In spite of all the labour that has been spent on the early history
of England, scholars are at variance upon the most fundamental of
questions: the question whether that history began with a population of
independent freemen or with a population of dependent serfs. Nothing
less than this is at issue in the current discussions as to the
existence of the “mark” and the origin of the manor; as well as in the
discussions, at first sight of less significance, as to the character
of our mediæval constitution. Neither for the government of the parish
nor for the government of the nation is it possible to construct an
historical theory which does not rest, consciously or unconsciously, on
some view as to the position of the body of the people.
The opinion almost universally accepted four or five years ago was
to this effect: that the English people, when it came to Britain,
was composed of a stalwart host of free men, who governed themselves
by popular national councils, administered justice by popular local
assemblies, and lived together in little village groups of independent
yeomen. It was, indeed, recognised that there were gradations of
rank--_eorl_ and _ceorl_, and the like,--and that some individuals
were unfortunate enough to be slaves. But these and similar facts
were not supposed to affect the general outlines of the picture; and
even those writers who expressed themselves most guardedly as to this
“primitive Teutonic polity,” proceeded by the subsequent course of
their narrative to assume it as their starting point. And looking back
on the intellectual history of the last fifty years, we can easily
trace the forces which assisted in giving this view currency. To begin
with, the historical movement of this century was undoubtedly the
offspring of Romanticism; and with Romanticism the noble independence
of the unlettered barbarian was an article of faith. Moreover, the
discovery of modern constitutionalism “in the forests of Germany”
harmonised with a comfortable belief, which was at one time very
common. This was the belief to which Kingsley gave such eloquent
expression, that the barbarian invasions were the predestined means of
bringing into the effete civilisation of Rome the manly virtues of the
North. For England the theory had the additional charm, during a period
of democratic change, of satisfying that most unscientific but most
English desire, the desire for precedent. An extension of the suffrage
rose far above mere expediency when it became a reconquest of primitive
rights.
But, though we can understand how it was that historians came to
discover the imposing figure of the free Teuton, it does not
necessarily follow that they were mistaken. The disproof must be
accomplished, if at all, by erudition equal to that by which the
doctrine has been supported; and it has been the task of M. Fustel de
Coulanges to assail with enormous learning and a cogent style almost
every one of those propositions as to early mediæval constitutional
history, which we were beginning to deem the secure achievements of
German science.
There was a great contrast, both in their character and in the
reception afforded to them, between the earlier and the later
works of M. Fustel. He gained his reputation, in 1864, by his
_Cité Antique_, a book wherein, unlike his later insistence on the
complexity of institutions, he used one simple idea--that of the
religion of the family--to solve most of the problems presented by
ancient civilisation. It gained immediately an extraordinary success;
especially in England, where it fell in with all that current of
thought which was then beginning to turn into the direction of social
evolution, comparative politics, and the like. For a year or so, the
final piece of advice which schoolmasters gave to men who were going up
for scholarships at the Universities was to read the _Cité Antique_.
Then for several years M. Fustel was not heard from, at any rate in
England; although it might have been seen by occasional articles in the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_ and elsewhere that he was devoting himself
to the early Middle Ages. In 1875 appeared the first volume of a
_Histoire des Institutions politiques de l’ancienne France_, reaching
to the end of the Merovingian period. But further investigation and
the controversy to which the book gave rise made him resolve to go
over the ground again more minutely in a series of volumes. Meanwhile
he issued in 1885 his _Recherches sur quelques problèmes d’histoire_.
With the modest declaration that before attempting to write the history
of feudalism--“un corps infiniment vaste, à organes multiples, à
faces changeantes, à vie complexe”--it was necessary to consider some
preliminary questions, he threw down the gauntlet to the dominant
school. He challenged the whole theory of primitive German life which
was fondly supposed to rest on the authority of Cæsar and Tacitus;
he showed how little evidence there was for the supposed existence
of popular courts of justice; he traced the growth of the class of
_coloni_ or semi-servile peasants under the later Roman empire, in a
way which suggested that they must have played a far more important
part in subsequent social development than is usually assigned to
them; and, finally, he denied altogether the existence of that free,
self-governing village community with common ownership of the village
lands, which Maurer had made familiar to us as the _mark_. His
antagonism to German scholars was evidently sharpened by national
antipathy: like his countrymen in many other departments of science,
he was bent on proving that France could beat Germany with its own
peculiar instruments of patient scholarship and minute research. It
is turning the tables with a vengeance, when the Frenchman shakes his
head, with much apparent reason, over the inexplicable rashness of his
German brethren.
Having thus cleared the way, M. Fustel began to put together
his materials for the great work of his life, the _Histoire des
Institutions Politiques_, in its new form. He had issued one volume
and prepared for publication a second when he was prematurely lost to
the world. His pupils have, indeed, been able to put together a third
volume from his manuscript and from earlier articles; and a fourth
and fifth are promised us. But these fragmentary sketches, written
many of them under the shadow of approaching death, are only slight
indications of what M. Fustel might have done for mediæval history.
