ANGLO-SAXON VILLAGES
Departure of Romans--Coming of Saxons--Bede--Saxon names of places--
Saxon village--Common-field system--_Eorl_ and _ceorl_--Thanes,
_geburs_, and _cottiers_--Description of village life--Thane's
house--_Socmen_--Ploughman's lament--Village tradesmen--Parish
council--Hundreds--Shires.
The scene changes. The Roman legions have left our shores, and are
trying to prop the tottering state of the falling empire. The groans
of the Britons have fallen on listless or distracted ears, and no one
has come to their succour. The rule of the all-swaying Roman power has
passed away, and the Saxon hordes have poured over the hills and vales
of rural Britain, and made it the Angles' land--our England.
The coming of the Saxons was a very gradual movement. They did not
attack our shores in large armies on one or two occasions; they came
in clans or families. The head of the clan built a ship, and taking
with him his family and relations, founded a settlement in wild Britain,
or wherever the winds happened to carry them. They were very fierce
and relentless in war, and committed terrible ravages on the helpless
Britons, sparing neither men, women, nor children, burning buildings,
destroying and conquering wherever they went.
Bede tells the story of doings of the ruthless Saxons:--
"The barbarous conquerors ... plundered all the neighbouring cities and
country, spread the conflagration from the eastern to the western sea
without any opposition, and covered almost every part of the devoted
island. Public as well as private structures were overturned; the
priests were everywhere slain before the altars; the prelates and
the people, without any respect of persons, were destroyed with fire
and sword; nor was there any to bury those who had been thus cruelly
slaughtered. Some of the miserable remainder, being taken in the
mountains, were butchered in heaps. Others, spent with hunger, came
forth and submitted themselves to the enemy for food, being destined
to undergo perpetual servitude, if they were not killed even upon the
spot. Some, with sorrowful hearts, fled beyond the seas; others,
continuing in their own country, led a miserable life among the woods,
rocks, and mountains, with scarcely enough food to support life, and
expecting every moment to be their last."
Many antiquaries believe that the extirpation of the Britons was not so
complete as Bede asserts, and that a large number of them remained in
England in a condition of servitude. At any rate, the almost entire
extinction of the language, except as regards the names of a few rivers
and mountains, and of a few household words, seems to point to a fairly
complete expulsion of the Britons rather than to a mingling of them with
the conquering race.
What remains have we in our English villages of our Saxon forefathers,
the makers of England? In the first place we notice that many of the
names of our villages retain the memory of their founders. When the
family, or group of families, formed their settlements, they avoided the
buildings and walled towns, relics of Roman civilisation, made clearings
for themselves in the primeval forests, and established themselves in
village communities. In the names of places the suffix _ing_, meaning
_sons of_, denotes that the village was first occupied by the clan of
some chief, whose name is compounded with this syllable _ing_. Thus the
Uffingas, the children of Offa, formed a settlement at Uffinggaston, or
Uffington; the Redingas, or sons of Rede, settled at Reading; the
Billings at Billinge and Billingham; the Wokings or Hocings, sons of
Hoc, at Woking and Wokingham. The Billings and Wokings first settled at
Billinge and Woking; and then like bees they swarmed, and started
another hive of industry at Billingham and Wokingham.
These family settlements, revealed to us by the patronymic _ing_, are
very numerous. At Ardington, in Berkshire, the Ardings, the royal race
of the Vandals, settled; the Frankish Walsings at Wolsingham; the
Halsings at Helsington; the Brentings at Brentingley; the Danish
Scyldings at Skelding; the Thurings at Thorington; and many other
examples might be quoted.
Many Saxon names of places end in _field_, which denotes a forest
clearing, or _feld_, made by the axes of the settlers in the primeval
woods, where the trees were _felled_. These villages were rudely
fortified, or inclosed by a hedge, wall, or palisade, denoted by the
suffix _ton_, derived from the Anglo-Saxon _tynan_, to hedge; and all
names ending with this syllable point to the existence of a Saxon
settlement hedged in and protected from all intruders. Thus we have
Barton, Preston, Bolton, and many others. The terminations _yard_,
_stoke_, or stockaded place, as in Basingstoke, _worth_ (Anglo-Saxon
_weorthig_), as in Kenilworth, Tamworth, Walworth, have much the same
meaning.
Perhaps the most common of all the terminations of names denoting the
presence of Anglo-Saxon settlers is the suffix _ham_. When the _a_ is
pronounced short the syllable denotes an inclosure, like _stoke_ or
_ton_; but when the _a_ is long, it means home, and expresses the
reverence with which the Anglo-Saxon regarded his own dwelling. England
is the land of homes, and the natural affection with which we Englishmen
regard our homes is to a great extent peculiar to our race. The
Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Italian, do not have the same respect for
home. Our Saxon forefathers were a very home-loving people, and it is
from them doubtless that we inherit our love for our homes.
