HOW THE CLASSES CONNECTED WITH THE LAND LIVED IN THE MIDDLE AGES
The castles of the great landowners have been so often described that
there is no need to do this again. The popular idea of a baron of the
Middle Ages is of a man who when he was not fighting was jousting or
hunting. Such were, no doubt, his chief recreations; so fond was he of
hunting, indeed, that his own broad lands were not enough, and he was
a frequent trespasser on those of others; the records of the time are
full of cases which show that poaching was quite a fashionable
amusement among the upper classes. But among the barons were many men
who, like their successors to-day, did their duty as landlords. Of one
of the Lords of Berkeley in the fourteenth century, it was said he was
'sometyme in husbandry at home, sometyme at sport in the field,
sometyme in the campe, sometyme in the Court and Council of State,
with that promptness and celerity that his body might have bene
believed to be ubiquitary'. Many of them were farmers on a very large
scale, though they might not have so much time to devote to it as
those excellent landlords the monks.
Thomas Lord Berkeley, who held the Berkeley estates from 1326 to 1361,
farmed the demesnes of a quantity of manors, as was the custom, and
kept thereon great flocks of sheep, ranging from 300 to 1,500 on each
manor.[127] The stock of the Bishop of Winchester, by an inquisition
taken at his death in 1367, amounted to 127 draught horses, 1,556 head
of black cattle, and 12,104 sheep and lambs. Almost every manor had
one or two pigeon houses, and the number of pigeons reared is
astonishing; from one manor Lord Berkeley obtained 2,151 pigeons in a
single year. No one but the lord was allowed to keep them, and they
were one of the chief grievances of the villeins, who saw their seed
devoured by these pests without redress. Their dung, too, was one of
the most valued manures. Lord Berkeley, like other landlords, went
often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another,
making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and
directing the husbandry. The castle of the great noble consumed an
enormous amount of food in the course of the year; from two manors on
the Berkeley estate came to the 'standinghouse' of the lord in twelve
months, 17,000 eggs, 1,008 pigeons, 91 capons, 192 hens, 288 ducks,
388 chickens, 194 pigs, 45 calves, 315 quarters of wheat, 304 quarters
of oats; and from several other manors came the like or greater store,
besides goats, sheep, oxen, butter, cheese, nuts, honey, &c.[128] Even
the lavish hospitality of the lords, and the great number of their
retainers, must have had some difficulty in disposing of these huge
supplies.
The examining of their bailiff's accounts must have taken a
considerable portion of the landlord's time, for those of each manor
were kept most minutely, and set forth, among other items, 'in what
sort he husbanded' the demesne farms, 'what sorts of cattle he kept in
them, and what kinds of graine he yearly sowed according to the
quality and condition of the ground, and how those kinds of graine
each second or third yeare were exchanged or brought from one manor to
another as the vale corne into an upland soyle, and contrarily'. And
we are told incidentally he 'set with hand, not sowed his beanes'. He
was also accustomed to move his live stock from one manor to another,
as they needed it.
The accounts also stated what days' works were due from each tenant
according to the season of the year, and at the end of each year there
was a careful valuation of live and dead stock.[129]
The difference
between the smaller gentry and the more important yeomen[130] who
farmed their own land must have been very slight. No doubt both of
them were very rough and ignorant men, who knew a great deal about the
cultivation of their land and very little about anything else. We may
be sure that the ordinary house of both was generally of wood; as
there is no stone in many parts of England, and bricks were not
reintroduced till the fourteenth century and spread slowly. Even in
Elizabeth's reign, Harrison[131] tells us that 'the ancient houses of
our gentry are yet for the most part of strong timber', and he even
thinks that houses made of oak were luxurious, for in times past men
had been contented with houses of willow, plum, and elm, but now
nothing but oak was good enough; and he quaintly says that the men who
lived in the willow houses were as tough as oak, and those who lived
in the oak as soft as willow. There are very few mansions left of the
time before Edward III, for being of timber they naturally decayed.
In a lease, dated 1152, of a manor house belonging to S. Paul's
Cathedral,[132] is a description of a manor house which contained a
hall 35 feet long, 30 feet broad, and 22 feet high; that is, 11 feet
to the tie beam and 11 feet from that to the ridge board; showing that
the roof was open and that there were no upper rooms. There was a
chamber between the hall and the thalamus or inner room which was 12
feet long, 17 feet broad, and 17 feet high, the roof being open as in
the hall; and the thalamus was 22 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 18
feet high. About the same date the Manor house of Thorp was larger,
and contained a hall, a chamber, tresantia (apparently part of the
hall or chamber separated by a screen to form an antechamber), two
private rooms, a kitchen, brew-house, malt-house, dairy, ox shed, and
three small hen-houses.