Nevertheless, his work, incomplete as it is, is of the utmost weight
and significance; in my opinion, it has done more than that of any
other scholar to bring back the study of mediæval society, after
long aberrations, to the right lines. We have to continue the work
of inquiry along those lines, and in his spirit. “It is now,” said
he, in the Preface to the _Recherches_, “twenty-five years since I
began to teach; and each year I have had the happiness to have four
or five pupils. What I have taught them above everything else has
been to _inquire_. What I have impressed upon them is not to believe
everything easy, and never to pass by problems without seeing them. The
one truth of which I have persistently endeavoured to convince them
is that history is the most difficult of sciences.” And again, in the
Introduction to _L’Alleu_, “Of late years people have invented the word
_sociology_. The word _history_ had the same sense and meant the same
thing, at least for those who understood it. History is the science of
social facts; that is to say, it is sociology itself.” “The motto he
had chosen, a motto,” says one of his pupils, “which sums up his whole
scientific life, was _Quaero_.”
It is curious to observe how slow English scholars have been to
realise the importance of these recent volumes. Is it because theories
of mediæval history, which are not more than twenty or thirty years
old, have already hardened into dogma, and we shrink from the
reconstruction which might be necessary were we to meddle with any
of the corner-stones? Some consolation, however, may be found in the
fact that a considerable effect has been produced by the work of an
English investigator, who was quite independently arriving, though from
a different point of view, at very similar conclusions. Mr. Seebohm’s
_English Village Community_, it is no exaggeration to say, revealed
to us, for the first time, the inner life of mediæval England. By
making us realise not only how uniform was the manorial system over the
greater part of England, but also how burdensome were the obligations
of the tenants, it forced us to reconsider the accepted explanation of
its origin. For the explanation generally accepted was that manors had
come into existence piecemeal, by the gradual subjection, here in one
way, there in another, of the free landowners to their more powerful
neighbours. Mr. Seebohm made it appear probable that the lord of the
manor, instead of being a late intruder, was from the first, so far as
England was concerned, the owner of the soil and the lord of those who
tilled it; that the development has been in the main and from the first
an advance from servitude to freedom; and not an elevation after long
centuries of increasing degradation.
Mr. Seebohm has not, perhaps, been so convincing in the explanation
he has to offer of the origin of the manor; but there is now a marked
tendency to accept what is, after all, his main contention--that the
manorial system was in existence, not as an exceptional phenomenon,
but as the prevailing form of social organisation _very soon_, at
any rate, after the English Conquest. There is absolutely no clear
documentary evidence for the free village community in England. As to
the word _mark_, not even Kemble, who first introduced it to English
readers, could produce an example of its use in English documents in
the sense of land owned by a community; and Anglo-Saxon scholars now
point out that his one doubtful instance of _mearcmót_ [A.D. 971] and
his three examples of _mearcbeorh_ are most naturally explained as
having to do with _mark_ merely in the sense of a boundary.[1] Not only
is there no early evidence; the arguments based on supposed survivals
into later times seem to melt away on close examination. It has, for
instance, been maintained that even in the Domesday Survey there are
traces of free communities. But the supposed Domesday references are
of the scantiest, and certainly would not suggest the mark to anyone
who was not looking for it. Most of them seem easily susceptible of
other interpretations; in some of them we probably have to do with two
or three joint-owners, in others very possibly with villages where the
lord has been bought out.[2] Another and more usual argument is derived
from the Court Baron, which was described by later legal theory as
absolutely essential to a manor, and yet of such a constitution that it
could not be held unless there were at least two free tenants to attend
it. But legal historians are beginning to regard the Court Baron as
not at all primitive, but rather as a comparatively late outcome of
feudal theory.[3]
It must be granted that there is little direct evidence prior to the
9th century in disproof of the free community; but all the indirect
evidence seems to tell against it. Gibbon long ago pointed out that the
grant by the King of the South Saxons to St. Wilfrid, in the year 680,
of the peninsula of Selsey (described as “the land of 87 families”),
with the persons and property of all its inhabitants, showed that
there, at any rate, there was a dependent population; especially as
Bede goes on to tell us that among these inhabitants there were 250
slaves. And there are two still more considerable pieces of evidence
to which due attention has hardly been given. The one is that the
great majority of the early grants of land, beginning as early as 674,
expressly transfer with the soil the cultivators upon it, and speak of
them by precisely the same terms, _cassati_ and _manentes_, as were in
contemporary use on the Continent to designate prædial serfs.[4] The
other is that, as in the rest of Western Europe the whole country was
divided into _villæ_, each _villa_ being a domain belonging to one or
more proprietors, and cultivated by more or less servile tenants,[5]
so in Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History_, written in 731, the ordinary
local division is also _villa_, often specifically described as _villa
regia_ or _villa comitis_. He does indeed use _vicus_ or _viculus_ a
dozen times; but in three of these cases the word _regis_ or _regius_
is added, and in two the term _villa_ is also used in the same chapter
for the same place.[6] These five examples, it may further be noticed,
occur in a narrative of the events of the middle of the seventh
century,--a period near enough to Bede’s own time for his evidence to
be valuable, and yet within a century and a half after the conquest of
the districts in question.