We find, then, the Saxon holding the lands. The clan formed settlements;
sections of each clan formed branch settlements; and several members of
each section cut their way through the thick forests, felled the trees,
built homesteads, where they tilled the land and reared their cattle.
In early Saxon times the settlement consisted of a number of families
holding a district, and the land was regularly divided into three
portions. There was the village itself, in which the people lived in
houses built of wood or rude stonework. Around the village were a few
small inclosures, or grass yards, for rearing calves and baiting farm
stock; this was the common farmstead. Around this was the arable land,
where the villagers grew their corn and other vegetables; and around
this lay the common meadows, or pasture land, held by the whole
community, so that each family could turn their cattle into it, subject
to the regulations of an officer elected by the people, whose duty it
was to see that no one trespassed on the rights of his neighbour, or
turned too many cattle into the common pasture.
[Illustration: BEATING ACORNS FOR SWINE
Cotton MS., _Nero_, c. 4]
Around the whole colony lay the woods and uncultivated land, which
was left in its natural wild state, where the people cut their timber
and fuel, and pastured their pigs in the glades of the forest. The
cultivated land was divided into three large fields, in which the
rotation of crops was strictly enforced, each field lying fallow once
in three years. To each freeman was assigned his own family lot, which
was cultivated by the members of his household. But he was obliged to
sow the same crop as his neighbour, and compelled by law to allow his
lot to lie fallow with the rest every third year. The remains of this
common-field system are still evident in many parts of the country, the
fields being termed "lot meadows," or "Lammas lands." Our commons, too,
many of which remain in spite of numerous inclosures, are evidences of
the communal life of our village forefathers.
How long the Saxon villages remained free democratic institutions, we do
not know. Gradually a change came over them, and we find the manorial
system in vogue. Manors existed in England long before the Normans came,
although "manor" is a Norman word; and in the time of Canute the system
was in full force. The existence of a manor implies a lord of the manor,
who exercised authority over all the villagers, owned the home farm, and
had certain rights over the rest of the land. How all this came about,
we scarcely know. Owing to the Danish invasions, when the rude barbarous
warriors carried fire and sword into many a peaceful town and village,
the villagers found themselves at the mercy of these savage hordes.
Probably they sought the protection of some thane, or _eorl_, with his
band of warriors, who could save their lands from pillage. In return for
their services they acknowledged him as the lord of their village, and
gave him rent, which was paid either in the produce of these fields or
by the work of their hands. Thus the lords of the manor became the
masters of the villagers, although they too were governed by law, and
were obliged to respect the rights of their tenants and servants.
Saxon society was divided into two main divisions, the _eorl_ and the
_ceorl_, the men of noble birth, and those of ignoble origin. The chief
man in the village was the manorial lord, a _thane_, who had his demesne
land, and his _gafol_ land, or _geneat_ land, which was land held in
villeinage, and cultivated by _geneats_, or persons holding by service.
These villein tenants were in two classes, the _geburs_, or villeins
proper, who held the yardlands, and the _cottiers_, who had smaller
holdings. Beneath these two classes there were the _theows_, or slaves,
made up partly of the conquered Britons, partly of captives taken in
war, and partly of freemen who had been condemned to this penalty for
their crimes, or had incurred it by poverty.
There were degrees of rank among Saxon gentlemen, as among those of
to-day. The thanes were divided into three classes: (i.) those of royal
rank (_thani regis_), who served the king in Court or in the management
of State affairs; (ii.) _thani mediocres_, who held the title by
inheritance, and corresponded to the lords of the manor in the later
times; (iii.) _thani minores_, or inferior thanes, to which rank
_ceorls_ or merchants could attain by the acquisition of sufficient
landed property.
We can picture to ourselves the ordinary village life which existed in
Saxon times. The thane's house stood in the centre of the village, not a
very lordly structure, and very unlike the stately Norman castles which
were erected in later times. It was commonly built of wood, which the
neighbouring forests supplied in plenty, and had stone or mud
foundations. The house consisted of an irregular group of low buildings,
almost all of one story. In the centre of the group was the hall, with
doors opening into the court. On one side stood the kitchen; on the
other the chapel when the thane became a Christian and required the
services of the Church for himself and his household. Numerous other
rooms with lean-to roofs were joined on to the hall, and a tower for
purposes of defence in case of an attack. Stables and barns were
scattered about outside the house, and with the cattle and horses lived
the grooms and herdsmen, while villeins and _cottiers_ dwelt in the
humble, low, shedlike buildings, which clustered round the Saxon thane's
dwelling-place. An illustration of such a house appears in an ancient
illumination preserved in the Harleian MSS., No. 603. The lord and lady
of the house are represented as engaged in almsgiving; the lady is thus
earning her true title, that of "loaf-giver," from which her name "lady"
is derived.
