough, which excluded rival
merchant guilds. A man might belong to more than one guild, e.g.
one for his trade and another for religion.
Craft guilds grew up in the towns, such as the tanners at Oxford,
which later merged with the shoemakers into a cordwainers' guild.
There were weavers' guilds in several towns, including London,
which were given royal sanction and protection for annual payments
(twelve pounds of silver for London. They paid an annual tribute
and were given a monopoly of weaving cloth within a radius of
several miles. Guild rules covered attendance of the members at
church services, the promotion of pilgrimages, celebration of
masses for the dead, common meals, relief of poor brethren and
sisters, the hours of labor, the process of manufacture, the wages
of workmen, and technical education. Henry standardized the yard
as the length of his own arm.