The ordinary manor house of the Middle Ages contained three rooms at
least, of mean aspect, the floor even of the hall, which was the
principal eating and sleeping room, being of dirt; and when there was
an upper room or solar added, which began to be done at the end of the
twelfth century,[133] access to it was often obtained by an outside
staircase.
If the manor house belonged to the owner of many manors, it was
sometimes inhabited by his bailiff.
The barns on the demesnes were often as important buildings as the
manor houses; one at Wickham, belonging to the canons of S. Paul's[134]
in the twelfth century, was 55 feet long, 13 feet high from the floor
to the principal beam, and 10-1/2 feet more to the ridge board; the
breadth between the pillars was 19-1/2 feet, and on each side it had a
wing or aisle 6-1/2 feet wide and 6-1/2 feet high. The amount of corn
in the barn was often scored on the door-posts.[135] In the manor
houses chimneys rarely existed, the fire being made in the middle of
the hall. Even in the early seventeenth century in Cheshire there were
no chimneys in the farmhouses, and there the oxen were kept under the
same roof as the farmer and his family.[136] When chimneys did come in
they were not much thought of. 'Now we have chimneys our tenderlings
complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses (colds);' for the smoke not
only hardened the timbers, but was said by Harrison to be an excellent
medicine for man. Instead of glass there was much lattice, and that
made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak in checkerwise, and horn
was also used. Beds, of course, were a luxury, the owner of the manor,
his guests, and retainers flung themselves down on the hall floor
after supper and all slept together, though sometimes rough mattresses
were brought in.
Furniture was rude and scanty. In 1150 the farm implements and
household furniture on the Manor of 'Waleton' was valued and consisted
of 4 carts, 3 baskets, a basket used in winnowing corn, a pair of
millstones, 10 tubs, 4 barrels, 2 boilers of lead with stoves, 2
wooden bowls, 3 three-legged tables, 20 dishes or platters, 2
tablecloths worth 6d., 6 metal bowls, half a load of the invaluable
salt, 2 axes, a table with trestles (the usual form of table), and 5
beehives made of rushes.[137] These articles were handed down from one
generation to another, and in a lease made 150 years afterwards of the
same manor most of them reappear. The greater part of the furniture,
until the fifteenth century, was most likely made by migratory
workmen, who travelled from village to village; for except the rudest
pieces it was beyond the village carpenter, and shops there were none.
It is not to be expected that when the master lived in this manner the
lot of the labourer was a very good one. His home was miserably poor,
generally of 'wattle and dab', sometimes wholly of mud and clay; many
with only one room for all purposes. A bill is still in existence for
a house, if it can be called one, built in 1306 for two labourers by
Queen's College, Oxford, which cost 20s. in all, and was a mere hovel
without floor, ceiling, or chimney.[138] Their wretched houses appear
to have been built on the bare earth, and unfloored. Perhaps as time
went on a rude upper storey was added, the floor of which was made of
rough poles or hurdles and was reached by a ladder. The furniture was
miserably poor; a few pots and pans, cups and dishes, and some tools
would exhaust the list.[139] The goods and chattels of a landless
labourer in 1431 consisted of a dish, an adze, a brass pot, 2 plates,
2 augers, an axe, a three-legged stool, and a barrel.[140] Englishmen
of all classes were hopelessly dirty in their habits; even till the
sixteenth century they were noted above other countries for the
profuseness of their diet and their unclean ways. Erasmus spoke of the
floor of his house as inconceivably filthy. To save fuel, the
labourer's family in the cold season all lay huddled in a heap on the
floor, 'pleasantly and hot', as Barclay the poet tells us; and if he
ever had a bed it was a bundle of fern or straw thrown down, with his
cloak as a coverlet, though thus he was just as well off as his social
superiors, for with them the loose cloak of the day was a common
covering for the night. He was constantly exposed to disease, for
sanitary precautions were ignored; at the entrance of his hovel was a
huge heap of decaying refuse, poisoning air and water. Even in the
sixteenth century a foreigner noticed that 'the peasants dwell in
small huts and pile up their refuse out of doors in heaps so high that
you cannot see their houses'.[141] Diseased animals were constantly
eaten, vegetables were few, and in the winter there was no fresh meat
for any one, except game and rabbits and, for the well-to-do, fish,
but we may doubt if the peasant got any but salt fish. The consequence
was that leprosy and kindred ailments were common; and we do not
wonder that plagues were frequent and slew the people like flies. The
peasants' food consisted largely of corn. In the bailiff's accounts of
the Manor of Woodstock in 1242, six servants at Handborough received
41-1/2 bushels of corn each, 2 ox herds at Combe received the same, and
4 servants at Bladon had 36 bushels each. In 1274 at Bosham, and in
1288 at Stoughton in Sussex, the allowance was the same.[142] The
writer of the anonymous _Treatise on Husbandry_ says that in his time,
the thirteenth century, the average annual allowance of corn to a