The absence, however, of direct evidence in proof of the original free
community in England, and the presence of much indirect evidence in
its disproof, have hitherto been supposed to be counterbalanced by
the well-ascertained existence of the mark among our German kinsfolk,
and by the results of “the comparative method,” especially as applied
to India. Let us take the _markgenossenschaft_ first. It is a little
difficult to discover the exact relation between Kemble and Maurer;
but the obvious supposition is that it was from Maurer that Kemble
derived his main idea; and it has usually been supposed that however
Kemble may have exaggerated the action of the mark in England, in
Germany it could be traced with unhesitating certainty. This is what,
to Englishmen, gives especial interest to the essay of M. Fustel de
Coulanges translated in the present volume.
M. Fustel begins with the ironical announcement that he does not intend
to criticise the theory of the mark in itself, but only to examine the
documentary evidence alleged in its favour, and to determine whether
such evidence can fairly be given the construction that Maurer puts
upon it. But here M. Fustel does some injustice to himself; for in
following a detailed criticism of this character the reader is apt
to overlook or forget the really important points which the writer
succeeds in establishing. It may be well to state these points in our
own way and order, as follows: (1) That the mark theory derives no
direct support from the language of Cæsar and Tacitus; (2) That the
word _mark_ in early German law means primarily a boundary, usually the
boundary of a private property; and then, in a derivative sense, the
property itself, a domain such as in Gaul was called a _villa_; (3)
That early German law is throughout based on the assumption of private
property in land, and never upon that of common ownership, whether
by a whole people or by a village group; and that whatever traces
there may be of earlier conditions point to rights possessed by the
_family_ and not by any larger body; (4) That the one direct proof of
a custom of periodical redistribution of the village lands is derived
from an evident blunder on the part of a copyist; and that the rest of
the evidence has nothing at all to do with periodical divisions; (5)
That the term _common_ as applied to fields and woods in early German
law means common to, or shared by two or more individual owners; (6)
That the _commons_, _allmende_, _common of wood_ and similar phrases,
which occur frequently in documents of the ninth and succeeding
centuries, point to a customary right of use enjoyed by tenants over
land belonging to a lord; and that there is no evidence that the
tenants were once joint _owners_ of the land over which they enjoyed
such rights; (7) That there is no evidence in the early Middle Ages of
mark assemblies or mark courts; and finally, the most important point
of all, (8) That to judge from the earliest German codes, great states
cultivated by slaves or by various grades of semi-servile tenants were
the rule rather than the exception even at the beginning of the Middle
Ages. Professor Lamprecht, whom M. Fustel treats as a mere follower of
Maurer, is naturally sore at the treatment he here receives; and indeed
his great work on German economic history is of the utmost utility
as a collection of facts relative to later centuries, even though he
does start with the assumption of the mark. But it is scarcely an
answer to M. Fustel to argue, as Professor Lamprecht does,[7] that
nothing depends on the _word_ “mark;” and that the chance absence of
a modern technical term from our meagre evidence does not prove the
non-existence of the thing it is used to designate. For our evidence is
not meagre; and M. Fustel proves not only the absence of the name, but
also the absence of all the alleged indications of the existence of the
thing.
The second line of defence is the evidence of “comparative custom.”
India, at any rate, it is urged, displays the village community: there
we may see, crystallised by the force of custom, conditions which in
Europe have long since passed away. Now it is, of course, true that
the village is “the unit of all revenue arrangements in India;”[8]
that, over large districts, cultivation is carried on by village
groups; and that in some provinces, notably the Punjab, this village
group is at present recognised as the joint owner of the village
lands. But it is a long step from this to the proposition that “the
oldest discoverable forms of property in land,” in India, “were forms
of collective property;”[9] and that all existing rights of private
ownership have arisen from the break-up or depression of the original
communities. The truth is, that of late years Indian facts have been
looked at almost exclusively through the spectacles of European theory.
Now that the mark is receding into improbability, it is urgently to be
desired that Indian economic history should be looked at for what it
will itself reveal.[10] It would be unwise to anticipate the results
of such an investigation. But there is one preliminary caution to be
expressed; we must take care not to exaggerate the force of custom.
Professor Marshall, in his recent great work, has indicated some of the
reasons for believing that custom is by no means so strong in India as
is generally supposed;[11] and it is to be hoped that he will see his
way to publishing the not-inconsiderable mass of evidence that he has
accumulated.
