THE RISE OF THE TOWNS
Every high road leads sooner or later to a market town, and in that town
the tourist may be sure of finding a _White Hart Inn_. The _White Hart_ is
the commonest of signs all through England. Half-timbered and rambling,
with the marks of decrepit old age and long service writ large all over
it, this inn is in evidence near the market-place, often in a street of
the same name, to remind us of its importance in the days gone by.
Sometimes, as at Guildford and Brentwood, the old building lies hidden
behind a more modern front. When the builder has laid violent hands on a
_White Hart_, title-deeds or other authentic records of its antiquity are
in nearly every case available.
[Illustration: The White Hart, Brentwood]
A vague tradition attempts to explain these inns as royal posting-houses,
it being supposed that stations to supply fresh horses for the royal
journeys were first established during the last years of Edward III.
Undoubtedly the _White Hart_ inns all date from the beginning of the
reign of Richard II. After the scandals and misrule during the long dotage
of his father, the nation centred all their hopes in the young king who
showed promise of becoming a wise and able ruler. The policy of the good
Parliament would once more govern in the council, and it seemed a happy
omen when he took for his badge the white stag with a collar of gold
around his neck. This legend, portrayed on so many signboards, was a
delight of the mediæval romantic writers: the white hart was never to be
taken alive except by one who had conquered the whole world. Its oldest
form appears in the pages of Aristotle who relates how Diomedes
consecrated a white stag to Diana; and how it lived for a thousand years
before it was killed by Agathocles, King of Sicily. Pliny gives Alexander
the Great, and later writers Julius Cæsar and Charlemagne, as the Emperors
who captured the young white stag and released it after decorating it with
the golden band. On the Dorchester road, near Stowminster, there used to
be an inn with this kingly stag painted for a sign, and underneath the
following lines translated from a mediæval quatrain by some not very
conscientious scholar who has imported Cæsar, stag and all, into the West
of England:
“When Julius Cæsar landed here,
I was then a little deer,
When Julius Cæsar reigned King,
Round my neck he put this ring;
Whoever shall me overtake,
Spare my life for Cæsar’s sake!”
But when we begin to inquire into the actual title-deeds of the _White
Hart_ inns, we find ourselves in the midst of movements of far deeper
import than the outburst of national loyalty on the signboards. The story
of a great mediæval fiscal policy; the birth of home manufactures; the
struggle of the towns for municipal rights. The sign of the White Hart
marks a turning-point in the great social and industrial revolution which
was to bring to the great body of Englishmen prosperity and freedom.
No country could compare with England, during the Middle Ages, for the
production of wool. From the twelfth century onwards wool was almost the
only export and the principal source of wealth for landowners and farmers.
So important a trade was bound to receive the attention of Chancellors in
search of a new tax. Accordingly, early in the thirteenth century, a
system was devised by which no wool could possibly be exported until it
had contributed its quota to the royal treasury. Wool, as well as some
other raw materials, such as skins, lead and tin, had to be brought for
sale to an appointed place called the Staple, where the trade was under
the superintendence of a special corporation whose seal must appear on
every bale. The Staple was at first fixed at Bruges, the chief seaport of
the Flemish cloth manufacturer, but during the reign of Edward III, it was
moved to England, and then finally, in 1390, established at Calais.
Thither every dealer was obliged to carry his bales by certain approved
routes, through Boston, London, Sandwich, Winchester, or Southampton, and
these towns became subsidiary centres of the Staple. _Staple Inn_, in
Holborn, was an inn for merchants of the Staple before it became a resort
for the lawyers. In the end the merchants of the Staple grew into a ring
of powerful monopolists, who controlled prices, regulated times of sale,
and even secured the carrying trade in their own hands. The sale of
English sheep abroad, either for breeding or for shearing, was also
forbidden under very heavy penalties.
All these vexatious formalities in getting his wool to Calais, and the
rapacity of the merchants of the Staple, disgusted the English farmer. As
early as 1258 Simon de Montfort urged that England ought to be a centre
of manufacture, and not merely a source of raw material. Edward III,
while with one hand consolidating the power of the monopolists who
controlled the Staple, on the other hand stimulated the obvious remedy. He
invited Flemish weavers to settle in this country. By the end of his reign
the whirring sound of the looms might be heard all through Norfolk, Essex
and Kent. From a country of farmers which exported wool, England was soon
to be transformed into a country of manufacturers who exported cloth. The
sale of wool at the Staple dwindled away, while Yorkshire tweeds and
Cotswold broadcloths were winning the preference for price and quality in
the most distant markets.
