EDUCATION.--LITERARY MEN AND SCRIBES.--PUNISHMENTS; THE STOCKS; THE
GALLOWS.
I put together in a short chapter two parts of my subject which may
at the first glance seem somewhat discordant, but which, I think, on
further consideration, will be found to be rather closely related--they
are, education and punishment for offences against the law. It can
hardly be doubted, indeed, that, as education becomes more general and
better regulated, if the necessity of punishment is not entirely taken
away, its cruelty is greatly diminished.
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was certainly a
general feeling of the necessity of extending and improving education.
It was during this period that our great universities rose into
existence, and flourished, and these schools, which provided for the
higher development of the mind, had their thousands of students,
instead of the hundreds who frequent them at the present day. But the
need of some provision for education was felt most in regard to that
less elevated degree of instruction which was required for the more
youthful mind,--in fact, it was long before the people of the middle
ages could be persuaded that literary education was of any use at
all, except for those who were to be made great scholars; the clergy
itself, unfortunately, did not see the necessity of popular education,
and although the schools in parish churches were long continued, they
appear to have been conducted more and more with negligence. It was the
mercantile class in the towns which made the first step in advance,
by the establishment of those foundations which have continued to the
present time under the name of grammar schools. These schools are
traced back to the thirteenth century, when the merchant guilds, by
whom they were founded, began to assume a greater degree of importance,
and they were usually intended for the general benefit of the town,
but were combined with an ecclesiastical establishment for performing
services for the souls of the members of the guilds, in consequence of
which, at the Reformation, they became involved in the superstitious
uses, and were dissolved and refounded in the reign of Edward VI., so
that they are now generally known as king Edward’s foundations. The
great object of these schools was to give the instruction necessary
for admission into the universities; and they were in some degree the
answer to an appeal which came deeply from the mass of the people,--for
there was at this time a great spontaneous eagerness for learning, both
for the sake of the learning itself, and because it was a road to high
distinction, which was not open to the masses in any other direction.
It was a very common practice for poor youths to go about the country
during vacation time, to beg money to keep them at school during term.
In Piers Ploughman, among the objects of legitimate charity, the writer
enumerates money given to--
_Sette scolers to scole,_
_Or to som othere craftes._
--Piers Ploughman, Vis., l. 4,525.
And in the popular complaints of the burden of taxation, involuntary
and voluntary, the alms given to poor scholars are often enumerated.
[Illustration: _No. 227. A Monk at his Studies._]
Independent, however, of what may be considered more especially as
scholarship, a considerable amount of instruction began now to be
spread abroad. Reading and writing were becoming much more general
accomplishments, especially among ladies. Among the amusements of
leisure hours, indeed, reading began now to occupy a much larger
place than had been given to it in former ages. Even still, popular
literature--in the shape of tales, and ballads and songs--was, in a
great measure, communicated orally. But much had been done during
the fourteenth century towards spreading a taste for literature and
knowledge; books were multiplied, and were extensively read; and wants
were already arising which soon led the way to that most important of
modern discoveries, the art of printing. Most gentlemen had now a few
books, and men of wealth had considerable libraries. The wills of
this period, still preserved, often enumerate the books possessed by
the testator, and show the high value which was set upon them. Many of
the illuminations of the fourteenth century present us with ingenious,
and sometimes fantastic, forms of book-cases and book-stands. In our
cut No. 227, from a manuscript of metrical relations of miracles of
the Virgin Mary, now preserved in the library of the city of Soissons
in France, we have a monk reading, seated before a book-stand, the
table of which moves up and down on a screw. Upon this table is the
inkstand, and below it apparently the inkbottle; and the table has in
itself receptacles for books and paper or parchment. In the wall of the
room are cupboards, also for the reception of books, as we see by one
lying loose in them. The man is here seated on a stool; but in our cut
No. 228, taken from a manuscript in the National Library in Paris (No.
6985), he is seated in a chair, with a writing-desk attached to it. The
scribe holds in his hand a pen, with which he is writing, and a knife
to scratch the parchment where anything may need erasion. The table
here is also of a curious construction, and it is covered with books.
Other examples are found, which show that considerable ingenuity was
employed in varying the forms of such library tables.
[Illustration: _No. 228. A Mediæval Writer._]
The next cut (No. 229) is taken from one of the illuminations to a
manuscript of the “Moralization of Chess,” by Jacques de Cessoles (MS.
Reg. 19 C. xi.), and is intended as a sort of figurative representation
of the industrial class of society. It is curious because the figure
is made to carry some of the principal implements of the chief trades
or manufactures, and thus gives us their ordinary forms. We need only
repeat the enumeration of these from the text. It is, we are told, a
man who holds in his right hand a pair of shears (_unes forces_); in
his left hand he has a great knife (_un grant coustel_); “and he must
have at his girdle an inkstand (_une escriptoire_), and on his ear a
pen for writing (_et sur l’oreille une penne à escripre_).” Accordingly
we see the ink-pot and the case for writing implements suspended at
the girdle, but by accident the pen does not appear on the ear in
our engraving. It is curious through how great a length of time the
practice of placing the pen behind the ear has continued in use.
