SOCIAL CONDITIONS
So long as a man is in perfect health, the movements of his life-organs
are hardly perceptible to him. He becomes conscious of their existence
only when something has happened to obstruct their free play. So, again,
is it with the body politic, for just so long as things move easily and
without friction, hardly are anyone's thoughts stimulated in the
direction of social reform. But directly distress or disturbance begin
to be felt, public attention is awakened, and directed to the
consideration of actual conditions. Schemes are suggested, new ideas
broached. Hence, that there were at all in the Middle Ages men with
remedies to be applied to "the open sores of the world," makes us
realise that there must have been in mediaeval life much matter for
discontent. Perhaps not altogether unfortunately, the seeds of unrest
never need much care in sowing, for the human heart would else advance
but little towards "the perfect day." The rebels of history have been as
necessary as the theorists and the statesmen; indeed, but for the
rebels, the statesmen would probably have remained mere politicians.
Upon the ruins of the late Empire the Germanic races built up their
State. Out of the fragments of the older _villa_ they erected the
_manor_. No doubt this new social unit contained the strata of many
civilisations; but it will suffice here to recognise that, while it is
perhaps impossible to apportion out to each its own particular
contribution to the whole result, the manor must have been affected
quite considerably by Roman, Celt, and Teuton. The chief difference
which we notice between this older system and the conditions of modern
agricultural life--for the manor was pre-eminently a rural
organism--lies in the enormous part then played in the organisation of
society by the idea of Tenure. For, through all Western civilisation,
from the seventh century to the fourteenth, the personal equation was
largely merged in the territorial. One and all, master and man, lord and
tenant, were "tied to the soil." Within the manor there was first the
land held in demesne, the "in-land"--this was the perquisite of the lord
himself; it was farmed by him directly. Only when modern methods began
to push out the old feudal concepts do we find this portion of the
estate regularly let out to tenants, though there are evidences of its
occasionally having been done even in the twelfth century. But besides
what belonged thus exclusively to the lord of the manor, there was a
great deal more that was legally described as held in villeinage. That
is to say, it was in the hands of others, who had conditional use of it.
In England these tenants were chiefly of three kinds--the villeins, the
cottiers, the serfs. The first held a house and yard in the village
street, and had in the great arable fields that surrounded them strips
of land amounting sometimes to thirty acres. To their lord they owed
work for three days each week; they also provided oxen for the plough.
But more than half of their time could be devoted to the farming of
their property. Then next in order came the cottiers, whose holding
probably ran to not more than five acres. They had no plough-work, and
did more of the manual labour of the farm, such as hedging,
nut-collecting, &c. A much greater portion of their time than was the
case with the villeins was at the disposal of their master, nor indeed,
owing to the lesser extent of their property, did they need so much
opportunity for working their own land. Lowest in the scale of all
(according to the Domesday Book of William I, the first great land-value
survey of all England, they numbered not more than sixteen per cent. of
the whole population) came the slaves or serfs. These had almost
exclusively the live stock to look after, being engaged as foresters,
shepherds, swineherds, and servants of the household. They either lived
under the lord's own roof, or might even have their cottage in the
village with its strip of land about it, sufficient, with the provisions
and cloth provided them, to eke out a scanty livelihood. Distinct from
these three classes and their officials (bailiffs, seneschals, reeves,
&c.) were the free tenants, who did no regular work for the manor, but
could not leave or part with their land. Their services were
requisitioned at certain periods like harvest-time, when there came a
demand for more than the ordinary number of hands. This sort of labour
was known as boon-work.
It is clear at once that, theoretically at least, there was no room in
such a community for the modern landless labourer. Where all the workers
were paid by their tenancy of land, where, in other words, fixity and
stability of possession were the very basis of social life, the fluidity
of labour was impossible. Men could not wander from place to place
offering to employers the hire of their toil. Yet we feel sure that, in
actual fact, wherever the population increased, there must have grown up
in the process of time a number of persons who could find neither work
nor maintenance on their father's property. Younger sons, or more remote
descendants, must gradually have found that there was no scope for them,
unless, like an artisan class, they worked for wages. Exactly at what
date began the rise of this agricultural and industrial class of fee
labourers we cannot very clearly tell. But in England--and probably the
same holds good elsewhere--between 1200 and 1350 there are traces of its
great development. There is evidence, which each year becomes more ample
and more definite, that during that period there was an increasingly
large number of people pressing on the means of subsistence. Though the
land itself might be capable of supporting a far greater number of
inhabitants, the part under cultivation could only just have been enough
to keep the actually existing population from the margin of destitution.
