CHAPTER I.

Transcriber’s note: Superscripts are preceded by the caret character ^,

as in 20^d. Multi-letter and mid-word superscripts are enclosed in

{braces}, as in w^{th} and w^{t}out. Italics are represented by

_underscores_.

WOMEN IN ENGLISH LIFE.

[Illustration: _C. Cook, sculp._

ANN,

_Lady Fanshawe_.

London Richard Bentley & Son 1896]

WOMEN

IN ENGLISH LIFE

from Mediæval to Modern Times.

BY

GEORGIANA HILL,

AUTHOR OF “A HISTORY OF ENGLISH DRESS.”

_IN TWO VOLUMES._

VOL. I.

[Illustration]

LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,

Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty.

MDCCCXCVI.

INTRODUCTION.

The object aimed at in the following pages is to show the place that

women have held in our national life, from the days when what we call

the Saxon race was dominant in England, down to the present time. For

this purpose those phases of our social history have been dwelt upon

which display most clearly the changes that have taken place in the

position of women, and the influence of great forces like the Church

and Feudalism. Names have been used as illustrations, and not with any

intention of adding to biographical literature. Instances that are

the most striking individually do not always serve best as examples.

For this reason many familiar historical scenes and figures have

been omitted. The continuity of a general record would be broken by

divergence into episodes interesting on account of their exceptional

character. Prominence has been given to domestic life, as that

concerns the larger number, and to those aspects of the case which have

not been summed up in the numerous accounts of noteworthy women.

In literature and art, which have their own special histories, where

the part that women have played is recounted at length, only a few

general points have been noted in order to show how women have stood

in relation to letters and art in successive periods. The subjects

themselves are treated as stages marking social advance, not discussed

in the light of their intrinsic interest and attractiveness.

A consideration of the position of women in England leads, naturally,

to the subject of their position in Europe generally, for the main

influences which have affected women in this country are the same

as those that have operated on the Continent, although the result

has taken different forms in accordance with the idiosyncracies of

each nation. It is unnecessary to discuss the condition of women

in the Eastern parts, for while Western Europe has been changing

and progressing with ever-increasing rapidity during the last ten

centuries, Eastern Europe--as far as social life is concerned--remained

for a long period in an almost stationary state. In character it was

Asiatic, though during the last three hundred years it has succumbed

more to the influences of its geographical position.

In the Middle Ages the conditions of life in Western Europe were pretty

uniform. There was hardly any education in the sense of book-learning,

except among religious communities. Locomotion was difficult and

dangerous, so that there was but scanty intercourse between the

inhabitants of different parts of the same country. Fighting was the

chief business of men, and manual work, skilled and unskilled, occupied

women of all ranks.

In an age when war was so frequent, the civil duties of life were left

to women, who fulfilled obligations that in more peaceful times fell

to the lot of men. They not only had entire charge of the household,

but shared largely in the operations of the field and the farm; they

were the spinners, the weavers, the brewsters, and the bakers. They

frequently controlled the management of estates, and occasionally

held public offices of trust and importance. There were no laws to

prevent women from filling such positions, and the fittest came to the

front unhampered by conventionality or arbitrary restrictions. But

although women appear to have had a wider field of activity than they

afterwards enjoyed, when social life became more complex, there was a

counteracting influence which told against the development and free

exercise of their energies. This was the influence of the Church.

It was the policy of the Church to keep women in a subordinate

position. As long as they remained thoroughly convinced of their

natural inferiority, and of the duty of subservience, they could be

reckoned upon as valuable aids to the building up of the ecclesiastical

power. The immense force of the religious and devotional spirit in

woman was at the absolute disposal of her spiritual directors. At a

time when there was no science, no art, and, for the majority, no

literature, the power of the Church was incomparably greater than

anything we can conceive of now.

The Church did not find it difficult to persuade women to accept the

limits marked out for them. There was no public sentiment to set off

against the power of the priest. Society was ruled by physical force;

the law was weak, and the Church was women’s shelter from the rudeness

of an age when those who should have protected the defenceless were

themselves the greatest offenders.

In order to enforce the doctrine of inferiority, the Church went

further, and proclaimed that there was in woman a wickedness additional

to the sin common to humanity. The “eternal feminine” was held before

men’s eyes as a temptation to be warred against. To fly from the

presence of woman was to resist evil. Celibacy was a saintly virtue,

and family life a thing to be tolerated rather than approved.

In the words of St. Chrysostom, woman was “a necessary evil, a

natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly

fascination, and a painted ill.” The influence of the Fathers was not

confined to their own age; their writings continued to affect the whole

teaching of the Church, Anglican as well as Roman, which has always

been in favour of the subordination of woman. She has been assigned

a lower place in religious exercises, and has been excluded from the

priestly office.

In successive periods of history the Church was largely responsible

for the terrible persecutions inflicted upon women--and chiefly upon

the poorest and most helpless--on the ground of witchcraft. Once

having disseminated the theory of woman’s inherent vice, it was only

a natural corollary to impute to her both the desire and the power of

working extraordinary mischief. The doctrine suited ages which believed

not only in an embodied and omnipresent Power of Evil, but also in

countless and multiform expressions of that power through natural

objects and phenomena.

The Feudal System, which prevailed in England up to the middle of

the fifteenth century, and in France up to a much later period, had

a repressive effect on women of the lower classes, though for women

in the upper ranks it presented certain advantages. The women of the

families of tenants on a feudal estate were regarded as chattels which

went with the land. They were bound to the soil, and were fined if they

either accepted work or married outside the lord’s domain.

The age of chivalry had a twofold effect on the position of women. It

created an ideal of womanhood which stirred the imagination and the

poetic fancy. Chivalry had its sublime side. It was a protest against

tyranny and vice; it inspired men to heroic deeds; it gave them a

loftier conception of duty. It was the revulsion of noble minds from

the coarseness, the unpitying indifference to wrong, and contempt for

weakness, which characterized the Middle Ages. Like a new gospel,

chivalry dawned upon a world in which the virtues of Paganism had

declined, while its vices still triumphed.

But chivalry had another side. The pure reverence for woman passed

into romantic admiration, into a worship of physical beauty, into mere

passion. Woman, from being little less than a saint, became a toy. The

teaching of the Church and the spirit of chivalry both acted adversely

on the position of woman. By the one she was lowered below the level of

humanity, by the other she was raised to an ideal pinnacle, where it

was impossible she could remain. The fault was the same in both cases.

The priest and the knight removed woman from her natural place into a

false position, endowing her with sub-human wickedness and superhuman

excellencies.

With the Renaissance and the spread of education, social life underwent

great changes. The Church was no longer the dominant influence. Great

secular forces came into play; the tide of learning swept over Europe;

commerce, travel, discoveries, inventions, caused old habits to be

unlearnt. Thought, which had been stagnant, was freshened into a moving

stream. In the intellectual re-birth, in the conflict of faiths, in the

deadly political struggles which occupied the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries in England, we see how women were passing from the narrow

life of the home into the wide life of the nation.

The great industrial revolution, which began in the last century, and

has progressed with such rapid strides, has had its special bearing

on the position of women. The material improvements brought about by

machinery and developing trade, have lifted the middle-class woman

out of the purely domestic sphere by lessening her household duties,

and so leaving her free for other occupations. She has ceased to be

a producer. But the working woman has been simply drawn more and more

from family life, to be absorbed into the ranks of outside workers. She

is, in many cases, as much detached from the home as the man, by the

necessity of wage-earning.

The educational revolution of modern times has also worked great

changes in the position of women in England. It has specially affected

the middle classes, who have been thereby enabled to enter with perfect

freedom into the world of letters, to follow professional and business

careers--in a word, to carve out for themselves an independent course.

A new conception has arisen of what is woman’s place in society.

She now bears an active part in all the great movements--political,

religious, philanthropic; her co-operation is sought in public work,

and her presence welcomed, rather than resented, in all new social

enterprises.

In the lighter side of life--in its recreations, which are now more

in the nature of work than play--women have a much wider field than

formerly, and take their pleasure as best suits them, without let or

hindrance. They are free to act according to their necessities and

tastes, wherever common sense and fitness lead them, without finding

the barrier of sex laid across the path. Those who are afraid lest

the world should suffer by women adopting modes of life unsanctioned

by tradition, may console themselves by remembering that Nature is

stronger than fashion or opinion, and will at once make her voice heard

whenever the lightest of her laws is transgressed.

The position of women in England cannot be regarded as an orderly

evolution. It does not show unvarying progress from age to age. In one

direction there has been improvement, in another deterioration. There

have been breaks and gaps in the general advance, so that certain

periods appear at a disadvantage in comparison with their predecessors.

The last half-century shows very rapid and momentous changes. Never

were such advantages placed within the reach of women; never were so

many opportunities--social, literary, educational, commercial--open to

them. But these advantages and opportunities would have been useless if

women had not been ready, and shown their fitness for the new trusts.

They have themselves largely created the public sentiment which now so

strongly impels them towards wider action, and imposes on them greater

responsibilities.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

PERIOD I.

_WOMEN IN THE DAYS OF FEUDALISM._

CHAPTER I.

A MEDIÆVAL MANOR-HOUSE.

PAGE

Domestic life in the Middle Ages--Interior of a manor-house--

Position and duties of the mistress--Household arrangements--

Dame Paston and her daughters--Lady Joan Berkeley--The lady

of the castle in time of war--Lady Pelham’s defence of

Pevensey Castle--Her letter to her husband 3

CHAPTER II.

LEARNING BEFORE THE DAYS OF THE PRINTING PRESS.

Learned ladies in Saxon times--Education of women in the Middle

Ages--The rise of Grammar Schools--Want of provision for

girls--Convent schools--Improvement of education in the

fifteenth century--Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond,

and her patronage of learning 17

CHAPTER III.

THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES.

The Feudal System unfavourable to the development of the middle

classes--Subjection of women under Feudalism--Tyranny of

feudal lords--Power of the Church--Rise of Commerce--

Material progress--End of the Feudal System 26

CHAPTER IV.

WOMEN AND THE ANCIENT GILDS.

The industrial equality of former days--Women as members

of Gilds--Restrictions on trade--Fitness of girls for

industrial occupations--Women as watchmakers: Sir John

Bennett’s opinion--The brewsters and ale-wives--Trade

unions compared with the ancient Gilds--Influence of the

Gilds--Equality of the sisteren and bretheren--Married

women trading alone--Labour regulations applicable to men

and women alike 39

CHAPTER V.

THE MEDIÆVAL NUN.

Dominance of the Church in the Middle Ages--The Conventual

System--Occupations of the Nuns--Power of the Abbesses--

Disputes between Religious Houses and the Laity--Latitude

allowed to Nuns--Convents Educational Centres--Effects of

the Suppression of Convents--Complaints of the Laity 56

CHAPTER VI.

THE CHURCH AS A SOCIAL FACTOR.

Influence of the Church on women in social life--The twofold

conception of womanhood--Canon and Civil Law--Effect of

ecclesiastical celibacy 85

CHAPTER VII.

ALMSGIVING IN OLDEN TIMES.

Almsgiving at the monasteries--Charity dispensed by private

families--Bequests of ladies for the relief of the poor--

Action of the Church--Change in the conception of the duty

of almsgiving--Needlework for the poor--Modern gilds--

Charity at the present day 100

PERIOD II.

_ENGLAND AFTER THE RENAISSANCE._

CHAPTER I.

FAMILY LIFE AFTER THE FALL OF FEUDALISM.

Effect on women of the fall of Feudalism--Characteristics of

Tudor England--Observations of foreigners on English-women--

Greater liberty allowed to women in England than on

the Continent--Social habits and amusements--Women’s

education--English family life--Parents and children 113

CHAPTER II.

THE SCHOLARS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Revival of learning in the sixteenth century--Attitude of the

nobility towards Letters and Arts--No age so productive of

learned ladies--The Tudor princesses and Lady Jane Grey--

Sir Anthony Coke’s daughters--Mary Sidney--Learned women

held in esteem--Learning confined to the upper classes--A

sixteenth-century schoolmaster on women’s education 126

CHAPTER III.

A LADY’S EDUCATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Retrogression in the seventeenth century--Tone of women’s

education--Mrs. Hutchinson--Lady Ann Halkett--Mrs. Alice

Thornton--Mrs. Makins--The Duchess of Newcastle--General

estimation of learning--Changes in social life--Some

patronesses of learning 145

CHAPTER IV.

GLIMPSES AT GREAT LADIES.

Changes in domestic life--Lady Elizabeth Howard’s household at

Naworth Castle--The Countess of Sunderland--The Belvoir

Castle family--The Countess of Salisbury’s suit--The

Countess of Pembroke and the “boon hen”--Bess of Hardwicke--

Court ladies--Lady Brilliana Harley--Lady Lucas--

Match-making--Seizure of an heiress 155

CHAPTER V.

EVERY-DAY LIFE IN THE STUART PERIOD.

Puritan influence--Neglect of women’s education--The

boarding-out system for girls--Sir Matthew Hale on the

education of girls--Manners and customs--Diversions of

great ladies--Rules for behaviour--John Evelyn on manners--

Effects of the Civil War--Simplicity of home life--Lady

Anne Halkett--Position of wives--A contemporary writer on

husbands 173

CHAPTER VI.

PETITIONERS TO PARLIAMENT.

The city dames during the Civil War--They petition Parliament

for peace--Reception of the petition--The military

called out--Petition from tradesmen’s wives for redress

of grievances--Pym’s reply--Women’s memorial to Cromwell

against imprisonment for debt--Sufferers during the Monmouth

Rebellion--Petition against Judge Jeffreys--Hannah Hewling

petitions the king 193

CHAPTER VII.

HEROINES OF THE CIVIL WAR.

Nature of the struggle--Position of Queen Henrietta Maria--

Activity of women on both sides--Mrs. Hutchinson at

Nottingham--Defence of Lathom House by the Countess of

Derby--Lady Arundel at Wardour Castle--Lady Bankes besieged

in Corfe Castle--Lady Lettice Digby defends Greashill

Castle--Lady Fanshawe’s visits to her husband in prison--

Experiences of a gentlewoman in the West of England--Lady

Musgrave and the Parliament--Lady Halkett assists the Duke

of York to escape--Lady Rochester and the elections--The

Jacobite rising--Flora McDonald 205

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MARTYR PERIODS: RELIGIOUS ZEAL AND RELIGIOUS APATHY.

Religious life in the sixteenth century--Religion the great

motive-power--The Lollard persecutions--Protestant martyrs

of the sixteenth century--Anne Askew--Women martyrs in the

seventeenth century--Persecution of the Quakeresses--Quaker

doctrines--Seventeenth-century Anglicanism--Indifference of

the Church to social work--Condition of the clergy--Mary

Astell and her Protestant nunnery--The Countess of Warwick 235

CHAPTER IX.

WITCHCRAFT.

Universality of the belief in witchcraft--Persecution of witches

in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Attitude of the

Puritans--Origin of the witch--First use of the term--

Enactments against witchcraft--The Essex persecutions--The

last judicial execution 261

CHAPTER X.

WOMEN AND THE ARTS.

Development of the arts in the seventeenth century--Introduction

of women on the stage--Corruption of the period--

Character of the drama--Wearing masks by spectators--

The French company at Blackfriars Theatre--The first

English company with women players--Famous actresses--

English female artists in the Stuart period--Foundation

of the Royal Academy of Arts--Angelica Kaufmann and Mary

Moser elected members--Their career--Fanny Reynolds--

Sir Joshua’s opinion of his sister’s work--Mrs. Cosway--

Mrs. Carpenter--Character of eighteenth-century work--

Women’s place in musical art--Musical education in early

times--Love of music in the sixteenth century--Instruments

played by women--Music abolished by the Puritans--Musical

maidservants in the seventeenth century--The first English

opera--Purcell’s early work--Performance at a ladies’ school 275

PERIOD III.

_LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY._

CHAPTER I.

MATRONS AND MAIDS.

Artificiality of eighteenth-century life--The _rôle_ of the

middle-class woman--Scotch domestic life--The old maid--

Admiration of foreigners for English women--English dress--

Public morals--Contrast between town and country life--

A country lady in London--Racquets, routs, and drums--

Education of girls--The boarding-school--Habits and manners

of the middle class--Le Blanc’s opinion of the English 307

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT LADY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

London society in the last century--Lord Chesterfield on taste--

Coarse language of great ladies--The speculation mania

among ladies--Narrowness of fashionable life--Manners

and amusements--Difficulties of social intercourse--The

founders of Almack’s Club--The passion for politics--Lady

Mary Wortley Montagu on women’s training--Some traits of

eighteenth-century life 333

PERIOD I.

_WOMEN IN THE DAYS OF FEUDALISM._

WOMEN IN ENGLISH LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

A MEDIÆVAL MANOR-HOUSE.

Domestic life in the Middle Ages--Interior of a manor-house--Position

and duties of the mistress--Household arrangements--Dame Paston

and her daughters--Lady Joan Berkeley--The lady of the castle in

time of war--Lady Pelham’s defence of Pevensey Castle--Her letter

to her husband.

