The Extension Of Voluntary Association
_Trade Unions, Trusts, and Coöperation_
78. The Rise of Trade Unions............................... 277
79. Opposition of the Law and of Public Opinion. The
Combination Acts....................................... 279
80. Legalization and Popular Acceptance of Trade Unions.... 281
81. The Growth of Trade Unions............................. 288
82. Federation of Trade Unions............................. 289
83. Employers' Organizations............................... 293
84. Trusts and Trade Combinations.......................... 294
85. Coöperation in Distribution............................ 295
86. Coöperation in Production.............................. 300
87. Coöperation in Farming................................. 302
88. Coöperation in Credit.................................. 306
89. Profit Sharing......................................... 307
90. Socialism.............................................. 310
91. Bibliography........................................... 311
An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of
England
INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
GROWTH OF THE NATION
To The Middle Of The Fourteenth Century
*1. The Geography of England.*--The British Isles lie northwest of the
Continent of Europe. They are separated from it by the Channel and the
North Sea, at the narrowest only twenty miles wide, and at the
broadest not more than three hundred.
The greatest length of England from north to south is three hundred
and sixty-five miles, and its greatest breadth some two hundred and
eighty miles. Its area, with Wales, is 58,320 square miles, being
somewhat more than one-quarter the size of France or of Germany, just
one-half the size of Italy, and somewhat larger than either
Pennsylvania or New York.
The backbone of the island is near the western coast, and consists of
a body of hard granitic and volcanic rock rising into mountains of two
or three thousand feet in height. These do not form one continuous
chain but are in several detached groups. On the eastern flank of
these mountains and underlying all the rest of the island is a series
of stratified rocks. The harder portions of these strata still stand
up as long ridges,--the "wolds," "wealds," "moors," and "downs" of the
more eastern and south-eastern parts of England. The softer strata
have been worn away into great broad valleys, furnishing the central
and eastern plains or lowlands of the country.
The rivers of the south and of the far north run for the most part by
short and direct courses to the sea. The rivers of the midlands are
much longer and larger. As a result of the gradual sinking of the
island, in recent geological periods the sea has extended some
distance up the course of these rivers, making an almost unbroken
series of estuaries along the whole coast.
The climate of England is milder and more equable than is indicated by
the latitude, which is that of Labrador in the western hemisphere and
of Prussia and central Russia on the Continent of Europe. This is due
to the fact that the Gulf Stream flows around its southern and western
shores, bringing warmth and a superabundance of moisture from the
southern Atlantic.
These physical characteristics have been of immense influence on the
destinies of England. Her position was far on the outskirts of the
world as it was known to ancient and mediæval times, and England
played a correspondingly inconspicuous part during those periods. In
the habitable world as it has been known since the fifteenth century,
on the other hand, that position is a distinctly central one, open
alike to the eastern and the western hemisphere, to northern and
southern lands.
[Illustration: Physiographic Map of *England And Wales*. Engraved by
Bormay & Co., N.Y.]
Her situation of insularity and at the same time of proximity to the
Continent laid her open to frequent invasion in early times, but after
she secured a navy made her singularly safe from subjugation. It made
the development of many of her institutions tardy, yet at the same
time gave her the opportunity to borrow and assimilate what she would
from the customs of foreign nations. Her separation by water from
the Continent favored a distinct and continuous national life, while
her nearness to it allowed her to participate in all the more
important influences which affected the nations of central Europe.
Within the mountainous or elevated regions a variety of mineral
resources, especially iron, copper, lead, and tin, exist in great
abundance, and have been worked from the earliest ages. Potter's clay
and salt also exist, the former furnishing the basis of industry for
an extensive section of the midlands. By far the most important
mineral possession of England, however, is her coal. This exists in
the greatest abundance and in a number of sections of the north and
west of the country. Practically unknown in the Middle Ages, and only
slightly utilized in early modern times, within the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries her coal supply has come to be the principal
foundation of England's great manufacturing and commercial
development.
The lowlands, which make up far the larger part of the country, are
covered with soil which furnishes rich farming areas, though in many
places this soil is a heavy and impervious clay, expensive to drain
and cultivate. The hard ridges are covered with thin soil only. Many
of them therefore remained for a long time covered with forest, and
they are devoted even yet to grazing or to occasional cultivation
only.
The abundance of harbors and rivers, navigable at least to the small
vessels of the Middle Ages, has made a seafaring life natural to a
large number of the people, and commercial intercourse comparatively
easy with all parts of the country bordering on the coast or on these
rivers.
Thus, to sum up these geographical characteristics, the insular
situation of England, her location on the earth's surface, and the
variety of her material endowments gave her a tolerably well-balanced
if somewhat backward economic position during the Middle Ages, and
have enabled her since the fifteenth century to pass through a
continuous and rapid development, until she has obtained within the
nineteenth century, for the time at least, a distinct economic
precedency among the nations of the world.
*2. Prehistoric Britain.*--The materials from which to construct a
knowledge of the history of mankind before the time of written records
are few and unsatisfactory. They consist for the most part of the
remains of dwelling-places, fortifications, and roadways; of weapons,
implements, and ornaments lost or abandoned at the time; of burial
places and their contents; and of such physical characteristics of
later populations as have survived from an early period. Centuries of
human habitation of Britain passed away, leaving only such scanty
remains and the obscure and doubtful knowledge that can be drawn from
them. Through this period, however, successive races seem to have
invaded and settled the country, combining with their predecessors, or
living alongside of them, or in some cases, perhaps, exterminating
them.
When contemporary written records begin, just before the beginning of
the Christian era, one race, the Britons, was dominant, and into it
had merged to all appearances all others. The Britons were a Celtic
people related to the inhabitants of that part of the Continent of
Europe which lies nearest to Britain. They were divided into a dozen
or more separate tribes, each occupying a distinct part of the
country. They lived partly by the pasturing of sheep and cattle,
partly by a crude agriculture. They possessed most of the familiar
grains and domestic animals, and could weave and dye cloth, make
pottery, build boats, forge iron, and work other metals, including
tin. They had, however, no cities, no manufactures beyond the most
primitive, and but little foreign trade to connect them with the
Continent. At the head of each tribe was a reigning chieftain of
limited powers, surrounded by lesser chiefs. The tribes were in a
state of incessant warfare one with the other.
*3. Roman Britain.*--This condition of insular isolation and barbarism
was brought to a close in the year 55 B.C. by the invasion of the
Roman army. Julius Cæsar, the Roman general who was engaged in the
conquest and government of Gaul, or modern France, feared that the
Britons might bring aid to certain newly subjected and still restless
Gallic tribes. He therefore transported a body of troops across the
Channel and fought two campaigns against the tribes in the southeast
of Britain. His success in the second campaign was, however, not
followed up, and he retired without leaving any permanent garrison in
the country. The Britons were then left alone, so far as military
invasion was concerned, for almost a century, though in the meantime
trade with the adjacent parts of the Continent became more common, and
Roman influence showed itself in the manners and customs of the
people. In the year 44 A.D., just ninety years after Cæsar's
campaigns, the conquest of Britain was resumed by the Roman armies and
completed within the next thirty years. Britain now became an integral
part of the great, well-ordered, civilized, and wealthy Roman Empire.
During the greater part of that long period, Britain enjoyed profound
peace, internal and external trade were safe, and much of the culture
and refinement of Italy and Gaul must have made their way even to this
distant province. A part of the inhabitants adopted the Roman
language, dress, customs, and manner of life. Discharged veterans from
the Roman legions, wealthy civil officials and merchants, settled
permanently in Britain. Several bodies of turbulent tribesmen who had
been defeated on the German frontier were transported by the
government into Britain. The population must, therefore, have become
very mixed, containing representatives of most of the races which had
been conquered by the Roman armies. A permanent military force was
maintained in Britain with fortified stations along the eastern and
southern coast, on the Welsh frontier, and along a series of walls or
dikes running across the island from the Tyne to Solway Firth.
Excellent roads were constructed through the length and breadth of the
land for the use of this military body and to connect the scattered
stations. Along these highways population spread and the remains of
spacious villas still exist to attest the magnificence of the wealthy
provincials. The roads served also as channels of trade by which goods
could readily be carried from one part of the country to another.
Foreign as well as internal trade became extensive, although exports
were mostly of crude natural products, such as hides, skins, and furs,
cattle and sheep, grain, pig-iron, lead and tin, hunting-dogs and
slaves. The rapid development of towns and cities was a marked
characteristic of Roman Britain. Fifty-nine towns or cities of various
grades of self-government are named in the Roman survey, and many of
these must have been populous, wealthy, and active, judging from the
extensive ruins that remain, and the enormous number of Roman coins
that have since been found. Christianity was adopted here as in other
parts of the Roman Empire, though the extent of its influence is
unknown.
During the Roman occupation much waste land was reclaimed. Most of the
great valley regions and many of the hillsides had been originally
covered with dense forests, swamps spread along the rivers and
extended far inland from the coast; so that almost the only parts
capable of tillage were the high treeless plains, the hill tops, and
certain favored stretches of open country. The reduction of these
waste lands to human habitation has been an age-long task. It was
begun in prehistoric times, it has been carried further by each
successive race, and brought to final completion only within our own
century. A share in this work and the great roads were the most
permanent results of the Roman period of occupation and government.
Throughout the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era the
Roman administration and society in Britain were evidently
disintegrating. Several successive generals of the Roman troops
stationed in Britain rose in revolt with their soldiers, declared
their independence of Rome, or passed over to the Continent to enter
into a struggle for the control of the whole Empire. In 383 and 407
the military forces were suddenly depleted in this way and the
provincial government disorganized, while the central government of
the Empire was so weak that it was unable to reëstablish a firm
administration. During the same period barbarian invaders were making
frequent inroads into Britain. The Picts and Scots from modern
Scotland, Saxon pirates, and, later, ever increasing swarms of Angles,
Jutes, and Frisians from across the North Sea ravaged and ultimately
occupied parts of the borders and the coasts. The surviving records of
this period of disintegration and reorganization are so few that we
are left in all but total ignorance as to what actually occurred. For
more than two hundred years we can only guess at the course of events,
or infer it from its probable analogy to what we know was occurring in
the other parts of the Empire, or from the conditions we find to have
been in existence as knowledge of succeeding times becomes somewhat
more full. It seems evident that the government of the province of
Britain gradually went to pieces, and that that of the different
cities or districts followed. Internal dissensions and the lack of
military organization and training of the mass of the population
probably added to the difficulty of resisting marauding bands of
barbarian invaders. These invading bands became larger, and their
inroads more frequent and extended, until finally they abandoned their
home lands entirely and settled permanently in those districts in
which they had broken the resistance of the Roman-British natives.