The statutes in English law which protest against a wholesale occupation
of the common-land by individuals were not directed merely against the
practices of a landlord class, for the makers of the law were themselves
landlords. It is far more likely that this invasion of village rights
was due to the action of these "landless men," who could not otherwise
be accommodated. The superfluous population was endeavouring to find for
itself local maintenance.
Precisely at this time, too, in England--where the steps in the
evolution from mediaeval to modern conditions have been more clearly
worked out than elsewhere--increase of trade helped to further the same
development. Money, species, in greater abundance was coming into
circulation. The traders were beginning to take their place in the
national life. The Guilds were springing into power, and endeavouring to
capture the machinery of municipal government. As a result of all this
commercial activity money payments became more frequent. The villein was
able to pay his lord instead of working for him, and by the sale of the
produce from his own yard-land was put in a position to hire helpers for
himself, and to develop his own agricultural resources. Nor was it the
tenant alone who stood to gain by this arrangement. The lord, too, was
glad of being possessed of money. He, too, needed it as a substitute for
his duty of military service to the king, for scutage (the payment of a
tax graduated according to the number of knights, which each baron had
to lead personally in time of war as a condition of holding land at all)
had taken the place of the old feudal levy. Moreover, he was probably
glad to obtain hired labour in exchange for the forced labour which the
system of tenure made general; just as later the abolition of slavery
was due largely to the fact that, in the long run, it did not pay to
have the plantations worked by men whose every advantage it was to shirk
as much toil as possible.
But in most cases, as far as can be judged now, the lord was methodical
in releasing services due to him. The week-work was first and freely
commuted, for regular hired labour was easy to obtain; but the
boon-work--the work, that is, which was required for unusual
circumstances of a purely temporary character (such as harvesting,
&c.)--was, owing to the obvious difficulty of its being otherwise
supplied, only arranged for in the last resort. Thus, by one of the many
paradoxes of history, the freest of all tenants were the last to achieve
freedom. When the serfs had been set at liberty by manumission, the
socage-tenants or free-tenants, as they were called, were still bound by
their fixed agreements of tenure. It is evident, however, that such
emancipation as did take place was conditioned by the supply of free
labour, primarily, that is, by the rising surplus of population. Not
until he was certain of being able to hire other labourers would a
landholder let his own tenants slip off the burdens of their service.
But this process, by which labour was rendered less stationary, was
immeasurably hastened by the advent of a terrible catastrophe. In 1347
the Black Death arrived from the East. Across Europe it moved, striking
fear by the inevitableness of its coming. It travelled at a steady rate,
so that its arrival could be easily foretold. Then, too, the
unmistakable nature of its symptoms and the suddenness of the death it
caused also added to the horror of its approach.
On August 15, 1349, it got to Bristol, and by Michaelmas had reached
London. For a year or more it ravaged the countryside, so that whole
villages were left without inhabitants. Seeing England so stunned by the
blow, the Scots prepared to attack, thinking the moment propitious for
paying off old scores; but their army, too, was smitten by the
pestilence, and their forces broke up. Into every glen of Wales it
worked its havoc; in Ireland only the English were affected--the "wild
Irish" were immune. But in 1357 even these began to suffer. Curiously
enough, Geoffrey Baker in his Chronicle (which, written in his own hand,
after six hundred years yet remains in the Bodleian at Oxford) tells us
that none fell till they were afraid of it. Still more curiously,
Chaucer, Langland, and Wycliff, who all witnessed it, hardly mention it
at all. There could not be any more eloquent tribute to the nameless
horror that it caused than this hushed silence on the part of three of
England's greatest writers.
Henry Knighton of Leicester Abbey, canon and chronicler, tells us some
of the consequences following on the plague, and shows us very clearly
the social upheaval it effected. The population had now so much
diminished that prices of live stock went down, an ox costing 4_s._, a
cow 12_d._, and a sheep 3_d._ But for the same reason wages went up, for
labour had suddenly grown scarce. For want of hands to bring in the
harvest, whole crops rotted in the fields. Many a manor had lost a third
of its inhabitants, and it was difficult, under the fixed services of
land tenure, to see what remedy could be applied. In despair the feudal
system was set aside, and lord competed with lord to obtain landless
labourers, or to entice within their jurisdiction those whose own
masters ill-treated them in any way. The villeins themselves sought to
procure enfranchisement, and the right to hire themselves out to their
lords, or to any master they might choose. Commutation was not
particularly in evidence as the legal method of redress; though it too
was no doubt here and there arranged for. But for the most part the
villein took the law into his own hands, left his manor, and openly sold
his labour to the highest bidder.
