Probably the superior privileges granted by King Edward to his
_Kyngstown-svper-Hvll_ provided very largely the cause of the decline.
The climax of its misfortunes came with a succession of extremely high
tides about the year 1356—tides which ‘sometimes exceeding beyond
measure the height of the town, and surrounding it like a wall on
every side,’ caused its absolute destruction. In 1400 Ravenserodd was
recorded to be ‘altogether consumed,’ while nothing remained of Ald
Ravenser but a single manor-house.
* * * * *
Such was the condition of the once prosperous port when in the month of
June, 1399, Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and grandson of King Edward the
Third, landed on its site with sixty followers. As Henry of Bolingbroke,
Earl of Hereford, he had in 1398 been banished by King Richard II. for a
term of six years, in order that a duel between him and the Duke of
Norfolk might be prevented. As Henry, Duke of Lancaster, he now returned
to claim the estates of his father, John of Gaunt, which estates Richard
had confiscated on their holder’s death.
When Henry of Lancaster landed at _Ravenserespourne_, he found its sole
occupant to be a hermit, by name Matthew Danthorpe. This hermit was
engaged in building a chapel on the desolate bank of shingle; and great
must have been his surprise when a ship carrying a company of well-armed
men bore down upon his hermitage instead of passing up the river, as
ships were accustomed to do.
Still greater must his surprise have been when he found that the ship
belonged to a royal Duke, and that its arrival was shortly followed by
arrivals from inland of the great Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland,
and the Earl of Westmorland. His surprise was, probably, not unmixed
with fear. For he was building his chapel without having obtained a
license from the King, and rumours were soon flying about that Henry of
Lancaster had come to claim something more than the estates which were
his by right of descent.
These flying rumours soon became certainties. Other lords and barons
rallied round the standard of Henry, and before long his sixty followers
had become as many thousands. At the time of his landing King Richard
was in Ireland; and when, after being long delayed by contrary winds, he
landed on the coast of Wales, he soon fell into the hands of Henry and
was taken a prisoner to the Tower of London. On the 30th of September
Henry, addressing the Members of Parliament, spoke as follows:
‘In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of
Lancaster, challenge this realm of England ... as I am descended by
right line of the blood coming from the good lord King Henry the
Third.’
Then Parliament declared the abdication of King Richard the Second and
the accession of King Henry the Fourth.
And what meanwhile of the hermit of _Ravenserespourne_? Had Henry
forgotten him? On the last day of September Henry was proclaimed King,
on the first day of October he signed at Westminster a royal license
making known that:
Of our special grace we have pardoned and remitted to the said
Matthew all manner of trespasses and mistakes committed by him in
this matter....
And moreover, of our more abundant grace, we have given and granted
to the said Matthew the aforesaid place, to hold to his successors,
the hermits of the aforesaid place, together with the chapel
aforesaid, when it shall be built and finished, and also the wreck
of the sea, and waifs, and all other profits and commodities
contingent to the sands for two leagues round the same place, for
ever.
The landing of King Henry IV. at Ravenser Spurn was commemorated by the
erection of a cross at the place of landing. Was it a grateful Matthew
Danthorpe who erected it? Very possibly. At any rate it was erected
within fourteen years of Henry’s landing. Many years afterwards it was
removed to Kilnsea; later still it was removed to Burton Constable, and
finally to Hedon, where it stands to-day in the garden of Holyrood
House.
* * * * *
The reign of Henry IV. was followed by that of his son and that of his
grandson. Then came in 1471 one of the most curious parallels in history
that it is possible to imagine. The ‘Wars of the Roses’ had been
discomforting the land for sixteen years. Henry VI. had been deposed in
1461, and Edward IV. had been elected in his place. But in 1470 Henry
had once more been placed upon the throne and Edward had fled to
Holland. A year later the latter returned, and landed on the same spot
where Henry Bolingbroke had landed seventy-two years earlier.
The parallel, however, does not end with his landing. As Henry of
Lancaster proclaimed that he had come merely to claim his ancestral
lands, so Edward of York proclaimed that he had returned for this same
purpose only. As a Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was the chief
supporter of Henry of Lancaster, so a Henry Percy, Earl of
Northumberland, came to the support of Edward of York. And as Henry of
Lancaster was fated to depose and put to death King Richard II., so
Edward of York was fated to overthrow and cause to be murdered King
Henry VI.