To those living in the hurry and bustle of modern existence, there

are few pictures so attractive as that of a stately manor-house in

olden times. Its seclusion and calm, the solidity, regularity, and

simplicity of its daily life, are a soothing contrast to the noise and

complexity of the common round in the present day. We are accustomed

to think of the Middle Ages as a period of strife, of rude commotions,

with a generally unsettled state of society. It was so, but with

it all there was a great peace which this generation knoweth not.

Fighting and brawling there was in plenty. Life was cheap, property

insecure; every man was his own policeman; quarrels meant blows, and

might was right. But the very causes which produced this state of

society created also an opposite condition of things. Bad roads, lack

of communication, which made it possible for deeds of violence to pass

unpunished, kept the knowledge of those deeds hidden from the community

at large. Life went on in quiet corners undisturbed by the thought of

evil and misfortune close at hand. There was no responsive throb of

feeling between one town and another, no electric thrill passing from

country-side to country-side. Each place lived its life comparatively

apart. To-day a touch on any of our great centres of life is felt

throughout the kingdom. In mediæval times England was not a whole, but

a conglomeration of communities, each with an independent existence.

The manor-house was essentially a self-contained domain. Even the best

of country roads were so indifferent that a town a few miles off was

not much more than a name to most of the occupants of the manor-house.

What were called high-roads were merely tracks along which waggons

were dragged with the utmost difficulty. The house itself, embowered

in trees on low-lying ground or sheltering against the breast of a

hill, was in its isolation both defenceless and secure. Generally, it

had a palisade or outer fence to form a protection against assault.

That a house of any pretensions should be something in the nature of a

stronghold was necessary in those days.

The upper story was reserved for the lady and her maidens. It was the

part most protected, and was sometimes strengthened further by the

placing of heavy doors at short intervals on the staircase which led to

this portion of the house. Originally consisting of only one apartment

called the solar, this upper floor was gradually enlarged until it

comprised several sleeping-rooms, the hall becoming more and more a

place for dining and receiving guests and transacting business, while

the real family life was lived upstairs. Mediæval manners necessitated

some retreat where the women-folk would not be exposed to contact with

any passing stranger who might claim hospitality. It seems, however,

to have been customary for the lady of the house to sit with her lord,

or, in his absence, to preside at the dinner or supper taken in the

hall. Her place was at the upper end, away from the entrance, and only

privileged guests would be permitted to sit close to her. There was a

full acknowledgment of the wife’s social position. To women of rank

and station the feudal system brought certain advantages. Every feudal

lord was a kind of princeling, and his wife shared his dignities. The

state kept up in the feudal castle and in the mediæval manor-house

gave the wife considerable importance. As far as social duties went,

husband and wife acted as partners, receiving and entertaining the

guests together. The unsettled times, which so often kept the lord

from his own roof, brought the lady into prominence as sole guardian

of the family possessions and interests. She was hedged round with a

little circle of ceremony. A great lady always had a body-guard of

maidens who lived under the eye of their mistress, while the lord had

a similar contingent of pages or squires. It was a general custom in

feudal times, and even somewhat later, for the daughters and sons of

good families to be sent to live in the household of some knight or

gentleman to be instructed in all the arts pertaining to their station.

Feudal etiquette required that a great lady should be personally served

by ladies of rank. With this personal service was combined training in

all domestic accomplishments which it was necessary for a well-bred

maiden to acquire. The English fashion of sending children from home

was commented on by foreigners as a proof of the lack of parental

affection. It was a fashion that was in full vogue in the middle of the

fifteenth century. In 1469, Dame Margaret Paston writes to her son, Sir

John Paston, about his sister Margery--

“I wuld ye shuld purvey for yur suster to be with my Lady

of Oxford, or with my Lady of Bedford, or in sume other

wurchepfull place, wher as ye thynk best, and I wull help to

her fyndyng, for we be eyther of us werye of other.”

Dame Paston’s blunt letter seems to bear out the charge brought against

English parents.

A knight’s lady was like the mistress of a boarding-school, and a

very stern mistress she often proved to be. Rank and birth did not

exempt her pupils from strict discipline and hard work. While their

brothers were learning to ride and to wrestle, to shoot, and to handle

the battle-axe, to sing and to learn to bear themselves gallantly

like gentlemen, the maidens were being initiated into the mysteries

of weaving, spinning, brewing, distilling, salting, and many other

processes which were then performed by each family for itself. To

these occupations was added needlework of all kinds, from the making

of plain serviceable smocks and cloaks to embroidering banners and

altar-cloths; for all wearing apparel, as well as everything required

for household use, was manufactured and made up at home. If the male

members of the establishment were numerous, a busy time the lady and

her maidens must have had. Well might the poet write--

“Mult doit fame estre chier tenue

Par li est tout gent vestue.

Bien sai que fame file et œuvre

Les dras dont l’en se vest et cuevre

“Et toissus d’or et drap de soie

Et por ce dis-je où que je soie,

A toz cels qui orront cest conte,

Que de fame ne dient honte.”[1]

No doubt the coarser kinds of work, such as the clothes for dependants,

were given out to the servants; but every young gentlewoman had to

learn the process, so as to be able in her turn to superintend a

household. Tailors were also employed for the making of both women’s

and men’s garments. In royal households there were regular tailors

who made feminine as well as masculine garments. A tailor was called a

cissor. In the time of Edward I., the King, the Queen, and the Prince

of Wales each had their separate tailors.

There were large establishments of celibate priests, like that of

Bishop Swinfield who lived in the thirteenth century, where no female

servants were permitted to enter, and men performed all the domestic

work. Unless the nuns of some neighbouring convent were employed in

working for these semi-monastic households, there must have been a

supply of masculine weavers and spinners. Curiously enough, the only

in-door employment in these priests’ houses for which female labour was

engaged was that of brewing. The brewing was always exclusively in the

hands of women, and it is thought possible that even in ecclesiastical

establishments the old custom was followed.

In the Middle Ages it was not usual for women to be employed about the

royal palaces except to attend on the queen and princesses. In France,

says Meiners, in his “History of the Female Sex”--

“When the kings lived apart from their consorts, they had in

their palaces no persons of the female sex, except a few of

those menials whose services are indispensably necessary in

every family, such as washerwomen, needle-women, etc., and

even these were removed by Philip the Fair from his court.

In like manner the palaces and apartments of the queens and

princesses were inaccessible to all persons of the other sex,

except the _maître de l’hotel_ and the knights or esquires who

mounted guard before the doors and chambers of the princesses.

At table, in rising and going to bed, in undressing and

dressing, queens and princesses were attended only by their

women and maids; and this ancient practice was retained by the

queens of France so late as the sixteenth century.”

But to return to the manor-house. A great lady, who had to superintend

and take an active share in the _making_ only of the clothes for the

household, would in these days feel herself very hardly pressed,

especially if she were also expected to be her own housekeeper and see

to the good ordering of the kitchen. But if she had also to manufacture

material and to preside over all those initial processes of which

she now sees nothing but the results, life would seem an intolerable

burden. It was not so thought in mediæval times. It is true that in

noblemen’s houses there was a steward, whose business it was to provide

the household with necessaries. In the Berkeley family, which may be

taken as a typical case, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,

the steward was accustomed to order, either monthly or quarterly,

certain quantities of provisions to be supplied from the manors and

farms belonging to the estate. But the lady of the house exercised a

general superintendence. Joan, the wife of Thomas, third Lord Berkeley,

who lived in the reign of Edward III., is described as--

“a vertuous lady and great huswife and a wise overseer of such

household affayres as were proper to her sex and government....

When shee came to theis farm-houses (as often shee did) to

oversee or take accompt of her dairy affaires, shee oftentimes

spent in provisions at a meale there the valewe of 4_d._ and

4_d._ ob. [4¼_d._ about] whereof allowance was afterwards given

to the Accomptant before her husband’s Auditor at the end of

the year. And some tymes also a cheese of two pound weight was

at such a tyme spent by her attendants. And in such huswifely

courses this virtuous Lady spent a part of her aged and weake

yeares untill her death.”

There was a dignity attached to manual labour which is exemplified

in the use of the word “spinster.” It was a term of which women were

proud. We now confine it to unmarried women, but as late as the

sixteenth century it was used by married women of the better class. A

gentlewoman who married a man of inferior rank claimed the title of

spinster as a sign of her good birth and gentle breeding.

Life was, however, by no means all work for the ladies of the

manor-house. There was time and to spare for lighter employments and

diversions. We hear a great deal of games, especially of chess, in

the households of people of rank, and the number of so-called chamber

games shows that the ladies had many hours for recreation. There was

dancing too, and lute-playing, and a little conning over ballads and

romances. For although the _damoiseaux_ frequently could not sign their

names, and found it hard work to spell out the words of the breviary,

the _demoiselles_, if they were not very skilful with the quill, were

fairly proficient in the art of reading, which was more cultivated by

women than by men.

In the intervals between needlework and housewifery, there would be

strolling in the garden on fine days, weaving garlands of flowers--a

favourite mediæval pastime; and in summer weather, when the lanes were

passable, rambles outside the domain and occasional rides. It is easy

to understand how much more essential was the garden to the enjoyment

of the women-folk in days when out-door exercise was comparatively

difficult. There would be a little visiting among the dependents in

the hamlet, and for the lady herself, in cold wet seasons, a great

dispensing of herbal medicines for rheums and ague. At all times there

were the doles to the poor, gifts which were thought due from the

great house. Religious observances occupied a portion of each day,

though the length and number of these depended on the character of

the inmates. Still, there would be certain outward forms of devotion

to be gone through in almost all large households. Few great ladies

were so punctilious in their devotions as the Princess Cecil, mother

of Edward IV., who used to rise at seven o’clock and say matins with

her chaplain. After that she heard a low mass in her chamber. A little

later in the morning, when the slight breakfast had been partaken of,

she would go to the chapel to hear divine service and two low masses.

She said evensong with her chaplain, and then went again to chapel.

In ordinary households the saints’ days would be observed, the great

fasts kept, and mass heard at regular intervals. Sometimes the abbot of

the neighbouring monastery would pay what might be called a pastoral

visit to the lord and lady of the manor, accompanied by some of his

monks, mounted on mules, accustomed to pace the rough or miry roads.

Besides these clerical visitors, there would be strangers to be

entertained every now and then, and if they were of high degree, the

lady herself would see that their wants were supplied, and would sup

and converse with them.

Life in the mediæval manor-house, though it was a life much secluded

from the noise and bustle of the world, was one full of activity and

varied occupation. There were so many necessary duties that must be

performed, that the absence of entertainment and of the pleasures of

art and literature was not felt. The horizon was limited. Interests

were concentrated within a narrow compass, but what is unknown is not

missed. For the women the manor-house was the world. It is recorded

as a merit on the part of Lady Joan Berkeley (mentioned above), that

in the forty-two years of her married life she never travelled ten

miles from her husband’s houses in Somerset and Gloucester, “much

less humered herselfe with the vaine delightes of London and other

cities.” If a great lady like the wife of Thomas Lord Berkeley lived

so circumscribed an existence, it is easy to imagine how small was

the circle of women of less degree. But this limited area of thought

and activity does not seem to have been a bad nursery. Writing of the

fifteenth century, Sir James Ramsay says--

“If we are led to form an unfavourable opinion of the male

aristocracy of the period, far otherwise is it with regard to

the ladies. Whether as wives, sisters, or daughters, their

letters create most favourable impressions.”

In feudal times it was not all noble ladies who could live in peace

and seclusion in their homes, protected from strife and rude alarms.

The châtelaine was often called upon to take supreme command in her

lord’s absence, and if trouble arose and the castle were attacked, the

mistress was not only the nominal but the actual head of affairs. We do

not find in those days that women shut themselves up and declined to

interfere because they did not understand politics. On the contrary,

they responded to the need with alacrity. The great lady put down her

embroidery-needle and took up the sword when danger threatened. She did

not fasten herself up in the solarium with her maidens, but took the

command of the household.

A notable heroine in the Wars of the Roses was Lady Joan Pelham, wife

of Sir John Pelham, Constable of Pevensey Castle. In 1399 Sir John was

in Yorkshire with Henry Duke of Lancaster, fighting against Richard

II. Lady Joan, left in Pevensey Castle, was fiercely attacked by the

Yorkist forces from Sussex, Kent, and Surrey. The castle was in great

danger, and there was much difficulty also in obtaining provisions. The

long letter which she wrote to her husband during the siege has the

additional interest of being the earliest letter extant written by an

English lady.

“MY DERE LORD,

“I recommande me to yowr hie Lordesehippe wyth hert and body

and all my pore myght, and wyth all this I think zou, as my

dere Lorde, derest and best yloved off all earthlyche Lordes; I

say for me and thanke yhow my dere Lorde, with all thys that I

say before, off your comfortable lettre, that ze send me fron

Pownefraite that com to me on Mary Magdaleyn day; ffor by my

trowth I was never so gladd as when I herd by your lettre that

ye warr stronge ynogh wyth the grace off God for to kepe yow

fro the malyce of your ennemys. And dere Lorde iff it lyk to

your hyee Lordeshippe that als ye myght, that smyght her off

your gracious spede whych God Allmyghty contynue and encresse.

And my dere Lorde, if is lyk zow for to know off my ffare, I am

here by layd in a manner off a sege, wyth the counte of Sussex,

Sudray, and a greet parsyll off Kentte; so that I ne may nogth

out, nor none vitayles gette me, bot with myche hard. Wharfore

my dere if it lyk zow, by the awyse off zowr wyse counsell,

for to sett remadye off the salvation off yhower castell & wt.

stand the malyce off ther sehures foresayde. And also that ye

be fullyehe enformede off there grett malyce wyker’s in these

schyres whyche yt haffes so dispytffuly wrogth to zow, and to

zowl castell, to zhowr men, and to zuor tenaunts ffore this

cuntree, have yai wastede for a grett whyle. Farewell my dere

Lorde, the Holy Trinyte zow kepe fro zour ennemys and son send

me gud tythyngs off yhow. Ywryten at Pevensay in the castell,

on Saynt Jacobe day last past.

“By yhowr awnn pore, J. Pelham.

“To my trew Lorde.”

CHAPTER II.

LEARNING BEFORE THE DAYS OF THE PRINTING PRESS.

Learned ladies in Saxon times--Education of women in the Middle

Ages--The rise of Grammar Schools--Want of provision for

girls--Convent schools--Improvement of education in the fifteenth

century--Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, and her

patronage of learning.

It might seem superfluous to discuss the subject of education in

periods when reading and writing were the accomplishments of but

a fraction of the population, while to speak of learning seems

altogether an anomaly. As has already been noted, writing was a rare

accomplishment up to the tenth century. At the time of the Norman

invasion, there were probably few laymen who could spell out a

breviary. Yet even under the Saxon kings, when there was such a dearth

of knowledge among the people and a scarcity of all literature, there

was a thread of scholarship running through the nation among the

Monastic Orders. Although the foundations of learning had been laid,

the building went on slowly. Strange as it appears, there was not only

among men, but among women, a zest for study in the far-off days of the

Saxon monk Aldhelm, who wrote for his female pupils his work, “De Laude

Virginitatis.”

Times that were in most respects very unfavourable for the pursuit

of letters produced students and scholars of no mean capacity. The

seclusion in which monks dwelt by choice and women by necessity, gave

opportunity for studies that would have been neglected under less

rude conditions. Saxon ladies varied the monotony of their domestic

occupations by the study of Latin, which they not only read, but wrote

with tolerable fluency.

Latin was then the great vehicle of knowledge. It was the language

of law, the medium of correspondence between scholars. Most of the

accessible literature was in Latin. It was, therefore, to the study

of that language above all else that students betook themselves. The

learned ladies of the sixteenth century had their forerunners in the

women of the seventh and eighth, in the studious Abbess Eadburga and

her pupil Leobgitha, with both of whom the celebrated St. Boniface,

called the Apostle of Germany, corresponded in Latin.

At that period learning was so closely associated with religion, that

the Church was the nursery of scholars. The acquirements of the Saxon

ladies were due to their connection with the religious orders. It was

in the priories and convents that the arts of reading and copying

manuscripts, of writing and composition were cultivated. So exclusively

was learning the monopoly of the Church, that in the Middle Ages

the study of books was but an inconsiderable part of a gentleman’s

education.

With women the case was somewhat different. Their enforced seclusion

in days of rude manners led them to sedentary occupations. They were

frequently the only members of the family who could read with any ease.

As long as war was the chief business and out-door sports the chief

pastime of men, the quieter lives of the women gave them the advantage

in point of learning.

But with the Renaissance a change crept in. The education of men began

to improve, while that of the women was left as before. When William

of Wykeham founded his school at Winchester in 1373, he thought only

of boys. Henry VI. did not propose to admit girls to his foundation at

Eton. All the great schools which rose up in the sixteenth century,

Rugby, Harrow, Westminster, St. Paul’s, and the rest, were confined to

the male sex. The universities, though owing much to the beneficence

of women in early times, have, until recently, not only done nothing

for the advancement of women’s education, but thrown stumbling-blocks

in its way.

In education, as in everything else, the rich, of course, had the

advantage. Sir Nicholas Bacon, in the reign of Elizabeth, introduced

some reforms into the education of wards. There were--

“articles devised for the bringing up in vertue and learning

of the Queenes Majesties Wardes, being heires males and whose

landes descending in possession and coming to the Queenes

Majestie shall amount to the cleere yearly value of c. markes

or above.”