But at once the governing class took fright. In their eyes it seemed as
though their tenants were taking an unfair advantage of the
disorganisation of the national life. Even before Parliament could meet,
in 1349 an ordnance was issued by the King (Edward III), which compelled
all servants, whether bond or free, to take up again the customary
services, and forced work on all who had no income in land, or were not
otherwise engaged. The lord on whose manor the tenant had heretofore
dwelt had preferential claim to his labour, and could threaten with
imprisonment every refractory villein. Within two years a statute had
been enacted by Parliament which was far more detailed in its operation,
fixing wages at the rate they had been in the twentieth year of the
King's reign (_i.e._ at a period before the plague, when labour was
plentiful), and also with all appearance of justice determining the
prices of agricultural produce. It was the first of a very long series
of Acts of Parliament that, with every right intention, but with a
really obvious futility, endeavoured to reduce everything to what it had
been in the past, to put back the hands of the clock, and keep them
back. But one strange fact is noticeable.
Whether unconsciously or not, the framers of these statutes were
themselves striking the hardest blow at the old system of tenure. From
1351 the masters' preferential claim to the villeins of their own manor
disappears, or is greatly limited. Henceforth the labourers are to
appear in the market place with their tools, and (reminiscent of
scriptural conditions) wait till some man hired them. The State, not the
lord, is now regulating labour. Labour itself has passed from being
"tied to the soil," and has become fluid. It is no longer a personal
obligation, but a commodity.
Even Parliament recognised that in many respects at least the old order
had passed away. The statute of 1351 allows "men of the counties of
Stafford, Lancaster, Derby, the borders of Wales and Scotland, &c., to
come in August time to labour in other counties, and to return in
safety, as they were heretofore wont to do." It is the legalisation of
what had been looked at, up till then, askance. The long, silent
revolution had become conscious. But the lords were, as we have said,
not altogether sorry for the turn things had taken. Groaning under
pressure from the King's heavy war taxation, and under the demands which
the advance of new standards of comfort (especially between 1370 and
1400) entailed, they let off on lease even the demesne land, and became
to a very great extent mere rent-collectors. Commutation proceeded
steadily, with much haggling so as to obtain the highest price from the
eager tenant. Wages rose slowly, it is true, but rose all the same; and
rent, though still high, was becoming, on the whole, less intolerable.
But the drain of the French war, and the peculation in public funds
brought about the final upheaval which completed what the Black Death
had begun. The capricious and unfairly graduated poll-tax of 1381 came
as a climax, and roused the Great Revolt of that year, a revolt
carefully engineered and cleverly organised, which yet for the demands
it made is a striking testimony to the moderation, the good sense, and
also the oppressed state of the English peasant.
The fourfold petition presented to the King by the rebels was:
(1) The abolition of serfdom.
(2) The reduction of rent to 4_d._ per acre.
(3) The liberty to buy and sell in market.
(4) A free pardon.
Compare the studiously restrained tone of these articles with the
terrible atrocities and vengeance wreaked by the Jacquerie in France,
and the no less awful mob violence perpetrated in Florence by the
Ciompi. While it shows no doubt in a kindly light the more equitable
rule of the English landholder, it remains a monument, also, of the
fair-mindedness of the English worker.
In the towns much the same sort of struggle had been going on; for the
towns themselves, more often than not, sprang up on the demesne of some
lord, whether king, Church, or baron. But here the difficulties were
complicated still further by the interference of the Guilds, which in
the various trades regulated the hours of labour, the quality of the
work, and the rate of remuneration. Yet, on the other hand, it is
undoubted that, once the squalor of the earlier stages of urban life had
been removed or at least improved, the social condition of the poor,
from the fourteenth century onwards, was immeasurably superior in the
towns to what it was in the country districts.
