CLERKS
1. Changes took place much more slowly in the Middle Ages than they do
now. First of all, the population was very much smaller, and hundreds
and hundreds of acres, now covered by big manufacturing towns, were
then unoccupied land.
2. At the time of the Norman Conquest the whole population of England
only numbered about 2,000,000 people; and in the time of King Henry
VII it was only 4,000,000; so that, in the course of 400 years, the
population had only doubled itself.
3. The people were not crowded into the towns. For instance, in the
time of King Edward III, Colchester was one of the large towns, yet it
had only 350 houses, in which 3000 people lived, all told. There were
only nine larger towns in the country at that time.
4. The bulk of the people were living in the villages, in the various
manors, not in the towns. Many things prevented the population from
growing very rapidly--disease, famine, and war kept it down. Death was
the punishment for a very large number of offences, so that it is not
to be wondered at that the population did not increase very fast.
5. The population was divided into two distinct classes--those who
were =clergy=, or =clerks=, and those who were not. By "clergy" we
understand, in these days, "ministers of religion"; but the word had a
very different meaning in the Middle Ages.
6. In early Saxon times religion and learning were very closely
related. Colleges and monasteries were centres of learning, and
bishops, abbots, priests, and monks took the lead in matters in
which a knowledge of reading and writing was required. Folk who had
a leaning towards learning naturally became connected with colleges
or monasteries. They began as scholars, and then were admitted, or
=ordained=, to one of the lower orders of the ministry--often when they
were still only boys.
7. There are many thousands of boys to-day who are choir-boys. In early
times those admitted to such an office as that had to be ordained, or
set apart for the purpose, by the bishop. That ordaining made them
=clerks= or clergy; and they were under the authority of the bishop or
his officers. If they did wrong, they were tried and punished in the
=bishop's court=.
8. In the course of years there grew up, side by side, two different
sets of courts of justice, the =Church Courts= and the =King's Courts=,
which were guided by different laws. The laws which ruled the Church
Courts were much more merciful than those which ruled the civil or
King's Courts. Death was the punishment for almost every offence tried
in the King's Courts and in the Manor Courts; but in the Church Courts
the punishments were much less severe, and the culprit had a much
better chance of "turning over a new leaf".
9. If a man was brought before the King's Court charged with a crime,
he could call for a book. If he could read a few sentences, that was
taken to show that he was a clerk, and he could claim to be tried by
the Church Court. That is, he could claim "benefit of clergy".
10. You can readily see that such a state of things, however good
it may have been at the first, was dreadfully abused in the course
of time. What at first had been merciful and just became in time
mischievous and dangerous. The great struggle between King Henry II and
Archbishop Thomas à Becket had to do with the power of these two sets
of courts, the Church Courts and the King's Courts--it had to do with
government, _not_ with religion and religious matters.
11. Clerks, or the clergy, were drawn from all classes of society, from
the royal family down to the serfs on the manors. In fact, before the
time of the Black Death, the only way in which a serf could become a
freeman was by buying his freedom or by becoming a clerk. A serf who
wanted his son to rise to a better position than his own would try to
get him made a clerk; for the moment he became a clerk he was a =free
man=.
12. But to attain his purpose the serf must first have the permission
of his master or overlord. All overlords were not tyrants by any
means. The serf might do his master a good turn--save his life, for
instance--and in return his master would set him free, or allow his son
to be taught by the priest and ordained; or he might let him join a
college or monastery.
13. Many and many a priest, clerk, or monk, rose from being a serf
or a villein in this way; so many, in fact, that a writer in the
twelfth century complains that villeins were attempting "to educate
their ignoble offspring". Later still, Piers Plowman complains that
"bondsmen's bairns could be made bishops".
14. There was a very sharp line of division between clerks and those
who were not clerks, and the privileges which clerks had, led to much
squabbling and many disorders.
15. Kings and nobles employed clerks on their business, for the simple
reason that they were able men. From the clerks, too, were drawn the
men whom we should now call =lawyers=. We have seen that there was a
vast deal of writing to be done in those days in connection with the
towns and the manors. Amongst these clerks were good men and bad men;
some who loved learning for its own sake; some who found that it paid
better than anything else; and others who misused their privileges, did
much evil, and brought the name of "clerk" into sad disgrace.
=Summary.=--The population of England in the Middle Ages was
small. At the Conquest it numbered 2,000,000, and in the time of
King Henry VII it was only 4,000,000. It was kept down by famine,
wars, and death-punishments, as well as by disease.
The population was divided into two great divisions, _clerks_
and those who were _not clerks_. Religion and learning in early
days went together. Clerks were under the rule of the bishop,
other folk under the king's rule. "Benefit of clergy" in time was
misused. Clerks were needed for the king's business, and to do
all sorts of work where learning was required. From them sprang
the _lawyers_. Clerks were drawn from all classes of society, and
they were very popular, because it was the only way by which the
son of a serf might become a _free man_. Many of the greatest
clerks rose from very humble origin. Many of these clerks greatly
misused their privileges, and in time their order, or class, got
to be much disliked.