Even while the Empire had been strong the heavy burden of taxation and
the severe pressure of administrative regulations had caused a decline
in wealth and population. Now disorder, incessant ravages of the
barbarians, isolation from other lands, probably famine and
pestilence, brought rapid decay to the prosperity and civilization of
the country. Cities lost their trade, wealth, and population, and many
of them ceased altogether for a time to exist. Britain was rapidly
sinking again into a land of barbarism.
*4. Early Saxon England.*--An increasing number of contemporary records
give a somewhat clearer view of the condition of England toward the
close of the sixth century. The old Roman organization and
civilization had disappeared entirely, and a new race, with a new
language, a different religion, another form of government, changed
institutions and customs, had taken its place. A number of petty
kingdoms had been formed during the fifth and early sixth centuries,
each under a king or chieftain, as in the old Celtic times before the
Roman invasion, but now of Teutonic or German race. The kings and
their followers had come from the northwestern portions of Germany.
How far they had destroyed the earlier inhabitants, how far they had
simply combined with them or enslaved them, has been a matter of much
debate, and one on which discordant opinions are held, even by recent
students. It seems likely on the whole that the earlier races,
weakened by defeat and by the disappearance of the Roman control, were
gradually absorbed and merged into the body of their conquerors; so
that the petty Angle and Saxon kings of the sixth and seventh
centuries ruled over a mixed race, in which their own was the most
influential, though not necessarily the largest element. The arrival
from Rome in 597 of Augustine, the first Christian missionary to the
now heathen inhabitants of Britain, will serve as a point to mark the
completion of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the country. By this time
the new settlers had ceased to come in, and there were along the coast
and inland some seven or eight different kingdoms. These were,
however, so frequently divided and reunited that no fixed number
remained long in existence. The Jutes had established the kingdom of
Kent in the south-eastern extremity of the island; the South and the
West Saxons were established on the southern coast and inland to the
valley of the Thames; the East Saxons had a kingdom just north of the
mouth of the Thames, and the Middle Saxons held London and the
district around. The rest of the island to the north and inland
exclusive of what was still unconquered was occupied by various
branches of the Angle stock grouped into the kingdoms of East Anglia,
Mercia, and Northumbria. During the seventh and eighth centuries there
were constant wars of conquest among these kingdoms. Eventually, about
800 A.D., the West Saxon monarchy made itself nominally supreme over
all the others. Notwithstanding this political supremacy of the West
Saxons, it was the Angles who were the most numerous and widely
spread, and who gave their name, England, to the whole land.
Agriculture was at this time almost the sole occupation of the people.
The trade and commerce that had centred in the towns and flowed along
the Roman roads and across the Channel had long since come to an end
with the Roman civilization of which it was a part. In Saxon England
cities scarcely existed except as fortified places of defence. The
products of each rural district sufficed for its needs in food and in
materials for clothing, so that internal trade was but slight.
Manufactures were few, partly from lack of skill, partly from lack of
demand or appreciation; but weaving, the construction of agricultural
implements and weapons, ship-building, and the working of metals had
survived from Roman times, or been brought over as part of the stock
of knowledge of the invaders. Far the greater part of the population
lived in villages, as they probably had done in Roman and in
prehistoric times. The village with the surrounding farming lands,
woods, and waste grounds made up what was known in later times as the
"township."
The form of government in the earlier separate kingdoms, as in the
united monarchy after its consolidation, gave limited though
constantly increasing powers to the king. A body of nobles known as
the "witan" joined with the king in most of the actions of government.
The greater part of the small group of government functions which were
undertaken in these barbarous times were fulfilled by local gatherings
of the principal men. A district formed from a greater or less number
of townships, with a meeting for the settlement of disputes, the
punishment of crimes, the witnessing of agreements, and other
purposes, was known as a "hundred" or a "wapentake." A "shire" was a
grouping of hundreds, with a similar gathering of its principal men
for judicial, military, and fiscal purposes. Above the shire came the
whole kingdom.
The most important occurrences of the early Saxon period were the
general adoption of Christianity and the organization of the church.
Between A.D. 597 and 650 Christianity gained acceptance through the
preaching and influence of missionaries, most of whom were sent from
Rome, though some came from Christian Scotland and Ireland. The
organization of the church followed closely. It was largely the work
of Archbishop Theodore, and was practically complete before the close
of the seventh century. By this organization England was divided into
seventeen dioceses or church districts, religious affairs in each of
these districts being under the supervision of a bishop. The bishop's
church, called a "cathedral," was endowed by religious kings and
nobles with extensive lands, so that the bishop was a wealthy landed
proprietor, in addition to having control of the clergy of his
diocese, and exercising a powerful influence over the consciences and
actions of its lay population. The bishoprics were grouped into two
"provinces," those of Canterbury and York, the bishops of these two
dioceses having the higher title of archbishop, and having a certain
sort of supervision over the other bishops of their province. Churches
were gradually built in the villages, and each township usually became
a parish with a regularly established priest. He was supported partly
by the produce of the "glebe," or land belonging to the parish church,
partly by tithe, a tax estimated at one-tenth of the income of each
man's land, partly by the offerings of the people. The bishops, the
parish priests, and others connected with the diocese, the cathedral,
and the parish churches made up the ordinary or "secular" clergy.
There were also many religious men and women who had taken vows to
live under special "rules" in religious societies withdrawn from the
ordinary life of the world, and were therefore known as "regular"
clergy. These were the monks and nuns. In Anglo-Saxon England the
regular clergy lived according to the rule of St. Benedict, and were
gathered into groups, some smaller, some larger, but always
established in one building, or group of buildings. These monasteries,
like the bishoprics, were endowed with lands which were increased from
time to time by pious gifts of kings, nobles, and other laymen.
Ecclesiastical bodies thus came in time to hold a very considerable
share of the land of the country. The wealth and cultivation of the
clergy and the desire to adorn and render more attractive their
buildings and religious services fostered trade with foreign
countries. The intercourse kept up with the church on the Continent
also did something to lessen the isolation of England from the rest of
the world. To these broadening influences must be added the effect
which the Councils made up of churchmen from all England exerted in
fostering the tardy growth of the unity of the country.
*5. Danish and Late Saxon England.*--At the end of the eighth century
the Danes or Northmen, the barbarous and heathen inhabitants of the
islands and coast-lands of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, began to make
rapid forays into the districts of England which lay near enough to
the coasts or rivers to be at their mercy. Soon they became bolder or
more numerous and established fortified camps along the English
rivers, from which they ravaged the surrounding country. Still later,
in the tenth and eleventh centuries, under their own kings as leaders,
they became conquerors and permanent settlers of much of the country,
and even for a time put a Danish dynasty on the throne to govern
English and Danes alike. A succession of kings of the West Saxon line
had struggled with varying success to drive the Danes from the country
or to limit that portion of it which was under their control; but as a
matter of fact the northern, eastern, and central portions of England
were for more than a century and a half almost entirely under Danish
rule. The constant immigration from Scandinavia during this time added
an important element to the population--an element which soon,
however, became completely absorbed in the mixed stock of the English
people.
The marauding Danish invaders were early followed by fellow-countrymen
who were tradesmen and merchants. The Scandinavian countries had
developed an early and active trade with the other lands bordering on
the Baltic and North seas, and England under Danish influence was
drawn into the same lines of commerce. The Danes were also more
inclined to town life than the English, so that advantageously
situated villages now grew into trading towns, and the sites of some
of the old Roman cities began again to be filled with a busy
population. With trading came a greater development of handicrafts, so
that the population of later Anglo-Saxon England had somewhat varied
occupations and means of support, instead of being exclusively
agricultural, as in earlier centuries.
During these later centuries of the Saxon period, from 800 to 1066,
the most conspicuous and most influential ruler was King Alfred. When
he became king, in 871, the Danish invaders were so completely
triumphant as to force him to flee with a few followers to the forest
as a temporary refuge. He soon emerged, however, with the nucleus of
an army and, during his reign, which continued till 901, defeated the
Danes repeatedly, obtained their acceptance of Christianity, forced
upon them a treaty which restricted their rule to the northeastern
shires, and transmitted to his son a military and naval organization
which enabled him to win back much even of this part of England. He
introduced greater order, prosperity, and piety into the church, and
partly by his own writing, partly by his patronage of learned men,
reawakened an interest in Anglo-Saxon literature and in learning which
the ravages of the Danes and the demoralization of the country had
gone far to destroy. Alfred, besides his actual work as king,
impressed the recognition of his fine nature and strong character
deeply on the men of his time and the memory of all subsequent times.
The power of the kingship in the Anglo-Saxon system of government was
strengthened by the life and work of such kings as Alfred and some of
his successors. There were other causes also which were tending to
make the central government more of a reality. A national taxation,
the Danegeld, was introduced for the purpose of ransoming the country
from the Danes; the grant of lands by the king brought many persons
through the country into closer relations with him; the royal judicial
powers tended to increase with the development of law and
civilization; the work of government was carried on by better-trained
officials.
On the other hand, a custom grew up in the tenth and early eleventh
century of placing whole groups of shires under the government of
great earls or viceroys, whose subjection to the central government of
the king was but scant. Church bodies and others who had received
large grants of land from the king were also coming to exercise over
their tenants judicial, fiscal, and probably even military powers,
which would seem more properly to belong to government officials. The
result was that although the central government as compared with the
local government of shires and hundreds was growing more active, the
king's power as compared with the personal power of the great nobles
was becoming less strong. Violence was common, and there were but few
signs of advancing prosperity or civilization, when an entirely new
set of influences came into existence with the conquest by the duke of
Normandy in the year 1066.