It had been Edward’s intention to land on the coast of Norfolk. But
finding a landing there impossible because of the guard kept by the
Earls of Warwick and Oxford, he had headed his four large and fourteen
small ships for the mouth of the Humber. The following is part of the
account of his landing given by Ralph Holinshed, a chronicler living in
the reign of Queen Elizabeth:—
The same night following, a great storme of winds and weather rose,
sore troubling the seas, and continued till the fourteenth day of
that moneth being thursday, on the which day with greater danger, by
reason of the tempestuous rage and torment of the troubled seas, he
arriued at the head of Humber, where the other ships were scattered
from him, each one seuered from other; so that of necessitie they
were driuen to land in sunder where they best might, for doubt to be
cast awaie in that perillous tempest. The king with the lord
Hastings his chamberleine, and other to the number of fiue hundred
men being in one ship, landed within Humber on Holdernesse side, at
a place called Rauenspurgh, euen in the same place where Henrie erle
of Derbie, after called king Henrie the fourth landed, when he came
to depriue king Richard the second of the crowne, and to vsurpe it
to himselfe.
Richard, duke of Glocester, and three hundred men in his companie,
tooke land in another place foure miles distant from thence, where
his brother king Edward did land. The earle Riuers, and with him two
hundred men, landed at a place called Pole, fourteene miles from the
hauen where the king came on land. The residue of his people landed
some here, some there, in place where for their suerties they
thought best. On the morrow, being the fifteenth of March, now that
the tempest ceased, and euerie man being got to land, they drew from
euerie of their landing places towards the king, who for the first
night was lodged in a poore village, two miles from the place where
he first set foot on land.
[Illustration:
_Photo by_] [_C.W. Mason_
Henry of Lancaster’s Cross.
Now in the garden of Holyrood House, Hedon.
]
The landing of Edward IV. at Ravenser Spurn was not entirely to the
liking of the men of Holderness. At first he was opposed by forces
raised by ‘Syr John Westerdale,’ the vicar of Keyingham, and by a
certain Martin atte See, or Martin de la Mare, a descendant of the first
inhabitant of Ravenserodd. The vicar of Keyingham was afterwards cast
into a London prison for his opposition, but Martin de la Mare was won
over to Edward’s side, and was knighted eleven years later.
By his will Sir Martin de la Mare directed that he should be ‘beried in
the queere of the parissh churche of Alhalowes in Barneston in
Holdernes;’ and on the left-hand side of the chancel in this church
there is an altar tomb, with a beautiful alabaster effigy, which until
recently was thought to be his. It is, however, now known to be that of
another knight who was buried at Barmston some fifty years before the
death of Sir Martin de la Mare.
XVIII.
LIFE IN A MEDIÆVAL TOWN.
[Illustration:
PRESENT SEAL OF THE
BOROUGH OF HEDON.
]
What sort of life did the townsfolk lead five centuries ago? Suppose the
townsfolk of to-day could suddenly be transported back five hundred
years, what would be the things likely to strike them as most strange?
One of these would certainly be the way in which the town was cut off,
as it were, from the surrounding district. Thus Hedon was cut off by two
Havens, one natural, the other artificial, and by another artificial
watercourse called the Town Moat. Beverley was entirely surrounded by a
similar moat, part of which remains in our own day, and entrance to the
town was gained by _Bars_ spanning the roads. Those at Beverley were
known respectively as the North Bar, Newbiggyn Bar, Keldgate Bar,
Norwood Bar, and South Bar.
[Illustration:
_Photo by_] North Bar Without, Beverley. [_C.W. Mason_
]
How early these Bars were built we do not know, but there have recently
been discovered the complete accounts for the rebuilding of North Bar in
1409. This is the Bar which exists to-day, and it has, in its five
hundred years’ existence, undergone little change, except for the
cutting through it of two side-passages for foot traffic. It still has
the massive oak folding doors which were shut every night at sunset, and
the groove can yet be seen in which the portcullis worked. If you ride
on through the Bar to York, you will enter that city by the Walmgate
Bar, and above your head as you pass through this you may see the bottom
spikes of its still remaining portcullis.
Hull was defended even more strongly than Beverley; for in 1322 the King
granted to its townsfolk leave to defend themselves with a wall as well
as a moat. A portion of the wall which they built is represented on the
old plan of Hull reproduced in part on the opposite page.
