on special royal commissions of gaol-delivery. They sat in
judgment in the county court at its monthly meetings, attended the
two great annual assemblies when the lord, knights and freeholders
of the county gathered to meet the itinerant justices who came
escorted by the sheriff and weapon bearers. They served on the
committees which reviewed the presentments of the hundreds and
village, and carried the record of the county court to Westminster
when summoned there by the kings' justices. They served on the
grand assize. As elected representatives of their fellow knights
of the county, they assessed any taxes due from each hundred.
Election might be by nomination by the sheriff from a fixed list,
by choice, or in rotation. They investigated and reported on local
abuses and grievances. The King's justices and council often
called on them to answer questions put to them on oath. In the
villages, humbler freeholders and sokemen were elected to assess
the village taxes. Six villeins answered for the village's
offenses before the royal itinerant justice.
Reading and writing in the English language was taught. The use of
English ceased to be a mark of vulgarity. In 1258 the first
governmental document was issued in English as well as in Latin
and French. Latin started falling into disuse. Boys of noblemen
were taught reading, writing, Latin, a musical instrument,
athletics, riding, and gentlemanly conduct. Girls were taught
reading, writing, music, dancing, and perhaps household nursing
and first aid, spinning, embroidery, and gardening. Girls of high
social position were also taught riding and hawking. Grammar
schools taught, in Latin, grammar, dialectic (ascertaining word
meaning by looking at its origin, its sound (e.g. soft or harsh),
its power (e.g. robust and strong sound), its inflection, and its
order; and avoiding obscurity and ambiguity in statements), and
rhetoric [art of public speaking, oratory, and debate]. The
teacher possessed the only complete copy of the Latin text, and
most of the school work was done orally. Though books were few and
precious, the students read several Latin works. Girls and boys of
high social position usually had private teachers for grammar
school, while boys of lower classes were sponsored at grammar
schools such as those at Oxford. Discipline was maintained by the
birch or rod.
There was no examination for admission as an undergraduate to
Oxford, but a knowledge of Latin with some skill in speaking Latin
was a necessary background. The students came from all
backgrounds. Some had their expenses paid by their parents, while
others had the patronage of a churchman, a religious house, or a
wealthy layman. They studied the "liberal arts", which derived its
name from "liber" or free, because they were for the free men of
Rome rather than for the economic purposes of those who had to
work. The works of Greek authors such as Aristotle were now
available; the European monk Thomas Aquinas had edited Aristotle's
works to reconcile them to church doctrine. He opined that man's
intellectual use of reason did not conflict with the religious
belief that revelation came only from God, because reason was
given to man by God. He shared Aristotle's belief that the earth
was a sphere, and that the celestial bodies moved around it in
perfect circles. Latin learning had already been absorbed without
detriment to the church.
A student at Oxford would become a master after graduating from a
seven year course of study of the seven liberal arts: [grammar,
rhetoric (the source of law), Aristotelian logic (which
differentiates the true from the false), arithmetic, including
fractions and ratios, (the foundation of order), geometry,
including methods of finding the length of lines, the area of
surfaces, and the volume of solids, (the science of measurement),
astronomy (the most noble of the sciences because it is connected
with divinity and theology), music and also Aristotle's philosophy
of physics, metaphysics, and ethics; and then lecturing and
leading disputations for two years. He also had to write a thesis
on some chosen subject and defend it against the faculty. A
Master's degree gave one the right to teach. Further study for
four years led to a doctorate in one of the professions: theology
and canon or civil law.
There were about 1,500 students in Oxford. They drank, played
dice, quarreled a lot and begged at street corners. There were mob
fights between students from the north and students from the south
and between students and townsmen. But when the mayor of Oxford
hanged two students accused of being involved in the killing of a
townswoman, many masters and students left for Cambridge. In 1214,
a charter created the office of Chancellor of the university at
Oxford. He was responsible for law and order and, through his
court, could fine, imprison, and excommunicate offenders and expel
undesirables such as prostitutes from the town. He had authority
over all crimes involving scholars, except murder and mayhem. The
Chancellor summoned and presided over meetings of the masters and
came to be elected by indirect vote by the masters who had
schools, usually no more than a room or hall with a central hearth
which was hired for lectures. Students paid for meals there.