*6. The Period following the Norman Conquest.*--Normandy was a province
of France lying along the shore of the English Channel. Its line of
dukes and at least a considerable proportion of its people were of the
same Scandinavian or Norse race which made up such a large element in
the population of England. They had, however, learned more of the arts
of life and of government from the more successfully preserved
civilization of the Continent. The relations between England and
Normandy began to be somewhat close in the early part of the eleventh
century; the fugitive king of England, Ethelred, having taken refuge
there, and marrying the sister of the duke. Edward the Confessor,
their son, who was subsequently restored to the English throne, was
brought up in Normandy, used the French language, and was accompanied
on his return by Norman followers. Nine years after the accession of
Edward, in 1051, William, the duke of Normandy, visited England and is
said to have obtained a promise that he should receive the crown on
the death of Edward, who had no direct heir. Accordingly, in 1065,
when Edward died and Harold, a great English earl, was chosen king,
William immediately asserted his claim and made strenuous military
preparations for enforcing it. He took an army across the Channel in
1066, as Cæsar had done more than a thousand years before, and at the
battle of Hastings or Senlac defeated the English army, King Harold
himself being killed in the engagement. William then pressed on toward
London, preventing any gathering of new forces, and obtained his
recognition as king. He was crowned on Christmas Day, 1066. During the
next five years he put down a series of rebellions on the part of the
native English, after which he and his descendants were acknowledged
as sole kings of England.
The Norman Conquest was not, however, a mere change of dynasty. It led
to at least three other changes of the utmost importance. It added a
new element to the population, it brought England into contact with
the central and southern countries of the Continent, instead of merely
with the northern as before, and it made the central government of the
country vastly stronger. There is no satisfactory means of discovering
how many Normans and others from across the Channel migrated into
England with the Conqueror or in the wake of the Conquest, but there
is no doubt that the number was large and their influence more than
proportionate to their numbers. Within the lifetime of William, whose
death occurred in 1087, of his two sons, William II and Henry I, and
the nominal reign of Stephen extending to 1154, the whole body of the
nobility, the bishops and abbots, and the government officials had
come to be of Norman or other continental origin. Besides these the
architects and artisans who built the castles and fortresses, and the
cathedrals, abbeys, and parish churches, whose erection throughout the
land was such a marked characteristic of the period, were immigrants
from Normandy. Merchants from the Norman cities of Rouen and Caen came
to settle in London and other English cities, and weavers from
Flanders were settled in various towns and even rural districts. For a
short time these newcomers remained a separate people, but before the
twelfth century was over they had become for the most part
indistinguishable from the great mass of the English people amongst
whom they had come. They had nevertheless made that people stronger,
more vigorous, more active-minded, and more varied in their
occupations and interests.
King William and his successors retained their continental dominions
and even extended them after their acquisition of the English kingdom,
so that trade between the two sides of the Channel was more natural
and easy than before. The strong government of the Norman kings gave
protection and encouragement to this commerce, and by keeping down the
violence of the nobles favored trade within the country. The English
towns had been growing in number, size, and wealth in the years just
before the Conquest. The contests of the years immediately following
1066 led to a short period of decay, but very soon increasing trade
and handicraft led to still greater progress. London, especially, now
made good its position as one of the great cities of Europe, and that
preëminence among English towns which it has never since lost. The
fishing and seaport towns along the southern and eastern coast also,
and even a number of inland towns, came to hold a much more
influential place in the nation than they had possessed in the
Anglo-Saxon period.
The increased power of the monarchy arose partly from its military
character as based upon a conquest of the country, partly from the
personal character of William and his immediate successors, partly
from the more effective machinery for administration of the affairs of
government, which was either brought over from Normandy or developed
in England. A body of trained, skilful government officials now
existed, who were able to carry out the wishes of the king, collect
his revenues, administer justice, gather armies, and in other ways
make his rule effective to an extent unknown in the preceding period.
The sheriffs, who had already existed as royal representatives in the
shires in Anglo-Saxon times, now possessed far more extensive powers,
and came up to Westminster to report and to present their financial
accounts to the royal exchequer twice a year. Royal officials acting
as judges not only settled an increasingly large number of cases that
were brought before them at the king's court, but travelled through
the country, trying suits and punishing criminals in the different
shires. The king's income was vastly larger than that of the
Anglo-Saxon monarchs had been. The old Danegeld was still collected
from time to time, though under a different name, and the king's
position as landlord of the men who had received the lands confiscated
at the Conquest was utilized to obtain additional payments.
Perhaps the greatest proof of the power and efficiency of the
government in the Norman period was the compilation of the great body
of statistics known as "Domesday Book." In 1085 King William sent
commissioners to every part of England to collect a variety of
information about the financial conditions on which estates were held,
their value, and fitness for further taxation. The information
obtained from this investigation was drawn up in order and written in
two large manuscript volumes which still exist in the Public Record
Office at London. It is a much more extensive body of information than
was collected for any other country of Europe until many centuries
afterward. Yet its statements, though detailed and exact and of great
interest from many points of view, are disappointing to the student of
history. They were obtained for the financial purposes of government,
and cannot be made to give the clear picture of the life of the people
and of the relations of different classes to one another which would
be so welcome, and which is so easily obtained from the great variety
of more private documents which came into existence a century and a
half later.
The church during this period was not relatively so conspicuous as
during Saxon times, but the number of the clergy, both secular and
regular, was very large, the bishops and abbots powerful, and the
number of monasteries and nunneries increasing. The most important
ecclesiastical change was the development of church courts. The
bishops or their representatives began to hold courts for the trial of
churchmen, the settlement of such suits as churchmen were parties to,
and the decision of cases in certain fields of law. This gave the
church a new influence, in addition to that which it held from its
spiritual duties, from its position as landlord over such extensive
tracts, and from the superior enlightenment and mental ability of its
prominent officials, but it also gave greater occasion for conflict
with the civil government and with private persons.
After the death of Henry I in 1135 a miserable period of confusion and
violence ensued. Civil war broke out between two claimants for the
crown, Stephen the grandson, and Matilda the granddaughter, of William
the Conqueror. The organization of government was allowed to fall into
disorder, and but little effort was made to collect the royal revenue,
to fulfil the newly acquired judicial duties, or to insist upon order
being preserved in the country. The nobles took opposite sides in the
contest for the crown, and made use of the weakness of government to
act as if they were themselves sovereigns over their estates and the
country adjacent to their castles with no ruler above them. Private
warfare, oppression of less powerful men, seizure of property, went on
unchecked. Every baron's castle became an independent establishment
carried on in accordance only with the unbridled will of its lord, as
if there were no law and no central authority to which he must bow.
The will of the lord was often one of reckless violence, and there was
more disorder and suffering in England than at any time since the
ravages of the Danes.
In Anglo-Saxon times, when a weak king appeared, the shire moots, or
the rulers of groups of shires, exercised the authority which the
central government had lost. In the twelfth century, when the power of
the royal government was similarly diminished through the weakness of
Stephen and the confusions of the civil war, it was a certain class of
men, the great nobles, that fell heir to the lost strength of
government. This was because of the development of feudalism during
the intervening time. The greater landholders had come to exercise
over those who held land from them certain powers which in modern
times belong to the officers of government only. A landlord could call
upon his tenants for military service to him, and for the contribution
of money for his expenses; he held a court to decide suits between one
tenant and another, and frequently to punish their crimes and
misdemeanors; in case of the death of a tenant leaving a minor heir,
his landlord became guardian and temporary holder of the land, and if
there were no heirs, the land reverted to him, not to the national
government. These relations which the great landholders held toward
their tenants, the latter, who often themselves were landlords over
whole townships or other great tracts of land with their population,
held toward their tenants. Sometimes these subtenants granted land to
others below them, and over these the last landlord also exercised
feudal rights, and so on till the actual occupants and cultivators of
the soil were reached. The great nobles had thus come to stand in a
middle position. Above them was the king, below them these successive
stages of tenants and subtenants. Their tenants owed to them the same
financial and political services and duties as they owed to the king.
From the time of the Norman Conquest, all land in England was looked
upon as being held from the king directly by a comparatively few, and
indirectly through them by all others who held land at all. Moreover,
from a time at least soon after the Norman Conquest, the services and
payments above mentioned came to be recognized as due from all tenants
to their lords, and were gradually systematized and defined. Each
person or ecclesiastical body that held land from the king owed him
the military service of a certain number of knights or armed horse
soldiers. The period for which this service was owed was generally
estimated as forty days once a year. Subtenants similarly owed
military service to their landlords, though in the lesser grades this
was almost invariably commuted for money. "Wardship and marriage" was
the expression applied to the right of the lord to the guardianship of
the estate of a minor heir of his tenant, and to the choice of a
husband or wife for the heir when he came of proper age. This right
also was early turned into the form of a money consideration. There
were a number of money payments pure and simple. "Relief" was a
payment to the landlord, usually of a year's income of the estate,
made by an heir on obtaining his inheritance. There were three
generally acknowledged "aids" or payments of a set sum in proportion
to the amount of land held. These were on the occasion of the
knighting of the lord's son, of the marriage of his daughter, and for
his ransom in case he was captured in war. Land could be confiscated
if the tenant violated his duties to his landlord, and it "escheated"
to the lord in case of failure of heirs. Every tenant was bound to
attend his landlord to help form a court for judicial work, and to
submit to the judgment of a court of his fellow-tenants for his own
affairs.
In addition to the relations of landlord and tenant and to the power
of jurisdiction, taxation, and military service which landlords
exercised over their tenants, there was considered to be a close
personal relationship between them. Every tenant on obtaining his land
went through a ceremony known as "homage," by which he promised
faithfulness and service to his lord, vowing on his knees to be his
man. The lord in return promised faithfulness, protection, and justice
to his tenant. It was this combination of landholding, political
rights, and sworn personal fidelity that made up feudalism. It existed
in this sense in England from the later Saxon period till late in the
Middle Ages, and even in some of its characteristics to quite modern
times. The conquest by William of Normandy through the wholesale
confiscation and regrant of lands, and through his military
arrangements, brought about an almost sudden development and spread of
feudalism in England, and it was rapidly systematized and completed in
the reigns of his two sons. By its very nature feudalism gives great
powers to the higher ranks of the nobility, the great landholders.