As to supposed analogies with the mark in the practices of other
peoples, all that can be said at this stage is that most of them prove
only a joint-cultivation and not a joint-ownership. Thus, the Russian
_mir_, which is often referred to in this connection, has always
in historical times been a village group in serfdom under a lord:
the decree of Boris Godounoff, frequently spoken of as the origin
of serfdom, in that it tied the cultivators to the soil, may much
more readily be explained as an attempt to hinder a movement towards
freedom. It was indeed in all probability a measure somewhat similar
in character to the English “statutes of labourers.”[12] With regard to
the various more or less savage peoples, who are said to live under a
system of common village ownership, the bulk of the evidence is, as M.
Fustel observes, of the most unsubstantial character. There are lessons
in the work of M. Emile de Laveleye which M. Fustel fails to recognise;
and to these we shall return; but to the main proposition which it was
intended to prove, M. de Laveleye’s book can hardly be regarded as
adding much strength.
We see, then, that there is no very adequate reason, either in German,
Indian, Russian, or any other supposed analogies, why we should not
suffer ourselves to be guided in our judgment as to England by English
evidence. And this evidence, as we have seen, would lead us to the
conclusion that very soon after the English Conquest, if not before,
the manor was the prevailing type of social organisation. The further
question still remains, what was its origin? This is a question which
cannot as yet be answered with certainty; but we are able to point
out the possible alternatives. For this purpose we must look for a
moment at each of the peoples that have successively occupied England.
Fortunately, there is no need to go back to the very beginning, to the
palæolithic inhabitants of Britain who dwelt in the caves and along
the river-shores. Scanty in number, they were extirpated by the more
numerous and warlike race that followed; very much as the Esquimaux,
the kinsfolk, as it would seem, of prehistoric cave-men, are being
harried out of existence by the North American Indians. There seems
no reason to suppose that these people contributed in any measure to
the formation of the later population of England.[13] But with the
race that took their place, a race of small stature and long heads,
the case is different. Ethnologists have long been of opinion that
these pre-Aryans were to a large extent the ancestors of the present
inhabitants of Western Europe; and they have of late won over to their
side a rising school of philologers,[14] some of whom go so far as
to explain the whole of modern history as the outcome of a struggle
between a non-Aryan populace and a haughty Aryan aristocracy.[15]
Without admitting any such hazardous deductions, we may accept the
statement that the blood of these pre-Aryan people--_Iberians_, as it
has become usual to call them--is largely represented in the English
nation of to-day. Mr. Gomme has accordingly hazarded the supposition
that our later rural organisation is in part derived from the
Iberian race. He maintains that the traces of “terrace-cultivation,”
which we come across here and there in England and Scotland, point
to a primitive Iberian hill-folk, whose “agricultural system,” in
some unexplained way, “became incorporated with the agricultural
system of the,” later Aryan, “village community.”[16] His argument
turns chiefly on certain alleged Indian parallels. But even if his
examples proved the point for India, which is hardly the case, there
is in Britain certainly no evidence for Mr. Gomme’s contention. If
the terrace-cultivation is to be assigned to a prehistoric people,
the archæological data would apparently place it in the bronze
period[17]--an age long subsequent to the Celtic immigration. And it
will be seen from what we have to say of the Celtic inhabitants at
a much later period that it is hardly worth while to dwell upon the
possibilities connected with their predecessors.
For, to judge from the account given by Cæsar[18]--who had abundant
opportunities of observation--the Britons, at the time of his invasion,
were still, except in Kent, in the pastoral stage. After speaking of
the inhabitants of Kent as far more civilised than the rest, he goes
on to say, “most of those in the interior sow no corn, but live on
flesh and milk.” Even if his statement is not to be taken literally,
there is this further reason for believing that the village community
was not in existence among the Britons, _viz._, that it did not appear
in those parts of the British Isles of which the Celts retained
possession until after they became subject to external influences at
a much later date. Neither in Wales, nor in the Highlands, nor in
Ireland, can we find the village community until modern times.[19]
There was, indeed, some agriculture even when the life was most
pastoral. This agriculture was carried on upon the “open-field” plan.
There was, moreover, a large number of dependent cultivators. But there
was nothing like the village group as it was to be found in mediæval
England.
When, however, we pass to the three centuries and a half of Roman
rule, we can hardly help coming to the conclusion that it was during
that period that England became an agricultural country; nor is it
easy to avoid the further conclusion that the agricultural system
then established remained during and after the barbarian invasions.
Take first the evidence for the extension of agriculture. Some thirty
years after Claudius first set about the conquest of Britain, and
but seventeen years after the suppression of the rebellion of the
southern tribes led by Boadicea, Agricola became proconsul of Britain.