The commercial prosperity of England is generally said to have been built
up on the industries arising out of the woolpack. But in the fourteenth
century capital was already being found for the development of many other
enterprises. In 1307 there were complaints about London fog, owing to the
use of coal as fuel. In the Sussex weald and the Forest of Dean the iron
trade was so busy that it was necessary to import a considerable portion
of the ore from Sweden and Spain. The excellence of English guns, it is
said, contributed largely to the victories of Henry V in France.[4] The
lost art of brickmaking was reintroduced by the Flemings. Cheaper labour
and materials induced copper-founders from Dinant and bell-founders from
Liege to transfer their trades hither. Instead of bringing beer from
Prussia the shipmasters found it more profitable to export Maidstone ales
into Flanders.
Meanwhile, the towns from a position of semi-servitude had been step by
step attaining to liberty, wealth and the political franchise. London led
the way owing to the presence of merchants from Rouen and Caen who settled
there immediately after the Conquest and took the position of a governing
class prepared to treat with the King for privileges. The steps by which
the various boroughs secured their rights of self-government, free speech
in free meeting and equal justice would need several volumes to describe.
They were won by steady solid perseverance, by customs allowed to grow up
unnoticed during the quarrels between the barons and the royal favourites,
by a direct bargain with the lord of the manor, or in a few instances by
less ingenuous methods. Most of the towns, like London, were situated on
the royal demesne. With these the work was comparatively easy. Secure of
his ultimate supremacy, and indifferent to small sources of power, the
king was generally willing to surrender local claims for a fixed payment
in money. A Corporation was a better security for the payment of dues than
petty officers given to peculation. Accordingly, from the reign of Henry
I, charters were granted giving a progressive degree of liberty, although
until the reign of John the King retained the nomination of the portreeve
or mayor.
The feudal baron was not so willing to part with his supremacy. But the
nobility were rapidly becoming poorer; and the issue of the battle was
ultimately with the strong. Either the powerful merchants’ guild,
returning unwearied to the fray after each rebuff, by its steady dogged
agitation ended in forcing a compromise, or else the traders deserted the
place and let it dwindle away into a poverty-stricken village. Sometimes
an ancient charter was alleged to exist and prescriptive rights claimed
before a commission in the King’s Courts; and the longest purse could fee
the most persistent counsel.
Much less hopeful were the prospects of citizens whose lord was a
religious house. The monasteries were rich, well acquainted with forms of
law, and as trustees not justified in parting with their hereditary
assets. Hitherto promoters of progress, the monks now began, to be
regarded as a stumbling-block on the path towards freedom. And from this
arose the smouldering hatred of the monasteries that underlies so much of
the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. During the great
revolt of the villeins the monasteries and bishops’ palaces on the route
of the insurgents were all burnt and sacked by the mob. At St. Albans,
Cirencester, and even in the cinque port of Romney, the struggles of the
townsfolk to burst their thraldom were endless and always futile. It was
organised force in conflict with organised authority, and the result was
that the latter prevailed. At Coventry the motto of the two contending
bodies was _divide et impera_. The Merchant Guild became the Guild of the
Holy Trinity and shared with the Corpus Christi Guild (of which the Prior
and other Churchmen were members) all authority in the town, nominating
the Mayor and all the important officials.
Simon de Montfort, “the father of English liberty,” was the first to
recognise the growing importance of the commercial middle classes by
summoning two burgesses from each of the town boroughs to his Parliament
in 1264, and their presence was treated as a matter of course in
subsequent Parliaments, though they formed a comparatively insignificant
factor. In the reign of Edward III, when the Knights of the Shire
associated with them to form the future House of Commons, their growing
wealth and ability to make terms with the King as a condition of granting
supplies was recognised and a marked increase of parliamentary activity
commenced. Their “petitions” became on the assent of the Crown Statutes of
the Realm, and henceforward the Lower House was to initiate nearly all
legislation.