Girls were put into wardship, too, but the Lord Keeper does not seem to

have thought any reforms were needed in their education.

It is not surprising to find that the girls of the poorer classes were

often much neglected. A contemporary writer, speaking of the women of

England, says--

“This nevertheless I utterlie mislike in the poorer sort of

them, for the wealthier doo sildome offend herein: that being

of themselves without competent wit they are so carelesse in

the education of their children (wherein their husbands also

are to be blamed) by means whereof verie manie of them neither

fearing God, neither regarding either manners or obedience,

do oftentimes come to confusion which (if anie correction or

discipline had beene used toward them in youth) might have

proved good members of their common-wealth and countrie by

their good service and industrie.”

The children of the poor could not have profited much by the free

education of the convent schools, for they began to earn their living

as soon as they were able to use their hands. There was plenty of

“discipline” in their bringing up, but not much regard paid to

“manners” or learning.

The custom among the well-to-do classes of sending their children

to live in the houses of the nobility prevailed all through the

Middle Ages and up to the sixteenth century. Among the laity it was a

recognized mode of education. The kind of training which the girls,

under this system, received depended on the character and acquirements

of the lady of the house. The primary things to be learnt were good

manners and domestic arts. Books were very scarce, and, except in

religious houses, there would be few persons who could make use of

them. Even at the end of the fifteenth century it was unusual for a

gentleman to be able to read and write.[2] There were, of course, the

schools attached to monasteries and convents where all classes were

taught, and in good families tutors were employed for both girls

and boys, such men as Elmer, Bishop of London, Roger Ascham, Walter

de Biblesworth, and others notable for learning, acting in that

capacity in the households of the nobility. The curriculum at the

convents included English, Latin, music, and grammar. The majority of

noblemen’s and gentlemen’s daughters are said to have attended the

convent schools. A custom prevailed for these young gentlewomen to

wear white veils, to distinguish them from professed nuns, who wore

black, which implies that all the pupils were resident in the convents.

It was not uncommon for the religious houses to be used as boarding

establishments. At some places ladies were received as inmates of a

conventual household, bringing their own servants to attend upon them,

and to a great extent living apart from the nuns.

With regard to women’s education, there seem to have been periods of

enlightenment alternating with periods of darkness. In Saxon days,

in the seventh and eighth centuries especially, the study of letters

occupied a good deal of the attention of women. But while the Norman

and Saxon were struggling into unity, education everywhere seems to

have been at a low ebb.

Women did not profit much by the literary renaissance of the age of

Chaucer. It is said that the daughters of John of Gaunt, who was

father to Henry IV., were the first English ladies who could write

(the Saxon abbesses and their pupils are ignored in this statement),

while the earliest letter extant written by a woman in English is said

to have been the notable epistle, already quoted, sent by Lady Joan

Pelham in 1399 to her husband, relating her troubles during her gallant

defence of Pevensey Castle.[3]

By the middle of the fifteenth century, however, some improvement

is noticeable. If writing were such a rare accomplishment as to add

lustre to the family of John of Gaunt, the grand-daughter of that

illustrious begetter of kings was celebrated for the keen interest she

took in books, and was herself an author. Margaret Beaufort, mother

of Henry VII., was a noted woman of learning, though her interest for

later generations lies more in the part she played in history. She was

a woman of great intellectual ability, and had been most carefully

trained. Printing was then a new art, and the Countess of Richmond, to

give her the title by which she is best known, was a warm patroness of

Caxton’s partner, Wynkyn de Worde, whom she appointed as her special

printer. The countess was a very great lady, and had her printer, her

poet, her band of minstrels, just as she had her resident confessor and

her domestic retinue. She ordered several works to be printed, and did

much to foster a taste for literature among the ladies of the court.

Her bent of mind was distinctly religious, and in her later years

she regulated her establishment on monastic lines, and lived a life

of conventual strictness. In her secluded manor-house, situated in

the Hundred of Woking, her principal visitor was the abbot of the

neighbouring monastery of Newark, who from time to time ambled along

the ill-kept road with a train of monks all mounted on mules to

confer with this powerful but dutiful daughter of the Church. In the

picturesquely shaded house, which is still well preserved and retains

much of its old-world air, the countess could pursue her reading and

meditations undisturbed, and it was probably here that she composed her

religious books. Her early studies enabled her to enjoy such literature

as was accessible. She was well acquainted with Latin and French, but

there is no mention of Greek or Hebrew.

We must skip the two next generations, and go on to the great

grand-daughters of the Countess of Richmond before we find the dead

languages assuming an important place in the curriculum of a woman’s

education. There were very few books accessible to the laity in the

days of Margaret of Richmond, but she lived long enough to see the

means of knowledge multiplying fast, and to assist in the process.

The intellectual gifts and literary attainments of her grandson, Henry

VIII., augured well for the progress of learning in England, and the

countess, who died the year that Henry was crowned, was thus spared

the pain of witnessing the crimes which stained his after career. The

mental energy which characterised all the Tudors seems to have had its

fountain-head in their distinguished ancestress, whose position exposed

her to many trials and dangers, through which her strength of mind,

steadiness of purpose, and nobility of character carried her unscathed.

Some ills might have been averted from England had Margaret Beaufort

been alive during the reign of her grandson. And what a brilliant

leader she would have made of that group of learned ladies who adorned

the second half of the sixteenth century!

CHAPTER III.

THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES.

The Feudal System unfavourable to the development of the middle

classes--Subjection of women under Feudalism--Tyranny of

feudal lords--Power of the Church--Rise of commerce--Material

progress--End of the Feudal System.

Until the development of England as a manufacturing country, the

strength and importance of the middle classes were not felt. They

came into power contemporaneously with the growth of trade and

commerce. It was the thriving burgesses who made England feared by

other nations, for it was they who equipped her fleets and replenished

empty exchequers. It has often been remarked that in no other country

in Europe is there a middle class corresponding to the middle class

in England. In no other country is the middle class such a powerful

factor in national life. Whether it will retain its power is doubtful.

The blows aimed by socialism at the upper classes are felt by those

below. For every large landowner who is attacked on the score of undue

wealth, there are a hundred small property-holders who will bend under

the strain put upon their resources. Ground rents are not all in the

hands of the nobility, and employers of labour are not all battening on

enormous profits. It is the middle classes whom the socialistic portion

of the democracy wish to reduce to a condition of insecurity, and whose

energies they are trying to paralyze.

The feudal system was unfavourable to the growth of the middle classes.

It savoured too much of absolutism. Energy was cramped. Individual

effort was possible only within certain limits. In the feudal ages

people cared more for protection than for freedom. They bowed to the

sovereignty of the feudal lord, and were dependent on his bounty.

The services which they were obliged to render prevented them from

straying into new paths, and the conditions under which they lived

made independent action impossible. It was not until the feudal system

was broken down that there was a free course for the development of

the middle classes. In the first four centuries after the coming of

the Normans, it is the aristocracy who are the history-makers. Roughly

speaking, there are only two classes to be considered: the nobles and

the serfs--for such the lower classes remained in all the important

relations of life--and until the arts of civilization have made some

progress, until the resources of the country have been brought into

play and foreign commerce has grown into importance, the life of the

populace is a somewhat monotonous tale.

It has been stated that feudalism raised woman to a higher place in

domestic life; that, whereas before she was in a state of subjection,

under the feudal system she exercised independent power. Undoubtedly,

as a wife woman was a gainer. The mantle of authority with which her

husband was invested, fell upon her whenever he was temporarily absent.

The _ménage_ of a feudal household certainly gave the lady of the house

a dignity, and imposed upon her responsibilities which secured her

respect and gave her freedom of action. She was called upon to direct a

little army of subordinates, and was her husband’s partner and equal.

But this improvement in the status of women is not discernible, except

in the governing classes. The women without title, rank, position,

wealth, the women of every-day life, profited little. They shared in

the subjection of their fathers, brothers, and husbands, and they

enjoyed none of the privileges which the feudal system conferred on

their more highly placed sisters. In a state of society where the mass

of the people were in a dependent position, it was not likely that any

special freedom would be granted to or even claimed by women. And in an

age when the worship of force was dominant, their physical inferiority

told heavily against them. Under feudalism there was no sort of

independence possible to women who were born to wealth or rank.

Women were under a twofold sovereignty--that of the feudal lord and of

their male relatives. No woman in any position of life could be said

to be a free agent. If she were a great heiress, she was disposed of

in marriage as best suited the king and his council without regard to

her wishes. In the case of a vassal’s daughter, the consent of the

feudal lord must be obtained to her marriage. Every tenant paid a sum

of money to the lord on the marriage of his daughter, and this tax was

even levied in the case of grand-daughters. The price was fixed by the

manorial courts. A couple could not be betrothed without the permission

of their feudal lord, and if they failed to obtain his consent they

were subject to a fine.

In France, when feudalism was at its height, the birth of a daughter

was regarded as a calamity, from the sovereign downwards. Louis XI.,

who refused even to admit into his presence his daughter, Jeanne de

Valois, during the first four years of her life, and ferociously struck

at her with his sword when she chanced one day to come into view,

represents in an exaggerated form the sentiment of the peasant, who,

if he had no sons, would say, “Je n’ai pas d’enfants, je n’ai que des

filles.”

Feudal England did not express herself so strongly, but a dowerless

daughter was felt to be a heavy burden, and a daughter with a portion

was treated simply as a marketable commodity.

On the labouring classes the tyranny of the feudal system pressed

grievously. A licence had to be bought to go outside the bounds of the

lord of the manor to obtain work. For instance, an orphan girl, in the

reign of Edward III., paid sixpence for the privilege of serving and

marrying “wheresoever and whensoever she pleases.”[4] A woman living on

the estate of a feudal lord was regarded as, in a manner, his property.

If she married a stranger and left the manor, the lord was entitled to

compensation, as being deprived of part of his “live stock.”

All through the Middle Ages it was the aim of the government to keep

the people on the land, to prevent the agricultural population from

quitting the rural districts. No father who could not show an income

of £20 a year in land or rent might apprentice his son or daughter to

any trade. This effectually cut off the chances of the majority of the

working class from migrating to the towns. The system, unworkable as it

appears, did not die out until the sixteenth century.

Powerful as was the Church in the Middle Ages, it was not able to

protect women outside the shade of the cloister. And it will be readily

understood how great was the influence of the priest in an age when

the mass of the people were so little able to think and judge for

themselves; in an age when belief in the supernatural encompassed daily

life with terrors, when the common laws of nature were dim mysteries,

when disease and misfortune were ascribed to the malevolence of witches

and evil spirits. The Church was the supreme arbiter, and to question

her decrees was to incur the risk of eternal misery. The powers of evil

could only be exorcised by holy water and priestly aid, and lapses

into sin were atoned for by substantial offerings. It was easy to

persuade women, always more susceptible than men to the emotional and

imaginative side of religion, that their dreams and fancies were divine

warnings. In that quaint collection of fourteenth-century maxims known

as the “Book of the Knight of Latour Landry,” the story is related of

a young wife who was induced to desert her husband for a lover, and

fell sick. She had a vision of a fiery pit, which a priest interpreted

to signify the abode of lost spirits, into which she would have been

plunged but for her piety in supporting one hundred priests to say

masses for the souls of her parents, and in dispensing charity among

the poor.

But if the Church tyrannized over the people and took advantage of

their ignorance, it was a great uplifting and civilizing power in their

lives. But for the Church the Middle Ages would been one dark night

of un-illumined barbarism. The Church summed up in herself all that

existed of knowledge and culture. It was the symbol of order, progress,

and learning. In time of war it was a haven of peace. It was the Church

that enabled women to live secure, sheltered lives in the midst of

turmoils and danger. It was the guardian of the people’s consciences,

and possessed over them a power of life and death.

Looked at from a lighter side, the Church was a potent factor in

every-day life. Her festivals were one of the chief recreations of the

people. To women especially, whose diversions were fewer than those

of men, the feast-days, with their processions and ceremonials, were

welcome excitements. In the services of the Church women found an

outlet for the gratification of the æsthetic sense which nothing else

afforded. If the main features of social life in the Middle Ages be

remembered--the sordidness of the dwellings, the absence of everything

beyond the barest necessaries in the majority of homes, the lack of

indoor recreations, and of all the resources of modern times afforded

by the means of locomotion--it will not appear strange that the Church

as a social force should have wielded such power.

The rise of the middle classes was the rise of a power antagonistic

to the Church. It was the beginning of the revolt against constituted

authority. It foreshadowed the strife between reason and dogma. All

the movements that have arisen against the power of the Church have

come from the middle classes. The spirit of inquiry which led men to

question the claims of an infallible priesthood, and culminated in the

breakdown of the power of the Roman Catholic Church in England, had

its birth among the middle classes. The modern scientific movement, to

which the Anglican Church has been so bitterly opposed, started from

the same source. The battle for freedom of worship, whether fought by

Anglicans against Romanists, or by Dissenters against Anglicans, has

been mainly carried on by members of the middle classes.

After the fall of feudalism, in the period immediately preceding

the Reformation, the extension of commerce was raising the middle

classes into power. New paths were opening out, and as riches were

more diffused and intercourse between different parts of the country

and with other nations became easier, the influence of the Church was

weakened. It became less dominant as new interests arose.

It was in this period that a remarkable step was taken among women of

the middle class--a step which shows that their interest in public

affairs was very keen. A number of city dames drew up a petition to

Parliament and presented it in person. It was not the stimulus of

private interest or the sharp spur of national calamity that sent them

to the doors of the legislature. It is a significant fact that it was

an affront offered to a woman which stirred the citizens’ wives to

action in the year 1429, when that unfortunate kinglet, the puppet of

his party, Henry VI., was nominally reigning. The Duke of Gloucester’s

matrimonial concerns were creating a good deal of agitation. He had put

away his wife, the Countess Jacqueline of Hainault, daughter of William

IV., Count of Holland, and widow of the Dauphin John, and set in her

place Eleanor Cobham. The good citizenesses were full of righteous

wrath. They resolved to present a remonstrance to the House of Lords.

“One Mistress Stokes, with divers other stout women of London,

of good account and well apparelled, came openly to the Upper

House of Parliament and delivered letters to the Duke of

Gloucester, to the Archbishop, and other lords there present,

containing matters of rebuke and sharp reprehension to the

said Duke of Gloucester because he would not deliver his

wife Jacqueline out of her grievous imprisonment, being then

detained prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy, and suffering her to

remain unkindly whilst he kept another adulteress contrary to

the law of God and the honourable estate of matrimony.”

These city dames, who probably were not very facile with their pen, who

had no newspapers to read, no clubs or societies at which to discuss

public matters, who were, doubtless, much occupied with the affairs

of their household, were so moved by the iniquity being perpetrated

upon one of their own sex, that they could not forbear taking action.

There must have been much indignant gossip between good Mistress Stokes

and her neighbours. The outrage on the wifely dignity of Countess

Jacqueline appealed to their inmost feelings. They were all women of

the thriving, comfortable middle class, as the description implies,

“stout women,” and “well apparelled,” whose husbands would be citizens

of good standing. Or perhaps some of them were women trading on their

own account, wool-staplers and merchants, as was not uncommon in those

times. They felt, as all good citizenesses should, that they had part

and lot in the affairs of the kingdom, and did not think it “going out

of their sphere” to express their opinion on a matter of the gravest

import. But it was a bold thing to interfere in the affairs of a peer

of the realm, one of royal blood, and to go up in person to the House

of Lords, especially for petitioners who by their rank and connections

could not command special attention, who had neither husbands,

brothers, nor friends in the august assembly to which they appealed.

The personal element, which was so manifest in the political women of

the eighteenth century, was absent.

With the growth of the commercial movement and the increase of material

prosperity, society was gradually reconstituted. As feudalism declined,

so did chivalry. The artificial view of life which it engendered faded

away. The commercial instinct, so strong in the English people, began

to override other impulses.

As England emerged from its commercial insignificance, an improvement

naturally took place in the material conditions of domestic life.

Luxuries that had hitherto belonged exclusively to the aristocracy,

were introduced into the homes of the middle classes. Houses were

better furnished, dress became more sumptuous, the table was better

provided. Indeed, the quality of the food was in advance of the other

conditions of life. With the growth of towns was created a more marked

difference between the rural and urban population. The burgher’s wife

who had glass windows to her house and went to church in a silken hood,

felt herself on a different plane from the farmer’s wife with her

shuttered lattices and linen coif. The trading class naturally lived

an in-door life, and became sensitive to hardships endured without

question by the agricultural class. Women who dwelt in cities fell

into a different groove of occupations and amusements from their rural

sisters, whom they began to regard with some disdain. Field and farm

work were looked upon with a little scorn by women who had been brought

up in the more sheltered atmosphere of town life. The dance on the

village green and the harvest revels were superseded for town dwellers

by feasts and shows.

There were hardly any books in the houses even of prosperous traders,

whose literature was confined to their account-books. As for the women,

they were busy enough with their household affairs, and sought their

recreation in a gossip with their neighbours. Few of them ever wrote

a letter or found any use for a pen. Even to this day there are good

housewives in country districts who would be puzzled to make out a

receipt or cast up a column of figures.

