MONASTERIES
1. The Saxons learned to respect the quiet simple lives of the early
monks. They saw them toiling hard in their fields, bravely facing many
difficulties and hardships, and turning the wilderness into a garden.
At first each monk, from the abbot downwards, had to take his share in
the toil, wherever it was, and the monastery, as well as the vill, had
to produce all that it needed.
2. Men, who were not very good or very religious, began to respect
the lives and works of the monks. We find thanes and kings not only
allowing monks to settle on some of their unoccupied land, but making
over to them some of their own land, on condition that they and their
children after them might always have a share in the prayers of these
good men. We see, too, that whole vills came gradually into the hands
of some monasteries; so that the convent became the lord of the vill,
instead of a thane or a king.
3. Some convents made rapid progress, while others never prospered, but
in the course of time disappeared. We have seen that the vill and the
"town" grew up in much the same way, and were formed on the same plan.
There are, however, a good many towns which grew up round monasteries
in the first instance.
4. For example, King Offa II, at the end of the eighth century, founded
the monastery of St. Alban, giving to it a wide extent of land round
the ruins of the old city of Verulam. The monastery was built, and much
land brought under cultivation. We find the sixth abbot, Ulsinus, two
centuries later, encouraging people to settle round the walls of the
monastery. That monastery lay near one of the great roads of England;
many people were coming and going; so houses were built and a market
was established. Churches, too, were erected for the use of the people
who settled in the town. The abbot was the lord of this "town", and
the people dwelling in it were his tenants. He, like any other lord of
a "tun", or "vill", was responsible for the keeping of order and good
government on his land.
[Illustration: ST. ALBAN'S CATHEDRAL page 47]
5. St. Edmund's Bury, or Bury St. Edmund's, grew up round a monastery
which had been established in a lonely place; and there, also, arose in
time a flourishing town, under the rule of the abbot.
6. A number of towns, which to-day are cathedral cities, grew up round
the churches where the bishop and his principal clergy had their homes
and chief centres of work.
7. These things only came about very gradually. The monks who settled
first at Bury, or those whom King Offa settled by the ruins of Verulam,
never dreamed that in the years to come their convents would be great
land-owners, with many hundreds of tenants. But it was so; and the
monasteries at length formed one of the most important classes of
land-owners in the country; their special rights and privileges coming
to them so gradually, and so naturally, that no one realized exactly
what was taking place.
8. Those who entered a monastery, or embraced "the religious life",
intended to keep out of the world, and apart from its cares and
worries as much as they could. But the lands left to them had to be
looked after and cultivated. These did not always lie close round
the monastery--very frequently they were tracts of land in distant
counties,--and somebody had to look after them. New possessions mean
new responsibilities; and so we find that the monasteries had not only
to attend to the daily round of worship and work inside the walls of
the monastery, but had to carry on all the business belonging to great
estates as well.
9. So in time a monastery had to use the services of many men besides
monks; the monks became great employers of labour one way and another,
and this attracted to their towns a good many skilled workmen.
10. The times when the Danes ravaged the greater part of the country
were very trying to the life of English villages and towns. These
sea-rovers came, at first, as plunderers, and the destruction of towns,
churches, and monasteries was very great. Some monasteries, like
Crowland[4], suffered several times, and many were never rebuilt. But,
gradually, the invaders settled in England. They did not bring with
them an entirely new land system. As they settled down to farming and
village life, we find that land was held in almost exactly the same
manner as under Saxon customs.
11. Of course there were some differences, and those who have studied
the subject closely can indicate a good many points in which the Saxon
and Danish land customs differed from each other. The dangers to which
the Saxons had been exposed by the attacks of the Danes had put a great
deal of power into the hands of the thanes and the king. Thus, by the
time the Danes had settled in England, every vill and tun had got into
the hands of some lord or thane, or was in the king's hands. In Danish
settlements there seems always to have been an overlord, who led his
people in war and ruled in time of peace; though there was a class of
=freemen= amongst them which had special rights and privileges.
12. But the Danes were something more than tillers of the soil; they
were traders too, and "tuns" became in many places more like our
"towns" and trading-places than ever they had been before. In time
we find the largest towns in the Danish part of England--Leicester,
Lincoln, Derby, Nottingham, and Stamford--binding themselves together
to protect their trading interests.
=Summary.=--Land was gradually left to monasteries by kings and
nobles on condition that they and their families should always be
prayed for. The monasteries became holders of lands, often far
away from their houses, which had to be attended to. Towns grew up
round many monasteries, like St. Alban's and Bury St. Edmund's,
and the monastery was their overlord.
The Danes brought no new land system with them to England, though
amongst them there was a class of freemen. Towns grew to be
greater trading-places in Danish times.