Possessions of the different classes in England--Condition
of Colchester in 1301--Tools, stock-in-trade, furniture,
&c.--Supply of food--Comparative duration of human
life--Want of facilities for commerce--Plenty and
civilization not productive of effeminacy--Colchester in the
present day.
It will be desirable to exhibit something like an average view of the
extent of the possessions of all classes of society, and especially of
the middling and labouring classes, in this country, at a period when
the mutual rights of capitalists and labourers were so little understood
as in the fourteenth century. We have shown how, at that time, there was
a general round of oppression, resulting from ignorance of the proper
interests of the productive classes; and it would be well also to show
that during this period of disunion and contest between capital and
labour, each plundering the other, and both plundered by arbitrary
power, whether of the nobles or the crown, production went on very
slowly and imperfectly, and that there was little to plunder and less to
exchange. It is difficult to find the materials for such an inquiry.
There is no very accurate record of the condition of the various classes
of society before the invention of printing; and even after that
invention we must be content to form our conclusions from a few
scattered facts not recorded for any such purpose as we have in view,
but to be gathered incidentally from slight observations which have come
down to us. Yet enough remains to enable us to form a picture of
tolerable accuracy; and in some points to establish conclusions which
cannot be disputed. It is in the same way that our knowledge of the
former state of the physical world must be derived from relics of that
former state, to which the inquiries and comparisons of the present
times have given an historical value. We know, for instance, that the
animals of the southern countries once abounded in these islands,
because we occasionally find their bones in quantities which could not
have been accumulated unless such animals had been once native to these
parts; and the remains of sea-shells upon the tops of hills now under
the plough show us that even these heights have been heaved up from the
bosom of the ocean. In the same way, although we have no complete
picture of the state of property at the period to which we allude, we
have evidence enough to describe that state from records which may be
applied to this end, although preserved for a very different object.
In the reign of Edward III., Colchester, in Essex, was considered the
tenth city in England in point of population. It then paid a poll-tax
for 2955 lay persons. In 1301, about half a century before, the number
of inhabitant housekeepers was 390; and the whole household furniture,
utensils, clothes, money, cattle, corn, and every other property found
in the town, was valued at 518_l._ 16_s._ 0-3/4_d._ This valuation took
place on occasion of a subsidy or tax to the crown, to carry on a war
against France; and the particulars, which are preserved in the Rolls of
Parliament, exhibit with great minuteness the classes of persons then
inhabiting that town, and the sort of property which each respectively
possessed. The trades exercised in Colchester were the following:--baker,
barber, blacksmith, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carter, cobbler,
cook, dyer, fisherman, fuller, furrier, girdler, glass-seller, glover,
linen-draper, mercer and spice-seller, miller, mustard and vinegar
seller, old clothes seller, saddler, tailor, tanner, tiler, weaver,
wood-cutter, and wool-comber. If we look at a small town of the present
day, where such a variety of occupations are carried on, we shall find
that each tradesman has a considerable stock of commodities, abundance
of furniture and utensils, clothes in plenty, some plate, books, and
many articles of convenience and luxury to which the most wealthy
dealers and mechanics of Colchester of the fourteenth century were utter
strangers. That many places at that time were much poorer than
Colchester there can be no doubt: for here we see the division of labour
was pretty extensive, and that is always a proof that production is
going forward, however imperfectly. We see, too, that the tradesmen were
connected with manufactures in the ordinary use of the term; or there
would not have been the dyer, the glover, the linen-draper, the tanner,
the weaver, and the wool-comber. There must have been a demand for
articles of foreign commerce, too, in this town, or we should not have
had the spice-seller. Yet, with all these various occupations,
indicating considerable profitable industry when compared with earlier
stages in the history of this country, the whole stock of the town was
valued at little more than 500_l._ Nor let it be supposed that this
smallness of capital can be accounted for by the difference in the
standard of money; although that difference is considerable. We may
indeed satisfy ourselves of the small extent of the capital of
individuals at that day, by referring to the inventory of the articles
upon which the tax we have mentioned was laid at Colchester.
The whole stock of a carpenter's tools was valued at one shilling. They
altogether consisted of two broad axes, an adze, a square, and a navegor
or spoke-shave. Rough work must the carpenter have been able to perform
with these humble instruments; but then let it be remembered that there
was little capital to pay him for finer work, and that very little fine
work was consequently required. The three hundred and ninety
housekeepers of Colchester then lived in mud huts, with a rough door and
no chimney. Harrison, speaking of the manners of a century later than
the period we are describing, says, "There were very few chimneys even
in capital towns: the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued
out at the roof, or door, or window. The houses were wattled, and
plastered over with clay; and all the furniture and utensils were of
wood. The people slept on straw pallets, with a log of wood for a
pillow." When this old historian wrote, he mentions the erection of
chimneys as a modern luxury. We had improved little upon our Anglo-Saxon
ancestors in the article of chimneys. In their time Alcuin, an abbot who
had ten thousand vassals, writes to the emperor at Rome that he
preferred living in his smoky house to visiting the palaces of Italy.