The quickening influence of trade was making itself felt everywhere. In
1331 the cloth trade was introduced at Bristol, and settled down then
definitely in the west of England. In the north we notice the beginnings
of the coal trade. Licence was given to the burgesses of Newcastle to
dig for coal in 1351; and in 1368 two merchants of the same city had
applied for and obtained royal permission to send that precious
commodity "to any part of the kingdom, either by land or water." Even
vast speculations were opening up for English commercial enterprise,
when, by cornering the wool and bribing the King, a ring of merchants
were able to break the Italian banking houses, and disorganise the
European money market, for on the Continent all this energy in trade was
already old. The house of Anjou, for example, had made the kingdom of
Naples a great trading centre. Its corn and cattle were famous the world
over. But in Naples it was the sovereigns (like Edward III and Edward IV
in England) who patronised the commercial instincts of their people. By
the indefatigable genius of the royal house, industry was stimulated,
and private enterprise encouraged. By wise legislation the interests of
the merchants were safeguarded; and by the personal supervision of
Government, fiscal duties were moderated, the currency kept pure and
stable, weights and measures reduced to uniformity, the ease and
security of communications secured.
No doubt trade not seldom, even in that age, led to much evil.
Parliament in England raised its voice against the trickery and deceit
practised by the greater merchants towards the small shopkeepers, and
complained bitterly of the growing custom of the King to farm out to the
wealthier among them the subsidies and port-duties of the kingdom. For
the whole force of the break-up of feudal conditions was to turn the
direction of power into the hands of a small, but moneyed class. Under
Edward III there is a distinct appearance of a set of _nouveaux riches_,
who rise to great prominence and take their places beside the old landed
nobility. De la Pole, the man who did most to establish the prosperity
of Hull, is an excellent example of what is often thought to be a
decidedly modern type. He introduced bricks from the Low Countries, and
apparently by this means and some curious banking speculations of very
doubtful honesty achieved a great fortune. The King paid a visit to his
country house, and made him Chief Baron of the Exchequer, in which
office he was strongly suspected of not always passing to the right
quarter some of the royal moneys. His son became Earl of Suffolk and
Lord Chancellor; and a marriage with royalty made descendants of the
family on more than one occasion heirs-at-law of the Crown.
Even the peasant was beginning to feel the amelioration of his lot,
found life easy, and work something to be shirked. In his food, he was
starting to be delicate. Says Langland in his "Vision of Piers Plowman":
"Then labourers landless that lived by their hands,
Would deign not to dine upon worts a day old.
No penny-ale pleased them, no piece of good bacon,
Only fresh flesh or fish, well-fried or well-baked,
Ever hot and still hotter to heat well their maw."
And he speaks elsewhere of their laziness:
"Bewailing his lot as a workman to live,
He grumbles against God and grieves without reason,
And curses the king and his council after
Who licence the laws that the labourers grieve."
That the poor could thus become fastidious was a good sign of the rising
standard of comfort.
But for all that life was hard, and much at the mercy of the weather,
and of the assaults of man's own fellows. The houses of the better folk
were of brick and stone, and glass windows were just becoming known,
whereas the substitute of oiled paper had been neither cheerful nor of
very much protection. But the huts of the poor were of plastered mud;
and even the walls of a quite respectable man's abode, we know from one
court summons to have been pierced by arrows shot at him by a pugnacious
neighbour. The plaintiff offered to take judge and jury then and there
and show them these "horrid weapons" still sticking to the exterior. In
the larger houses the hall had branched off, by the fourteenth century,
into withdrawing-rooms, and parlours, and bedrooms, such as the Paston
Letters describe with much curious wealth of detail. Lady Milicent
Falstolf, we are told, was the only one in her father's household who
had a ewer and washing-basin.
Yet with all the lack of the modern necessities of life, human nature
was still much the same. The antagonism between rich and poor, which the
collapse of feudal relations had strained to breaking-point, was not
perhaps normally so intense as it is to-day; yet there was certainly
much oppression and unnecessary hardships to be suffered by the weak,
even in that age. The Ancren Riwle, that quaint form of life for
ankeresses drawn up by a Dominican in the thirteenth century, shows
that even then, despite the distance of years and the passing of so many
generations, the manners and ways and mental attitudes of people
depended very much as to whether they were among those who had, or who
had not; the pious author in one passage of homely wit compares certain
of the sisters to "those artful children of rich parents who purposely
tear their clothes that they may have new ones."
There have always been wanton waste and destitution side by side; and on
the prophecy of the One to whom all things were revealed, we know that
the poor shall be always with us. Yet we must honour those who, like
their Master, strive to smooth away the anxious wrinkles of the world.