Under the early Norman kings, however, their strength was kept in
tolerably complete check. The anarchy of the reign of Stephen was an
indication of the natural tendencies of feudalism without a vigorous
king. This time of confusion when, as the contemporary chronicle says,
"every man did that which was good in his own eyes," was brought to an
end by the accession to the throne of Henry II, a man whose personal
abilities and previous training enabled him to bring the royal
authority to greater strength than ever, and to put an end to the
oppressions of the turbulent nobles.
*7. The Period of the Early Angevin Kings, 1154-1338.*--The two
centuries which now followed saw either the completion or the
initiation of most of the characteristics of the English race with
which we are familiar in historic times. The race, the language, the
law, and the political organization have remained fundamentally the
same as they became during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. No
considerable new addition was made to the population, and the elements
which it already contained became so thoroughly fused that it has
always since been practically a homogeneous body. The Latin language
remained through this whole period and till long afterward the
principal language of records, documents, and the affairs of the
church. French continued to be the language of the daily intercourse
of the upper classes, of the pleadings in the law courts, and of
certain documents and records. But English was taking its modern form,
asserting itself as the real national language, and by the close of
this period had come into general use for the vast majority of
purposes. Within the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge grew up, and within the fourteenth took their
later shape of self-governing groups of colleges. Successive orders of
religious men and women were formed under rules intended to overcome
the defects which had appeared in the early Benedictine rule. The
organized church became more and more powerful, and disputes
constantly arose as to the limits between its power and that of the
ordinary government. The question was complicated from the fact that
the English Church was but one branch of the general church of Western
Christendom, whose centre and principal authority was vested in the
Pope at Rome. One of the most serious of these conflicts was between
King Henry II and Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, principally on the
question of how far clergymen should be subject to the same laws as
laymen. The personal dispute ended in the murder of the archbishop, in
1170, but the controversy itself got no farther than a compromise. A
contest broke out between King John and the Pope in 1205 as to the
right of the king to dictate the selection of a new archbishop of
Canterbury. By 1213 the various forms of influence which the church
could bring to bear were successful in forcing the king to give way.
He therefore made humble apologies and accepted the nominee of the
Pope for the office. Later in the thirteenth century there was much
popular opposition to papal taxation of England.
In the reign of Henry II, the conquest of Ireland was begun. In 1283
Edward I, great-grandson of Henry, completed the conquest of Wales,
which had remained incompletely conquered from Roman times onward. In
1292 Edward began that interference in the affairs of Scotland which
led on to long wars and a nominal conquest. For a while therefore it
seemed that England was about to create a single monarchy out of the
whole of the British Islands. Moreover, Henry II was already count of
Anjou and Maine by inheritance from his father when he became duke of
Normandy and king of England by inheritance from his mother. He also
obtained control of almost all the remainder of the western and
southern provinces of France by his marriage with Eleanor of
Aquitaine. It seemed, therefore, that England might become the centre
of a considerable empire composed partly of districts on the
Continent, partly of the British Islands. As a matter of fact, Wales
long remained separated from England in organization and feeling,
little progress was made with the real conquest of Ireland till in the
sixteenth century, and the absorption of Scotland failed entirely.
King John, in 1204, lost most of the possessions of the English kings
south of the Channel and they were not regained within this period.
The unification of the English government and people really occurred
during this period, but it was only within the boundaries which were
then as now known as England.
Henry II was a vigorous, clear-headed, far-sighted ruler. He not only
put down the rebellious barons with a strong hand, and restored the
old royal institutions, as already stated, but added new powers of
great importance, especially in the organization of the courts of
justice. He changed the occasional visits of royal officials to
different parts of the country to regular periodical circuits, the
kingdom being divided into districts in each of which a group of
judges held court at least once in each year. In 1166, by the Assize
of Clarendon, he made provision for a sworn body of men in each
neighborhood to bring accusations against criminals, thus making the
beginning of the grand jury system. He also provided that a group of
men should be put upon their oath to give a decision in a dispute
about the possession of land, if either one of the claimants asked for
it, thus introducing the first form of the trial by jury. The
decisions of the judges within this period came to be so consistent
and so well recorded as to make the foundation of the Common Law the
basis of modern law in all English-speaking countries.
Henry's successor was his son Richard I, whose government was quite
unimportant except for the romantic personal adventures of the king
when on a crusade, and in his continental dominions. Henry's second
son John reigned from 1199 to 1216. Although of good natural
abilities, he was extraordinarily indolent, mean, treacherous, and
obstinate. By his inactivity during a long quarrel with the king of
France he lost all his provinces on the Continent, except those in the
far south. His contest with the Pope had ended in failure and
humiliation. He had angered the barons by arbitrary taxation and by
many individual acts of outrage or oppression. Finally he had
alienated the affections of the mass of the population by introducing
foreign mercenaries to support his tyranny and permitting to them
unbridled excess and violence. As a result of this widespread
unpopularity, a rebellion was organized, including almost the whole of
the baronage of England, guided by the counsels of Stephen Langton,
archbishop of Canterbury, and supported by the citizens of London. The
indefiniteness of feudal relations was a constant temptation to kings
and other lords to carry their exactions and demands upon their
tenants to an unreasonable and oppressive length. Henry I, on his
accession in 1100, in order to gain popularity, had voluntarily
granted a charter reciting a number of these forms of oppression and
promising to put an end to them. The rebellious barons now took this
old charter as a basis, added to it many points which had become
questions of dispute during the century since it had been granted, and
others which were of special interest to townsmen and the middle and
even lower classes. They then demanded the king's promise to issue a
charter containing these points. John resisted for a while, but at
last gave way and signed the document which has since been known as
the "Great Charter," or Magna Carta. This has always been considered
as, in a certain sense, the guarantee of English liberties and the
foundation of the settled constitution of the kingdom. The fact that
it was forced from a reluctant king by those who spoke for the whole
nation, that it placed definite limitations on his power, and that it
was confirmed again and again by later kings, has done more to give it
this position than its temporary and in many cases insignificant
provisions, accompanied only by a comparatively few statements of
general principles.
The beginnings of the construction of the English parliamentary
constitution fall within the next reign, that of John's son, Henry
III, 1216-1272. He was a child at his accession, and when he became a
man proved to have but few qualities which would enable him to
exercise a real control over the course of events. Conflicts were
constant between the king and confederations of the barons, for the
greater part of the time under the leadership of Simon de Montfort,
earl of Leicester. The special points of difference were the king's
preference for foreign adventurers in his distribution of offices, his
unrestrained munificence to them, their insolence and oppression
relying on the king's support, the financial demands which were
constantly being made, and the king's encouragement of the high claims
and pecuniary exactions of the Pope. At first these conflicts took the
form of disputes in the Great Council, but ultimately they led to
another outbreak of civil war. The Great Council of the kingdom was a
gathering of the nobles, bishops, and abbots summoned by the king from
time to time for advice and participation in the more important work
of government. It had always existed in one form or another, extending
back continuously to the "witenagemot" of the Anglo-Saxons. During the
reign of Henry the name "Parliament" was coming to be more regularly
applied to it, its meetings were more frequent and its self-assertion
more vigorous. But most important of all, a new class of members was
added to it. In 1265, in addition to the nobles and great prelates,
the sheriffs were ordered to see that two knights were selected from
each of their shires, and two citizens from each of a long list of the
larger towns, to attend and take part in the discussions of
Parliament. This plan was not continued regularly at first, but
Henry's successor, Edward I, who reigned from 1272 to 1307, adopted it
deliberately, and from 1295 forward the "Commons," as they came to be
called, were always included in Parliament. Within the next century a
custom arose according to which the representatives of the shires and
the towns sat in a separate body from the nobles and churchmen, so
that Parliament took on its modern form of two houses, the House of
Lords and the House of Commons.
Until this time and long afterward the personal character and
abilities of the king were far the most important single factor in the
growth of the nation. Edward I was one of the greatest of English
kings, ranking with Alfred, William the Conqueror, and Henry II. His
conquests of Wales and of Scotland have already been mentioned, and
these with the preparation they involved and a war with France into
which he was drawn necessarily occupied the greater part of his time
and energy. But he found the time to introduce good order and control
into the government in all its branches; to make a great investigation
into the judicial and administrative system, the results of which,
commonly known as the "Hundred Rolls," are comparable to Domesday Book
in extent and character; to develop the organization of Parliament,
and above all to enact through it a series of great reforming
statutes. The most important of these were the First and Second
Statutes of Westminster, in 1275 and 1285, which made provisions for
good order in the country, for the protection of merchants, and for
other objects; the Statute of Mortmain, passed in 1279, which put a
partial stop to injurious gifts of land to the church, and the Statute
_Quia Emptores_, passed in 1290, which was intended to prevent the
excessive multiplication of subtenants. This was done by providing
that whenever in the future any landholder should dispose of a piece
of land it should be held from the same lord the grantor had held it
from, not from the grantor himself. He also gave more liberal charters
to the towns, privileges to foreign merchants, and constant
encouragement to trade. The king's firm hand and prudent judgment were
felt in a wide circle of regulations applying to taxes, markets and
fairs, the purchase of royal supplies, the currency, the
administration of local justice, and many other fields. Yet after all
it was the organization of Parliament that was the most important work
of Edward's reign. This completed the unification of the country. The
English people were now one race, under one law, with one Parliament
representing all parts of the country. It was possible now for the
whole nation to act as a unit, and for laws to be passed which would
apply to the whole country and draw its different sections continually
more closely together. National growth was now possible in a sense in
which it had not been before.
The reign of Edward II, like his own character, was insignificant
compared with that of his father. He was deposed in 1327, and his son,
Edward III, came to the throne as a boy of fourteen years. The first
years of his reign were also relatively unimportant. By the time he
reached his majority, however, other events were imminent which for
the next century or more gave a new direction to the principal
interests and energies of England. A description of these events will
be given in a later chapter.