This was in the ninth century. Five hundred years had made little
difference in the chimneys of Colchester. The nobility had hangings
against the walls to keep out the wind, which crept in through the
crevices which the builder's bungling art had left: the middle orders
had no hangings. Shakspere alludes to this rough building of houses even
in his time:--
"Imperial Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."
Even the nobility went without glass to their windows in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. "Of old time," says Harrison, "our country
houses, instead of glass, did use much lattice, and that made either of
wicker or fine rifts of oak, in checkerwise." When glass was introduced,
it was for a long time so scarce that at Alnwick Castle, in 1567, the
glass was ordered to be taken out of the windows, and laid up in safety,
when the lord was absent.
The mercer's stock-in-trade at Colchester was much upon a level with the
carpenter's tools. It was somewhat various, but very limited in
quantity. The whole comprised a piece of woollen cloth, some silk and
fine linen, flannel, silk purses, gloves, girdles, leather purses, and
needle-work; and it was altogether valued at 3_l._ There appears to have
been another dealer in cloth and linen in the town, whose store was
equally scanty. We were not much improved in the use of linen a century
later. We learn from the Earl of Northumberland's household book, whose
family was large enough to consume one hundred and sixty gallons of
mustard during the winter with their salt meat, that only seventy ells
of linen were allowed for a year's consumption. In the fourteenth
century none but the clergy and nobility wore white linen. As industry
increased, and the cleanliness of the middle classes increased with it,
the use of white linen became more general; but even at the end of the
next century, when printing was invented, the paper-makers had the
greatest difficulty in procuring rags for their manufacture; and so
careful were the people of every class to preserve their linen, that
night-clothes were never worn. Linen was so dear that Shakspere makes
Falstaff's shirts eight shillings an ell. The more sumptuous articles of
a mercer's stock were treasured in rich families from generation to
generation; and even the wives of the nobility did not disdain to
mention in their wills a particular article of clothing, which they left
to the use of a daughter or a friend. The solitary old coat of a baker
came into the Colchester valuation; nor is this to be wondered at, when
we find that even the soldiers at the battle of Bannockburn, about this
time, were described by an old rhymer as "well near all naked."
The household furniture found in use amongst the families of Colchester
consisted, in the more wealthy, of an occasional bed, a brass pot, a
brass cup, a gridiron, and a rug or two, and perhaps a towel. Of chairs
and tables we hear nothing. We learn from the Chronicles of Brantome, a
French historian of these days, that even the nobility sat upon chests
in which they kept their clothes and linen. Harrison, whose testimony we
have already given to the poverty of these times, affirms, that if a man
in seven years after marriage could purchase a flock bed, and a sack of
chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself as well lodged as the
lord of the town, "who peradventure lay seldom on a bed entirely of
feathers." An old tenure in England, before these times, binds the
vassal to find straw even for the king's bed. The beds of flock, the few
articles of furniture, the absence of chairs and tables, would have been
of less consequence to the comfort and health of the people, if they had
been clean; but cleanliness never exists without a certain possession of
domestic conveniences. The people of England, in the days of which we
are speaking, were not famed for their attention to this particular.
Thomas a Becket was reputed extravagantly nice, because he had his
parlour strewed every day with clean straw. As late as the reign of
Henry VIII., Erasmus, a celebrated scholar of Holland, who visited
England, complains that the nastiness of the people was the cause of the
frequent plagues that destroyed them; and he says, "their floors are
commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lie unmolested a
collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of
dogs and cats, and of everything that is nauseous." The elder Scaliger,
another scholar who came to England, abuses the people for giving him no
convenience to wash his hands. Glass vessels were scarce, and pottery
was almost wholly unknown. The Earl of Northumberland, whom we have
mentioned, breakfasted on trenchers and dined on pewter. While such
universal slovenliness prevailed as Erasmus has described, it is not
likely that much attention was generally paid to the cultivation of the
mind. Before the invention of printing, at the time of the valuation of
Colchester, books in manuscript, from their extreme costliness, could be
purchased only by princes. The royal library of Paris, in 1378,
consisted of nine hundred and nine volumes,--an extraordinary number.