[Illustration: HOUSE OF SAXON THANE]
The interior of the hall was the common living-room for both men and
women, who slept on the reed-strewn floor, the ladies' sleeping-place
being separated from the men's by the arras. The walls were hung with
tapestry, woven by the skilled fingers of the ladies of the household. A
peat or log fire burned in the centre of the hall, and the smoke hid the
ceiling and finally found its way out through a hole in the roof. Arms
and armour hung on the walls, and the seats consisted of benches called
"mead-settles," arranged along the sides of the hall, where the Saxon
chiefs sat drinking their favourite beverage, mead, or sweetened beer,
out of the horns presented to them by the waiting damsels. When the hour
for dinner approached, rude tables were laid on trestles, and forthwith
groaned beneath the weight of joints of meat and fat capons which the
Saxon loved dearly. The door of the hall was usually open, and thither
came the bards and gleemen, who used to delight the company with their
songs and stories of the gallant deeds of their ancestors, the weird
legends of their gods Woden and Thor, their Viking lays and Norse sagas,
and the acrobats and dancers astonished them with their strange
postures.
Next to the thane ranked the _geburs_, who held land granted to them by
the thane for their own use, sometimes as much as one hundred and twenty
acres, and were required to work for the lord on the home farm two or
three days a week, or pay rent for their holdings. This payment
consisted of the produce of the land. They were also obliged to provide
one or more oxen for the manorial plough team, which consisted of eight
oxen.
There was also a strong independent body of men called _socmen_, who
were none other than our English yeomen. They were free tenants, who
have by their independence stamped with peculiar features both our
constitution and our national character. Their good name remains;
English yeomen have done good service to their country, and let us hope
that they will long continue to exist amongst us, in spite of the
changed condition of English agriculture and the prolonged depression in
farming affairs, which has tried them severely.
[Illustration: WHEEL PLOUGH
From Bayeux Tapestry]
Besides the _geburs_ and _socmen_ there were the _cottiers_, who had
small allotments of about five acres, kept no oxen, and were required to
work for the thane some days in each week. Below them were the _theows_,
serfs, or slaves, who could be bought and sold in the market, and were
compelled to work on the lord's farm.
Listen to the sad lament of one of this class, recorded in a dialogue of
AElfric of the tenth century:--
"What sayest thou, ploughman? How dost thou do thy work?"
"Oh, my lord, hard do I work. I go out at daybreak, driving the oxen to
field, and I yoke them to the plough. Nor is it ever so hard winter that
I dare loiter at home, for fear of my lord, but the oxen yoked, and the
ploughshare and the coulter fastened to the plough, every day must I
plough a full acre, or more."
"Hast thou any comrade?"
"I have a boy driving the oxen with an iron goad, who also is hoarse
with cold and shouting."
"What more dost thou in the day?"
"Verily then I do more. I must fill the bin of the oxen with hay, and
water them, and carry out the dung. Ha! Ha! hard work it is, hard work
it is! because _I am not free._"
Evidently the ploughman's want of freedom was his great hardship; his
work in ploughing, feeding, and watering his cattle, and in cleansing
their stable, was not harder than that of an ordinary carter in the
present day; but servitude galled his spirit, and made the work
intolerable. Let us hope that his lord was a kind-hearted man, and gave
him some cattle for his own, as well as some land to cultivate, and then
he would not feel the work so hard, or the winter so cold.
Frequently men were thus released from slavery; sometimes also freemen
sold themselves into slavery under the pressure of extreme want. A man
so reduced was required to lay aside his sword and lance, the symbols
of the free, and to take up the bill and the goad, the implements of
slavery, to fall on his knees and place his head, in token of submission,
under the hands of his master.
[Illustration: SMITHY
From the Cotton MS., B 4]
Each trade was represented in the village community. There were the
_faber_, or smith, and the carpenter, who repaired the ironwork and
woodwork of the ploughs and other agricultural implements, and in return
for their work had small holdings among the tenants free from ordinary
services. There was the _punder_, or pound-man, who looked after the
repair of the fences and impounded stray cattle; the _cementarius_, or
stonemason; the _custos apium_, or bee-keeper, an important person, as
much honey was needed to make the sweetened ale, or mead, which the
villagers and their chiefs loved to imbibe; and the steward, or
_prepositus_, who acted on behalf of the lord, looked after the
interests of the tenants, and took care that they rendered their legal
services. The surnames Smith, Baker, Butcher, Carter, and many others,
preserve the remembrance of the various trades which were carried on in
every village, and of the complete self-dependence of the community.