In the fourteenth century there were few persons outside the ranks of

the clergy who could write. There was a considerable improvement in the

following century, which affords a convenient starting-point from which

to commence the study of town life.[5] Letter-writing was becoming

usual among the well-to-do of the middle classes, those who would now

be called the gentry. Education was spreading. The gulf between the

aristocracy and the democracy was being bridged over by a thriving,

intelligent middle class. As we approach the sixteenth century, the old

manner of life is fast seen to be disappearing. The castle is no longer

the power that it was once. The sovereignty of the nobles is weakened,

in many cases completely shattered, and the system of tyrannical

protection on the one side and slavish dependence on the other passes

away.

CHAPTER IV.

WOMEN AND THE ANCIENT GILDS.

The industrial equality of former days--Women as members of

Gilds--Restrictions on trade--Fitness of girls for industrial

occupations--Women as watchmakers: Sir John Bennett’s

opinion--The brewsters and ale-wives--Trade unions compared

with the ancient Gilds--Influence of the Gilds--Equality of the

sisteren and bretheren--Married women trading alone--Labour

regulations applicable to men and women alike.

The records of the industrial history of England reveal one anomaly

which is by no means cheering to those who are striving to improve

the economic position of women. It cannot be gainsaid that in periods

before the labour question began to be scientifically discussed, there

was a juster conception of the relations which should subsist between

the sexes in the common affairs of daily life. Men and women were

treated on a par. When labour laws were enacted they were enacted for

both alike; it was assumed that the sexes stood on an equality. With

one or two exceptions, there was no especial legislation for women.

Nor was there any hindrance, either in theory or in actuality, to

women trading and engaging in industrial occupations. A woman was not

debarred from any commercial pursuit simply by reason of sex. Whatever

work she was able to undertake she carried through without having to

surmount artificial barriers set up by prejudice and by the action of

those interested in the restriction of women’s industrial liberty.

At the present day women have to fight their way into the commercial

world, and every fresh step which they make towards independence

is hailed as a triumph, and a hopeful sign for the future; or as a

retrograde step, a deplorable and dangerous departure, according to the

views of the onlookers; but in all cases as something abnormal, to be

commented upon and criticized. The general opinion in the first half of

this century was that women and business were things apart, and better

kept separate. Either it was assumed that women knew nothing about

business and could never learn, or that if they did edge their way in

they would be thrusting men out.

It does not appear that in the past such views were entertained, that

women were considered to be going out of their “sphere” when they

entered the world of trade, or that it was attempted to deny them any

of the privileges which might attach to commercial pursuits. The women

took their places quite naturally side by side with the men, and no one

saw anything strange in the position. They could receive apprentices;

they became members of trade gilds, worked at various industries; in

short, played their part as full members of the industrial community.

It has been remarked that “great changes in the _status_ of woman

and in the _status_ of labour have been correlative and often

contemporaneous.” This is exemplified in the revolution brought about

by the factory system, which altered the whole conditions of domestic

life for large numbers of women in the lower ranks. The greater freedom

which women enjoyed in olden times in regard to trading is remarkable

on account of the severe restrictions applied to all forms of industry.

It was not as if the worker were left to tread his own path. The

relations between employer and employed were strictly defined. Hours,

wages, clothing, form of engagement, manner of work, all came under

legal supervision. And yet this interfering legislation did not create

those differences between male and female adult workers, which have

been a deplorable feature of modern times, and which faddists of a

certain school are doing their best to accentuate.

It may be argued that women have perfect liberty in the present day

to enter upon any commercial pursuit; that the law does not hinder

them from becoming merchants, shipowners, and traders of all kinds.

What the law, however, does not forbid, custom prevents. Among the

middle classes it is tacitly agreed that the boys of the family must

be started on a commercial career, and systematic efforts are being

made towards achieving that end. A boy is apprenticed to some trade,

and shown how to work his way up step by step from the bottom rung to

the top of the ladder. He can enter a manufactory, a workshop, a retail

business. But want of training and want of capital have militated

against the industrial progress of women. There are only a few trades

open to a girl, not for lack of physical strength, but because custom

has decreed that certain occupations shall belong to men. Putting aside

such pursuits as are obviously unsuited to girls--for in dealing with

female labour it is the fitness of _girls_ that has to be considered,

since all occupations must be entered upon before adult life--there are

many employments in which they are as well, if not better, fitted to

engage than men and boys.

Sir John Bennett, writing in 1857, called attention to the fact that

women were excellent watchmakers, and might be profitably employed in

England as they were on the Continent.

“Thousands of women are at this moment finding profitable

employment at the most delicate portion of watch-work

throughout the district around Neuchatel. The subdivision of

labour is there wisely made so minute as to adjust itself

precisely to the special capabilities of every woman’s

individual dexterity. The watch is composed of many distinct

parts; some require force and decision in the hands of the

workman, while many are so exquisitely delicate that for them

the fine touch of the female finger is found to be far superior

to the more clumsy handling of the man.... Now, why should

not our English women be employed upon a labour for which

their sisters in Switzerland prove themselves so eminently

adapted, and thus provide, to a large extent, a remedy for the

distresses of our labouring population, and open out a new

channel whereby they may elevate their condition and benefit

mankind? In London 50,000 females are working under sixpence

per day, and above 100,000 under one shilling per day. So long

as nearly every remunerative employment is engrossed by men

only, so long must the wretchedness and slavery of women remain

what it is. For any man to declare, whatever his motive, that

the women of London are sure to do badly what the Swiss women

are now doing well, is an insult and a fallacy in which I

refuse to join.

“No factory system is necessary for the successful manufacture

of this very beautiful little machine. The father has but to

teach his own daughters, wife, and female relatives at his own

home, and then, just as their leisure suits, they can perform

each her part without necessarily interfering with the most

indispensable of her domestic duties. Thus the whole family

is well provided for, and by the reduction of the cost of the

watch, the sale would be increased indefinitely, and this

increase would give additional employment to men and women in

about equal proportion. Working watchmakers have no need to

fear the introduction of female labour; the large demand that

necessarily would ensue, when watches were materially cheapened

in price, would doubtless more than compensate any loss they

might temporarily sustain; the change it would effect would be

found not only a moral good and an immense social blessing,

but would satisfy the indispensable requirements of a strong

commercial necessity.”

When people complain of women pushing into men’s occupations, it ought

to be remembered how many things men have absorbed which formerly

belonged as much, if not more, to women. For instance, it was the

women who did the brewing, even in households where men were employed

for other domestic duties. The feminine suffix in the word “brewster”

is another sign that brewing was a woman’s occupation. Most of the

beer-houses in London were owned by women who brewed their own beer up

to the end of the fifteenth century, by which time brewing was passing

into the hands of men. Women were also the principal ale-keepers, and

the ale-wife was a noted character in rural England. The number of inns

kept at the present day by women, in the country districts especially,

shows how this old custom has held its ground.

An ordinance of Edward III. indicates the kind of trades in which

formerly women were predominant. It runs--

“But the intent of the King and his Council is that women, that

is to say, brewers, bakers, carders and spinners, and workers

as well of wool as of linen cloth and of silk; brawdesters,

and breakers of wool, and all other that do use and work all

handy works, may freely use and work as they have done before

this time without any impeachment or being restrained by this

ordinance.”

In former times it was not felt to be unseemly for men and women to

work side by side, nor are there any evidences that such a proceeding

led to immoral conduct. Then it was habitual for the sexes to be

associated in labour. The situation presented nothing strange,

and nothing tempting; custom proved a safeguard. In spite of the

improvement in manners and public conduct, the difficulty of men and

women consorting for a common purpose has always been put forth in

modern times as a reason why certain occupations should be restricted

to men, except among the lower class of operatives who are continually

under the eye of overseers, and in shops where the public act as

supervisors.

There are certain departments of industry which bring out very clearly

the advantages which women formerly possessed and the privileges they

enjoyed. It is claimed, though on insufficient grounds, that the

present trade unions are the legitimate descendants of the ancient

gilds. In one respect, certainly, they are extremely unlike. The trade

unions have, until quite recently, been purely men’s associations, and

their formation has been a hindrance to the women working in the same

trade. The gilds knew no distinctions of sex. They were formed in the

interest of the trading community for purposes of mutual help, and

were as much for the benefit of the “sisteren” as the “bretheren.” The

attitude of the ancient gilds towards women was essentially different

from that of the modern trade unions.

In the Middle Ages the influence of the gilds was considerable. Their

authority was widespread, and they practically controlled the trade.

It is, therefore, of importance to note their action and the rules by

which they were constituted when considering the position of women in

regard to industry and commerce. In nearly all the gilds there were

women members, and in many cases the names of women appear as founders.

Gilds were formed for various purposes. They were in the nature of

friendly societies. In addition to their commercial side, they were

“associations for mutual help and social and religious intercourse

amongst the people,” and these associations “were almost always formed

equally of men and women.”[6]

Miss Toulmin Smith says, in her Introduction to “English Gilds,” that--

“scarcely five out of the five hundred were not formed equally

of men and women.... Even where the affairs were managed by a

company of priests, women were admitted as lay members, and

they had many of the same duties and claims upon the gilds as

the men.”

The brothers and sisters all met together to transact the business

of the gild. It was no mere matter of form to admit women. They were

active working members, sharing in all the privileges and contributing

to the funds, though smaller payments were sometimes exacted of the

women. The female members, like the male, wore the livery.

“Also it is ordeyned that every suster of the fraternite and

Gilde schul ben cladde in a swte of hodes, that is for to seye

reed, pena 20^d.”[7]

Not only did the gild lend money to the younger members to start them

in business, and succour those in distress who “fell into poverty

through mishap, and not by fault of their own,” but it provided

the dowerless with marriage portions, or the penniless with means

to embrace a religious life. In the ordinances of the Ludlow Gild,

established in 1824, was a clause that--

“if any good girl of the gild of marriageable age cannot have

the means found by her father either to go into a religious

house or to marry, whichever she wishes to do; friendly and

right help shall be given her, out of our means and our common

chest, enabling her to do whichever of the two she wishes.”

In the religious gilds, of which there were two classes, one for the

clergy and one for the laity, the women were put on a par with the lay

members. Any gross offence, such as drinking and rioting, committed

by a priest, was punished with degradation; but if the offender were

a layman or a woman, by exclusion until satisfaction was given. The

clergy gilds did not admit women as members, but in one of the foreign

gilds the wives of lay brothers were admitted on certain conditions at

the oft-repeated request of the members.

The great companies also admitted women. The female members of the

Drapers’ Company carried on business and received apprentices like

the male members. “Every brother or sister of the fellowship taking

an apprentice shall present him to the wardens, and shall pay 1¾,”

runs the ordinance of 1503. This company was very careful to enjoin

respect for its female members. It was expressly ordered that when a

“sister” died she should be interred with full honours, have the best

pall thrown over her coffin, and be “followed by the Fraternity to the

grave with every respectful ceremony equally as the men.” After the

death of a gild brother, his widow could carry on his trade as one of

the gild. If a female member married a man of the same trade who was

not free of the gild, he acquired freedom by the marriage. A woman who

married a man of another trade was excluded from the gild. There were

certain gilds of which women became free in their own right, and others

where the wives and daughters of the gild brothers acquired a right

to membership from their connection. In the craft gilds a member was

allowed to have his wife and children and maid-servant to assist him

in his work. The Clothworkers, the Fishmongers, the Grocers, all speak

in their articles of brothers and sisters. Wives of members of the

Grocers’ Company were admitted on their marriage.

“All women not of the Fraternity and after married to any of

the Fraternity shall be entered and looked upon as of the

Fraternity for ever, and shall be assisted and made as one of

us; and after the death of the husband, the widow shall come to

the dinner and pay 40^d. if she is able.”

If she married out of the fraternity, she was not to be admitted to the

feast, or to receive any assistance from the company. Within recent

times women have obtained the freedom of both the Fishmongers’ and the

Drapers’ Companies, but for the purpose of sharing in the charities,

not with a view to trading. Since the beginning of the present century

forty-two women have been admitted to the Drapers’ Company, and there

are now upwards of a hundred belonging to the Fishmongers’ Company.[8]

Formerly married women were merchants and traders on their own account.

Clearly, it was by no means unusual, for in the _Liber Albus of

London_, compiled in the fourteenth century, is an ordinance relating

to married women carrying on business alone--

“and where a woman _coverte de baron_ follows craft within the

said city by herself apart, with which the husband in no way

intermeddles, such woman shall be bound as a single woman as to

all that concerns her said craft. And if the husband and wife

are impleaded in such case, the wife shall plead as a single

woman in the Court of Record, and shall have her law and other

advantages by way of plea just as a single woman. And if she

is condemned she shall be committed to prison until she shall

have made satisfaction; and neither the husband nor his goods

shall in such case be charged or interfered with.”

It was recognized that wives were independent beings responsible for

their own acts. This is clearly shown by the following ordinance in the

_Liber Albus:_--

“Item, if a wife, though a single woman, rents any house or

shop within the said city, she shall be bound to pay the rent

of the said house or shop, and shall be impleaded and sued as

a single woman, by way of debt if necessary, notwithstanding

that she was _coverte de baron_ at the time of such letting,

supposing that the lessor did not know thereof.”

There was no exemption for women on the ground of sex. An enactment

in the Statute of Labourers passed in the reign of Edward III. for

preventing idleness expressly includes women. It provides that--

“every man and woman of our realm of England of what condition

he be, free or bond, able in body and within the age of

threescore years, not living in merchandize, not exercising

any craft, nor having of his own whereof he may live, nor

proper land about whose tillage he may himself occupy, and not

serving any other, if he in convenient service (his estate

considered) be required to serve, he shall be bounden to serve

him which so shall him require.... And if any such man or woman

being so required to serve will not the same do, ... he shall

be committed to the next gaol, there to remain under strait

keeping, till he find surety to serve in the form aforesaid.”

When an oppressive enactment was made regulating the wages of labourers

and prohibiting them from receiving anything beyond a certain sum,

women were included. Their movements also were controlled. In the reign

of Richard II. it was provided--

“that no artificer, labourer, servant nor victualler, man nor

woman, should travel out of the hundred, rape, or wapen-take

where he is dwelling without a letter patent under the King’s

seal, stating why he is wandering, and that the term for which

he or she had been hired has been completed. Otherwise the

offender might be put in a pair of stocks, which was to be

provided in every town.”

Another curiously arbitrary regulation ordained that if a girl or boy

served up to the age of twelve at husbandry, they were to continue

that employment all their lives, and not to turn to any craft. “Up to

the age of twelve” is a significant sign of the conditions of juvenile

life. Children were held as full members of the working population.

It is evident that in the eye of the law women ranked on an equality

with men. Narrow as was the view taken by legislators of industrial

life, and absurd as many of the enactments seem now, it was reserved

for modern times to set up an artificial barrier between the sexes,

to push the working woman down a step, and rank her with children and

“young persons.”

The sense of the community was in advance of the legal conception

which merged the personality of the wife in that of the husband. The

gilds took care, by special ordinances, to remedy the defects of the

law. Having admitted women to the full privileges of their order,

and regarding them as workers with individual rights and duties,

they naturally reasoned that women should not be exempted from the

responsibilities of their own acts because they were married. In the

ordinances of the Worcester Gild, founded 1467, is the following:--

“Also yf eny man’s wyf becom detto^r or plegge, or by or sylle

eny chaffare or vitelle, or hyn eny house by har lyf, she to

answere to hym or hur that hath cause to sue, as a woman soole

marchaunt; and that an acion of dette be mayntend agenst hur,

to be conceyved aft^r the custom of the seid lite, w^{t}out

nemyng her husband in the seid accyon.”[9]

It has been pointed out that under the gild system women were employed

to a much smaller extent in manufactures than under the domestic

system which followed.[10] An ordinance of the fullers of Lincoln

places a restriction on the indiscriminate employment of women, and

limits it to the wives and servants of the masters. Whatever their

position in the lower branches of trade, they had full access to the

higher departments. They had governing power and the privileges which

belong to members of corporate bodies. The changes that followed on the

break-up of the gilds tended to throw women into the rank and file of

workers and to exclude them from the more responsible posts.

The principle of equality is everywhere apparent in the ordinances

relating to labour. In the reign of Edward IV. an ordinance was made

in the borough of Wells, that apprentices of both sexes to burgesses

would become burgesses themselves when their term of service was

accomplished. No distinction was made between male and female. Statutes

relating to apprentices in London and elsewhere apply equally to both

girls and boys. It was taken as a matter of course that a parent

might wish to apprentice his daughter just as much as his son. The

proclamation in 1271, relating to the woollen industry, expressly

permitted “all workers of woollen cloths, male and female, as well of

Flanders as of other lands,” to come to England to follow their craft.

Sometimes, indeed, the women appear to have enjoyed an advantage, as

in the statute of 1363 which ordered that “handicraftsmen should use

but one mystery,” while workwomen were free to work in their accustomed

way. In later times a theory grew up that women were competitors, not

co-workers, with men. There are numbers of people who on this ground

would hinder women from engaging in commercial pursuits and earning

their own livelihood. They argue that it is better for women to be

dependent upon their male relatives than to make their own way in the

world. That women should seek to achieve economic independence was,

until recently, quite against the general sentiment. But the force

of circumstances has proved stronger than theories: a surplus female

population and changes in social life have upset the notion that women

were created solely for family life, and that they were to be the

spenders, not the providers.