Now, it appears from the account given by his biographer, Tacitus,
that even as early as this the Roman tribute was collected in the
form of corn. But we may gather that the cultivation of corn was only
gradually spreading over the country; for we are told that Agricola
had to interfere to prevent extortionate practices on the part of the
revenue officers, who were in the habit of forcing the provincials
to buy corn at an exorbitant rate from the Government granaries, in
order to make up the prescribed quantity.[20] We may conjecture that
the extension of agriculture was itself largely owing to the pressure
of the Roman administration. But to whatever it may have been due,
before the Roman rule had come to an end Britain had become celebrated
for its production of corn. On one occasion, A.D. 360, the Emperor
Julian had as many as eight hundred vessels built to carry corn
from Britain to the starving cities on the Rhine. But by whom was
the corn grown? We can hardly doubt that it was raised in Britain,
as in other Roman provinces, on great private estates, surrounding
the _villas_ of wealthy landowners, and cultivated by dependants of
various grades--_coloni_, freedmen, slaves. Remains of Roman villas
are scattered all over the southern counties of England,[21] far
too closely adjacent one to another to allow us to think of the life
of Britain as “mainly military,” or to look upon Britain as “a Roman
Algeria.”[22] It would be absurd to suppose that these villas were
all the residences of wealthy officers or of provincials who derived
their income from official emoluments. We should be justified, even
if we had no direct information, in supposing that the _villa_ meant
in Britain very much what it meant in Gaul and elsewhere; but, as it
chances, a decree of Constantine of the year 319 does actually mention
_coloni_ and _tributarii_ as present in England;[23] and both these
terms indicate classes which, whether technically free or not, were
none the less dependent on a lord and bound to the soil. And we can
readily see how such a class would grow up. Some of the _coloni_ may,
as in Italy, have originally been free leaseholders, who had fallen
into arrears in the payment of their rent. But there is no necessity
for such a supposition. Among the Gauls, as Cæsar tells us, the only
classes held in honour were the druids and the knights (equites). “The
people” (plebes), he says, “are regarded in much the same light as
slaves, without any initiative or voice in public affairs; and many
of them are forced by debt, or the pressure of taxation, or even by
violence, actually to become the slaves of the more powerful.”[24] In
all probability the Romans found “knights” and “people” in the same
relative position in Britain; and, indeed, when the unconquered tribes
of Ireland and Wales come within the ken of history we find among them
a large class of servile cultivators below the free tribesmen.[25]
Whatever may have happened to the “knights,” the “people” would easily
become serfs bound to the soil on the various villas. Then, again, it
must be noticed that it was the constant policy of the Roman emperors
to provide for the needs both of agriculture and of military service by
transporting conquered barbarians to distant provinces, and settling
them on vacant or uncultivated lands. M. Fustel de Coulanges in his
_Recherches_[26] shows that these barbarians were by no means turned
into peasant proprietors; they became tenants, bound to the soil, upon
the imperial domains or the estates of great proprietors. Britain
enjoyed its share of the fruits of this policy; for in the later part
of the second century Antoninus sent to Britain a number of Marcomanni;
a century later, Probus transported hither a number of Burgundians and
Vandals; and Valentinian, still a century later, sent a tribe of the
Alamanni.[27] There is, therefore, no difficulty in accounting for the
growth of a population of prædial serfs during the period of Roman rule.
If, however, we suppose that Southern Britain was divided during the
period of Roman rule into estates cultivated by dependent tenants and
slaves, there is much that would lead us to believe that the Roman
agricultural system was retained by the English conquerors; even
though, in the present state of our knowledge, we cannot directly
prove continuity. The first and most important consideration is this:
the English manorial system was substantially, and, indeed, in most
of its details, similar to that which prevailed during the Middle
Ages in Northern France and Western Germany. But these Continental
conditions--it has, I think, conclusively been proved--were the direct
continuation of conditions that had prevailed under Roman rule.[28]
The natural conclusion is that what is true of the Continent is
true also of England. This conviction is confirmed by looking at
two of the fundamental characteristics of the English manor. The
distinction between land _in villenage_ and land _in demesne_--the
latter cultivated by the tenants of the former, but yet kept in the
lord’s hands--is to be found in the mediæval manor, and in the
Roman villa.[29] It is not to be found either in the tribal system
of Wales,--which we may look upon as indicating the condition to
which the Celtic inhabitants of Britain might have arrived if left
to themselves; nor in Tacitus’ account of the ancient Germans, which
probably furnishes us in general outline with a picture of the social
organisation which the English brought with them. Both in Wales and
among the ancient Germans there were slaves working in their masters’
houses, or on their farms, and there were also servile tenants paying
dues in kind; but in neither case was there an obligation on the part
of a tenant to labour on any other land than his own holding.