The same library now comprises upwards of four hundred thousand volumes.
But it may fairly be assumed that, where one book could be obtained in
the fourteenth century by persons of the working classes, four hundred
thousand may be as easily obtained now. Here then was a privation which
existed five hundred years ago, which debarred our ancestors from more
profit and pleasure than the want of beds, and chairs, and linen; and
probably, if this privation had continued, and men therefore had not
cultivated their understandings, they would not have learnt to give any
really profitable direction to their labour, and we should still have
been as scantily supplied with furniture and clothes as the good people
of Colchester of whom we have been speaking.
Let us see what accumulated supply, or capital, of food the inhabitants
of England had five centuries ago. Possessions in cattle are the
earliest riches of most countries. We have seen that cattle was called
"live money;" and it is supposed that the word capital, which means
stock generally, was derived from the Latin word "capita," or heads of
beasts. The law-term "chattels" is also supposed to come from cattle.
These circumstances show that cattle were the chief property of our
ancestors. Vast herds of swine constituted the great provision for the
support of the people; and these were principally fed, as they are even
now in the New Forest, upon acorns and beech-mast. In Domesday Book, a
valuation of the time of William the Conqueror, it is always mentioned
how many hogs each estate can maintain. Hume the historian, in his
Essays, alluding to the great herds of swine described by Polybius as
existing in Italy and Greece, concludes that the country was thinly
peopled and badly cultivated; and there can be no doubt that the same
argument may be applied to England in the fourteenth century, although
many swine were maintained in forests preserved for fuel. The hogs
wandered about the country in a half-wild state, destroying, probably,
more than they profitably consumed; and they were badly fed, if we may
judge from a statute of 1402, which alleges the great decrease of fish
in the Thames and other rivers, by the practice of feeding hogs with the
fry caught at the weirs. The hogs' flesh of England was constantly
salted for the winter's food. The people had little fodder for cattle in
the winter, and therefore they only tasted fresh meat in the summer
season. The mustard and vinegar seller formed a business at Colchester,
to furnish a relish for the pork. Stocks of salted meat are mentioned in
the inventory of many houses there, and live hogs as commonly. But
salted flesh is not food to be eaten constantly, and with little
vegetable food, without severe injury to the health. In the early part
of the reign of Henry VIII., not a cabbage, carrot, turnip, or other
edible root, grew in England. Two or three centuries before, certainly,
the monasteries had gardens with a variety of vegetables; but nearly
all the gardens of the laity were destroyed in the wars between the
houses of York and Lancaster. Harrison speaks of wheaten bread as being
chiefly used by the gentry for their own tables; and adds that the
artificer and labourer are "driven to content themselves with
horse-corn, beans, peason, oats, tares, and lentils." There is no doubt
that the average duration of human life was at that period not one-half
as long as at the present day. The constant use of salted meat, with
little or no vegetable addition, doubtless contributed to the shortening
of life, to say nothing of the large numbers constantly swept away by
pestilence and famine. Till lemon-juice was used as a remedy for scurvy
amongst our seamen, who also are compelled to eat salted meat without
green vegetables, the destruction of life in the navy was something
incredible. Admiral Hosier buried his ships' companies twice during a
West India voyage in 1726, partly from the unhealthiness of the Spanish
coast, but chiefly from the ravages of scurvy. Bad food and want of
cleanliness swept away the people of the middle ages, by ravages upon
their health that the limited medical skill of those days could never
resist. Matthew Paris, an historian of that period, states that there
were in his time twenty thousand hospitals for lepers in Europe.
The slow accumulation of capital in the early stages of the civilization
of a country is in a great measure caused by the indisposition of the
people to unite for a common good in public works, and the inability of
governments to carry on these works, when their principal concern is
war, foreign or domestic. The foundations of the civilization of this
country were probably laid by our Roman conquerors, who carried roads
through the island, and taught us how to cultivate our soil. Yet
improvement went on so slowly that, even a hundred years after the
Romans were settled here, the whole country was described as marshy. For
centuries after the Romans made the Watling-street and a few other
roads, one district was separated from another by the general want of
these great means of communication. Bracton, a law-writer of the period
we have been so constantly mentioning, holds that, if a man being at
Oxford engage to pay money the same day in London, he shall be
discharged of his contract, as he undertakes a physical impossibility.