CHAPTER V.

THE MEDIÆVAL NUN.

Dominance of the Church in the Middle Ages--The Conventual

System--Occupations of the Nuns--Power of the Abbesses--Disputes

between Religious Houses and the Laity--Latitude allowed to

Nuns--Convents Educational Centres--Effects of the Suppression of

Convents--Complaints of the Laity.

Throughout the Middle Ages the Church was the dominant power in

England. It may seem absurd to characterize a period extending over

several centuries by any one feature, but the supremacy of the Church

is so marked as to stamp the whole of that changeful time. The

relationship of the Church to the laity was that of guardian and ruler,

in temporal as well as spiritual matters. Where the Church did not

inspire reverence it inspired fear, and where there was not willing

obedience there was dependence.

The position of women with regard to the Church was affected by this

attitude of the Church to the world. As servants of this mighty

organization, women who embraced a religious life were lifted by

the Church’s power and influence above the heads of the rest of

the community, of whom they were frequently the teachers, helpers,

advisers, and general benefactors in time of need. It was in the

nunneries that the education of girls of all classes was carried on.

Convent schools were the only schools either for rich or poor, and

the “sisters” the only women able to qualify themselves to become

instructors.

The nuns, again, were the chief dispensers of charity. The lady of the

manor might be a bountiful almsgiver, but she could not be so well

acquainted with the needs of the poor as the convent sisters who tended

them in sickness and knew all the troubles of their daily life. The

convent was a centre of help and enlightenment. Even where the nuns

never left their walls, they were constantly employed on benevolent

works. Philanthropy, in the Middle Ages, was a religious duty, but

it was only in connection with the Church that it was practised

in an organized way. The dole-giving at great houses was scarcely

philanthropy; it was part of the household system, and the recipients

of the bounty regarded it almost as a right.

Women’s position in relation to the Church assumes a different aspect

when the limitations of ordinary life are considered. There was no

social work in which women could engage carried on independently of the

Church. The “religious” had the field to themselves. The lay worker

was of no importance whatever unless she had wealth which enabled her

to confer benefits, or dignities which gave her prominence. Through

the convent the Church’s influence was diffused among the people, its

doctrines leavened the minds of the masses, its authority and power

were felt everywhere among high and low.

Their relation to the Church elevated women to a plane above the common

level. For although they were in subjection to their spiritual rulers,

those rulers had authority far greater in civil matters than their

successors can boast of in the present day. The humble nun who went

about with downcast eyes, who was taught to obey without questioning,

was the instrument of a power greater than that of kings. In the

progress of civilization, it was women who, through the Church, gained

the firstfruits of culture.

In the Middle Ages, and, indeed, as long as the conventual system

lasted as part of the English Church, the nun was teacher,

philanthropist, doctor, and nurse. Her duties were by no means

confined to the cloister. At Gloucester, where there was a Benedictine

convent, the nuns went about among the people, teaching, advising,

consoling, and discoursing on subjects with which convent sisters are

supposed to have little acquaintance. Nuns were sometimes accused of

giving too much attention to housewifery. Among other things, they are

said to have composed moral tales like those of Hannah More and her

sisters, and to have read them to the village maidens.

“The English nuns,” writes Paul Casenigo, a Venetian traveller

of the sixteenth century, “gave instruction to the poorer

virgins (peasants) as to their duties when they became wives;

to be obedient to their husbands, and to give good example.”

The poorer folk felt it a great loss when the kindly sisters--many

of them gentlewomen of good birth--to whom they were accustomed to

carry all their troubles, were ruthlessly dispersed at the time of

the dissolution of the religious houses. The nunnery of Godstow,

near Oxford, famous for its unblemished reputation, was quite a

centre of benevolence. There were no clothing clubs in that or any

other neighbourhood, no “mothers’ meetings,” no sewing-parties for

making garments for the poor, no penny dinners, no dispensaries, no

hospitals. If it had not been for the good nuns of Godstow, the poor

must have suffered greatly. Henri Ambère, a French architect, says

of Godstow, that he saw no such excellent nuns in his own country

as were to be seen in that convent. Warm clothing was made for the

poor, who, in winter, had to bar out the light to keep out the cold

by means of shutters, and whose chimney consisted of a simple hole in

the roof through which the rain and wind poured down, while the smoke

struggled up ineffectually. Were there any sick? it was the nuns to

whom application was made for remedies, which were compounded within

the convent walls. Were there any infirm and starving? there was food

for them at the convent. Was there a wedding in the village? it was

the nuns who provided the bride with her simple trousseau. Every year

provision was made to give a couple of suits of clothing and the sum of

ten shillings to six peasant girls on their marriage.[11]

Thus we find the nuns carrying on, as part of their service to the

Church, all kinds of secular work, now largely performed by lay members

of the community.

With the fall of the monastic houses much of this work was dropped.

The Anglican Church, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had

no such hold on the people at large as the Romish Church had acquired.

As an organization for dealing with the masses, it was particularly

ineffective. In this century the Church has regained something of what

it lost, or rather it has covered ground which it had never before

really occupied. One of the most striking features of its remarkable

activity at the present day is the large part taken by women. Without

the service of women, the Church would be unable to carry on the

greater portion of its secular work. But there is a noticeable

difference between the way in which the work is undertaken in the

present age and in what are called the Ages of Faith. That which is

now accomplished by co-operation among individuals, without reference

to any authority, was formerly only practicable under the ægis of the

Church. Women could never have performed that kind of ministry to the

community without the help of the Church. It was in the convent they

obtained the qualification and the means, and it was the convent garb

that protected them in the discharge of their outside duties.

There is another aspect in which women’s relation to the Church may

be studied. The heads of the great religious houses were necessarily

persons of importance, with privileges and great responsibilities.

They had considerable wealth at their disposal, and in authority and

influence they ranked among the nobles of the land, to whom they were

often allied by birth. An abbess was a person to be reckoned with and

consulted as much as an abbot. In the age of double monasteries she

was superior in power. The origin of these institutions is a little

obscure. It has been thought that the idea was derived from Gaul,

whither the Saxon princesses were sent to be educated. Dr. Lingard has

another theory. He considers the double monasteries were formed to

prevent the nuns from having any excuse for intercourse with laymen. A

convent could not be worked entirely by women; prejudice and tradition,

as well as the limitations of sex, stood in the way.

“The functions of the sacred ministry had always been the

exclusive privilege of the men, and they alone were able to

support the fatigues of husbandry and conduct the extensive

estates which many convents had received from the piety of

their benefactors.”

Men were necessary evils; the question was how to make their presence

innocuous.

“It was conceived that the difficulty might be diminished if

it could not be removed, and with this view some monastic

legislators devised the plan of establishing double

monasteries. In the vicinity of the edifice destined to

receive the virgins who had dedicated their chastity to God,

was erected a building for the residence of a society of

monks or canons, whose duty it was to officiate at the altar

and superintend the external ceremony of the community. The

mortified and religious life to which they had bound themselves

by the most solemn engagements was supposed to render them

superior to temptation; and, to remove even the suspicion of

evil, they were strictly forbidden to enter the inclosure of

the women, except on particular occasions, with the permission

of the superior, and in the presence of witnesses. But the

abbess retained the supreme controul over the monks as well as

the nuns; their prior depended on her choice, and was bound to

regulate his conduct by her instructions.”

Double monasteries were very common in Ireland, and were in vogue in

England during the first eight or nine centuries of the Christian era.

Over these institutions it was always a woman who had supreme rule. No

abbot could be persuaded to take charge of a community of nuns, so the

abbess ruled over both monks and nuns.

“The whole together formed a sort of vast family, maternity

being the natural form of authority--all the more so as the

neophytes were often admitted with all their dependents, as was

Cædmon, who entered Whitby with all belonging to him, including

a child of three years old.”[12]

Abbesses were great people in Saxon times--princesses of royal blood,

like St. Hilda, who was grand-niece to Edwin, the first Christian king

of Northumbria. St. Ethelburga, who also lived in the seventh century,

and became abbess of Brie, in the diocese of Meaux, was the daughter

of a king of East Anglia; St. Ethelreda, who built Ely monastery,

was a queen, and the daughter of a king; St. Werburga of Ely was the

daughter of Wulfere, king of Mercia, and niece of Ethelred, who put her

to rule over all the female religious houses. With her royal uncle’s

aid, she founded Trentham and Hanbury in Staffordshire, and Wedon in

Northamptonshire. There were great solemnities when she became a nun

and entered the Abbey of Ely, of which St. Audry was then the head. Her

qualities and character were celebrated in the following lines:--

“In beaute amyable she was equall to Rachell,

Comparable to Sara in fyrme fidelyte,

In sadnes and wysedom lyke to Abygaell:

Replete as Delbora with grace of prophecy,

Equyvalent to Ruth she was in humylyte,

In pulchrytude Rebecca lyke Hester in Colynesse,

Lyke Judyth in vertue and proued holynesse.”[13]

For an abbess the cloister rule was relaxed. She might come and go, and

see whom she pleased. Her signature is to be found to the charters of

the realm, and she had the right to assist in the deliberations of the

national assemblies.

“In 694 abbesses were in so great esteem for their sanctity and

prudence, that they were summoned to the Council at Becanceld

(in Kent), and the names of five (not one abbot) subscribed to

the constitutions there made.”

This is the first time they are mentioned as taking part in a synod.

The Abbess Elfleda was present at a council held respecting the affairs

of Wilfrid, Bishop of Leicester, early in the eighth century. She

attended to represent her late brother, King Alcfrid, who died in 705,

and who, in the matter of Bishop Wilfrid, had, she asserted, promised,

on his death-bed, to stand by the decree of the Apostolic See.

Abbesses were also summoned to attend or to send proxies to the King’s

Council in later times, as in 1306, when four abbesses

“were cited to the Great Council held to grant an aid on the

knighting of the Prince of Wales--an assembly which, although

not properly constituted, exercised some of the functions of a

parliament.”[14]

The Parliamentary writ bears the names of the abbesses of Wilton,

Wynton or Winchester, Shaftesbury, and Barking, then spelt Berkeyngg.

Abbesses were required to furnish military service by proxy.

The Saxon abbesses were invested with immense powers, and owed

obedience to none save the Pope. Much of the deference paid them was

doubtless on account of their high rank, abbesses being always of good

birth, and frequently of royal blood. In later times, as well as in the

Saxon era, this was the case. Anne, Duchess of York, mother of Edward

IV., was prioress of Sion monastery.

Abbesses seem to have been tenacious of their privileges, and to

have known how to resist the encroachments of the clergy when any

interference was attempted. It has been said that they claimed the

right to ordain. At the same time, they were subject to deposition if

they abused their power or were inattentive to their duties. The nuns

would carry their complaints to the bishop, who would occasionally

take the superintendence of a nunnery into his own hands instead of

appointing any abbess--perhaps dividing the immediate governance

between two of the nuns. It was the duty of an abbess not only to

look after the internal affairs of the convent, but to see that the

necessary repairs to the building were carried out.

The powers of an abbess varied according to period and place, for while

in some cases they were free to act pretty much as they pleased, in

others they were subject to strict rules, and had their liberty much

curtailed.

“By a council near Paris, in the eighth century, it is

ordered that the bishop, as well as the abbess, may send a

nun misbehaving herself to a penitentiary; that no abbess

is to superintend more than one monastery, or to quit the

precincts except once a year, when summoned by her sovereign;

and that the abbess must do penance in the monastery for her

faults by the bishop’s direction. Charlemagne enacted that

the bishop must report to the Crown any abbess guilty of

misconduct, in order that she might be deposed. Abbesses were

forbidden, in the reign of his successor, to walk alone, and

thus were placed, in some degree, under the surveillance of the

sisterhood. Charlemagne prohibited abbesses from laying hands

on any one, or pronouncing the blessing.”[15]

On account of the property and lands belonging to convents, abbesses

and prioresses were constantly brought into relationship with the

outer world, and not always in a very pleasant way. The command which

they had over the fiefs of the convent was a frequent source of

friction with the laity. In 1292 the Prioress of Mynchin Buckland, in

Somersetshire, was a party in a suit, together with a widow and two

men, touching the right of common pasture in an appurtenance of the

convent. The case went against the religious house, but the prioress

and the widow both escaped paying their share of the costs on the plea

of poverty.[16]

Sometimes troubles arose from the interference of the clergy. In the

fourteenth century a diocesan official made himself very disagreeable

to the sisters of Mynchin Buckland priory, demanding to see their title

to certain churches which they had held from time immemorial. The

sisters replied by demanding, in their turn, to see his commission,

whereupon he grew indignant, and imposed upon them a heavy fine for

contumacy. The case was carried to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who

at once stopped the proceedings of the diocesan official, and restored

quietude to the convent.

In the reign of Edward III. we find a prioress suing a sheriff for

recovery of a pension granted to her convent in the reign of Henry III.

As the sheriff positively refused to pay, the prioress carried the case

to the King’s Court, where the recalcitrant sheriff was thoroughly

beaten. Lands granted to a convent without due formalities sometimes

created difficulties, as in the reign of Henry IV., when the Prioress

of Mynchin Barrow found her claim to a meadow which had been granted

without the royal licence was bringing her into conflict with the

laity. However, her rights were maintained after full examination.

The head of a religious house, whether abbot or abbess, had a great

many secular duties. At Sion Monastery, which was a double house

founded by Henry V. in 1415, the abbess who was at the head had the

charge of all the money derived from the proceeds of the nuns’ work,

and also from the endowments of the foundation. In the charter it is

set forth--

“that the abbess of the aforesaid place and her successors

shall be persons able to prosecute all manner of causes and

actions real and personal and mixed, of whatsoever nature or

kind they may be, and to answer and defend the same as well in

courts spiritual as temporal, before all judges, ecclesiastical

and secular whatsoever.”[17]

There was very often a certain amount of Church patronage connected

with a religious house. The Prioress of Cannyngton Priory had the

living of a church in the diocese of Exeter in her hands, and

frequently ecclesiastics were admitted to Holy Orders on titles granted

by a prioress and her convent.

Mynchin Buckland, which was a preceptory as well as a priory, was

disturbed in 1270 by the conduct of the preceptor, who did not like to

see any money paid for the maintenance of the sisterhood. This was

the only community of women established by the Order of St. John of

Jerusalem.

Nunneries were generally under the superintendence of the local clergy,

who were responsible to the bishop, and if there were any disorders,

an official was sent down to inquire into the matter. The diocesan

officials had large powers, and used them liberally.

Another thing which brought the convent into relationship with

the outer world, was the fact of their being used as houses of

entertainment, and as places of residence for ladies temporarily in

want of a home.[18] Visitors were constantly sent by the bishop to

lodge and board at a priory. These ladies always lived at their own

cost, and it was specially enjoined that they were not to interfere

with the routine of the establishment. They brought their own servants,

and sometimes remained a considerable time. These visitors never came

without an express order from the bishop.

The kind of accommodation to be found in a priory may be gathered from

the following inventory of the contents of a chamber allotted to one

“Dame Agnes Browne” in the priory of Minster, in Sheppey.

“Stuff given her by her frends:--A fetherbed, a bolster, 2

pyllows, a payre of blankatts, 2 corse coverleds, 4 pare of

shets good and badde, an olde tester and selar of paynted

clothes and 2 peces of hangyng to the same; a square cofer

carvyd, with 2 bed clothes upon the cofer, and in the wyndow a

lytill cobard of waynscott carvyd and 2 lytill chestes; a small

goblet with a cover of sylver parcell gylt, a lytill maser

with a brynne of sylver and gylt, a lytell pese of sylver and

a spore of sylver, 2 lytyll latyn candellstyks, a fire panne

and a pare of tonges, 2 small aundyrons, 4 pewter dysshes, a

porrenger, a pewter bason, 2 skyllotts [a small pot with a long

handle], a lytill brasse pot, a cawdyron and a drynkyng pot of

pewter.”

There were occasions when the lady abbess dispensed hospitality on a

liberal scale. At the convent of Sion, in London, it was the custom

at Pardon-time, which was in the month of August, for the Court of

Aldermen to pay a visit to the convent.[19] It will easily be imagined

that a good deal of preparation had to be made for these visitors.

They recognized the demands made upon their hostess by sending the

appropriate acknowledgment of a present of wine.

In the Middle Ages nuns were allowed, under regulations, to go out

and see their friends. The rule was stricter in earlier periods,

and strictest of all among the double monasteries. In the first six

centuries of the Christian Church, the general rule seems to have been

that--

“a virgin was not permitted to leave the house or monastery

except for special reason, and no one had access to her but

bishop or priest.”