This plan shows the town as it was about the year 1380, and makes very
clear the difference between a town and a village five centuries ago. On
the left bank of the river Hull is the village of _Dripole_, with its
church and few scattered houses; on the right bank is the town of
_Kyngeston-upon-Hull_, with its churches, houses, and gardens closely
packed together within a castellated wall, and protected by a riverside
battery armed with three small cannon. The shipping on the river is seen
to be also protected, and this with an iron chain drawn across the mouth
of the river.
In the part of the plan not here given, there is shown a more ominous
sign of authority. Outside the Beverley Gate stands a gibbet on which
hang the bodies of three culprits as warnings of the fate that comes to
evil-doers.
* * * * *
To those accustomed to the wide and well-paved streets of our modern
towns, the streets of a mediæval town would appear very strange. On the
plan of Hull the two main streets, then known as _Aldgate_ and
_Lowgate_, are shown fairly wide. But _High Street_, which follows
regularly in its course the windings of the river Hull, is much
narrower; and the by-streets of the town are so narrow as not to appear
at all.
[Illustration: PART OF A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY PLAN OF HULL.]
[Illustration:
HIGH STREET, HULL.
Showing the ancient _King’s Head Inn_, now pulled down.
]
Streets in mediæval times were astonishingly narrow. The ‘High Street’
of Hull has changed little during the last five hundred years, and
to-day there are portions in which two carts cannot pass each other. The
extreme width of the western half of Grimsby Lane, one of the by-streets
connecting High Street and the Market Place, named after Simon de
Grymesby, Mayor of Hull in 1391, is only nine feet. So also the main
street in Beverley now barely allows two vehicles to pass each other,
and some of the side lanes entering it, such as Laundress Lane and
Tindall Lane, are even narrower than the Grimsby Lane just mentioned.
In all these cases the roadway has remained practically the same width
for a space of five centuries. But five centuries ago the condition of
the road and the amount of air-space above it were very different from
what they are to-day. Mediæval houses were built of thick beams of
timber, with the intervening spaces filled in with brick and plaster,
and security of the floors was obtained by making the second story
project a foot or two beyond the first, and the third project similarly
beyond the second. The result was a very firmly built house, but a very
narrowly confined roadway.
[Illustration: SECTIONS OF A MEDIÆVAL AND A MODERN STREET.]
The difference between the mediæval and the modern style of road
planning is shown in the above diagram, which gives to scale the
building-lines of High Street and King Edward Street—the oldest and the
newest business streets in the city of Hull.
Mediæval streets were paved with round cobble stones—such stones as
still form the pavement of the market-places of Beverley and Hedon. It
is on record that in the year 1400 two Dutch ships brought into Hull
cargoes of these stones amounting to 56,000 in number. But the method of
drainage was then exactly the opposite of what it is to-day; for the
middle of the road was the gutter, or _kennel_. If we imagine that there
were then no ‘dust-carts,’ and that each householder got rid of refuse
by the simple process of casting it out into the kennel for the next
shower of rain to wash away, we shall come to some idea of the general
condition of the streets in a mediæval town.
Little wonder that in mediæval towns were bred foul diseases that broke
out at intervals and sometimes carried off half the population in the
course of a few months. In 1349—the year of the ‘Black Death’—1361,
1369, and 1451 the _Plague_ visited the East Riding, and there are to be
seen in the chancel floor of Holy Trinity Church, Hull, the tombstone
and brasses of a merchant named Richard Byll, who was one of its victims
in the last-mentioned year.
* * * * *
Five centuries ago one of the privileges of a free borough was the
holding of a market for the sale of goods by people who were not
burgesses of the town. Every free borough had its market-place, which
usually lay under the shadow of the parish church, as it does to-day at
Beverley, Driffield, Hedon, Howden and Hull. The markets were held on
certain fixed days of the week, and Tuesdays and Fridays have been the
market-days at Hull since the granting of King Edward I.’s charter in
the year 1299.
While the position of the market, and probably also its general
appearance, have not altered during all these centuries, certain of its
adornments have entirely disappeared. Beverley is the only town in the
East Riding that has preserved its market cross. From all the towns of
the East Riding have disappeared the stocks, the pillory, and the
ducking-stool.