For the greater part of the long period which has now been sketched in
outline it is almost solely the political and ecclesiastical events
and certain personal experiences which have left their records in
history. We can obtain but vague outlines of the actual life of the
people. An important Anglo-Saxon document describes the organization
of a great landed estate, and from Domesday Book and other early
Norman records may be drawn certain inferences as to the degree of
freedom of the masses of the people and certain facts as to
agriculture and trade. From the increasing body of public records in
the twelfth century can be gathered detached pieces of information as
to actual social and economic conditions, but the knowledge that can
be obtained is even yet slight and uncertain. With the thirteenth
century, however, all this is changed. During the latter part of the
period just described, that is to say the reigns of Henry III and the
three Edwards, we have almost as full knowledge of economic as of
political conditions, of the life of the mass of the people as of that
of courtiers and ecclesiastics. From a time for which 1250 may be
taken as an approximate date, written documents began to be so
numerous, so varied, and so full of information as to the affairs of
private life, that it becomes possible to obtain a comparatively full
and clear knowledge of the methods of agriculture, handicraft, and
commerce, of the classes of society, the prevailing customs and ideas,
and in general of the mode of life and social organization of the mass
of the people, this being the principal subject of economic and social
history. The next three chapters will therefore be devoted
respectively to a description of rural life, of town life, and of
trading relations, as they were during the century from 1250 to 1350,
while the succeeding chapters will trace the main lines of economic
and social change during succeeding periods down to the present time.
CHAPTER II
RURAL LIFE AND ORGANIZATION
*8. The Mediæval Village.*--In the Middle Ages in the greater part of
England all country life was village life. The farmhouses were not
isolated or separated from one another by surrounding fields, as they
are so generally in modern times, but were gathered into villages.
Each village was surrounded by arable lands, meadows, pastures, and
woods which spread away till they reached the confines of the similar
fields of the next adjacent village. Such an agricultural village with
its population and its surrounding lands is usually spoken of as a
"vill." The word "manor" is also applied to it, though this word is
also used in other senses, and has differed in meaning at different
periods. The word "hamlet" means a smaller group of houses separated
from but forming in some respects a part of a vill or manor.
The village consisted of a group of houses ranging in number from ten
or twelve to as many as fifty or perhaps even more, grouped around
what in later times would be called a "village green," or along two or
three intersecting lanes. The houses were small, thatch-roofed, and
one-roomed, and doubtless very miserable. Such buildings as existed
for the protection of cattle or the preservation of crops were closely
connected with the dwelling portions of the houses. In many cases they
were under the same roof. Each vill possessed its church, which was
generally, though by no means always, close to the houses of the
village. There was usually a manor house, which varied in size from
an actual castle to a building of a character scarcely distinguishable
from the primitive houses of the villagers. This might be occupied
regularly or occasionally by the lord of the manor, but might
otherwise be inhabited by the steward or by a tenant, or perhaps only
serve as the gathering place of the manor courts.
Connected with the manor house was an enclosure or courtyard commonly
surrounded by buildings for general farm purposes and for cooking or
brewing. A garden orchard was often attached.
[Illustration: Thirteenth Century Manor House, Millichope, Shropshire.
(Wright, _History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments_.)]
The location of the vill was almost invariably such that a stream with
its border meadows passed through or along its confines, the mill
being often the only building that lay detached from the village
group. A greater or less extent of woodland is also constantly
mentioned.
The vill was thus made up of the group of houses of the villagers
including the parish church and the manor house, all surrounded by a
wide tract of arable land, meadow, pasture, and woods. Where the lands
were extensive there might perhaps be a small group of houses forming
a separate hamlet at some distance from the village, and occasionally
a detached mill, grange, or other building. Its characteristic
appearance, however, must have been that of a close group of buildings
surrounded by an extensive tract of open land.
[Illustration: Thirteenth Century Manor House, Boothby Pagnell,
Lincolnshire. (Turner, _Domestic Architecture in England_.)]
*9. The Vill as an Agricultural System.*--The support of the vill was in
its agriculture. The plan by which the lands of the whole group of
cultivators lay together in a large tract surrounding the village is
spoken of as the "open field" system. The arable portions of this were
ploughed in pieces equalling approximately acres, half-acres, or
quarter-acres.
[Illustration: Village with Open Fields, Nörtershausen, near Coblentz.
Germany. (From a photograph taken in 1894.)]
The mediæval English acre was a long narrow strip forty rods in length
and four rods in width, a half-acre or quarter-acre being of the same
length, but of two rods or one rod in width. The rod was of different
lengths in different parts of the country, depending on local custom,
but the most common length was that prescribed by statute, that is to
say, sixteen and a half feet. The length of the acre, forty rods, has
given rise to one of the familiar units of length, the furlong, that
is, a "furrow-long," or the length of a furrow. A rood is a piece of
land one rod wide and forty rods long, that is, the fourth of an acre.
A series of such strips were ploughed up successively, being separated
from each other either by leaving the width of a furrow or two
unploughed, or by marking the division with stones, or perhaps by
simply throwing the first furrow of the next strip in the opposite
direction when it was ploughed. When an unploughed border was left
covered with grass or stones, it was called a "balk." A number of such
acres or fractions of acres with their slight dividing ridges thus lay
alongside of one another in a group, the number being defined by the
configuration of the ground, by a traditional division among a given
number of tenants, or by some other cause. Other groups of strips lay
at right angles or inclined to these, so that the whole arable land of
the village when ploughed or under cultivation had, like many French,
German, or Swiss landscapes at the present time, something of the
appearance of a great irregular checker-board or patchwork quilt, each
large square being divided in one direction by parallel lines.
Usually the cultivated open fields belonging to a village were divided
into three or more large tracts or fields and these were cultivated
according to some established rotation of crops. The most common of
these was the three-field system, by which in any one year all the
strips in one tract or field would be planted with wheat, rye, or some
other crop which is planted in the fall and harvested the next summer;
a second great field would be planted with oats, barley, peas, or some
such crop as is planted in the spring and harvested in the fall; the
third field would be fallow, recuperating its fertility. The next year
all the acres in the field which had lain fallow the year before might
be planted with a fall crop, the wheat field of the previous year
being planted with a spring crop, and the oats field in its turn now
lying uncultivated for a year. The third year a further exchange would
be made by which a fall crop would succeed the fallow of that year and
the spring crop of the previous year, a spring crop would succeed the
last year's fall crop and the field from which the spring crop was
taken now in its turn would enjoy a fallow year. In the fourth year
the rotation would begin over again.
[Illustration: Village with Open Fields, Udenhausen, near Coblentz,
Germany. (From a photograph taken in 1894.)]
Agriculture was extremely crude. But eight or nine bushels of wheat or
rye were expected from an acre, where now in England the average is
thirty. The plough regularly required eight draught animals, usually
oxen, in breaking up the ground, though lighter ploughs were used in
subsequent cultivation. The breed of all farm animals was small, carts
were few and cumbrous, the harvesting of grain was done with a sickle,
and the mowing of grass with a short, straight scythe. The distance of
the outlying parts of the fields from the farm buildings of the
village added its share to the laboriousness of agricultural life.
[Illustration: Modern Ploughing with Six Oxen in Sussex. (Hudson, W.
H.: _Nature in Downland_. Published by Longmans, Green & Co.)]
[Illustration: Open Fields of Hayford Bridge, Oxfordshire, 1607.
(Facsimile map published by the University of Oxford.)]
The variety of food crops raised was small. Potatoes were of course
unknown, and other root crops and fresh vegetables apparently were
little cultivated. Wheat and rye of several varieties were raised as
bread-stuff, barley and some other grains for the brewing of beer.
Field peas and beans were raised, sometimes for food, but generally as
forage for cattle. The main supply of winter forage for the farm
animals had, however, to be secured in the form of hay, and for this
reliance was placed entirely on the natural meadows, as no clover or
grasses which could be artificially raised on dry ground were yet
known. Meadow land was constantly estimated at twice the value of
arable ground or more. To obtain a sufficient support for the oxen,
horses, and breeding animals through the winter required, therefore, a
constant struggle. Owing to this difficulty animals that were to be
used for food purposes were regularly killed in the fall and salted
down. Much of the unhealthiness of medieval life is no doubt
attributable to the use of salt meat as so large a part of what was at
best a very monotonous diet.
Summer pasture for the horses, cattle, sheep, and swine of the village
was found partly on the arable land after the grain crops had been
taken off, or while it was lying fallow. Since all the acres in any
one great field were planted with the same crop, this would be taken
off from the whole expanse at practically the same time, and the
animals of the whole village might then wander over it, feeding on the
stubble, the grass of the balks, and such other growth as sprung up
before the next ploughing, or before freezing weather. Pasturage was
also found on the meadows after the hay had been cut. But the largest
amount of all was on the "common pasture," the uncultivated land and
woods which in the thirteenth century was still sufficiently
abundant in most parts of England to be found in considerable extent
on almost every manor. Pasturage in all these forms was for the most
part common for all the animals of the vill, which were sent out under
the care of shepherds or other guardians. There were, however,
sometimes enclosed pieces of pasture land in the possession of the
lord of the manor or of individual villagers.
The land of the vill was held and cultivated according to a system of
scattered acres. That is to say, the land held by any one man was not
all in one place, but scattered through various parts of the open
fields of the vill. He would have an acre or two, or perhaps only a
part of an acre, in one place, another strip not adjacent to it, but
somewhere else in the fields, still another somewhere else, and so on
for his whole holding, while the neighbor whose house was next to his
in the village would have pieces of land similarly scattered through
the fields, and in many cases probably have them adjacent to his. The
result was that the various acres or other parts of any one man's
holding were mingled apparently inextricably with those of other men,
customary familiarity only distinguishing which pieces belonged to
each villager.
In some manors there was total irregularity as to the number of acres
in the occupation of any one man; in others there was a striking
regularity. The typical holding, the group of scattered acres
cultivated by one man or held by some two or three in common, was
known as a "virgate," or by some equivalent term, and although of no
universal equality, was more frequently of thirty acres than of any
other number. Usually one finds on a given manor that ten or fifteen
of the villagers have each a virgate of a given number of acres,
several more have each a half virgate or a quarter. Occasionally, on
the other hand, each of them has a different number of acres. In
almost all cases, however, the agricultural holdings of the villagers
were relatively small. For instance, on a certain manor in Norfolk
there were thirty-six holdings, twenty of them below ten acres, eight
between ten and twenty, six between twenty and thirty, and two between
thirty and forty. On another, in Essex, there were nine holdings of
five acres each, two of six, twelve of ten, three of twelve, one of
eighteen, four of twenty, one of forty, and one of fifty. Sometimes
larger holdings in the hands of individual tenants are to be found,
rising to one hundred acres or more. Still these were quite
exceptional and the mass of the villagers had very small groups of
acres in their possession.