Another feature of the English manor was the division of its arable
lands into three fields, with a regular rotation of crops, and with
one field out of the three always fallow. Occasionally only two fields
are to be found, sometimes as many as four; but by far the most usual
number was three.[30] Now it is a very significant fact that the
three-field system has never been at all general in North-Western
Germany, or in Jutland, the regions from which the English undoubtedly
came; and it is for this reason that Professor Hanssen--who has given
his whole life to the study of the agrarian history of Germany,
and who is certainly not biassed by any antipathy to the mark
theory--declares that the English cannot have brought the three-field
system with them to Britain. Two hypotheses are tenable: either that it
grew up in later centuries to meet the special needs of the country;
or that it was found there when the English came. That this latter
hypothesis is most probable would seem to be indicated by the fact
that the region in Germany where it has been most widely prevalent is
precisely that which was most Romanised, _viz._, the South West.[31]
We need not follow Mr. Seebohm in his ingenious attempt to show how it
grew up in Southern Germany; it is sufficient for our present purpose
to point out that the fact, however it may be explained, strengthens
the probability that Roman influence had a good deal to do, in Britain
also, with the creation of the conditions which we find in after times.
There are, therefore, many reasons for maintaining the permanence in
Britain of the _villa_ organisation; and we have seen above that while
there are no clear traces of the _free_ community, there are traces
of what is afterwards called the manor, within a couple of centuries
after the English conquest. These two lines of argument converge toward
the conclusion that the manorial system dates in the main from the
period of Roman rule. But this conclusion does not absolutely determine
the other question, which has been so warmly debated, as to the race
to which we are to assign the mass of the later population. It is
expedient to narrow our inquiry to the southern and midland shires of
England; leaving out of consideration not only Wales, but also the
south-western peninsula, in which there is undoubtedly a preponderance
of Celtic blood, and those eastern and northern counties in which there
was a considerable Danish settlement. When we have solved the main
problem, it will be early enough to consider these lesser difficulties.
Unfortunately, even on the main problem there is much to be done before
we can venture on a positive answer; and there need be no haste to
come to a decision. For the economic historian the question is one
of subordinate importance. If he is allowed to take for his starting
point, as the result of recent discussion, that English social history
began with (1) the manor, (2) a population of dependent cultivators,
it matters but little to him what may have been the origin of the
population. The present position of the question may, however, be
stated in some such way as this. We can hardly suppose a continuity in
system unless a considerable number of the old cultivators were left to
work it. The reasonableness of such a supposition has been obscured
by its unfortunate association by certain writers with the wild
idea that the whole fabric of Roman society and political machinery
survived the English conquest. There is absolutely no good evidence
for such a survival; and Mr. Freeman has justly pointed out[32] that,
had it been the case, the subsequent history of Britain would have
resembled that of Gaul, instead of forming a marked contrast to it.
But the disappearance of the Roman political organisation, and the
destruction on the battlefield of Roman or Romanised land-_owners_,
is not inconsistent with the undisturbed residence upon the rural
estates of the great body of actual labourers. The English had been
far less touched by Roman civilisation than the Franks; they met with
a resistance incomparably more determined than that offered by the
Provincials to the barbarians in any other part of the empire; and they
remained Pagan for more than a century after the invasion. These facts
sufficiently explain the savagery which distinguished the English from
the Frankish invasion. But however terrible the English may have been
in their onslaught, it was obviously for their interest, while taking
the place of the landlords, to avail themselves of the labour of the
existing body of labourers. And if the Roman upper class was killed
out in England and not in Gaul, this would furnish a fairly adequate
explanation of the fact that in Gaul the language of the conquered is
spoken, and in England that of the conquerors.
It is reassuring to find, on referring to Gibbon’s chapter on the
English conquest of Britain, that this conclusion agrees with the
judgment of one “whose lightest words are weighty.”[33] Gibbon dwells
as strongly as anyone could wish on the thorough character of the
English operations: “Conquest has never appeared more dreadful or
destructive than in the hands of the Saxons.” He lays due stress on the
fate of Andredes-Ceaster: “the last of the Britons, without distinction
of age or sex, was massacred in the ruins of Anderida; and the
repetition of such calamities was frequent and familiar under the Saxon
heptarchy.” He asserts, with vigorous rhetoric, that a clean sweep was
made of the Roman administrative organisation:
“The arts and religion, the laws and language, which the Romans had
so carefully planted in Britain, were extirpated by their barbarous
successors.... The kings of France maintained the privileges of
their Roman subjects, but the ferocious Saxons trampled on the laws
of Rome and of the emperors. The proceedings of civil and criminal
jurisdiction, the titles of honour, the forms of office, the ranks of
society ... were finally suppressed.... The example of a revolution,
so rapid and so complete, may not easily be found.”
Nevertheless, he does not agree with those who hold that such a
revolution involved either the “extirpation” or the “extermination” or
even the “displacement” of the subject population.
“This strange alteration has persuaded historians, _and even
philosophers_” (an amusing touch) “that the provincials of Britain
were totally exterminated; and that the vacant land was again peopled
by the perpetual influx and rapid increase of the German colonies....