But this was subject to variation, for in the Roman Church, about the

fourth century, we read of “holy virgins” frequenting the public baths,

for which they were blamed by Cyprian. A male or female devotee could,

at any time, return to the world and marry.[20]

The injunctions made in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

show that a great deal of latitude was permitted to nuns. It was

not until the sixteenth century that they were rigidly confined to

the cloister.[21] In the Middle Ages they were not much more under

restraint, in the matter of visiting, than girls in boarding-schools

and colleges at the present day. They were not to go out without

express permission, or to wander from house to house when they went

into the neighbouring city. Sometimes it was enjoined that they should

only go to places from which they could return the same day, and at

other convents they were permitted to remain out one night. In one

case they were not to go “beyond the vill except from great and lawful

cause; in pairs and in nun’s habit.”

The Superior of the convent of St. Helen’s, London, was admonished to

be circumspect, and not to let women have the keys of the postern door,

“for there is moche comyng in and oute at unlefull tymys.” That there

should be any coming and going of this promiscuous kind shows how much

latitude was allowed in religious houses.

Anchoresses were under stricter rules, and had less to do with the

outer world.

“An anchoress must not become a schoolmistress, nor turn her

anchoress-house into a school for children. Her maiden may,

however, teach any little girl concerning whom it might be

doubted whether she should learn among boys, but an anchoress

ought to give her thoughts to God only.”[22]

The directions to the women attending on the anchoresses show how

in the thirteenth century, when these rules were framed, personal

cleanliness was still regarded as among the errors to be avoided, or at

least a luxury to be renounced.

“Let no man see them unveiled, nor without hood. Let them look

low. They ought not to kiss, nor lovingly embrace any man,

neither of their acquaintance nor a stranger, _nor to wash

their head_, nor to look fixedly on any man, nor to romp nor

frolic with him.”

But the anchoresses themselves have permission to wash “whensoever it

is necessary, as often as ye please.” They were enjoined to occupy

themselves with useful and charitable work. “Assist with your own

labour, as far as ye are able, to clothe yourselves and your domestics

as St. Jerome teacheth.”

In 1534 the Archbishop of York wrote, among other things, the following

injunction to the convent of Synningthwaite:--

“We enjoin and command by these presents that from henceforth

the prioress shall diligently provide that no secular nor

religious persons have resort or recourse at any time to her

or any of the said sisters on any occasion, unless it be their

fathers and mothers or other near kinsfolk.”

Also--

“We command and exhort the said prioress in virtue of obedience

that she from henceforth license none of her sisters to go

forth of the house unless it be for the profit of the house,

or to visit their fathers and mothers or other their near

kinsfolk, if the prioress shall think it convenient, and then

the prioress shall assign some sad and discreet religious

sister to go with her, and that she limit them a time to

return, and that they be not over long out of the monastery.”

The nuns were accustomed to indulge in amusements, for there are

injunctions which show that games and revels were common.

“Also we enjoyne you that alle daunsyng and revelyng be utterly

forborne among you except Christmasse and other honest tymys of

recreacyone, among yourse selfe in absence of seculars in all

wyse.”

The nuns of Appleton, Yorkshire, were apparently rather jovial, and the

prioress is commanded in 1489 to see “that none of your sisters use the

alehouse nor the watersyde where course of strangers dayly resorte.” It

was likewise ordered that the sisters should not--

“bring in, receave, or take any layman religious or secular

into the chambre or any secrete place day or night, nor with

thaim in such private places to commine, ete or drinke, without

lycence of your priorisse.”

At Sion Monastery the rule was stricter.

“Conversation with seculars was permitted only in company

and with the license of the abbess from noon to vespers, and

this only on Sundays, and the great feasts of the Saints,

not however by going out of the house, but by sitting at the

appointed windows; for to none was it permitted after their

entrance to leave the cloisters of the monastery. If any sister

desired to be seen by her parents or honest and dear friends,

she might, with the permission of the abbess, open the window

occasionally during the year; but if she did not open it, a

more abundant reward was assured to her hereafter.”[23]

This monastery is described by Wriothesley as “the vertues [most

virtuous] house of religion that was in England.” Taine speaks of it in

very different terms: “Au monastère de Sion les moines confesseurs des

nonnes les debauchent et les absolvent tout ensemble.” Sion Monastery

was of the Order of St. Bridget which was reputed to be one of the

best. It was suppressed in 1539.

That there was laxity in the government of some of the convents which

resulted in idleness and waste of money is evident. The Bishop of

Lincoln, Longland, sent very peremptory orders to the Superior of the

nuns of Cottam or Cottram, in Lincolnshire, respecting her duties:

“Ouer this I charge you lady prioresse undre the said payne

that ye yereby make your accompte openly and truely in your

chaptour house afore the mooste part, and the senours of your

susters that they may knowe frome yere to yere the state of

said house, and that ye streight upon sight hereof dymynishe

the nombre of your seruants as well men as women, whiche

excessyve nombre that ye kepe of them bothe is oon of the

grette causes of your miserable povertye.”

This was in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.

As places of education the convents exercised the most important

influence on the outside world. Even in the ninth century children

were sent to England from the continent to be educated in the schools

established by Theodorus and Hadrian.[24] This is the more remarkable,

as in the seventh century there were so few convents in England that

many of the nobility sent their daughters to be educated in France. The

religious house of Brie, of which mention has already been made, as

having a Saxon abbess, received the daughter of Earconberth, King of

Kent, during the rule of the Abbess Fara in 640. Eight hundred years

later Sir Thomas Boleyn sent his ill-fated daughter Anne, during her

sojourn in France, to a convent at Brie to complete her education. It

seems probable that it was the same religious house.

In the seventh and eighth centuries, the nuns were as much occupied

with literary studies as the monks, reading theology and even classics,

copying manuscripts, which they adorned with wonderful embellishments.

They were able to correspond in Latin; some were acquainted with Greek,

and they appear to have been very assiduous in the pursuit of such

literature as was available.

The Abbess Eadburga and her pupil Leobgitha were both correspondents

of the famous Archbishop Boniface, who lived in the eighth century. On

one occasion Leobgitha sends Boniface some Latin hexameters of her own

composition. In her letter she says--

“These underwritten verses I have endeavoured to compose

according to the rules derived from the poets, not in a spirit

of presumption, but with the desire of exciting the powers

of my slender talents, and in the hope of thine assistance

therein. This art I have learnt from Eadburga, who is ever

occupied in studying the divine law.”

The lines run thus--

“Arbiter omnipotens solusqui cuncta creavit,

In regno patris semperqui lumine fulget;

Qua jugiter flagrans sit regnet gloria Christi,

Illæsum servet semper te jure perenni.”[25]

Another nun, St. Erkenwald, had as a teacher Hildelitha--

“a woman as well excellentlie learned in the liberall sciences

as verie expert in skill of religious discipline and life.”

For many centuries, indeed as long as the conventual system lasted,

the only schools for girls were the convent schools, where, says

Robert Aske, “the daughters of gentlemen were brought up with virtue.”

From the educational point of view, the suppression of the convents

was decidedly a blunder; and they were not merely schools for

book-learning. Among other things were taught the treatment of various

disorders, the compounding of simples, the binding up of wounds. The

custom of bleeding people for every form of illness, and to ward off

possible sickness, created the necessity for some kind of bandage ready

prepared to apply to the place where the incision was made. It was

common to make these bandages of silk, and offer them as presents.[26]

The pupils were also taught what might be called fancy cookery, such as

the making of sweetmeats. Writing, drawing, needlework of all kinds,

and music, both vocal and instrumental, entered into the curriculum.

“In the convents the female portion of the population found

their only teachers, the rich as well as the poor, and the

destruction of the religious houses by Henry was the absolute

extinction of any systematic education for women during a long

period. Thus at Winchester Convent, the list of the ladies

being educated within the walls at the time of the suppression

shows that these Benedictine nuns were training the children

of the first families in the country. Carrow, in Norfolk, for

centuries gave instruction to the daughters of the neighbouring

gentry, and as early as A.D. 1273 a papal prohibition was

obtained from Pope Gregory X., restraining the nobility from

crowding this monastery with more sisters than its income would

support.”[27]

Of Mynchin Buckland we read--

“It was, doubtless, also a noted seminary for the daughters

of the great neighbouring families. The Berkeleys, Erleghs,

Montacutes, Wrothams, Bouchers, and others, were ever at home

at Buckland, and learned from the good sisters all the mental

accomplishments which they in after-life possessed. Reading,

writing, some knowledge of arithmetic, the art of embroidery,

music, and French, ‘after the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,’

were the recognized course of study, while the preparation of

perfumes, balsams, simples, and confectionery was among the

more ordinary departments of the education afforded.”

When the suppression took place, the laity, who enjoyed great

benefits from the presence of the religious houses, made ineffectual

protests against their dissolution. The famous convent of Godstow, in

Oxfordshire, was particularly regretted, as it was one--

“where there was great strictness of life, and to which were

most of the young gentlewomen of the county sent to be bred, so

that the gentry of the county desired the king would spare the

house.”

The abbess herself wrote a long letter to Thomas Cromwell, complaining

of the treatment to which she was subjected. Some portions of it may

be read with interest:--

“Pleaseth hit your Honour with my moste humble dowtye, to be

advertised, that where it hath pleasyd your Lordship to be

the verie meane to the King’s Majestie for my preferment,

most unworthie to be Abbes of this the King’s Monasterie of

Godystowe.... I trust to God that I have never offendyd God’s

laws, neither the King’s, wherebie this poore monasterie ought

to be suppressed. And this notwithstanding, my good Lorde, so

it is, that Dr. London, whiche (as your Lordship doth well

know) was agaynst my promotion, and hath ever sence borne me

great malys and grudge, like my mortal enemye, is sodenlie

cummynd unto me, with a great rowte with him, and here doth

threaten me and my Sisters, saying that he hath the King’s

commission to suppress this House spyte of my teeth. And

when he saw that I was contente that he sholde do all things

according to his Commission, and shewyd him playne that I wolde

never surrender to his hande, being my awncyent enemye; now he

begins to entreat me, and to invegle my Sisters, one by one,

otherwise than ever I herde tell that the King’s subjects bathe

been handelyd, and here tarieth and contynueth to my great

coste and charges, and will not take my answere that I will not

surrender till I know the King’s gracious commandment, or your

good Lordship’s....

“And notwithstanding that Dr. London, like an untrew man, hath

informed your Lordship that I am a spoiler and a waster, your

good Lordship shall know that the contrary is trewe; for I have

_not alienatyd one halporthe_ of goods of this monasterie,

movable or unmovable, but have rather increas’d the same, nor

never made lease of any farme or peece of grounde belongyng to

this House, or then hath been in times paste, alwaies set under

Convent Seal for the wealthe of the House. And therefore my

very truste is, that I shall find the Kynge as gracious Lord

unto me, as he is to _all other_ his subjects, seyng I have not

offendyd.”

The letter is dated from Godstow, or, as it was spelt then, Godistow,

and signed--

“Your most bounden Beds Woman,

“Katherine Bulkeley, _Abbes there_.”

From other convents came pathetic appeals from the helpless inmates,

who were threatened with loss of home and livelihood. One abbess wrote

to Cromwell--

“But now as touchynge my nowne parte, I most humbly beseche yow

to be so specyall good mayster unto me yowre poore bedewoman

as to give me yowre best advertysment and counseyle what

waye shal be best for me to take, seynge there shal be none

left here but myselfe and thys poore madyn.... Trustynge and

nothynge dowtynge in youre goodnes, that ye wyll so provyd for

us, that we shall have syche onest lyvynge that we shall not

be drevyn be necessyte nether to begge nor to fall to other

unconvenyance.”

The Prioress and nuns of Legborne wrote, saying--

“And whereas we doo here that a grete nombre of abbyes shal

be punnyshid, subprest, and put downe, bicause of theire

myslyvyng, and that all abbyes and pryoryes under the value of

£200 be at oure moste noble prynces pleasure to sub-presse and

put downe, yet if it may pleas youre goodnes we trust in God ye

shall here no compleyntes agaynst us nother in oure lyvyng nor

hospitalitie keepyng. In consideracion whereof if it may please

youre goodnes in oure great necessitie to be a meane and sewter

for youre owne powre pryory, that it may be preserved and

stand, you shal be a more higher ffounder to us then he that

first foundid oure howse.”

When the conventual system came to an end, the relation of women to

the Church was materially changed. They were no longer the Church’s

administrators and her authorized servants. And while they could not,

as before, dispense its alms and hospitality, or impart the knowledge

they had acquired in the cloister, they themselves were deprived of

its protecting care. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries

the “religious” women did not exceed 1560,[28] but to a large number

of others the cloister was a temporary retreat, a possible home, a

refuge in time of distress. The effect upon women of the sweeping

away of monastic institutions may be considered from various points

of view--from the educational, social, as well as the religious side.

It may be regarded as the work of a reformer or of a destroyer. Mr.

Lecky describes it as “far from a benefit to women or the world.”[29]

But that it greatly affected the position of women there can be no

question. It loosened, although it did not sever, the close tie which

had bound women to the spiritual authority as to a foster-mother. The

Anglican Church stood in a different relation, socially speaking, to

the people. It was a less personal relation. And the Protestant clergy

did not make use of women in any special way as the instruments of the

Church. As will be seen later on, the tendency during the first two

centuries of the religious revolution, as it may be termed, was to

ignore women as workers. The Roman Church, while it plainly proclaimed

women to be inferior morally, and by inference intellectually, to men,

availed itself to the full of their capacities. Until modern times, the

Protestant Church went on its way regardless of the fact that a great

unused power was lying close at hand. It was in movements outside the

Church that the religious emotion in women first found vent in the

Protestant era.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CHURCH AS A SOCIAL FACTOR.

Influence of the Church on women in social life--The twofold

conception of womanhood--Canon and Civil Law--Effect of

ecclesiastical celibacy.

It has come to be regarded almost as truism that women are more

religious than men, that they are, by nature, more devout, more

susceptible to spiritual influences. If Matthew Arnold’s definition of

religion as “morality touched by emotion” be accepted, it is easy to

point to the larger development of the emotional nature in women as a

cause for their greater leaning towards religion. But for the present

purpose it is only necessary to deal with the manifestations of this

impulse; the causes belong to the domain of psychology.

Before considering women’s part in the religious life of the country,

it has to be remembered that their part in social life has been largely

determined by the Church. For centuries the Church was, practically,

the only civilizing influence, the only restraint upon passion and

lawlessness, the only protection of the weak against the strong. It was

the Church that taught respect for womanhood, that raised the wife from

a state of subjection amounting to slavery to a position of dignity

in the household. It was in the Church that women sought safety,

shelter, protection, livelihood, occupation, when the home was gone,

when kindred failed, when life and honour were at stake. The supremacy

which the Church exercised over the laity in general was emphasized

in the case of women, more prone to render unquestioning obedience to

constituted authority.

From the beginning the Church was quick to recognize the value of

women’s adherence, and the importance of the services which they

could render. By raising women, the Church created a power for its

own uses. And women were as quick to respond. They gave themselves

freely. Whatever the Church has done for women has been repaid by them

tenfold. Their labour, their property, their lives were placed at the

disposal of the Church. They gave something more--their freedom of

thought, their independence of action. Their minds, as well as their

consciences, were in the keeping of the priest.

The Church, while with one hand it raised woman from the abasement

into which she had been cast by Paganism, lowered her with the other.

When it taught men to pay respect to their wives, when it interfered

with the tyranny which placed women in complete subjection to their

male relatives, it was that women might come directly under the

priestly power. The Church had no intention of setting women free to

act independently. It was only a change of masters. This was seen

especially about the fourth century, when the clergy had begun to

degenerate from their former simplicity.

“Then the men, exiling the women by degrees, took the sole

government of the church into their own hands, and assembling

together, made what canons they pleased for their own secular

advantage. Then were some published against the ordination of

priestesses, deaconesses, etc.”[30]

The same thing is observable in the next century.

“Women in most places were denied all ecclesiastical offices,

and commanded to be silent in the churches, and so it continued

for several centuries even till the ancient faith began to bud

forth again (after that great night of apostacy) among the

Waldenses, who justified women’s preaching.”

The Church was careful to impress women with a sense of their

inferiority. It has even been denied that Christianity--or rather its

exponents--did anything to elevate women to a higher social status.

“Das Christenthum brachte der Frau keine Erlösung aus ihrer

Erniedrigung. Im Gegentheil! War sie in der heidnischen Welt

nur die Sklavin, die Waare, das Hausthier gewesen, so wurde sie

jetzt noch ausserdem zum ‘Gefäss der Hölle’ erklärt.”[31]

This remark is borne out by Tertullian’s apostrophe--

“Woman! thou oughtest always to walk in mourning and rags,

thine eyes filled with tears of repentance, to make men forget

that thou hast been the destruction of the race. Woman, thou

art the gate of hell.”

A curious contradiction appears in theological teaching. It is

difficult to reconcile the conception of womanhood which found its

expression in Mariolatry with that which was given voice to by the

Fathers, which proclaimed woman unfit to receive the Eucharist in her

naked hands, which forbade her to approach the altar,[32] which taught

that she was a temptation in man’s way to try him, which regarded the

married state as a condition of sin, and even among the laity exalted

virginity and celibacy as a species of sainthood. In a treatise on

chastity attributed to Sixtus III., married people are said to risk,

though not entirely to forfeit, eternal happiness. St. Martin of Tours

considered marriage pardonable, but virginity glorious. St. Jerome

spoke of marriage as at best a vice: “All that we can do is to excuse

and purify it.” Tertullian was much stronger: “Celibacy,” he wrote,

“must be chosen, though the human race perish in consequence.”