We find, as late as the time of Elizabeth, that her Majesty would not
stay to breakfast at Cambridge because she had to travel twelve miles
before she could come to the place, Hinchinbrook, where she desired to
sleep. Where there were no roads, there could be few or no markets. An
act of parliament of 1272 says that the religious houses should not be
compelled to _sell_ their provisions--a proof that there were no
considerable stores except in the religious houses. The difficulty of
navigation was so great, that William Longsword, son of Henry II.,
returning from France, was during three months tossed upon the sea
before he could make a port in Cornwall. Looking, therefore, to the want
of commerce proceeding from the want of communication--looking to the
small stock of property accumulated to support labour--and looking, as
we have previously done, to the incessant contests between the small
capital and the misdirected labour, both feeble, because they worked
without skill--we cannot be surprised that the poverty of which we have
exhibited a faint picture should have endured for several centuries, and
that the industry of our forefathers must have had a long and painful
struggle before it could have bequeathed to us such magnificent
accumulations as we now enjoy.
The writers who lived at the periods when Europe was slowly emerging
from ignorance and poverty, through the first slight union of capital
and labour as voluntary exchangers, complain of the increase of comforts
as indications of the growing luxury and effeminacy of the people.
Harrison says, "In times past men were contented to dwell in houses
builded of sallow, willow, plum-tree, or elm; so that the use of oak was
dedicated to churches, religious houses, princes' palaces, noblemen's
lodgings, and navigation. But now, these are rejected, and nothing but
oak any whit regarded. And yet see the change; for when our houses were
builded of willow, then had we oaken men; but now that our houses are
made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but many, through
Persian delicacy crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore
alteration. In those days, the courage of the owner was a sufficient
defence to keep the house in safety; but now, the assurance of the
timber, double doors, locks, and bolts, must defend the man from
robbing. Now have we many chimneys, and our tenderlings complain of
rheums, catarrhs, and poses. Then had we none but rere-dosses, and our
heads did never ache." These complaints go upon the same principle that
made it a merit in Epictetus, the Greek philosopher, to have had no door
to his hovel. We think he would have been a wiser man if he had
contrived to have had a door. A story is told of a Highland chief, Sir
Evan Cameron, that himself and a party of his followers being benighted,
and compelled to sleep in the open air, when his son rolled up a ball of
snow and laid his head upon it for a pillow, the rough old man kicked it
away, exclaiming, "What, sir! are you turning effeminate?" We doubt
whether Sir Evan Cameron and his men were braver than the English
officers who fought at Waterloo; and yet many of these marched from the
ball-room at Brussels in their holiday attire, and won the battle in
silk stockings. It is an old notion that plenty of the necessaries and
conveniences of life renders a nation feeble. We are told that the
Carthaginian soldiers whom Hannibal carried into Italy were suddenly
rendered effeminate by the abundance which they found around them at
Capua. The commissariat of modern nations goes upon another principle;
and believes that unless the soldier has plenty of food and clothing he
will not fight with alacrity and steadiness. The half-starved soldiers
of Henry V. won the battle of Agincourt; but it was not because they
were half-starved, but because they roused their native courage to cut
their way out of the peril by which they were surrounded. The Russians
of our time had a notion that the English could not fight on land,
because for forty years we had been a commercial instead of a military
nation. The battle of the Alma corrected their mistake. When we hear of
ancient nations being enervated by abundance, we may be sure that the
abundance was almost entirely devoured by a few tyrants, and that the
bulk of the people were rendered weak by the destitution which resulted
from the unnatural distribution of riches. We read of the luxury of the
court of Persia--the pomp of the seraglios, and of the palaces--the
lights, the music, the dancing, the perfumes, the silks, the gold, and
the diamonds. The people are held to be effeminate. The Russians, from
the hardy north, can lay the Persian monarchy any day at their feet. Is
this national weakness caused by the excess of production amongst the
people, giving them so extravagant a command over the necessaries and
luxuries of life that they have nothing to do but drink of the full cup
of enjoyment? Mr. Fraser, an English traveller, thus describes the
appearance of a part of the country which he visited in 1821:--"The
plain of Yezid-Khaust presented a truly lamentable picture of the
general decline of prosperity in Persia. Ruins of large villages thickly
scattered about with the skeleton-like walls of caravansaries and
gardens, all telling of better times, stood like _memento moris_
(remembrances of death) to kingdoms and governments; and the whole plain
was dotted over with small mounds, which indicate the course of cannauts
(artificial streams for watering the soil), once the source of riches
and fertility, now all choked up and dry; for there is neither man nor
cultivation to require their aid." Was it the luxury of the people which
produced this decay--the increase of their means of production--their
advancement in skill and capital; or some external cause which repressed
production, and destroyed accumulation both of outward wealth and
knowledge? "Such is the character of their rulers," says Mr. Fraser,
"that the only measure of their demands is the power to extort on one
hand, and the ability to give or retain on the other." Where such a
system prevails, all accumulated labour is concealed, for it would
otherwise be plundered. It does not freely and openly work to encourage
new labour. Burckhardt, the traveller of Nubia, saw a farmer who had
been plundered of everything by the pacha, because it came to the ears
of the savage ruler that the unhappy man was in the habit of eating
wheaten bread; and that, he thought, was too great a luxury for a
subject. If such oppressions had not long ago been put down in England,
we should still have been in the state of Colchester in the fourteenth
century. When these iniquities prevailed, and there was neither freedom
of industry nor security of property--when capital and labour were not
united--when all men consequently worked unprofitably, because they
worked without division of labour, accumulation of knowledge, and union
of forces--there was universal poverty, because there was feeble
production. Slow and painful were the steps which capital and labour had
to make before they could emerge, even in part, from this feeble and
degraded state. But that they have made a wonderful advance in five
hundred years will not be difficult to show. It may assist us in this
view if we compare the Colchester of the nineteenth century with the
Colchester of the fourteenth, in a few particulars.