And now we can return to our _White Hart_ inns. They were the first inns
to be built by the corporations, or at least under their licence. Secure
in the possession of their charter, proud of their ever-increasing
commerce, hopeful of the future privileges and reforms that were likely to
be obtained by their burgesses in Parliament, the towns began to provide
new inns of a superior kind for the merchants who came regularly to their
markets. They were held direct from the King, and to the reigning king
alone they looked for any future marks of favour. Hence these inns almost
invariably bear the badge of the reigning king. When Richard II was
deposed the White Hart gave place to the White Swan of Henry IV, and this
latter is nearly as common on the signboards. Barons and earls might
dispute and make war on one another as to who was the sovereign _de jure_;
the concern of the towns was with the king _de facto_. The Commons
regarded each change of dynasty from Plantagenet to red rose and from red
rose to white rose with the complacency of the Vicar of Bray. The old
aristocracy ruined themselves and died out amid these political disputes;
meanwhile the burghers grew rich and their posterity formed the nucleus of
a new aristocracy of English race and of more patriotic instincts.
[Illustration: The Swan, Felstead]
The signboards tell the same tale all through the fifteenth century. The
Antelope of Henry VI, the White Lion of Edward IV, and the White Boar of
Richard III each take their turn. The changes they represented meant
little more than incidental gossip to the burghers. All the real life of
the citizens was in their home and trade, in their craft guilds, in
treaties with neighbouring towns, or in the little controversies of the
town council.
We know only a few incidental details about the internal comforts of the
White Hart inns. The majority of the guests slept in large rooms, on
couches or wooden bedsteads. Only a few very important grandees were
accorded a private _camera_. The bed was a long sack-like mattress stuffed
with straw or hay; great folk would carry with them their own bed on
their journeys. Most people lay in their ordinary clothes on the bed,
though counterpanes and linen were just coming into use. Carpets were
chiefly employed like tapestry for hanging on the walls and diminishing
the continual draughts. The women had their special apartments; the
serving men slept on the rushes of the hall, while the grooms were left to
make the best of stable and barn. Meals were taken at fixed hours, at a
long movable table on trestles in the hall, guests and servants sitting
down together, but placed according to rank. Some of the dishes would not
commend themselves to fastidious moderns, but at least, there was never
any lack of good wholesome fare; loaves, joints and meat pasties all on a
gargantuan scale. Wines of British as well as foreign extraction competed
with the nut brown ale. Essex was in those days the vineyard of England.
How much we have fallen off in the capacity of our stomachs from the good
old times of open-air life and daily exercise on horseback may be judged
from the following allowance of provisions granted to Lady Lucy, one of
the maids of honour to Queen Katherine of Aragon:
“Breakfast--A chine of beef, a loaf, a gallon of ale.
Luncheon--Bread and a gallon of ale.
Dinner--A piece of boiled beef, a slice of roast meat, a gallon of
ale.
Supper--Porridge, mutton, a loaf, and a gallon of ale.”
When the Warden of Merton College travelled with two of his fellows and
four servants from Oxford to Durham in 1331, the season being winter,
their average bill was 2d. for beds for the whole party, or for the
servants alone, one halfpenny; at the town inns of fifty years later the
price of a bed was one penny, and the increased comfort warranted the
higher charge.[5] The private rooms, instead of being numbered, received
names according to the subject portrayed on the tapestry hangings. This
custom continued in old-fashioned inns up to quite recent times, and has
served as the basis of stage humour of a sort:
SCENE. A Country Inn.
_Timothy._ What rooms have you disengaged, Waiter?
_Waiter._ Why sir, there’s the Moon: but I forget--there’s a man in
that.
_Timothy._ Eh! A man in the Moon! Oh then we’ll not go there.
_Waiter._ There’s the Waterloo Subscription, Sir; that’s full--there’s
the Pope’s Head; that’s empty, etc., etc.[6]
In the minute books of the Grey Coat Hospital, a very valuable religious
educational charity, we come across a rather startling entry. On Epiphany,
1698, “After prayers and sermon in church, the children and their parents
dined in Hell.” Heaven and Hell were two public dining rooms adjoining the
old Palace of Westminster, and so named either from the hangings or other
pictorial decoration.