But neither reason nor facts can justify the unnatural supposition
that the Saxons of Britain remained alone in the desert which they had
subdued. After the sanguinary barbarians had secured their dominion,
and gratified their revenge, _it was their interest to preserve the
peasants as well as the cattle_ of the unresisting country. In each
successive revolution the patient herd becomes the property of its
new masters; and the salutary compact of food and labour is silently
ratified by their mutual necessities.”[34]
A weightier argument than that of language has been based on the
history of religion. Little importance, indeed, can be attached to
the fact that in Gaul there was no break in the episcopate or in the
diocesan system, while in England both needed to be re-established by
Augustine and Theodore. For even if the diocesan system had existed
in Britain before the English invasion--which is doubtful[35]--it
would disappear with the destruction of the governing classes. It is
a more important consideration that if Britain had been thoroughly
Christianised, and if a large Christian population had continued to
dwell in the country, we should surely have had some reference to
these native Christians in the accounts we subsequently obtain of
the conversion of the English. But we know very little of British
Christianity; it might have been strong in the cities, and even among
the gentry in the country, without having any real hold upon the
rural population--the _pagani_ as they were called elsewhere. Dr.
Hatch, speaking of the condition of Gaul when the Teutonic invasions
began, has told us that the mass of the Celtic peasantry was still
unconverted.[36] And this is still more likely to be true of Britain.
Even if nominally Christian, half-heathen serfs, left without churches
or priests, would soon relapse into paganism; especially as it would be
their interest to accept the religion of their conquerors. The exact
force of the argument as to religion must be left as undetermined.
There is another source of information to which we might naturally
turn, considering how much has been heard of it of late years. We might
expect some assistance from “craniology:” the character of the skulls
found in interments of the period of the English settlement ought to
tell something as to the races to which they belonged. But although
much attention has been given to _pre_-historic barrows, there has
been comparatively little scientific examination of cemeteries of a
later date. There are, at present, not enough ascertained facts to
speak for themselves; and such facts as have been gathered have usually
been interpreted in the light of some particular theory. When we find
the late Professor Rolleston telling us that there are as many as
five distinct types of skull belonging to inhabitants of Britain just
before the English invasion, as well as two separate types of English
skulls,[37] we see how wide a room there is for conjecture. Yet from
his careful investigation of a Berkshire cemetery, which was probably
characteristic of mid-England as a whole, there are two results on
which we may venture to lay stress. One is that such evidence as it
furnishes runs counter to the theory of intermarriage,[38] which has
been so frequently resorted to in order to temper the severity of the
pure Teutonic doctrine. This is intelligible enough. If the mass of
the lower people were allowed to remain, while the place of the upper
classes was taken by the English invaders, intermarriage would seldom
take place. The other is that there are abundant relics, among the
English graves, of a long-headed race, which can fairly be identified
with the Iberian type as modified by increasing civilisation; and
but scanty relics of the broad-headed Celt.[39] This fits in very
readily with the supposition that under the Celtic, and therefore
under the Roman rule, the cultivating class was largely composed of
the pre-Celtic race; and allows us to believe that the agricultural
population was but little disturbed.
But though the cultivators already at work were probably left as they
were, it is very likely that they were joined by many new-comers. We
can hardly suppose that _free_ English warriors would have settled down
at once as tillers of the soil, toiling half the days of the week on
land not their own. But Tacitus describes a class of persons among the
Germans whom he repeatedly calls _slaves_, and speaks of as subject to
the arbitrary authority of their masters. They were not, he expressly
says, employed in gangs, as on a Roman villa; but each man had his own
house and family, and rendered to his master no other service than the
periodical payment of a certain quantity of corn, or cattle, or cloth.
He goes so far as to compare this class with the Roman _coloni_, though
they differed from them in not being _legally_ free. He calls our
attention further to the presence of a number of _freedmen_, occupying
a position but little above that of slaves. There is no reason at all
to suppose that Tacitus regarded these slaves and freedmen as few in
number. And if there were slaves and freedmen in the same position
among the invading English, they would readily fall into the ranks of
the servile cultivators.[40]
On the whole, we may conclude that the main features of the later
manorial system were of Roman origin, and that a large part--how large
we are unable to say--of the working population was of Provincial
blood. But it does not follow that every later manor represents a Roman
villa, or that all the Roman estates had the extent of the manors which
now represent them. In both of these directions there was opportunity
for much later development: many new manors were doubtless created on
new clearings, and many old manors were enlarged. It would be easy
enough to create fresh servile tenancies if there was a large body
of slaves; and such there certainly was even in the early centuries
of the English occupation. One of the most unfortunate consequences
of the mark theory has been to create a vague impression that any
condition lower than absolute freedom was altogether exceptional in
early English society. But we can hardly turn over the old English
laws without seeing that this could not have been the case. Not only
is there frequent reference to slaves, but manumission occupies as
prominent a position as in the Continental codes, was accomplished
by ceremonies of a similar character, and brought with it the same
consequence in the abiding subjection of the freedman to his former
master.[41] As on the Continent also, the Church interfered for the
slave’s protection, and endeavoured to secure for him a property in
the fruits of his labour.[42] It is not necessary to revert to the
discussion as whence this class came. It is enough to point to it as
explaining the extension of the manorial system. It will, however,
be noticed that every fresh proof that the conditions of society in
England were similar to those on the Continent strengthens the argument
of the preceding pages.