labourer was 36 bushels.[143] Fish, too, seem to have formed a large
portion of his diet; all classes ate enormous quantities of fish,
before the Reformation, in Lent and on fast days, and the labourer was
constantly given salt herrings as part of his pay. In 1359, at
Hawsted, the villeins when working were allowed 2 herrings a day, some
milk, a loaf, and some drink.[144] Eden[145] says his food consisted
of a few fish, principally herrings, a loaf of bread, and some beer;
but we must certainly add pork, which was his stand-by then as
now.[146] In the fourteenth century, at all events, there were three
kinds of bread in use--white bread, ration bread, and black bread; and
it was no doubt the latter that the peasant ate.[147] Clothing was
dear and cloth coarse, the most valuable personal property consisting
of clothing and metal vessels. Shirts were the subject of charitable
gifts.[148] By 37 Edw. III, c. 14, labourers were not to wear any
manner of cloth but 'blanket and russet wool of 12d.' and girdles of
linen. If they wore anything more extravagant it was forfeited to the
king.
To the labourer of modern times the life of his forefathers would have
seemed unutterably dull. No books, no newspapers, no change of scene
by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics. The very
cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous.
But there were bright spots in his existence: the village church not
only afforded him the consolations of religion but also entertainments
and society. Religion in the Middle Ages was a part of the people's
daily life, and its influence permeated even their amusements.
Miracles and mystery plays, played in the churches and churchyards,
were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or
parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer
were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the
parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more
sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened
by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and
herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, 'a
common mill ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a common
smith worked at a common forge.' His existence, moreover, was
enlivened by a considerable number of sports. A statute at the end of
the fourteenth century (12 Ric. II, c. 6) says he was fond of playing
at tennis(!), football, quoits, dice, casting the stone, and other
games, which this statute forbad him, and enacted that he should use
his bow and arrows on Sundays and holidays instead of such idle sport.
This is a foretaste of the modern sentiment that seeks to wean him
from watching football matches and take to miniature rifle clubs. He
was also, like some of his successors, fond of poaching, though he
appears to have been rash enough to indulge in it by day. 13 Ric. II,
c. 13, says he was prone on holidays, when good Christian people be in
church hearing divine service, to go hunting with greyhounds and other
dogs, in the parks and warrens of the lord and of others, and
sometimes these hunts were turned into conferences and conspiracies,'
for to rise and disobey their allegiance', such as preceded the
Peasants' Revolt of 1381; and accordingly no one who did not own lands
worth 40s. a year was to keep a dog to hunt, or ferrets other
'engines': the first game law on the English statute book.
FOOTNOTES:
[127] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 302. No doubt the riches of
the Berkeleys were considerably greater than those of many of the
barons.
[128] _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 166. There is no reason to doubt
Smyth, as he wrote with the original accounts before him.
[129] _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 156.
[130] The yeoman is said to have made his appearance in the fifteenth
century, but the small freeholders of the manor before that date were
to all intents and purposes yeomen. No doubt, as trade grew in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries successful tradesmen bought small
freeholds in the country and swelled the numbers of yeomen.
[131] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, F.J. Furnivall edn., p. 337.
[132] _Domesday of S. Paul_, Camden Society, p. 129.
[133] Turner, _Domestic Architecture_, i. 59.
[134] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. 123.
[135] _Historical MSS. Commission Report_, v. 444.
[136] Ormerod, _History of Cheshire_, i. 129.
[137] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. xcvii.
[138] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_.
[139] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 21.
[140] See Cullum, _History of Hawsted_.
[141] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, Appendix ii, lxxxi. In some
manors, however, there were careful regulations for public health.
According to the Durham _Halmote Rolls_, published by the Surtees
Society, village officials watched over the water supply, prevented
the fouling of streams; bye-laws were enacted as to the regulation of
the common place for clothes washing, and the times for emptying and
cleansing ponds and mill-dams.
[142] Ballard, _Domesday_, Antiquary Series, p. 209.
[143] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 75.
[144] Cullum, _Hawsted_, 1784 ed., p. 182.
[145] _State of the Poor_, i. 15.
[146] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 32.
[147] See _Knights Hospitallers in England_, Camden Society,
Introduction.
[148] Thorold Rogers, _op. cit._ i. 66.