Corners of the room were often partitioned off for private study.
At night, some students slept on the straw on the floor. Six hours
of sleep were considered sufficient. In 1231, the king ordered
that every student must have his name on the roll of a master and
the masters had to keep a list of those attending his lectures.
In 1221 the friars established their chief school at Oxford. They
were bound by oaths of poverty, obedience, and chastity, but were
not confined within the walls of a monastery. They walked barefoot
from place to lace preaching. They begged for their food and
lodgings. They replaced monks, who had become self-indulgent, as
the most vital spiritual force among the people.
The first college was founded in 1264 by Walter de Merton, former
Chancellor to the King, at Oxford. A college had the living
arrangements of a Hall, with the addition of monastic-type rules.
A warden and about 30 scholars lived and ate meals together in the
college buildings. Merton College's founding documents provided
that: "The house shall be called the House of the Scholars of
Merton, and it shall be the residence of the Scholars forever. . .
There shall be a constant succession of scholars devoted to the
study of letters, who shall be bound to employ themselves in the
study of Arts or Philosophy, the Canons or Theology. Let there
also be one member of the collegiate body, who shall be a
grammarian, and must entirely devote himself to the study of
grammar; let him have the care of the students in grammar, and to
him also let the more advanced have recourse without a blush, when
doubts arise in their faculty. . . There is to be one person in
every chamber, where Scholars are resident, of more mature age
than the others, who is to make his report of their morals and
advancement in learning to the Warden. . . The Scholars who are
appointed to the duty of studying in the House are to have a
common table, and a dress as nearly alike as possible. . . The
members of the College must all be present together, as far as
their leisure serves, at the canonical hours and celebration of
masses on holy and other days. . . The Scholars are to have a
reader at meals, and in eating together they are to observe
silence, and to listen to what is read. In their chambers, they
must abstain from noise and interruption of their fellows; and
when they speak they must use the Latin language. . . A Scrutiny
shall be held in the House by the Warden and the Seniors, and all
the Scholars there present, three times a year; a diligent inquiry
is to be instituted into the life, conduct, morals, and progress
in learning, of each and all; and what requires correction then is
to be corrected, and excesses are to be visited with condign
punishment. . ."
Educated men (and those of the 1200s through the 1500s), believed
that the earth was the center of the universe and that it was
surrounded by a giant spherical dome on which the stars were
placed. The sun and moon and planets were each on a sphere around
the earth that was responsible for their movements. The origin of
the word "planet" meant "wanderer" because the motion of the
planets changed in direction and speed. Astrology explained how
the position of the stars and planets influenced man and other
earthly things. For instance, the position of the stars at a
person's birth determined his character. The angle and therefore
potency of the sun's rays influenced climate, temperament, and
changes of mortal life such as disease and revolutions. Unusual
events such as the proximity of two planets, a comet, an eclipse,
a meteor, or a nova were of great significance. A star often was
thought to presage the birth of a great man or a hero. There was a
propitious time to have a marriage, go on a journey, make war, and
take herbal medicine or be bled by leeches, the latter of which
was accompanied by religious ceremony. Cure was by God, with
medical practitioners only relieving suffering. But there were
medical interventions such as pressure and binding were applied to
bleeding. Arrow and sword wounds to the skin or to any protruding
intestine were washed with warm water and sewn up with needle and
silk thread. Ribs were spread apart by a wedge to remove arrow
heads. Fractured bones were splinted or encased in plaster.
Dislocations were remedied. Hernias were trussed. Bladder stones
blocking urination were pushed back into the bladder or removed
through an artificial opening in the bladder. Surgery was
performed by butchers, blacksmiths, and barbers.
Roger Bacon, an Oxford master, began the science of physics. He
read Arab writers on the source of light rays being from the object
seen, the nature of refraction and reflection of light, and the
properties of lenses. He studied the radiation of light and heat.