The higher conception of womanhood was an ideal only, a theme for

poets, a dream of saints; the lower conception was the guide for common

life, the basis of everyday teaching. It was this lower conception

which, in different ways, determined women’s position in society.

Gradually the precepts of the canon law found their way into common

law, and the subordination enforced upon women in matters spiritual was

extended to matters temporal. The supremacy which canon law obtained

is easily accounted for when we compare the disciplined character of

all ecclesiastical as compared with lay government, the training of the

priest with that of the noble, the ignorance pervading all classes, and

the rude character of the legislation administered in feudal society.

The Roman conquest brought the legislative code of the empire into

Britain, but with the advent of Christianity Roman law was gradually

coloured by ecclesiastical law, and assumed a different complexion.

Some writers go so far as to say that Roman law was entirely

superseded. Through the law the Church kept an invisible hold upon the

people, and compelled subjugation to its decrees. The Church, however,

did not need shelter or excuse for any of its acts. It was powerful

enough to command obedience to whatever it chose to decree. There was

no influence greater, no authority more dreaded. Its rival, education,

was but a puny stripling, without armour or weapons.

In the tenth century we find a repetition of the ecclesiastical law

excluding women from certain parts of the church. There is a Saxon

constitution which runs--

“We charge that at the time when the priest sings mass no woman

be nigh the altar, but that they stand in their own place,

and that the mass priest there receive of them what they are

willing to offer.”

Women were not suffered to penetrate within the altar precincts in the

sixteenth century. It is related that Sir Thomas More’s wife did not

sit with her husband in the chancel, but in some other part of the

church, in what are described as the common parish seats.

The entrance of women within the Church of Durham was limited to

a certain point in the nave marked by a blue cross on the marble

pavement, in accordance with the rule of St. Cuthbert. One day in the

year 1333, Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III., paid a visit to Durham

Cathedral, supped with the king in the Prior’s chamber, and retired

to rest in the apartment arranged for her husband in the priory. The

monks were scandalized, and sought an interview with the king, who bade

the queen rise, which she did immediately, and, clad only in her night

array, went over from the priory buildings to the castle for the night,

beseeching St. Cuthbert’s pardon for having polluted sacred ground with

her presence.

Ecclesiastical law affected women very disastrously by the enforcement

of priestly celibacy. Although against the rules of the Church,

marriage was common among the clergy in pre-Norman times, especially

in the north of England. Substantial reasons existed against allowing

priests to marry. There were complaints that the married clergy took

the Church property to provide marriage portions for their sons and

daughters and legacies for their wives, and were generally in the habit

of applying ecclesiastical funds to their private uses.

“It is all the worse when they have it all, for they do not

dispose of it as they ought, but decorate their wives with

what they should the altars, and turn everything to their own

worldly pomp.... Let those who before this had the evil custom

of decorating their women as they should the altars refrain

from this evil custom, and decorate their churches as they best

can; then would they command for themselves both divine counsel

and worldly worship. A priest’s wife is nothing but a snare of

the devil, and he who is ensnared thereby on to his end will be

seized fast by the devil.”

In the tenth century, priests were found deserting their wives for

other women. No doubt scandals of this kind, and other grave abuses,

induced the Winchester Council in 1076 to make a declaration against

the marriage of priests. All future marriages were forbidden, but

parish priests who were already married were allowed to keep their

wives. In the next century severe measures were taken. A Council

was convened at London in 1102, when it was decreed that no married

priest could celebrate. The controversy on clerical celibacy went

on by fits and starts, until the Lateran Council in 1215 definitely

pronounced against marriage. Meanwhile the clergy had followed their

own instincts, and evaded the ordinances against marriage by taking

concubines, like Bishop Nigel of Ely, in the twelfth century. That

prelate’s partner was the valiant Maud of Ramsbury, who bravely

defended the castle of Devizes against King Stephen, and only

capitulated when the enemy, having stolen her son, threatened to hang

him before her eyes.

The document entitled, “Instructions for Parish Priests,” composed not

later than the middle of the fifteenth century, shows that it was quite

common for priests to be married, though the practice was reprobated,

and “chastity,” meaning abstinence from wedlock, was enjoined. But

those who were too weak to live honestly and uprightly as celibates are

told to take a wife. Dr. Jessop states that by the eleventh century

country parsons had almost ceased to be married men, though Benedicts

were found among them here and there as late as the thirteenth century,

when a veto was put upon priests’ marriages.[33] The decrees of

provincial councils prove the existence of priestly concubinage down to

the sixteenth century.

The worst effects of the celibate system were seen in the sixteenth

century. Debauchery was spread throughout the country. As many as one

hundred thousand women were ruined by the priests, for whom houses

of ill fame were kept.[34] From Carnarvonshire came complaints of

the well-to-do laity, that their wives and daughters were not safe

from outrage by the priests. Out of their own mouths the clergy are

condemned. In 1536 the secular clergy in the diocese of Bangor wrote to

Cromwell, that if their women were taken away they would be homeless

outcasts.

“We ourselves shall be driven to seek our living at all houses

and taverns, for mansions upon the benefices and vicarages we

have none. And as for gentlemen and substantial honest men, for

fear of inconvenience, and knowing our frailty and accustomed

liberty, they will in no wise board us in their houses.”

In this year the Lower House of Convocation presented a memorial

inveighing against priestly marriages. But in the reign of Edward VI.,

what might be called a Permissive Bill was passed for the sufficient

reason that “great filthiness of living had followed on the laws that

compelled chastity and prohibited marriage.” Under Queen Mary celibacy

was again enforced, married priests were ejected from their livings,

and even those who renounced their wives were not always secure of

their places. Elizabeth had a great aversion to married priests, and

openly expressed her contempt for their wives, whom she could not bring

herself to receive at Court. But though she demurred a good deal to

giving a formal assent to ecclesiastical marriages, the Act of Edward

VI. was eventually reinforced, a reaction having set in with the

rise of the Protestant party. The Act was hedged round with various

restrictions.

“No manner of priest or deacon shall hereafter take to his wife

any manner of woman without the advice and allowance first had

upon good examination by the bishop of the same diocese and

two justices of the peace of the same shire dwelling next to

the place where the same woman hath made her most abode before

her marriage; not without the good-will of the parents of the

said woman, if she have any living, or two of the next of her

kinsfolks, or for lack of the knowledge of such, of her master

or mistress where she serveth.”

The advantages and disadvantages of celibacy, and the manner of life

proper for the married and the unmarried priest, are set forth by

George Herbert in his dissertation on the “Country Parson.”

“The country parson, considering that virginity is a higher

state than matrimony, and that the ministry requires the

best and highest things, is rather unmarried than married.

But yet, as the temper of his body may be, or as the temper

of his parish may be, where he may have occasion to converse

with women, and that among suspicious men, and other

like circumstances considered, he is rather married than

unmarried.... If he be unmarried, he hath not a woman in his

house, but finds opportunities of having his meat dressed and

other services done by men-servants at home, and his linen

washed abroad. If he be unmarried and sojourn, he never talks

with any women alone, but in the audience of others; and that

seldom, and then also in a serious manner, never jestingly or

sportfully....

“If he be married, the choice of his wife was made rather by

his ear than by his eye; his judgment, not his affection, found

out a fit wife for him....

“As he is just in all things, so is he to his wife also....

Therefore he gives her respect both afore her servants and

others, and half at least of the government of the house,

reserving so much of the affairs as serve for a diversion for

him; yet never giving over the reins, but that he sometimes

looks how things go.”

The ideal wife is thus described:

“Instead of the qualities of the world, he requires only three

of her. First, training up of her children and maids in the

fear of God; with prayers and catechising and all religious

duties. Secondly, a curing and healing of all wounds and sores

with her own hands; which skill either she brought with her, or

he takes care she shall learn it of some religious neighbour.

Thirdly, a providing for her family in some such sort, as that

neither they want a competent sustentation, nor her husband be

brought into debt.”

In modern times a section of the clergy in the English Church have

shown a disposition to revert to the practice of earlier ages, and

follow a celibate life. It is part of the ascetic movement which some

years ago was rather a marked feature in the Church. But even among

those Anglicans who recoil from the term “Protestant,” and endeavour

to preserve as much as possible of the forms of Church government which

prevailed in pre-Reformation times, there are few comparatively who

adopt this species of monasticism.

No doubt marriage has greatly helped to break down the authority of

the priest. A man with a wife and family living the domestic life

of an ordinary citizen is brought at once to the level of common

humanity, priest though he be. He loses that glamour which attached

to him when he was cut off from his fellows and set apart on another

plane by virtue of his office. Women, more than men, have been in all

ages prone to superstitious reverence for ecclesiastical authority.

They are still apt to look to the clergyman to guide them in the daily

affairs of secular life, not because they consider him better qualified

intellectually than other men, but because they have a lurking remnant

of belief in priestly infallibility. There are many who make the

clergyman a referee on all subjects, of whatever nature, and look upon

him as the proper head of every movement, educational, philanthropic,

or otherwise, irrespective of his qualifications for such a position.

The deference paid to clerical opinion and the leaning on clerical

authority are survivals of old habits of thought, weakened in the

process of transmission, but having a strong principle of vitality.

The counterbalancing force to the influence of the Church on women

is to be found not merely in its acknowledged rivals, intellectual

development and the progress of secular knowledge, but in the

motive-power of the religious sentiment. It has been justly observed

that--

“the clergy of all ages, in concentrating the strength of woman

on her religious nature, have summoned up a power that they

could not control. When they had once lost the confidence of

those ruled by this mighty religious sentiment, it was turned

against them. In the Greek and Roman worship women were the

most faithful to the altars of the gods; yet when Christianity

arose, the foremost martyrs were women. In the Middle Ages

women were the best Catholics, but they were afterwards the

best Huguenots. It was a woman, not a man, that threw the stool

at the offending minister’s head in a Scotch kirk; it was a

woman who made the best Quaker martyr on Boston common. And

from vixennish Jenny Geddes to high-minded Mary Dyer, the whole

range of womanly temperament responds as well to the appeal of

religious freedom as of religious slavery.”[35]

A French writer in the middle of the present century, describing

England during the Ages of Faith, with its surname of the “Isle of

Saints,” as “un spectacle digne des anges,” laments its coldness

and lack of virtue under Protestantism. In what he styles this

materialistic age--

“la femme est loin, bien loin d’être ce qu’elle fut pour

l’opinion publique aux époques de foi vive et ardente.”

The expression of the religious sentiment has taken a different form.

It may be less obvious and definite, but in the opinion of one of our

modern thinkers it is the mainspring of all progress--

“Nothing can be more obvious,” writes Mr. Kidd,[36] “as soon as

we begin to understand the nature of the process of evolution

in progress around us, than that the moving force behind it is

not the intellect, and that the development as a whole is not

in any true sense an intellectual development.

* * * * *

“The intellect is employed in developing ground which has been

won for it by other forces. But it would appear that it has

by itself no power to occupy this ground; it has not even any

power to continue to hold it after it has been won, when these

forces have spent and exhausted themselves. The evolution

which is slowly proceeding in human society is not primarily

intellectual, but religious in character.”

CHAPTER VII.

ALMSGIVING IN OLDEN TIMES.

Almsgiving at the monasteries--Charity dispensed by private

families--Bequests of ladies for the relief of the poor--Action

of the Church--Change in the conception of the duty of

almsgiving--Needlework for the poor--Modern gilds--Charity at the

present day.

In the days preceding the poor law--that is, before the dissolution

of the monasteries--charity to the poor was regarded in much the same

light as hospitality among equals. Just as it was an unwritten law that

strangers on all occasions must be entertained, so it was an accepted

rule of life for the wealthy to support their poor neighbours with

doles in money and in kind. The monasteries were the great dispensers

of alms; but every nobleman’s or gentleman’s house had also a number

of poor who looked to it for support. The feudal system was in a great

measure responsible for this feeling of dependence. Nobody under that

system stood alone. The poor were bound to the soil, and their lives

were inextricably woven--not always for their good--into the lives of

those above them. With the dispensation of doles and the care of the

poor the ladies in the households of the nobility were much concerned.

It was the business of the mistress to see that the sick were cared

for, the needy visited, and that the aged had their wants supplied.

Charity was less far-reaching, and had no pretence at organization; it

was a part of domestic life, not an outside business to be taken up and

laid down at will. What is now done by means of paid officials was then

all accomplished by the donors themselves. The charity which now passes

through numerous channels before it reaches the recipient went then by

a comparatively direct route.

Great families sometimes marked the Church festivals by special

almsgiving, and would celebrate marriage anniversaries in the same way.

This was the custom in the family of Lord William Howard at Naworth

Castle. The giving away of money at other times seems to have been

rather spasmodic. The steward of the Howard family frequently records:

“To my Lady to give away 20/-.” Besides what was dispensed in that

way, there were lists of doles to the poor, such as sixpence to a poor

woman; sixpence to a poor leper boy; “To the poor at Armathwate 6_d._”

(which shows how much more sixpence was worth then); “To the pore at

Carlyle 1/6.” There was giving at funerals too; the steward records,

“Bestowed in bread and beer at the buriall of the plumber 5/-,” among

the extraordinary payments; where we also find items for shoemending

recorded, such as, “Mending a pair of shoes 4_d._” It was customary

for a person who had any property at all to leave a sum of money to be

given to the poor on the day of his or her burial. Thus Mrs. Susannah

Eyre, a widow of substantial means who lived in the seventeenth

century, left twopence a piece for the poor who should attend her

funeral, besides a bequest of goods and chattels to be distributed

among the poor of specified districts.

Great ladies usually recognized their duties among the poor, not only

by giving doles, but by founding almshouses. There were, probably, not

many who actually maintained a number of poor within their own walls

like Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond. This celebrated lady

used to maintain twelve poor people under her roof when she retired to

her manor of Woking, where Dr. John Fisher acted as her confessor and

almoner.

Nearly every lady of distinction did something of a permanent nature

for the relief of the poor. The famous Bess of Hardwick, in the midst

of her building of palaces, did not forget to erect and liberally

endow an almshouse for the poor at Derby. The Countess of Pembroke not

only built an almshouse, but procured a patent by which it was turned

into a corporation. Various are the charities bequeathed by noble

ladies in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries for the

relief of the poor. Lady Gresham in 1560 left tenements in the city,

the rents of which were to be used for the poor, partly in money and

partly in coals. Mrs. Frances Clark left £200 to the Skinners’ Company

to pay £10 a year for the poor of St. Thomas’s, Southwark. Dame Isabell

Gray, of Ogle Castle, Northumberland, left a sum of money for the poor,

to be given at the day of her burial. Instances might be multiplied,

such as the bequest of Lady Middleton in 1645, of Viscountess Conway in

1637, of Lady Mico in 1670, of Mrs. Ridley in 1716. Money that is now

given to societies was then left to individuals.

The care of the poor from the days of Dorcas downwards has always been

deemed women’s special work, but it has been largely controlled by the

church. In olden times a great lady would choose for her almoner a

monk, or at least a priest. The Church has endeavoured to maintain its

authority in this respect down to the present day. A large portion of

the ancient endowments and funds for the relief of the poor is in its

hands. Great ladies and women in all ranks still frequently allow their

charities to be filtered through the medium of the Church. The visiting

of the poor is carried on under ecclesiastical guidance. The Church

in modern times has striven to become the fountain and head of all

benevolence, and, as a great organized institution, discourages outside

efforts. Women in country districts dispense most of their charity

under the direction of the priest, except where there happens to be

a great lady who chooses to assert her independence, and is powerful

enough to act alone.

In large towns, the whole social life being so complex, there is

more scope for individuality in work. The Church is less dominant,

being brought into rivalry with lay organizations. But in secular

work there is a tendency for women to run in a groove. The immense

gain that accrues from combination in work, the pernicious effects

of indiscriminate charity, and the impossibility of dealing with a

huge floating population of indigent persons except by well-organized

methods, have a tendency to convert hundreds of women workers into mere

automata, obeying the behests of some central authority.

The whole conception of almsgiving has changed. In the Middle Ages,

and for a considerable period after, it was regarded as a soul-saving

process, of much the same value as saying masses or practising

mortifications. Sovereigns were frequently expected to honour the

festivals of the saints by entertaining immense numbers of indigent

persons, and the royal munificence was often severely taxed. That a

woman should be bountiful to the poor, according to her means, was a

cardinal virtue which ranked with truth and chastity.

The support of the poor has now become a social rather than a personal

obligation. It has been converted from a pious duty into a State

practice. The religious element, in spite of the influence of the

Church, has much diminished. Charity still covers some of our sins, but

not the multitude it was wont to envelop. Souls are no longer saved by

a distribution of loaves and blankets, or weekly doles to the poor. The

element of personal service, which was once thought essential, has also

faded into comparative insignificance. Charity may be done by deputy,

by a stroke of the pen. It cannot, of course, be supposed that great

ladies in former times did not exercise a good deal of benevolence by

indirect means; but it may be affirmed that a mediæval gentlewoman

who did not perform some personal office for the relief of the poor,

would have been severely censured for her neglect and impiety unless

she silenced the priests by exceptionally large gifts. Now a lady may

walk through life unrebuked, though she has never with her own hands

performed a single act of charity.