There is one further element in the problem which must not be
overlooked. Mr. Seebohm’s doctrine that the later villeins were
descended from servile dependants has perhaps led some to suppose that
the only alternative to the mark theory is the supposition that the
villeins of the Middle Ages were all the descendants of slaves. But
here the analogy of Continental conditions is again of use. Though
there is no trace of the free village community, at any rate in
historical times, and the villa with its slaves was the germ of the
later seigneury; yet the servile tenants of subsequent centuries were
to no small extent the descendants of _coloni_, who, though bound
to the soil, were still technically free, centuries after the Roman
rule had passed away.[43] And so in the early English laws we find men
technically free, whom, none the less, it can scarcely be exaggeration
to describe as _serfs_. Such, for instance, is the freeman who works
on the Sabbath “by his lord’s command,”[44] or who kills a man “by his
lord’s command;”[45] who pays a fine if he goes from his lord without
leave;[46] or who receives from his lord a dwelling as well as land,
and so becomes bound not only to the payment of rent, but also to the
performance of labour services.[47] Yet, the _colonus_ of pre-English
days and his descendants might long retain a position superior to
that of a slave with an allotment. In obscure differences of this
kind may possibly be found the origin of the distinction between the
“privileged” and “unprivileged” villeins of later centuries.[48]
It must be allowed that there is still very much that is obscure in
the early history of villeinage. This obscurity may be expected to
disappear as social antiquities come to be studied by scholars who
are economists as well as historians. It was on the economic side, if
the criticism may be ventured, that M. Fustel de Coulanges was weak.
He never seemed to grasp the difference between what we may call the
joint-husbandry of the mediæval village group, and the liberty of the
modern farmer to make of his land what he pleases. While pointing
out that M. de Laveleye does not prove common _ownership_, he fails
to realise that, even if this is so, the joint-husbandry, with its
appurtenant common rights, is a phenomenon of the utmost interest, and
deserves careful attention. He seems to think that it explains itself;
although, the more complex and the more widespread it proves to be,
the less likely does it seem that it originated in the miscellaneous
promptings of individual self-interest.
We may perhaps state the problem thus. In the mediæval manor there were
two elements, the _seigneurial_--the relations of the tenants to the
lord; and the _communal_--the relations of the tenants to one another.
The mark theory taught that the seigneurial was grafted on to the
communal. The value of the work of M. Fustel de Coulanges and of Mr.
Seebohm is in showing that we cannot find a time when the seigneurial
element was absent; and also in pointing to reasons, in my opinion
conclusive, for connecting that element with the Roman villa. But the
communal element is still an unsolved mystery. Among the difficulties
which lie on the surface in M. Fustel’s treatment of the question,
it may be worth while to mention two. He insists that the _villa_
itself, from the earliest time at which it appears, has a unity which
it retains throughout.[49] This seems to suggest some earlier economic
formation out of which it arose; for if the villas were originally
nothing more than private estates, like the estates formed in a new
country in our own day, they would hardly have had such a fixity of
outline. Then, again, nothing is more characteristic of the later manor
than the _week-works_, the labour performed by each villein for two or
three days every week on the lord’s demesne. But such week-works do
not appear in mediæval documents until A.D. 622.[50] M. Fustel hardly
realises that a fact like this requires explanation; or, indeed, that
such services were far more onerous than any he describes in the case
of the earlier _coloni_.
Difficulties such as these can only be satisfactorily overcome by
taking into account both sides of the subject--the economic as well
as the constitutional or legal. Side by side with a development which
combined together gangs of slaves and the households of dependent
coloni into the homogeneous class of serfs, and then went on to make
out of the mediæval serf the modern freeman, another series of changes
was going on of which M. Fustel de Coulanges says nothing. It was the
development from a “wild field grass husbandry,” where a different
part of the area in occupation was broken up for cultivation from time
to time, to the “three-field system” with its permanent arable land
pasture, and then again from that to the “convertible husbandry” and
the “rotation of crops” of more recent times. The task for the economic
historian is to put these two developments into their due relation the
one to the other.
The study of economic history is altogether indispensable, if we
are ever to have anything more than a superficial conception of the
evolution of society. But it must be thorough; and we must not be
over-hasty in proclaiming large results. And although a principal
motive for such inquiry will be the hope of obtaining some light on
the direction in which change is likely to take place in the future,
it will be wise for some time to come for students resolutely to turn
away their eyes from current controversies. There is a sufficient
lesson in the topic we have been considering. The history of the mark
has served Mr. George as a basis for the contention that the common
ownership of land is the only natural condition of things; to Sir Henry
Maine it has suggested the precisely opposite conclusion that the whole
movement of civilisation has been from common ownership to private.
Such arguments are alike worthless, if the mark never existed.