He studied angles of reflection in plane, spherical, cylindrical,
and conical mirrors, in both their concave and convex aspects. He
did experiments in refraction in different media, e.g. air, water,
and glass, and knew that the human cornea refracted light, and
that the human eye lens was doubly convex. He comprehended the
magnifying power of convex lenses and conceptualized the
combination of lenses which would increase the power of vision by
magnification. He realized that rays of light pass so much faster
than those of sound or smell that the time is imperceptible to
humans. He knew that rays of heat and sound penetrate all matter
without our awareness and that opaque bodies offered resistance to
passage of light rays. He knew the power of parabolic concave
mirrors to cause parallel rays to converge after reflection to a
focus and knew that a mirror could be produced that would start a
fire at a fixed distance. These insights made it possible for
jewelers and weavers to use lenses to view their work instead of
glass globes full of water, which distorted all but the center of
the image: "spherical aberration". The lens, whose opposite
surfaces were sections of spheres, took the place of the
central parts of the globe over the image.
He knew about magnetic poles attracting, if different and
repelling, if the same, and the relation of magnets' poles to
those of the heavens and earth. He calculated the circumference of
the world and the latitude and longitude of terrestrial positions.
He foresaw sailing around the world.
Bacon began the science of chemistry when he took the empirical
knowledge as to a few metals and their oxides and some of the
principal alkalis, acids, and salts to the abstract level of
metals as compound bodies the elements of which might be separated
and recomposed and changed among the states of solid, liquid, and
gas. When he studied man's physical nature, health, and disease,
he opined that the usefulness of a talisman was not to bring about
a physical change, but to bring the patient into a frame of mind
more conducive to physical healing. He urged that there be
experiments in chemistry to develop medicinal drugs.
He studied different kinds of plants and the differences between
arable land, forest land, pasture land, and garden land.
He studied the planetary motions and astronomical tables to
forecast future events. He did calculations on days in a month and
days in a year which later contributed to the legal definition of
a leap year.
Bacon was an extreme proponent of the inductive method of finding
truths, e.g. by categorizing all available facts on a certain
subject to ascertain the natural laws governing it. His
contribution to the development of science was abstracting the
method of experiment from the concrete problem to see its bearing
and importance as a universal method of research. He advocated
changing education to include studies of the natural world using
observation, exact measurement, and experiments.
His explanation of a rainbow as a result of natural laws was
contrary to theological opinion that a rainbow was placed in the
heavens to assure mankind that there was not to be another
universal deluge.
The making and selling of goods diverged e.g. as the cloth
merchant severed from the tailor and the leather merchant severed
from the butcher. These craftsmen formed themselves into guilds,
which sought charters to require all craftsmen to belong to the
guild of their craft, to have legal control of the craft work, and
be able to expel any craftsman for disobedience. These guilds were
composed of master craftsmen, their journeymen, and apprentices.
These guilds determined the wages and working conditions of the
craftsmen and petitioned the borough authorities for ordinances
restraining trade, for instance by controlling the admission of
outsiders to the craft, preventing foreigners from selling in the
town except at fairs, limiting purchases of raw materials to
suppliers within the town, forbidding night work, restricting the
number of apprentices to each master craftsmen, and requiring a
minimum number of years for apprenticeships. In return, these
guilds assured quality control. In some boroughs, they did work
for the town, such as maintaining certain defensive towers or
walls of the town near their respective wards. In some boroughs,
fines for infractions of these regulations were split between the
guild and the government.
In some towns, the merchant guilds attempted to directly regulate
the craft guilds. Crafts fought each other. There was a street
battle with much bloodshed between the goldsmiths and the
parmenters and between the tailors and the cordwainers in 1267 in
London. There was also a major fight between the goldsmiths and
the tailors in 1268. The Parish Clerks' Company was chartered in
1233.