In former days noble ladies--that is, those of a pious

disposition--occupied themselves largely in making garments for the

poor. Queens, princesses, and ladies of rank would toil for hours at a

time, and give up a portion of each day, to the conversion of coarse

cloth into suitable apparel for their humble neighbours, who counted

upon this charity. Each lady, assisted possibly by her maids, provided

for the wants of those who were nearest at hand. Needlework, which

since the introduction of machinery has fallen to a lower level of

repute, was formerly the occupation most highly esteemed among women.

It was not only a duty, but a pious exercise. While some salved their

consciences with elaborate embroidery for church purposes, others were

contented to plod along the homely seam, to fashion smocks and cloaks

for the toilers, and bed-linen and blankets for the sick.

In the present century needlework has received an impetus from the

formation of gilds and societies. Nearly all the work for the poor is

done in this associated manner. The workers, instead of distributing

their productions personally, send them more often to some centre to

be dispensed in an organized fashion. It is curious to note how, in

spite of the invention of the sewing-machine, the women of the middle

classes cling to the old methods. A dozen to twenty ladies will meet

together at regular intervals for four or five hours to accomplish what

a quarter of their number could do with machines in a tithe of the

time. If working parties had no other object than the ostensible one

of providing raiment for the poor, or clothing savages, they would not

continue to flourish.

In olden times great ladies sat in their tapestried chambers, toiling

painfully to convert the coarse cloth spun in their own households into

smocks and gowns for dwellers in the windowless, smoke-begrimed hovels

of the neighbouring hamlets. The great ladies of the present day, from

their cosy boudoirs, issue schemes for the enrolment of women all over

the country into gilds and societies for providing clothing for the

poor. Instead of working singly, they co-operate. The names of H.R.H.

Princess Henry of Battenberg, H.R.H. the Duchess of Teck, and Lady

Wolverton will occur readily as leaders of needlework gilds.

The articles made by these gilds are sent to the clergy for

distribution among their poor parishioners, to homes and hospitals,

even to prisons. There are many schools for girls of the educated

classes where a portion of time is set apart for needlework for the

poor, the aim being twofold: to teach the girls how to work, and to

cultivate the spirit of service. The old customs are being revived in a

different dress. People who are afraid that the ways of our ancestors

are quite forgotten and despised in the whirl of new notions, may take

comfort from the thought of how much attention is given to the serious

study of homely duties. Science has been introduced into the domestic

arts. The same things are being done, but in better ways. This is

specially true with regard to philanthropy. Almsgiving, which was once

regarded as a religious duty, has now become a positive evil. Society

as now constituted, far from benefiting, suffers much from any attempt

to return to the old forms of benevolence. Weekly doles of bread, and

the flinging of coppers to beggars in the street, help to dislocate

the social machinery. In the innumerable channels which modern charity

has found for itself, the aim is to secure the independence of the

recipients. Formerly, almsgiving had a double object--to benefit the

soul of the donor as well as contribute to the welfare of the poor. At

the present day, almsgiving, or the more cautious benevolence which has

taken its place, is single in purpose, and has for its sole end the

well-being of the beneficiary.

PERIOD II.

_ENGLAND AFTER THE RENAISSANCE._

CHAPTER I.

FAMILY LIFE AFTER THE FALL OF FEUDALISM.

Effect on Women of the fall of Feudalism--Characteristics of Tudor

England--Observations of foreigners on Englishwomen--Greater

liberty allowed to women in England than on the Continent--Social

habits and amusements--Women’s education--English family

life--Parents and children.

The fall of feudalism, which meant the break-up of the power of the

nobles, had as great an influence on the position of women in England

as the overthrow of the supremacy of the Roman Church. Women in

everyday life are more affected by a social than a religious change.

The king might refuse to acknowledge the authority of the Pope,

monasteries might be stripped of their wealth and the Church of its

endowments, but women who were not nuns, or destined for a religious

life, did not feel the upheaval which was undermining the power of the

priest as they felt the storm which shattered the power of the noble.

Whatever the form of Church government might be, women did not cease

to recognize the duty of obedience to spiritual directors. But when the

family no longer owed obedience to a feudal lord, when personal service

was at an end, when the labourer was free to work for his own profit,

the change that was passing over social life was very distinctly felt

by families in the humbler ranks. Of the third great force, the mental

freedom given by the Renaissance, there are naturally fewer signs, for

its influence was confined chiefly to the upper classes.

The dawn of the sixteenth century was the dawn of a new era, social,

religious, and commercial. It was the beginning of a gradual

transformation which with every century, with every generation, takes

some new form, and is sometimes called progress, sometimes revolution,

but which moves on with the same relentless persistence as the laws

that govern the earth.

It was a rough world in which women found themselves at liberty to

come and go, to taste new pleasures, enjoy fresh luxuries, hear new

opinions, and think new thoughts. But, at least, it was a world of

action, of striving, of pushing forward. Despotic as was the throne,

oppressive as were the new landowning class, a freer spirit prevailed.

Social changes work gradually, and their influence is not at once

perceived; but the germ of modern England was working in those days of

religious stress, intellectual activity, and commercial enterprise.

The visits of foreigners to England in the sixteenth century enable

us to see ourselves as others saw us. The position of women and the

relations of the sexes always excited comment from strangers.

“Wives,” writes a Dutchman, “are not kept so strictly as they

are in Spain or elsewhere. Nor are they shut up, but they

have the free management of the house or housekeeping, after

the fashion of those of the Netherlands and others their

neighbours. They go to market to buy what they like best

to eat. They are well dressed, fond of taking it easy, and

commonly leave the care of household matters and drudgery to

their servants. They sit before their doors, decked out in

fine clothes, in order to see and be seen by the passers-by.

In all banquets and feasts they are shown the greatest honour.

They are placed at the upper end of the table, where they

are first served; at the lower end they help the men. All

the rest of their time they employ in walking and riding, in

playing at cards or otherwise, in visiting their friends and

keeping company, conversing with their equals (whom they term

gossips) and their neighbours, and making merry with them at

child-births, christenings, churchings, and funerals; and all

this with the permission and knowledge of their husbands, as

such is the custom. Although the husbands often recommend to

them the pains, industry, and care of the German or Dutch

women, who do what the men ought to do both in the house and

the shops, for which services in England men are employed,

nevertheless the women usually persist in retaining their

customs. This is why England is called the paradise of married

women. The girls who are not yet married are kept much more

rigorously and strictly than in the Low Countries.”

Another observer says--

“The women have much more liberty than perhaps in any other

place.... The females have great liberty, and are almost like

masters.”

Manners were very free, nowhere more so than among persons of quality,

and language was very coarse to modern ears. But if women did not

hesitate to use an oath, if their behaviour to men seems bold and their

coquetry of a type too pronounced, it must be remembered that they only

adopted the tone of the society in which they lived.

“In all the world,” says a sixteenth-century writer, “there is

no regyon nor countrie that doth use more swearynge than is

used in Englande, for a chylde that scarse can speake, a boy,

a gyrle, a wenche, now-a-dayes wyl swere as great othes as an

old knave and an olde drabbe.... As for swearers a man nede not

to seke for theym, for in the Kynges courte and lordes courtes

in cities, borowes and in townes, and in every house, in maner

there is abbominable swerynge, and no man dothe go about to

redresse it, but doth take swearyng as for no synne, whiche is

a damnable synne; and they the which doth use it, be possessed

of the Devill, and no man can helpe them but God and the kyng.”

The attitude of men towards women had undoubtedly changed. The old

chivalric notions had died away, and with them a good deal of false

sentiment. Tudor England did not set woman up on a pinnacle as a being

endowed with supernatural virtues and charms. It did not make quests on

her behalf, or court danger for the sake of a smile. Tudor England had

something else to think about. It was busy with foreign enterprises,

discovering new lands; with commerce and trade, building up a solid

foundation of wealth; with new branches of knowledge, with fresh

studies of old things, with reconstituting its religious beliefs, and

with keeping up its head among the nations. Poets in the Middle Ages

had sung of woman as an angel, ecclesiastical asceticism had treated

her as little better than a demon, but the men of the sixteenth century

were of a different mould. They had something of the modern spirit,

and looked upon woman as a being to share in the common burdens and

pleasures of life, not to be worshipped or shunned.

It is clear that in England women had attained to a greater degree

of freedom in daily life than on the Continent. Frederick Duke of

Wirtemberg, who was in England about the year 1592, writes--

“The women have much more liberty than perhaps in any other

place; they also know well how to make use of it; for they go

dressed out in exceedingly fine clothes, and give all their

attention to their ruffs and stuffs by such a degree indeed

that, as I am informed, many a one does not hesitate to wear

velvet in the streets, which is common with them, whilst at

home perhaps they have not a piece of dry bread.”

Increase of luxury had an injurious effect on certain industries.

People were no longer satisfied with home-made products, but coveted

the resources of the capital. Laments are uttered that the trade in

certain towns is decaying--

“While men weare contented with suche thinges as weare made

within the market townes next unto theim, then weare they of

oure townes and cities well set aworke, as I knewe the time

when men weare contented with cappes, hattes, girdelles and

poyntes and all maner of (garmentes) made in the townes next

adjoyninge; whereby the townes then weare well occupied and set

aworke and yet the money paid for the same stuffe remayned in

the countrie. Nowe the porest yonge man in a country can not

be contented either with a lether girdle, or lether pointes,

gloves, kynues or daggers made nighe home. And specially no

gentleman can be content to have eyther cappe, coate, dublet,

hose or shirt made in his countrey, but they must haue theire

geare from London; and yet manye thinges thearof are not

theare made, but beyonde the sea; whereby the artificers of

oure townes are idle.”[37]

Queen Elizabeth made ineffectual attempts to circumscribe London, whose

boundaries were rapidly enlarging under the pressure of the growing

population and the constant influx of provincials and foreigners. About

this time stone building began to be common, the old timber houses

being replaced by more solid if less picturesque edifices.

Complaints were made of people flocking to London from the country, and

wasting their substance in revels--

“When husband hath at play set up his rest,

Then wife and babes at home a hungry goeth.”

“The maister may keepe revell all the yeere,

And leave the wife at home like silly foule.”

Country dames did not often share in the jaunts to the capital made

by their husbands. Until the seventeenth century it did not become

customary for families to go to London for annual visits. Bad roads

and the lack of public conveyances kept town and country apart. The

squire’s lady knew nothing of the bustling life led in the sombre,

substantial houses of the London burgesses, for whose wives there was

plenty of occupation in looking after the servants and the apprentices

who formed part of the household, in superintending the cooking of the

bountiful meals, buying the household necessaries, and replenishing the

family wardrobe. There were no newspapers, but there was abundance of

gossip, a much more impressive medium of communicating news. Amusement

took the form of spectacles chiefly, and the citizens and citizenesses

flocked readily to a mask, a play, a procession, a cock-fight, or a

bear-baiting. Women were not squeamish about unpleasant sights. They

had not learnt to feel that the brutal sports so common then were

degrading. It was hardly likely that they should. There were too many

hangings and quarterings and burnings of human beings in London to make

people sensitive about the pain of animals. The gallows were constantly

working, and women had to accustom themselves to many revolting sights.

Worse times were coming, but as yet the shadow of the great civil war

had not darkened England.

With regard to the education of women in every-day life, there is no

evidence to show that they shared in the higher learning cultivated so

assiduously by the daughters of the aristocracy. What M. Paul Rousselot

says in his “History of the Education of Women in France,” applies

equally well to England. The majority of women in the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries profited little, he considers, by the great

movement known as the Renaissance. To a large extent they were outside

it--

“On ne les a pas en général volontairement introduites dans ce

progrès, elles y sont entrées, un peu d’elles mêmes, beaucoup

par la force des choses.”

When we read of women discoursing in Latin, writing in Greek,

discussing philosophy and science, we must be on our guard, says M.

Rousselot, from believing that the initiators of the modern spirit had

any idea that the moment was come to institute for women a rational

system of instruction and education.

Certainly in England there were no women of the burgess class who could

discourse in Latin, and the wives and daughters of country squires

were equally guiltless of any such accomplishments. No systematic

attempt was made to raise the standard of women’s education in the

middle ranks. The founders of the endowed grammar schools in the

sixteenth century never thought of girls; they only provided for boys.

Queen Elizabeth, excellent scholar as she was, and keen as was her

appreciation of learning, did nothing for the intellectual advancement

of her female subjects. The Virgin Queen only acted like her compeers.

“Scarcely has there ever appeared, in any period or in any

nation, a legislator who has made it the subject of his serious

attention, and the men who are greatly interested that women

should be sensible and virtuous, seem, by their conduct towards

that sex, to have entered into a general conspiracy to order it

otherwise.”[38]

Sir Thomas Overbury’s poem, “A Wife,” expresses the sentiment of the

age--

“Give me next Good, an understanding Wife,

By nature wise, not learned by much Art.

Some knowledge on her side will all my Life

More scope of Conversation impart.

* * * * *

“A passive understanding to conceive,

And judgment to discern, I wish to finde.

Beyond that, all as hazardous I leave;

Learning and pregnant wit in Woman-kinde,

What it findes malleable maketh frail,

And doth not adde more ballast, but more sail.

“Domesticke charge doth best that Sexe befit,

Contiguous businesse so to fix the minde,

That leasure space for fancies not admit,

Their leasure ’tis corrupteth Womankinde.

Else, being plac’d from many vices free,

They had to Heav’n a shorter cut then we.

Books are a part of Man’s Prerogative,

In formall Ink they Thoughts and Voices hold,

That we to them our Solitude may give,

And make Time present travel that of old.”

Hitherto there had been two careers open to women--marriage and the

conventual life. With the sweeping away of the religious houses there

remained only the first. English family life has been lauded as the

_beau idéal_ of domesticity, but, as far as women were concerned, it

was a very narrow ideal. There seemed no place for the daughters who

failed to find husbands. One wonders what became of the unmarried

women. They were probably condemned to drudge for their relatives, like

Samuel Pepys’ sister, who came into his household as a servant.

There was much severity exercised towards children among all classes.

Poor Lady Jane Grey pathetically relates how glad she was to go to her

tutor to escape the blows, pinches, and constant reprimands which she

received when in the presence of her parents, and Lady Jane was by no

means of a refractory disposition. After this it is less surprising to

find, at an earlier period, one of the Paston family, whose well-known

letters throw so much light on domestic life in the fifteenth century,

ill treated and beaten as if she were an unruly slave.

“She [Elizabeth Paston, daughter of Agnes Paston] was never in

so great sorrow as she is nowadays,” wrote one of the relatives

in June, 1454; “for she may not speak with no man, whosoever

come, ne not may see nor speak with any man, nor with servants

of her mother’s, but that she beareth on her hand otherwise

than she meaneth; and she hath since Easter the most part been

beaten once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice on a

day, and her head broken in two or three places.”

Dame Paston did not approve of having marriageable daughters about her

at home. One she had sent to a certain Cousin Calthorp, who, when he

was making changes in his household, wished to be rid of his charge.

She writes in some perturbation to her son--

“He seth she waxeth hygh, and it wer tyme to purvey her a

mariage. I marvell what causeth hym to write so now; outher she

hath displeased hym or elles he hath takyn her with diffraught.

Therfor I pray you comune with my Cosyn Clere at London, and

wete how he is dysposyd to her ward, and send me word, for I

shall be fayn to send for her, and with me she shall but lese

her tyme, and with ought she will be better occupied she shall

often tymes meve me and put me in gret inquietenesse. Remembr

what labour I had with your suster, therfor do your parte to

help her forth, that may be your wurchiep and myn.”

Girls married very young, and the poet who makes a daughter lament that

at fifteen she had not found a husband, was probably not exaggerating.

“Good faith, before I came to this ripe groath,

I did accuse the labouring time of sloath;

Methought the yere did runne but slowe about,

For I thought each yeere ten I was without.

Being foreteene and toward the tother yeere,

Good Lord, thought I, fifteene will nere be heere!

For I have heard my mother say that then

Prittie maidens were fit for handsome men.”

A Venetian noble who accompanied an ambassador from Venice to the

English court in the sixteenth century writes--

“The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested

towards their children; for after having kept them at home till

they arrive at the age of seven or nine years at the utmost,

they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in

the houses of other people, binding them generally for another

seven or nine years.”

On the other hand, we find children described as--

“most ongracious grafftes, ripe and redy in all lewd libertie,”

through the fault of the parents and schoolmasters, “which do

nother teach ther children good, nother yet chastice them when

thei do evill.”

In the following century people looked back with regret to the time

when daughters were--

“obsequious and helpful to their parents,” when “there was no

supposed humiliation in offices which are now accounted menial,

but which the peer received as a matter of course from ‘the

gentlemen of his household,’ and which were paid to the knights

or gentlemen by domestics chosen in the families of their own

most respectable tenants; whilst in the humbler ranks of middle

life it was the uniform and recognized duty of the wife to wait

on her husband, the child on his parents, the youngest of the

family on his elder brothers and sisters.”