It is to be noted next that a large proportion of the cultivated
strips were not held in virgates or otherwise by the villagers at all,
but were in the direct possession and cultivation of the lord of the
manor. This land held directly by the lord of the manor and cultivated
for him was called the "demesne," and frequently included one-half or
even a larger proportion of all the land of the vill. Much of the
meadow and pasture land, and frequently all of the woods, was included
in the demesne. Some of the demesne land was detached from the land of
the villagers, enclosed and separately cultivated or pastured; but for
the most part it lay scattered through the same open fields and was
cultivated by the same methods and according to the same rotation as
the land of the small tenants of the vill, though it was kept under
separate management.
*10. Classes of People on the Manor.*--Every manor was in the hands of a
lord. He might be a knight, esquire, or mere freeman, but in the great
majority of cases the lord of the manor was a nobleman, a bishop,
abbot, or other ecclesiastical official, or the king. But whether the
manor was the whole estate of a man of the lesser gentry, or merely
one part of the possessions of a great baron, an ecclesiastical
corporation, or the crown, the relation between its possessor as lord
of the manor and the other inhabitants as his tenants was the same. In
the former case he was usually resident upon the manor; in the latter
the individual or corporate lord was represented by a steward or other
official who made occasional visits, and frequently, on large manors,
by a resident bailiff. There was also almost universally a reeve, who
was chosen from among the tenants and who had to carry on the demesne
farm in the interests of the lord.
[Illustration: Seal, with Representation of a Manor House. (Turner,
_Domestic Architecture in England_.)]
The tenants of the manor, ranging from holders of considerable amounts
of land, perhaps as much as a hundred acres, through various
gradations down to mere cotters, who held no more than a cottage with
perhaps a half-acre or a rood of land, or even with no land at all,
are usually grouped in the "extents" or contemporary descriptions of
the manors and their inhabitants into several distinct classes. Some
are described as free tenants, or tenants holding freely. Others, and
usually the largest class, are called villains, or customary tenants.
Some, holding only a half or a quarter virgate, are spoken of as half
or quarter villains. Again, a numerous class are described by some
name indicating that they hold only a dwelling-house, or at least that
their holding of land is but slight. These are generally spoken of as
cotters.
All these tenants hold land from the lord of the manor and make
payments and perform services in return for their land. The free
tenants most commonly make payments in money only. At special periods
in the year they give a certain number of shillings or pence to the
lord. Occasionally they are required to make some payment in kind, a
cock or a hen, some eggs, or other articles of consumption. These
money payments and payments of articles of money value are called
"rents of assize," or established rents. Not unusually, however, the
free tenant has to furnish _precariæ_ or "boon-works" to the lord.
That is, he must, either in his own person or through a man hired for
the purpose, furnish one or more days' labor at the specially busy
seasons of the year, at fall and spring ploughing, at mowing or
harvest time. Free tenants were also frequently bound to pay relief
and heriot. Relief was a sum of money paid to the lord by an heir on
obtaining land by inheritance. Custom very generally established the
amount to be paid as the equivalent of one year's ordinary payments.
Heriot was a payment made in kind or in money from the property left
by a deceased tenant, and very generally consisted by custom of the
best animal which had been in the possession of the man, or its
equivalent in value. On many manors heriot was not paid by free
tenants, but only by those of lower rank.
The services and payments of the villains or customary tenants were of
various descriptions. They had usually to make some money payments at
regular periods of the year, like the free tenants, and, even more
frequently than they, some regular payments in kind. But the fine paid
on the inheritance of their land was less definitely restricted in
amount, and heriot was more universally and more regularly collected.
The greater part of their liability to the lord of the manor was,
however, in the form of personal, corporal service. Almost universally
the villain was required to work for a certain number of days in each
week on the demesne of the lord. This "week-work" was most frequently
for three days a week, sometimes for two, sometimes for four;
sometimes for one number of days in the week during a part of the
year, for another number during the remainder. In addition to this
were usually the _precariæ_ or boon-works already referred to.
Sometimes as part of, sometimes in addition to, the week-work and the
boon-work, the villain was required to plough so many acres in the
fall and spring; to mow, toss, and carry in the hay from so many
acres; to haul and scatter so many loads of manure; carry grain to the
barn or the market, build hedges, dig ditches, gather brush, weed
grain, break clods, drive sheep or swine, or any other of the forms of
agricultural labor as local custom on each manor had established his
burdens. Combining the week-work, the regular boon-works, and the
extra specified services, it will be seen that the labor required from
the customary tenant was burdensome in the extreme. Taken on the
average, much more than half of the ordinary villain's time must have
been given in services to the lord of the manor.
The cotters made similar payments and performed similar labors, though
less in amount. A widespread custom required them to work for the lord
one day a week throughout the year, with certain regular payments, and
certain additional special services.
Besides the possession of their land and rights of common pasture,
however, there were some other compensations and alleviations of the
burdens of the villains and cotters. At the boon-works and other
special services performed by the tenants, it was a matter of custom
that the lord of the manor provide food for one or two meals a day,
and custom frequently defined the kind, amount, and value of the food
for each separate meal; as where it is said in a statement of
services: "It is to be known that all the above customary tenants
ought to reap one day in autumn at one boon-work of wheat, and they
shall have among them six bushels of wheat for their bread, baked in
the manor, and broth and meat, that is to say, two men have one
portion of beef and cheese, and beer for drinking. And the aforesaid
customary tenants ought to work in autumn at two boon-works of oats.
And they shall have six bushels of rye for their bread as described
above, broth as before, and herrings, viz. six herrings for each man,
and cheese as before, and water for drinking."
Thus the payments and services of the free tenants were principally of
money, and apparently not burdensome; those of the villains were
largely in corporal service and extremely heavy; while those of the
cotters were smaller, in correspondence with their smaller holdings of
land and in accordance with the necessity that they have their time in
order to make their living by earning wages.
The villains and cotters were in bondage to the lord of the manor.
This was a matter of legal status quite independent of the amount of
land which the tenant held or of the services which he performed,
though, generally speaking, the great body of the smaller tenants and
of the laborers were of servile condition. In general usage the words
_villanus_, _nativus_, _servus_, _custumarius_, and _rusticus_ are
synonymous, and the cotters belonged legally to the same servile
class.
The distinction between free tenants and villains, using this word, as
is customary, to include all those who were legally in servitude, was
not a very clearly marked one. Their economic position was often so
similar that the classes shaded into one another. But the villain was,
as has been seen, usually burdened with much heavier services. He was
subject to special payments, such as "merchet," a payment made to the
lord of the manor when a woman of villain rank was married, and
"leyr," a payment made by women for breach of chastity. He could be
"tallaged" or taxed to any extent the lord saw fit. He was bound to
the soil. He could not leave the manor to seek for better conditions
of life elsewhere. If he ran away, his lord could obtain an order from
a court and have him brought back. When permission was obtained to
remain away from the manor as an inhabitant of another vill or of a
town, it was only upon payment of a periodical sum, frequently known
as "chevage" or head money. He could not sell his cattle without
paying the lord for permission. He had practically no standing in the
courts of the country. In any suit against his lord the proof of his
condition of villainage was sufficient to put him out of court, and
his only recourse was the local court of the manor, where the lord
himself or his representative presided. Finally, in the eyes of the
law, the villain had no property of his own, all his possessions
being, in the last resort, the property of his lord. This legal
theory, however, apparently had but little application to real life;
for in the ordinary course of events the customary tenant, if only by
custom, not by law, yet held and bequeathed to his descendants his
land and his chattels quite as if they were his own.
Serfdom, as it existed in England in the thirteenth century, can
hardly be defined in strict legal terms. It can be described most
correctly as a condition in which the villain tenant of the manor was
bound to the locality and to his services and payments there by a
legal bond, instead of merely by an economic bond, as was the case
with the small free tenant.
There were commonly a few persons in the vill who were not in the
general body of cultivators of the land and were not therefore in the
classes so far described. Since the vill was generally a parish also,
the village contained the parish priest, who, though he might usually
hold some acres in the open fields, and might belong to the peasant
class, was of course somewhat set apart from the villagers by his
education and his ordination. The mill was a valued possession of the
lord of the manor, for by an almost universal custom the tenants were
bound to have their grain ground there, and this monopoly enabled the
miller to pay a substantial rent to the lord while keeping enough
profit for himself to become proverbially well-to-do.
There was often a blacksmith, whom we find sometimes exempted from
other services on condition of keeping the demesne ploughs and other
iron implements in order. A chance weaver or other craftsman is
sometimes found, and when the vill was near sea or river or forest
some who made their living by industries dependent on the locality. In
the main, however, the whole life of the vill gathered around the
arable, meadow, and pasture land, and the social position of the
tenants, except for the cross division of serfdom, depended upon the
respective amounts of land which they held.
*11. The Manor Courts.*--The manor was the sphere of operations of a
manor court. On every manor the tenants gathered at frequent periods
for a great amount of petty judicial and regulative work. The most
usual period for the meeting of the manor court was once every three
weeks, though in some manors no trace of a meeting is found more
frequently than three times, or even twice, a year. In these cases,
however, it is quite probable that less formal meetings occurred of
which no regular record was kept. Different kinds of gatherings of the
tenants are usually distinguished according to the authority under
which they were held, or the class of tenants of which they were made
up. If the court was held by the lord simply because of his feudal
rights as a landholder, and was busied only with matters of the
inheritance, transfer, or grant of lands, the fining of tenants for
the breach of manorial custom, or failure to perform their duties to
the lord of the manor, the election of tenants to petty offices on the
manor, and such matters, it was described in legal language as a court
baron. If a court so occupied was made up of villain tenants only, it
was called a customary court. If, on the other hand, the court also
punished general offences, petty crimes, breaches of contract,
breaches of the assize, that is to say, the established standard of
amount, price, or quality of bread or beer, the lord of the manor
drawing his authority to hold such a court either actually or
supposedly from a grant from the king, such a court was called a court
leet. With the court leet was usually connected the so-called view of
frank pledge. Frank pledge was an ancient system, according to which
all men were obliged to be enrolled in groups, so that if any one
committed an offence, the other members of the group would be obliged
to produce him for trial. View of frank pledge was the right to punish
by fine any who failed to so enroll themselves. In the court baron and
the customary court it was said by lawyers that the body of attendants
were the judges, and the steward, representing the lord of the manor,
only a presiding official; while in the court leet the steward was the
actual judge of the tenants. In practice, however, it is probable that
not much was made of these distinctions, and that the periodic
gatherings were made to do duty for all business of any kind that
needed attention, while the procedure was that which had become
customary on that special manor, irrespective of the particular form
of authority for the court.