The citizens of London had a common seal for the city. London
merchants traveled throughout the nation with goods to sell exempt
from tolls. Most of the London aldermen were woolmongers,
vintners, skinners, and grocers by turns or carried on all these
branches of commerce at once. Jews were allowed to make loans with
interest up to 2d. a week for 20s. lent. There are three inns in
London. Inns typically had narrow facades, large courtyards,
lodging and refreshment for the well-off, warehousing and
marketing facilities for merchants, and stabling and repairs for
wagons. Caregiving infirmaries such as "Bethlehem Hospital" were
established in London. One was a lunatic infirmary founded by the
sheriff of London. Only tiles were used for roofing in London,
because wood shingles were fire hazards and fires in London had
been frequent. Some areas near London are disclaimed by the king
to be royal forest land, so all citizens could hunt there and till
their land there without interference by the royal foresters. The
Sheriff's court in London lost its old importance and handled
mainly trespass and debt cases, while important cases went to the
Hustings, which was presided over by the Mayor with the sheriffs
and aldermen in attendance. From the early 1200s, the Mayor's
Court took on the work which the weekly Husting could not manage.
This consisted mostly of assault and robbery cases. Murder and
manslaughter cases were left to the royal courts.
London aldermen were elected by the citizens of their respective
wards in wardmotes, in which was also arranged the watch,
protection against fire, and probably also assessment of the taxes
within the ward. There was much effort by the commoners to
influence the governance of the city. In 1261 they forced their
way into the townmote and by this brute show of strength, which
threatened riot, they made their own candidate mayor. Subsequent
elections were tumultuous.
The Tower of London now had outer walls of fortress buildings
surrounded by a wide and deep moat, over which was one stone
causeway and wooden drawbridge. Within this was an inner curtain
wall with twelve towers and an inner moat. The palace within was a
principal residence of English monarchs, whose retinue was
extensive, including the chief officers of state: Lord High
Steward, Lord High Chancellor, Lord High Treasurer, Lord Great
Chamberlain, Lord High Constable, Keeper of the Seals, and the
King's Marshall; lesser officials such as the Chamberlain of the
Candles, Keeper of the Tents, Master Steward of the Larder, Usher
of the Spithouse, Marshall of the Trumpets, Keeper of the Books,
Keeper of the Dishes and of the Cups, and Steward of the Buttery;
and numbers of cat hunters, wolf catchers, clerks and limners,
carters, water carriers, washerwomen and laundresses, chaplains,
lawyers, archers, huntsmen, hornblowers, barbers, minstrels,
guards and servitors, and bakers and confectioners. The fortress
also contained a garrison, armory, chapels, stables, forge,
wardrobe for a tailor's workroom and secure storage of valuable
clothes, silver plate, and expensive imports such as sugar, rice,
almonds, dried fruits, cinnamon, saffron, ginger, galingale,
zedoary, pepper, nutmeg, and mace. There was a kitchen with
courtyard for cattle, poultry, and pigs; dairy, pigeon loft,
brewery, beehives, fruit stores, gardens for vegetables and herbs;
and sheds for gardeners. There was also a mint, which minted a
gold penny worth 2s. of silver, a jewel house, and a menagerie
(with leopards, lions, a bear, and an elephant). The fortress also
served as a state prison. Most prisoners there had opposed the
royal will; they were usually permitted to live in quarters in the
same style they were used to, including servants and visits by
family and friends. But occasionally prisoners were confined in
irons in dark and damp dungeons.
The King's family, immediate circle, and most distinguished guests
dined elegantly in the Great Hall at midday. They would first
wash their hands in hot water poured by servants over bowls. The
table had silver plate, silver spoons, and cups of horn, crystal,
maple wood, or silver laid on a white cloth. Each guest brought
his own knife in a leather sheath attached to a belt or girdle. A
procession of servitors brought the many dishes to which the
gentlemen helped the ladies and the young their seniors by placing
the food in scooped-out half-loaves of bread that were afterwards
distributed to the poor. A wine cup was handed around the table.