[Illustration: PARISH STOCKS PRESERVED IN BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
To the stocks and the pillory went in former times such men and women as
‘John Fleshewer, butcher,’ of Hedon, who in 1420 was brought before the
town bailiffs on the charge that he ‘did sell flesh not useable, old,
useless, and worthless,’ and ‘Agnes, wife of John Piese, schipman,’ also
of Hedon, who ‘did sell two penny wheat loaves of bread, not useable and
fusty.’ In the ducking-stool went to the town moat or the river the
scolding woman whose temper and tongue were equally beyond their owner’s
control. So the stocks, pillory, and ducking-stool proved themselves to
be not only ornamental but also very useful.
The daily work of wage-earners five hundred years ago was very different
from what it is to-day. There were then no such things as our huge
factories in which thousands of ‘hands’ are employed day after day at
the same monotonous toil. Work was more varied and the conditions were
much freer. But hours were longer and pay was considerably less. The
legal hours of the day labourer from March to September were 5 a.m. to 7
p.m., with two hours allowed for breakfast and dinner. On the other
hand, ‘Bank Holidays’—or Holy-Days, as they were then called—were far
more numerous. _Holy-days_, in fact, reduced the working-days of the
year to only 264 in number.
The building-accounts for the Beverley North Bar in 1409 give a record
of all the wages paid; and from these we find that the wages of a
bricklayer were 6d. per day, of a labourer 4d., and of a carter with his
horse and cart 12d.[40] What would the ‘British workman’ of to-day think
of the following scale of wages, which formed the _statute yearly wages_
in 1444:—
With food and
clothing.
s. d. s. d.
Bailiff of husbandry 23 4 or 5 0
Hind, carter, shepherd 20 0 ” 4 0
Labourer 15 0 ” 3 4
Woman servant 10 0 ” 4 0
Child under 14 6 0 ” 3 0
Footnote 40:
The total cost of the building operations, from the surveying of the
ground to the ‘roseynyng’ of the doors, was £96 17s. 4½d.—about £2000
in our money.
The work of the _Trade Gilds_ in regulating the trade and industries of
a town will be described in another chapter, but here is the place to
refer to the work of the RELIGIOUS or SOCIAL GILDS which were so
prominent a feature of mediæval town life. These were voluntary
associations of men and women, who undertook to pay sums of money into a
common fund, on which all members could draw during old age or during
periods of sickness. In other words they were the Friendly Societies—the
‘Hearts of Oak,’ ‘Ancient Order of Foresters,’ and ‘Oddfellows’—of our
own times.
At Hull there were six of these Gilds, the most important being the Gild
of St. John Baptist, the Gild of Corpus Christi, and the Gild of the
Holy Trinity. In the case of the first of these a member undertook to
pay two shillings of silver each year, in four instalments, and derived
the following benefits, on becoming ‘infirm, bowed, blind, deaf, dumb,
maimed, ... either in youth or age.’:—
(1) weekly, one halfpenny of silver;
(2) at the Festival of St. Martin in winter 5s. of silver for one
garment.
The entrance fee to this Gild was 13s. 4d., but that to the Gild of
Corpus Christi was 3 lbs. of silver. Here, however, the ‘sick pay’ was
correspondingly higher, being 14d. weekly; and if any brother or sister
was in need 20s. was ‘granted on loan.’
In the reign of Edward VI. nearly all the Religious Gilds came to an
end. Henry VIII. had intended their suppression, but it fell to the lot
of Protector Somerset to be their actual destroyer. On the plea that
they were engaged in religious services not in accordance with
Government ideas, they suffered the fate of the monasteries; and their
property in lands, houses, and plate—their invested funds we should call
it to-day—was diverted to other purposes.
Of the Gilds at Hull the sole one to survive was the _Gild of the Holy
Trinity_, which was founded in 1369 and later became identical with the
_Shipman’s Gild_. This identity with the Shipman’s Gild in 1547 saved
its life, and in place of being swept away its privileges were
increased. It had many private benefactors, chief among whom was Thomas
Ferries, who in 1631 gave it the estate of the Whitefriars on which its
buildings now stand. King Charles II. granted it a charter in which it
is stated that the Gild
hath much tended to the furtherance of Navigation, the increase of
shipping, and the well breeding of Seamen in that Town and Port.
[Illustration: ARMS OF THE HULL TRINITY HOUSE.]
The Corporation of the HULL TRINITY HOUSE consists of twelve Elder
Brethren, six Assistants, and an indefinite number of Younger Brethren.