[Illustration: Interior of Fourteenth Century Manor House, Sutton
Courtenay, Berkshire. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth
Century._)]
The manor court was presided over by a steward or other officer
representing the lord of the manor. Apparently all adult male tenants
were expected to be present, and any inhabitant was liable to be
summoned. A court was usually held in each manor, but sometimes a lord
of several neighboring manors would hold the court for all of these
in some one place. As most manors belonged to lords who had many
manors in their possession, the steward or other official commonly
proceeded from one manor or group of manors to another, holding the
courts in each. Before the close of the thirteenth century the records
of the manor courts, or at least of the more important of them, began
to be kept with very great regularity and fulness, and it is to the
mass of these manor court rolls which still remain that we owe most of
our detailed knowledge of the condition of the body of the people in
the later Middle Ages. The variety and the amount of business
transacted at the court were alike considerable. When a tenant had
died it was in the meeting of the manor court that his successor
obtained a regrant of the land. The required relief was there
assessed, and the heriot from the property of the deceased recorded.
New grants of land were made, and transfers, leases, and abandonments
by one tenant and assignments to another announced. For each of these
processes of land transfer a fine was collected for the lord of the
manor. Such entries as the following are constantly found: "John of
Durham has come into court and taken one bond-land which Richard Avras
formerly held but gave up because of his poverty; to have and hold for
his lifetime, paying and doing the accustomed services as Richard paid
and did them. He gives for entrance 6_s._ 8_d._;" "Agnes Mabeley is
given possession of a quarter virgate of land which her mother held,
and gives the lord 33_s._ 4_d._ for entrance."
Disputes as to the right of possession of land and questions of dowry
and inheritance were decided, a jury being granted in many cases by
the lord at the petition of a claimant and on payment of a fee.
Another class of cases consisted in the imposition of fines or
amerciaments for the violation of the customs of the manor, of the
rules of the lord, or of the requirements of the culprit's tenure;
such as a villain marrying without leave, failure to perform
boon-works or bad performance of work, failure to place the tenant's
sheep in the lord's fold, cutting of wood or brush, making unlawful
paths across the fields, the meadows, or the common, encroachment in
ploughing upon other men's land or upon the common, or failure to send
grain to the lord's mill for grinding. Sometimes the offence was of a
more general nature, such as breach of assize, breach of contract,
slander, assault, or injury to property. Still another part of the
work of the court was the election of petty manorial officers; a
reeve, a reaper, ale-tasters, and perhaps others. The duty of filling
such offices when elected by the tenants and approved by the lord or
his steward was, as has been said, one of the burdens of villainage.
However, when a villain was fulfilling the office of reeve, it was
customary for him to be relieved of at least a part of the payments
and services to which he would otherwise be subject. Finally the manor
court meetings were employed for the adoption of general regulations
as to the use of the commons and other joint interests, and for the
announcement of the orders of the steward in the keeping of the peace.
*12. The Manor as an Estate of a Lord.*--The manor was profitable to the
lord in various ways. He received rents in money and kind. These
included the rents of assize from free and villain land tenants, rent
from the tenant of the mill, and frequently from other sources. Then
came the profits derived from the cultivation of the demesne land. In
this the lord of the manor was simply a large farmer, except that he
had a supply of labor bound to remain at hand and to give service
without wages almost up to his needs. Finally there were the profits
of the manor courts. As has been seen, these consisted of a great
variety of fees, fines, amerciaments, and collections made by the
steward or other official. Such varied payments and profits combined
to make up the total value of the manor to the landowner. Not only the
slender income of the country squire or knight whose estate consisted
of a single manor of some ten or twenty pounds yearly value, but the
vast wealth of the great noble or of the rich monastery or powerful
bishopric was principally made up of the sum of such payments from a
considerable number of manors. An appreciable part of the income of
the government even was derived from the manors still in the
possession of the crown.
The mediæval manor was a little world in itself. The large number of
scattered acres which made up the demesne farm cultivated in the
interests of the lord of the manor, the small groups of scattered
strips held by free holders or villain tenants who furnished most of
the labor on the demesne farm, the little patches of ground held by
mere laborers whose living was mainly gained by hired service on the
land of the lord or of more prosperous tenants, the claims which all
had to the use of the common pasture for their sheep and cattle and of
the woods for their swine, all these together made up an agricultural
system which secured a revenue for the lord, provided food and the raw
material for primitive manufactures for the inhabitants of the vill,
and furnished some small surplus which could be sold.
[Illustration: Interior of Fourteenth Century Manor House, Great
Malvern, Worcestershire. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth
Century._)]
Life on the mediæval manor was hard. The greater part of the
population was subject to the burdens of serfdom, and all, both free
and serf, shared in the arduousness of labor, coarseness and lack of
variety of food, unsanitary surroundings, and liability to the rigor
of winter and the attacks of pestilence. Yet the average condition of
comfort of the mass of the rural inhabitants of England was probably
as high as at any subsequent time. Food in proportion to wages was
very cheap, and the almost universal possession of some land made it
possible for the very poorest to avoid starvation. Moreover, the great
extent to which custom governed all payments, services, and rights
must have prevented much of the extreme depression which has
occasionally existed in subsequent periods in which greater
competition has distinguished more clearly the capable from the
incompetent.
From the social rather than from the economic point of view the life
of the mediæval manor was perhaps most clearly marked by this
predominance of custom and by a second characteristic nearly related.
This was the singularly close relationship in which all the
inhabitants of the manor were bound to one another, and their
correspondingly complete separation from the outside world. The common
pasture, the intermingled strips of the holdings in the open fields,
the necessary coöperation in the performance of their daily labor on
the demesne land, the close contiguity of their dwellings, their
universal membership in the same parish church, their common
attendance and action in the manor courts, all must have combined to
make the vill an organization of singular unity. This self-centred
life, economically, judicially, and ecclesiastically so nearly
independent of other bodies, put obstacles in the way of change. It
prohibited intercourse beyond the manor, and opposed the growth of a
feeling of common national life. The manorial life lay at the base of
the stability which marked the mediæval period.
*13. BIBLIOGRAPHY*
GENERAL WORKS
Certain general works which refer to long periods of economic history
will be mentioned here and not again referred to, excepting in special
cases. It is to be understood that they contain valuable matter on the
subject, not only of this, but of succeeding chapters. They should
therefore be consulted in addition to the more specific works named
under each chapter.
Cunningham, William: _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, two
volumes. The most extensive and valuable work that covers the whole
field of English economic history.
Ashley, W. J.: _English Economic History_, two volumes. The first
volume is a full and careful analysis of mediæval economic conditions,
with detailed notes and references to the primary sources. The second
volume is a work of original investigation, referring particularly to
conditions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it does not
give such a clear analysis of the conditions of its period as the
first volume.
Traill, H. D.: _Social England_, six volumes. A composite work
including a great variety of subjects, but seldom having the most
satisfactory account of any one of them.
Rogers, J. E. T.: _History of Agriculture and Prices_; _Six Centuries
of Work and Wages_; _Economic Interpretation of History_. Professor
Rogers' work is very extensive and detailed, and his books were
largely pioneer studies. His statistical and other facts are useful,
but his general statements are not very valuable, and his conclusions
are not convincing.
Palgrave, R. H. I.: _Dictionary of Political Economy_. Many of the
articles on subjects of economic history are the best and most recent
studies on their respective subjects, and the bibliographies contained
in them are especially valuable.
Four single-volume text-books have been published on this general
subject:--
Cunningham, William, and McArthur, E. A.: _Outlines of English
Industrial History_.
Gibbins, H. de B.: _Industry in England_.
Warner, George Townsend: _Landmarks in English Industrial History_.
Price, L. L.: _A Short History of English Commerce and Industry_.
SPECIAL WORKS
Seebohm, Frederic: _The English Village Community_. Although written
for another purpose,--to suggest a certain view of the origin of the
medieval manor,--the first five chapters of this book furnish the
clearest existing descriptive account of the fundamental facts of
rural life in the thirteenth century. Its publication marked an era in
the recognition of the main features of manorial organization. Green,
for instance, the historian of the English people, seems to have had
no clear conception of many of those characteristics of ordinary rural
life which Mr. Seebohm has made familiar.
Vinogradoff, Paul: _Villainage in England_.
Pollock, Sir Frederick, and Maitland, F. W.: _History of English Law_,
Vol. 1.
These two works are of especial value for the organization of the
manor courts and the legal condition of the population.
SOURCES
Much that can be explained only with great difficulty becomes clear to
the student immediately when he reads the original documents. Concrete
illustrations of general statements moreover make the work more
interesting and real. It has therefore been found desirable by many
teachers to bring their students into contact with at least a few
typical illustrative documents. The sources for the subject generally
are given in the works named above. An admirable bibliography has been
recently published by
Gross, Charles: _The Sources and Literature of English History from
the Earliest Times to about 1485_. References to abundant material for
the illustration or further investigation of the subject of this
chapter will be found in the following pamphlet:--
Davenport, Frances G.: _A Classified List of Printed Original
Materials for English Manorial and Agrarian History_.
Sources for the mediæval period are almost all in Latin or French.
Some of them, however, have been more accessible by being translated
into English and reprinted in convenient form. A few of these are
given in C. W. Colby: _Selections from the Sources of English
History_, and G. C. Lee: _Source Book of English History_.
In the _Series of Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources
of European History_, published by the Department of History of the
University of Pennsylvania, several numbers include documents in this
field. Vol. III, No. 5, is devoted entirely to manorial documents.
DISCUSSIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE MANOR
The question of the origin of the mediæval manorial organization,
whether it is principally of native English or of Roman origin, or
hewn from still other materials, although not treated in this
text-book, has been the subject of much interest and discussion. One
view of the case is the thesis of Seebohm's book, referred to above.