In the winter after dinner, there would often be games of chess or
dice or songs of minstrels, and sometimes dancing, juggler or
acrobat displays, or storytelling by a minstrel. In the summer
there were outdoor games and tournaments. Hunting with hounds or
hawks was popular with both ladies and gentlemen. The King would
go to bed on a feather mattress with fur coverlet that was
surrounded by linen hangings. His grooms would sleep on trundle
beds in the same room. The queen likewise shared her bedchamber
with several of her ladies sleeping on trundle beds. Breakfast was
comprised of a piece of bread and a cup of wine taken after the
daily morning mass in one of the chapels. Sometimes a round and
deep tub was brought into the bedchamber by servants who poured
hot water onto the bather in the tub. Baths were often taken in
the times of Henry III, who believed in cleanliness and
sanitation. Henry III was also noted for his luxurious tastes. He
had a linen table cloth, goblets of mounted cocoa-nut, a glass cup
set in crystal, and silk and velvet mattresses, cushions, and
bolster. He had many rooms painted with gold stars, green and red
lions, and painted flowers. To his sister on her marriage, he gave
goldsmith's work, a chess table, chessmen in an ivory box, silver
pans and cooking vessels, robes of cloth of gold, embroidered
robes, robes of scarlet, blue, and green fine linen, Genoese cloth
of gold, two napkins, and thirteen towels.
In the King's 1235 grant to Oxford, the Mayor and good men were
authorized to take weekly for three years 1/2 d. on every cart
entering the town loaded with goods, if it was from the county, or
1d. if it came from outside the county; 1/4 d. for every horse
load, except for brushwood; 1/2 d. on every horse, mare, ox, or
cow brought to sell; and 1/2 d. for every five sheep, goats, or
pigs.
English ships had one mast with a square sail. The hulls were made
of planks overlapping each other. There was a high fore castle
[tower] on the bow, a top castle on the mast, and a high stern
castle from which to shoot arrows down on other ships. There were
no rowing oars, but steering was still by an oar on the starboard
side of the ship. The usual carrying capacity was 30 tuns [big
casks of wine each with about 250 gallons]. On the coasts there
were lights and beacons. Harbors at river mouths were kept from
silting up. Ships were loaded from piers. The construction of
London Bridge had just been finished. Bricks began to be imported
for building. About 10% of the population lived in towns.
Churches had stained glass windows.
Newcastle-on-Tyne received these new rights:
1. And that they shall justly have their lands and tenures
and mortgages and debts, whoever owes them to them.
2. Concerning their lands and tenures within the town,
right shall be done to them according to the custom of the
city Winton.
3. And of all their debts which are lent in
Newcastle-on-Tyne and of mortgages there made, pleas shall
be held at Newcastle-on-Tyne.
4. None of them shall plead outside the walls of the City of
Newcastle-on-Tyne on any plea, except pleas of tenures
outside the city and except the minters and my ministers.
5. That none of them be distrained by any without the said
city for the repayment of any debt to any person for which
he is not capital debtor or surety.
6. That the burgesses shall be quit of toll and lastage
[duty on a ship's cargo] and pontage [tax for repairing
bridges] and have passage back and forth.
7. Moreover, for the improvement of the city, I have granted
them that they shall be quit of year's gift and of scotale
[pressure to buy ale at the sheriff's tavern], so that my
sheriff of Newcastle-on-Tyne or any other minister shall
not make a scotale.
8. And whosoever shall seek that city with his merchandise,
whether foreigners or others, of whatever place they may be,
they may come sojourn and depart in my safe peace, on paying
the due customs and debts, and any impediment to these
rights is prohibited.
9. We have granted them also a merchant guild.
10. And that none of them [in the merchant guild] shall
fight by combat.
The king no longer lives on his own from income from his own
lands, but takes money from the treasury. A tax of a percentage of
1/15 th of personal property was levied in 1225 for a war, in
return for which the king signed the Magna Carta. It was to be
paid by all tenants-in-chief, men of the royal domain, burgesses
of the boroughs and cities, clerical tenants-in-chief, and
religious houses. The percentage tax came to be used frequently
and ranged from about 1/40 th to 1/5 th. In 1294, this tax was
bifurcated into one percentage amount for the rural districts and
a higher one for urban districts, because the burgesses had
greater wealth and much of it was hard to uncover because it was
in the possession of customers and debtors. It was usually 1/10 th
for towns and royal domains and 1/15 th in the country. This amount
of money collected by this tax increased with the wealth of the
country.