We have inherited many customs and institutions from our Saxon
forefathers, which connect our own age with theirs. In recent years we
have established parish councils in our villages. Formerly the pet
theory of politicians was centralisation; everything had to be done at
one centre, at one central office, and London became the head and centre
of all government. But recently politicians thought that they had
discovered a new plan for carrying on the internal affairs of the
country, and the idea was to leave each district to manage its own
affairs. This is only a return to the original Saxon plan. In every
village there was a moot-hill, or sacred tree, where the freemen met to
make their own laws and arrange their agricultural affairs. Here
disputes were settled, plough lands and meadow lands shared in due lot
among the villagers, and everything arranged according to the custom of
the village.
Our county maps show that the shires are divided into hundreds. This we
have inherited from our Saxon forefathers. In order to protect
themselves from their neighbours, the Saxon colonists arranged
themselves in hundreds of warriors. This little army was composed of
picked champions, the representatives of a hundred families; men who
were ready in case of war to uphold the honour of their house, and to
fight for their hearths and homes. These hundred families recognised a
bond of union with each other and a common inheritance, and ranged
themselves under one name for general purposes, whether for defence,
administration of justice, or other objects.
On a fixed day, three times a year, in some place where they were
accustomed to assemble--under a particular tree,[1] or near some
river-bank--these hundred champions used to meet their chieftain, and
gather around him when he dismounted from his horse. He then placed his
spear in the ground, and each warrior touched it with his own spear in
token of their compact, and pledged himself to mutual support. At this
assembly criminals were tried, disputes settled, bargains of sale
concluded; and in later times many of these transactions were inserted
in the chartularies of abbeys or the registers of bishops, which thus
became a kind of register too sacred to be falsified. A large number of
the hundreds bear the name of some chieftain who once used to call
together his band of bearded, light-haired warriors and administer rude
justice beneath a broad oak's shade.[2] Others are named after some
particular spot, some tree, or ford, or stone, or tumulus, where the
hundred court met.
Our counties or shires were not formed, as is popularly supposed, by
King Alfred or other royal person by the dividing up of the country into
portions, but were the areas occupied by the original Saxon tribes or
kingdoms. Most of our counties retain to this day the boundaries which
were originally formed by the early Saxon settlers. Some of our counties
were old Saxon kingdoms--such as Sussex, Essex, Middlesex--the kingdoms
of the South, East, and Middle Saxons. Surrey is the Sothe-reye, or
south realm; Kent is the land of the Cantii, a Belgic tribe; Devon is
the land of the Damnonii, a Celtic tribe; Cornwall, or Corn-wales, is
the land of the Welsh of the Horn; Worcestershire is the shire of the
Huiccii; Cumberland is the land of the Cymry; Northumberland is the land
north of the Humber, and therefore, as its name implies, used to extend
over all the North of England. Evidently the southern tribes and
kingdoms by conquest reduced the size of this large county and confined
it to its present smaller dimensions. In several cases the name of the
county is derived from that of its chief town, _e.g._ Oxfordshire,
Warwickshire; these were districts which were conquered by some powerful
earl or chieftain, who held his court in the town, and called his newly
acquired property after its name.
We have seen the picture of an ordinary English village in early Saxon
times, the villeins and slaves working in the fields and driving their
oxen, and the thane dressed in his linen tunic and short cloak, his hose
bandaged to the knee with strips of cloth, superintending the farming
operations. We have seen the freemen and thanes taking an active part in
public life, attending the courts of the hundred and shire, as well as
the folk moot or parish council of those times, and the slave mourning
over his lack of freedom. But many other relics of Saxon times remain,
and these will require another chapter for their examination.
[1] Until the eighteenth century there stood a pollard oak in the parish
of Shelford, Berks, where the hundred court used to be held.
[2] Other theories with regard to the origin of the hundred have been
suggested. Some writers maintain that the hundred was a district whence
the hundred warriors were derived, or a group of townships. But the
Bishop of Oxford in his _Constitutional History_ states: "It is very
probable that the colonists of Britain arranged themselves in hundreds
of warriors; it is not probable that the country was carved into equal
districts. The only conclusion that seems reasonable is that under the
name of geographical hundreds we have the variously sized _pagi_, or
districts, in which the hundred warriors settled, the boundaries of
these being determined by other causes."