[Illustration: _No. 229. Industry._]
The punishments of the middle ages are remarkable, still more so in
other countries than in England, for a mixture of a small amount of
feeling of strict justice with a very large proportion of the mere
feeling of vengeance. Savage ferocity in the commission of crime
led to no less savage cruelty in retaliation. We have seen, in a
former chapter, that this was not the sentiment of our Anglo-Saxon
forefathers, but that their criminal laws were extremely mild; but
after the Norman conquest, more barbarous feelings on this subject
were brought over from the Continent. Imprisonment itself, even before
trial, was made frightfully cruel; the dungeons into which the accused
were thrown were often filthy holes, sometimes with water running
through them, and, as a refinement in cruelty, loathsome reptiles were
bred in them, and the prisoners were not only allowed insufficient
food, but they were sometimes stripped naked, and thrown into prison in
that condition. In the early English romance of the “Seven Sages” (the
text printed by Weber), when the emperor was persuaded by his wife to
order her step-son for execution, he commanded that he should be taken,
stripped naked of his clothes, and then hanged aloft--
_Quik he het_ (commanded) _his sone take,_
_And spoili him of clothes nake,_
_And beten him with scourges stronge,_
_And afterward him hegge_ (high) _anhonge_.
--Weber, iii. 21.
At the intercession of one of the wise men, the youth is respited and
thrown into prison, but without his clothing; and when, on a subsequent
occasion, he was brought out of prison for judgment, he remained still
naked.
Our three cuts which follow illustrate the subject of mediæval
punishments for crimes and offences. The first (No. 230) is taken from
a well-known manuscript, in the British Museum, of the fourteenth
century (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), and represents a monk and a lady, whose
career has brought them into the stocks, an instrument of punishment
which has figured in some of our former chapters. It is a very old mode
of punishing offenders, and appears, under the Latin name of _cippus_,
in early records of the middle ages. An old English poem, quoted by Mr.
Halliwell in his Dictionary, from a manuscript at least as old as the
fifteenth century, recounting the punishments to which some misdoers
were condemned, says:--
_And twenty of thes oder ay in a pytt,_
_In stokkes and feturs for to sytt._
The stocks are frequently referred to in writers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and they have not yet become entirely obsolete.
The _Leeds Mercury_ for April 14, 1860, informs us that, “A notorious
character, named John Gambles, of Stanningley (Pudsey), having been
convicted some months ago for Sunday gambling, and sentenced to sit
in the stocks for six hours, left the locality, returned lately, and
suffered his punishment by sitting in the stocks from two till eight
o’clock on Thursday last.” They were formerly employed also, in place
of fetters, in the inside of prisons--no doubt in order to cause
suffering by irksome restraint; and this was so common that the Latin
term _cippus_, and the French _ceps_, were commonly used to designate
the prison itself. It may be remarked of these stocks, that they
present a peculiarity which we may perhaps call a primitive character.
They are not supported on posts, or fixed in any way to the spot, but
evidently hold the people who are placed in them in confinement merely
by their weight, and by the impossibility of walking with them on the
legs, especially when more persons than one are confined in them. This
is probably the way in which they were used in prisons.
[Illustration: _No. 230. A Party in the Stocks._]
[Illustration: _No. 231. An Offender Exposed to Public Shame._]
A material part of the punishment of the stocks, when employed in the
open air, consisted, of course, in the public disgrace to which the
victim was exposed. We might suppose that the shame of such exposure
was keenly felt in the middle ages, from the frequency with which it
was employed. This exposure before the public was, we know, originally,
the chief characteristic of the cucking-stool, for the process of
ducking the victim in the water seems to have been only added to it
at a later period. Our cut No. 231, taken from an illumination in the
unique manuscript of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,” in the Hunterian
Library, at Glasgow, represents a person thus exposed to the scorn and
derision of the populace in the executioner’s cart, which is drawn
through the streets of a town. To be carried about in a cart was always
considered as especially disgraceful, probably because it was thus
that malefactors were usually conducted to the gallows. In the early
romances of the cycle of king Arthur we have an incident which forms
an apt illustration of the prevalence of this feeling. Sir Lancelot,
when hastening to rescue his lady, queen Guenever, has the misfortune
to lose his horse, and, meeting with a carter, he seizes his cart as
the only means of conveyance, for the weight of his armour prevented
him from walking. Queen Guenever and her ladies, from a bay window
of the castle of sir Meliagraunce, saw him approach, and one of the
latter exclaimed, “See, madam, where as rideth in a cart a goodly armed
knight! I suppose that he rideth to hanging.” Guenever, however, saw
by his shield that it was sir Lancelot. “‘Ah, most noble knight,’ she
said, when she saw him in this condition, ‘I see well that thou hast
been hard bested, when thou ridest in a cart.’ Then she rebuked that
lady that compared him to one riding in a cart to hanging. ‘It was foul
mouthed,’ said the queen, ‘and evil compared, so to compare the most
noble knight of the world in such a shameful death. Oh Jhesu! defend
him and keep him,’ said the queen, ‘from all mischievous end.’”
Our next cut (No. 232) is taken from the same manuscript in the British
Museum which furnished us with No. 230. The playful draughtsman has
represented a scene from the world “upso-down,” in which the rabbits
(or perhaps hares) are leading to execution their old enemy the dog.
[Illustration: _No. 232. A Criminal drawn to the Gallows._]
The gallows and the wheel were instruments of execution of such common
use in the middle ages that they were continually before people’s eyes.
Every town, every abbey, and almost every large manorial lord, had the
right of hanging, and a gallows or tree with a man hanging upon it was
so frequent an object in the country that it seems to have been almost
a natural ornament of a landscape, and it is thus introduced by no
means uncommonly in mediæval manuscripts. The two examples given in our
cut No. 233 are taken from the illuminations in the manuscript of the
romance of the “Chevalereux comte d’Artois,” in the manuscript from
which this romance was printed by M. Barrois.
[Illustration: _No. 233. Mediæval Ornaments of the Landscape._]