From the Elder Brethren two Wardens are chosen annually. They maintain
several almshouses for mariners and their dependents, and one of the
best navigation schools in the country; they also grant out-pensions to
a large number of worn-out seamen.
* * * * *
We have dealt with the work of the townsfolk in the fifteenth century,
but what of their amusements? Here they were certainly nothing like so
well off as their descendants of the twentieth century. Of theatres and
kinematograph shows they had none. Football matches they had
occasionally. But it was with this difference—that a football match then
was not one in which thirty men played while thirty thousand looked on
and yelled their applause or disapproval. A football match in those days
meant one in which the ‘field’ was the main street of the town, the
‘goals’ were the town wall or moat at either end of the street, and the
‘players’ were the whole body of townsfolk. Such a match is still played
annually in at least one town of Northern England.
For the rest the people had their Church-Ales, their Miracle Plays, and
their Fairs. CHURCH-ALES were parish feasts held in and around the
church on the eve of the church’s saint’s-day; and to them each
parishioner contributed his share—a dozen loaves, a cheese, or a few
gallons of ale—the whole being then sold as required, while all present
made merry. Church-Ales were, in other words, the ‘Parish-Teas’ and the
‘Knife-and-Fork Suppers’ of our own degenerate days.
As has been said, there were in mediæval towns no theatres. Still the
townsfolk had their plays. In very early times the play-house was the
church, the plays were representations of events recorded in the
Scriptures, and the performers were the clergy.
In the thirteenth century, however, it became the custom for these
MIRACLE-PLAYS, as they were called, to be performed no longer in the
church, but on moveable platforms, known as ‘pageants,’ in streets and
market-places, or on village greens, at the different fairs and
festivals throughout the country. Yorkshire seems to have taken a
prominent share in their creation; for we have to-day a manuscript of
forty-eight plays performed regularly at York for two hundred years, and
another of thirty plays performed at Wakefield. We know also that at
Beverley such plays were produced each year on the festival of Corpus
Christi—the Thursday after Trinity Sunday—from 1407 to 1604, and that at
Hull the play of _Noah_ was performed in the streets once each year for
a space of three centuries.
[Illustration: A MIRACLE PLAY IN THE OLDEN TIME.]
What the performance of a Miracle Play was like may be judged pretty
well from the accompanying illustration. The pageant was a large
‘two-decker’ vehicle, which could be drawn by men or horses from one
‘station’ to another.
[Illustration:
NOAH’S ARK.
(_From an old French Miracle Play_).
]
It was the custom at York for the first play in the series—_God the
Father Almighty Creating and Forming the Heavens_—to begin on Corpus
Christi morning at 5 o’clock. This was at the gates of the Priory of
Holy Trinity. When this part of the Creation had been satisfactorily got
through, its pageant passed on to take up its second station ‘at the
door of Robert Harpham’; while another play showing _God the Father
Creating the Earth_ took its place. And so on through the whole series,
each play being thus performed at twelve different stations during the
course of the day.
The performers of these plays were the members of the various Trade
Gilds of a town. So far as the number of plays allowed, each Gild might
have its own play, and the plays were as far as possible appropriately
distributed. Thus at York the Goldsmiths had allotted to them _The Three
Kings Coming from the East_, the Vintners had _The Turning of Water into
Wine_, and the Butchers had _The Crucifixion_. At both York and Hull the
Shipmen, or Mariners, had the play of _Noah_.
Stage properties were well looked after. The ‘ark’ used in a French
performance of _The Deluge_ is here shown, while that used in the
corresponding play produced each ‘Plough Monday’[41] by the Hull Shipmen
was equally elaborate though built more in resemblance to an ordinary
ship. It had mast and rigging, and pictures of the animals that ‘went in
two by two’ hung round its sides painted on boards. From one festival to
another it remained suspended from the roof of Holy Trinity Church.
Footnote 41:
The first Monday after ‘Twelfth Night,’ _i.e._ the Monday following
January 6th.
Some curious items occur in the old accounts of the Hull Trinity House
in this connection:—
To Robert Brown, playing God 6d.
To Noah and his wife 1s. 6d.
To a shipwright for clinking Noah’s
ship, one day 7d.
For three skins for Noah’s coat, making
it, and a rope to hang the ship in the
kirk 2s. 5d.
When, in 1494, the Gild of the Holy Trinity had to purchase a new Ark,
the accounts show also that the cost amounted to the tremendous sum of
£7 4s. 11d.