Other books treating of it are the following:--
Earle, John: _Land Charters and Saxonic Documents_, Introduction.
Gomme, G. L.: _The Village Community_.
Ashley, W. J.: A translation of Fustel de Coulanges, _Origin of
Property in Land_, Introduction.
Andrews, Charles M.: _The Old English Manor_, Introduction.
Maitland, F. W.: _Domesday Book and Beyond_.
Meitzen, August: _Siedelung und Agrarwesen_, Vol. II, Chap. 7.
The writings of Kemble and of Sir Henry Maine belong rather to a past
period of study and speculation, but their ideas still lie at the base
of discussions on the subject.
CHAPTER III
TOWN LIFE AND ORGANIZATION
[Illustration: Town Wall of Southampton, Built in the Thirteenth
Century. (Turner: _Domestic Architecture in England_.)]
*14. The Town Government.*--In the middle of the thirteenth century
there were some two hundred towns in England distinguishable by their
size, form of government, and the occupations of their inhabitants,
from the rural agricultural villages which have just been described.
London probably had more than 25,000 inhabitants; York and Bristol may
each have had as many as 10,000. The population of the others varied
from as many as 6000 to less than 1000. Perhaps the most usual
population of an English mediæval town lay between 1500 and 4000. They
were mostly walled, though such protection was hardly necessary, and
the military element in English towns was therefore but slightly
developed. Those towns which contained cathedrals, and were therefore
the seats of bishoprics, were called cities. All other organized towns
were known as boroughs, though this distinction in the use of the
terms city and borough was by no means always preserved. The towns
differed widely in their form of government; but all had charters from
the king or from some nobleman, abbey, or bishopric on whose lands
they had grown up. Such a charter usually declared the right of the
town to preserve the ancient customs which had come to be recognized
among its inhabitants, and granted to it certain privileges,
exemptions, and rights of self-government. The most universal and
important of these privileges were the following: the town paid the
tolls and dues owed to the king or other lord by its inhabitants in a
lump sum, collecting the amount from its own citizens as the latter or
their own authorities saw fit; the town courts had jurisdiction over
most suits and offences, relieving the townsmen from answering at
hundred and county court suits which concerned matters within their
own limits; the townsmen, where the king granted the charter, were
exempt from the payment of tolls of various kinds throughout his
dominions; they could pass ordinances and regulations controlling the
trade of the town, the administration of its property, and its
internal affairs generally, and could elect officials to carry out
such regulations. These officials also corresponded and negotiated in
the name of the town with the authorities of other towns and with the
government. From the close of the thirteenth century all towns of
any importance were represented in Parliament. These elements of
independence were not all possessed by every town, and some had
special privileges not enumerated in the above list. The first charter
of a town was apt to be vague and inadequate, but from time to time a
new charter was obtained giving additional privileges and defining the
old rights more clearly. Nor had all those who dwelt within the town
limits equal participation in its advantages. These were usually
restricted to those who were known as citizens or burgesses; full
citizenship depending primarily on the possession of a house and land
within the town limits. In addition to the burgesses there were
usually some inhabitants of the town--strangers, Jews, fugitive
villains from the rural villages, or perhaps only poorer natives of
the town--who did not share in these privileges. Those who did possess
all civil rights of the townsmen were in many ways superior in
condition to men in the country. In addition to the advantages of the
municipal organization mentioned above, all burgesses were personally
free, there was entire exemption from the vexatious petty payments of
the rural manors, and burgage tenure was thee nearest to actual land
ownership existent during the Middle Ages.
[Illustration: Charter of Henry II to the Borough of Nottingham.
(_Records of Borough of Nottingham_. Published by the Corporation.)]
*15. The Gild Merchant.*--The town was most clearly marked off from the
country by the occupations by which its people earned their living.
These were, in the first place, trading; secondly, manufacturing or
handicrafts. Agriculture of course existed also, since most townsmen
possessed some lands lying outside of the enclosed portions of the
town. On these they raised crops and pastured their cattle. Of these
varied occupations, however, it was trade which gave character and,
indeed, existence itself to the town. Foreign goods were brought to
the towns from abroad for sale, the surplus products of rural manors
found their way there for marketing; the products of one part of the
country which were needed in other parts were sought for and purchased
in the towns. Men also sold the products of their own labor, not only
food products, such as bread, meat, and fish, but also objects of
manufacture, as cloth, arms, leather, and goods made of wood, leather,
or metal. For the protection and regulation of this trade the
organization known as the gild merchant had grown up in each town.
The gild merchant seems to have included all of the population of the
town who habitually engaged in the business of selling, whether
commodities of their own manufacture or those they had previously
purchased. Membership in the gild was not exactly coincident with
burgess-ship; persons who lived outside of the town were sometimes
admitted into that organization, and, on the other hand, some
inhabitants of the town were not included among its members.
Nevertheless, since practically all of the townsmen made their living
by trade in some form or another, the group of burgesses and the group
of gild members could not have been very different. The authority of
the gild merchant within its field of trade regulation seems to have
been as complete as that of the town community as a whole in its field
of judicial, financial, and administrative jurisdiction. The gild
might therefore be defined as that form of organization of the
inhabitants of the town which controlled its trade and industry. The
principal reason for the existence of the gild was to preserve to its
own members the monopoly of trade. No one not in the gild merchant of
the town could buy or sell there except under conditions imposed by
the gild. Foreigners coming from other countries or traders from other
English towns were prohibited from buying or selling in any way that
might interfere with the interests of the gildsmen. They must buy and
sell at such times and in such places and only such articles as were
provided for by the gild regulations. They must in all cases pay the
town tolls, from which members of the gild were exempt. At
Southampton, for instance, we find the following provisions: "And no
one in the city of Southampton shall buy anything to sell again in the
same city unless he is of the gild merchant or of the franchise."
Similarly at Leicester, in 1260, it was ordained that no gildsman
should form a partnership with a stranger, allowing him to join in the
profits of the sale of wool or other merchandise.
[Illustration: Hall of Merchants' Company of York. (Lambert: _Two
Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown & Sons, Hull.)]
[Illustration: Interior of Hall of Merchants' Company of York.
(Lambert: _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown &
Sons, Hull.)]
As against outsiders the gild merchant was a protective body, as
regards its own members it was looked upon and constantly spoken of as
a fraternity. Its members must all share in the common expenditures,
they are called brethren of the society, their competition with one
another is reduced to its lowest limits. For instance, we find the
provision that "any one who is of the gild merchant may share in all
merchandise which another gildsman shall buy."
[Illustration: Earliest Merchant Gild Roll of the Borough of
Leicester. (Bateson: _Records of the Borough of Leicester_. Published
by C. J. Clay & Sons, Cambridge.)]
The presiding officer was usually known as the alderman, while the
names given to other officials, such as stewards, deans, bailiffs,
chaplains, skevins, and ushers, and the duties they performed, varied
greatly from time to time.
Meetings were held at different periods, sometimes annually, in many
cases more frequently. At these meetings new ordinances were passed,
officers elected, and other business transacted. It was also a
convivial occasion, a gild feast preceding or following the other
labors of the meeting. In some gilds the meeting was regularly known
as "the drinking." There were likewise frequent sittings of the
officials of the fraternity, devoted to the decision of disputes
between brethren, the admission of new members, the fining or
expulsion of offenders against the gild ordinances, and other routine
work. These meetings were known as "morrowspeches".
The greater part of the activity of the gild merchant consisted in the
holding of its meetings with their accompanying feasts, and in the
enforcement of its regulations upon its members and upon outsiders. It
fulfilled, however, many fraternal duties for its members. It is
provided in one set of statutes that, "If a gildsman be imprisoned in
England in time of peace, the alderman, with the steward and with one
of the skevins, shall go, at the cost of the gild, to procure the
deliverance of the one who is in prison." In another, "If any of the
brethren shall fall into poverty or misery, all the brethren are to
assist him by common consent out of the chattels of the house or
fraternity, or of their proper own." The funeral rites, especially,
were attended by the man's gild brethren. "And when a gildsman dies,
all those who are of the gild and are in the city shall attend the
service for the dead, and gildsmen shall bear the body and bring it to
the place of burial." The gild merchant also sometimes fulfilled
various religious, philanthropic, and charitable duties, not only to
its members, but to the public generally, and to the poor. The time of
the fullest development of the gild merchant varied, of course, in
different towns, but its widest expansion was probably in the early
part of the period we are studying, that is, during the thirteenth
century. Later it came to be in some towns indistinguishable from the
municipal government in general, its members the same as the
burgesses, its officers represented by the officers of the town. In
some other towns the gild merchant gradually lost its control over
trade, retaining only its fraternal, charitable, and religious
features. In still other cases the expression gradually lost all
definite significance and its meaning became a matter for antiquarian
dispute.
*16. The Craft Gilds.*--By the fourteenth century the gild merchant of
the town was a much less conspicuous institution than it had
previously been. Its decay was largely the result of the growth of a
group of organizations in each town which were spoken of as crafts,
fraternities, gilds, misteries, or often merely by the name of their
occupation, as "the spurriers," "the dyers," "the fishmongers." These
organizations are usually described in later writings as craft gilds.
It is not to be understood that the gild merchant and the craft gilds
never existed contemporaneously in any town. The former began earlier
and decayed before the craft gilds reached their height, but there was
a considerable period when it must have been a common thing for a man
to be a member both of the gild merchant of the town and of the
separate organization of his own trade. The later gilds seem to have
grown up in response to the needs of handicraft much as the gild
merchant had grown up to regulate trade, though trading occupations
also were eventually drawn into the craft gild form of organization.
The weavers seem to have been the earliest occupation to be organized
into a craft gild; but later almost every form of industry which gave
employment to a handful of craftsmen in any town had its separate
fraternity. Since even nearly allied trades, such as the glovers,
girdlers, pocket makers, skinners, white tawyers, and other workers in
leather; or the fletchers, the makers of arrows, the bowyers, the
makers of bows, and the stringers, the makers of bowstrings, were
organized into separate bodies, the number of craft gilds in any one
town was often very large. At London there were by 1350 at least as
many as forty, at York, some time later, more than fifty.
[Illustration: Old Townhall of Leicester, Formerly Hall of Corpus
Christi Gild. (Drawing made in 1826.)]