In the reign of Edward III. Colchester numbered 359 houses of mud,
without chimneys, and with latticed windows. In the reign of Queen
Victoria, according to the census of 1851, it has 4145 inhabited houses,
containing a population of 19,443 males and females. The houses of the
better class, those rented at ten pounds a year and upwards, are
commonly built of brick, and slated or tiled; secured against wind and
weather; with glazed windows and with chimneys; and generally well
ventilated. The worst of these houses are supplied, as fixtures, with a
great number of conveniences, such as grates, and cupboards, and
fastenings. To many of such houses gardens are attached, wherein are
raised vegetables and fruits that kings could not command two centuries
ago. Houses such as these are composed of several rooms--not of one room
only, where the people are compelled to eat and sleep and perform every
office, perhaps in company with pigs and cattle--but of a kitchen, and
often a parlour, and several bedrooms. These rooms are furnished with
tables, and chairs, and beds, and cooking-utensils. There is ordinarily,
too, something for ornament and something for instruction;--a piece or
two of china, silver spoons, books, and not unfrequently a watch or
clock. The useful pottery is abundant and of really elegant forms and
colours; drinking-vessels of glass are universal. The inhabitants are
not scantily supplied with clothes. The females are decently dressed,
having a constant change of linen, and gowns of various patterns and
degrees of fineness. Some, even of the humbler classes, are not thought
to exceed the proper appearance of their station if they wear silk. The
men have decent working habits, strong shoes and hats, and a respectable
suit for Sundays, of cloth often as good as is worn by the highest in
the land. Every one is clean; for no house above the few hovels which
still deform the country is without soap and bowls for washing, and it
is the business of the females to take care that the linen of the family
is constantly washed. The children, very generally, receive instruction
in some public establishment; and when the labour of the day is over,
the father thinks the time unprofitably spent unless he burns a candle
to enable him to read a book or the newspaper. The food which is
ordinarily consumed is of the best quality. Wheaten bread is no longer
confined to the rich; animal food is not necessarily salted, and salt
meat is used principally as a variety; vegetables of many sorts are
plenteous in every market, and these by a succession of care are brought
to higher perfection than in the countries of more genial climate from
which we have imported them; the productions too of distant regions,
such as spices, and coffee, and tea, and sugar, are universally consumed
almost by the humblest in the land. Fuel, also, of the best quality, is
abundant and comparatively cheap.
If we look at the public conveniences of a modern English town, we shall
find the same striking contrast. Water is brought not only into every
street, but into every house; the dust and dirt of a family is regularly
removed without bustle or unpleasantness; the streets are paved, and
lighted at night; roads in the highest state of excellence connect the
town with the whole kingdom, and by means of railroads a man can travel
several hundred miles in a few hours, and more readily than he could ten
miles in the old time; and canal and sea navigation transport the
weightiest goods with the greatest facility from each district to the
other, and from each town to the other, so that all are enabled to apply
their industry to what is most profitable for each and all. Every man,
therefore, may satisfy his wants, according to his means, at the least
possible expense of the transport of commodities. Every tradesman has a
stock ready to meet the demand; and thus the stock of a very moderately
wealthy tradesman of the Colchester of the present day is worth more
than all the stock of all the different trades that were carried on in
the same place in the fourteenth century. The condition of a town like
Colchester--a flourishing market-town in an agricultural
district--offers a fair point of comparison with a town of the time of
Edward III.