An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge E-Book

Ambrose Bierce

• Herausgeber: arslan
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer. Bierce's book The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.

Leseprobe

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE Ambrose Bierce

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY—THE ROMANS AND THEIR SUCCESSORS—TRADE

§ 1.

ALTHOUGH the industrial history of England does not properly begin until the settlement made by the Norman Conquest, it is nevertheless impossible to omit some reference to the previous economic condition of the country. As everybody knows, the Romans were the first to invade Britain, although it had been known, probably for centuries previously, to the Phenicians and Carthaginians who used to sail here for its tin and lead. The Romans, however, first colonized the country and began to develop its resources; and they succeeded in introducing various industries and in opening up a considerable commerce.

Under Roman sway Britain reached a high level of prosperity, and there is abundant evidence of this fact from Roman writers. They speak of the rich natural productions of Britain, of its numerous flocks and herds, of its minerals, of its various commercial facilities, and of the revenues derived from these sources. {2}

We know that there were no less than fifty-nine cities in Britain in the middle of the third century A.D., and the population was probably fairly large, though we have no certain statistics upon this point.1 Large quantities of corn were exported from the land, as many as 800 vessels being sent on one occasion to procure corn for the Roman cities in Germany. This shows a fairly advanced agriculture. Tin also was another important export, as indeed it has always been; and British slaves were constantly sent to the market at Rome. In the country itself great material works, such as walled towns, paved roads, aqueducts, and great public buildings were undertaken, and remained to testify to the greatness of their builders long after their name had become a distant memory. The military system of the Romans helped to produce industrial results, for the Roman soldiers took a prominent part in road-making, building dykes, working mines, and the great engineering operations that marked the Roman rule. The chief towns very largely owed their origin to their importance as military stations; and most of them, such as York, London, Chester, Lincoln, Bath, and Colchester, have continued ever since to be considerable centres of population, though of course with occasional fluctuations. When, however, the Romans finally left Britain (in A.D. 410), both trade and agriculture began to sink; the towns decayed; and for centuries England became the battle-ground of various predatory tribes from the Continent, who gradually effected a settlement, first in many kingdoms, but finally in one, and became known as “the English,” or the Anglo-Saxon nationality (A.D. 827).

 1 See note 1, p. 243, on Population of Roman Britain.

§ 2. Trade in the Anglo-Saxon period

—But although Egbert became Lord of the Saxons in 827, it was not till {3} the reign of Edgar (958–975) that England became one united kingdom, and indeed throughout this period internal war was almost constant, and naturally prevented any great growth of home industry or foreign trade. The home industry, such as it was, was almost entirely agricultural, under a system of which I shall speak in the next chapter. The separate communities living in the country villages or small towns were very much disinclined for mutual intercourse, and endeavoured as far as possible to be each a self-sufficing economic whole, getting their food and clothing, coarse and rough as it generally was, from their own flocks and herds, or from their own land in the mark or manor.2 Hence only the simplest domestic arts and manufactures were carried on.

 2 See next chapter.

§ 3. Internal Trade. Money

—But, however much a community may desire to be self-sufficing, it cannot be so entirely. Differences of soil, mineral wealth, and other advantages cause one community to require what another has in abundance. Salt, for instance, was largely in request for salting meat for the winter, and it cannot be universally procured in England. Hence local markets arose, at first always on the neutral boundary between two marks,3 the place of the market being marked by the boundary stone, the origin of the later “market cross.” These markets at first took place only at stated times during the year. Shrines and burial-places of noted men were the most frequented spots for such annual fairs. Thus, e.g., the origin of Glasgow may be traced from the burial-place of St Ninian (A.D. 570). There seems to have been a well-defined, though small, trading class; but, at any rate at first, most people of different occupations met {4} at well-known, convenient places, and bartered without the assistance of any kind of middlemen.

 3 See note 2, p. 243, on Markets on Boundaries.

Mere barter, however, is tedious and cumbersome; and although, up to the time of Alfred (A.D. 870), a large proportion, though not the whole, of English internal trade was carried on in this fashion, the use of metals for exchange begins to become common in the ninth century; and in A.D. 900 regular money payments by tenants are found recorded. And when we come to the levy of the Danegeld (A.D. 991)—the tax raised by Ethelred as a bribe to the Danes—it is clear that money coinage must have been widely diffused and in general circulation.

§ 4. Foreign Trade

—Trade of all kinds had suffered a severe blow when the Romans quitted Britain, but during the Anglo-Saxon period English merchants still did a certain amount of foreign trade. They were encouraged too in this by a doom, of Danish origin,4 which provided that “if a merchant thrived so that he fared thrice over the sea by his own means, then was he of thane-right worthy,” which gave him a comparatively high rank. The settlement of German merchants in London, pointing to some continental trade, also dates from the time of Ethelred the Unready (about A.D. 1000). Much of this foreign trade lay in the treasures of precious metals and embroideries, which were imported for use in monasteries. It is interesting, by the way, to note that St Dunstan (who died in 988) encouraged handicraft work in metals, especially in ironwork. The exports from England were chiefly wool—which we shall afterwards see becomes of great importance—some agricultural produce, and also, as before, lead and tin. English merchants we know went to Marseilles, and others frequented the great French fairs of Rouen and St Denis in the ninth century; while, {5} rather earlier, we have a most interesting document, our first treaty of commerce in fact, dated A.D. 796, by which Karl the Great, or Charlemagne, as some people call him, grants protection to certain English traders from Mercia. And in King Alfred’s days one English bishop even “penetrated prosperously” to India with the king’s gifts to the shrine of St Thomas.

 4 See note 3, p. 243, on Danish Influence on Commerce.

§ 5. General Summary

—Taking a general view of the period between the Saxon Conquest and the Norman Conquest, we see that crafts and manufactures were few and simple, being confined as far as possible to separate and isolated communities. Fine arts, and works in metal and embroideries were limited to the monasteries, which also imported them. The immense mineral wealth of the island in iron and coal was untouched. Trade was small, though undoubtedly developing. The mass of the population was engaged in agriculture, and every man had, so to speak, a stake in the land, belonging to a manor or parish. A landless man was altogether outside the pale of social life. The owners of the land, and the method of its cultivation, will occupy us in the next chapter.

CHAPTER II THE LAND: ITS OWNERS AND CULTIVATORS

§ 1. The Mark

—We have just said that the population of England as a whole was almost entirely engaged in agriculture; and indeed for some centuries onward this industry was by far the most important in the country. Now, it is impossible to understand the conditions of this industry without first glancing at the tenure of land as existing about this time. It has been thought, but it is {6} not at all certain, that in very early times before the tribes afterwards called English had crossed over to England, or perhaps even before they had arrived in Europe, all land was held in common by various communities of people, perhaps at first with only a few families in each. The land occupied by this community (whether it was a whole tribe or a few families) had probably been cleared away from the original forests or wastes, and was certainly separated from all other communities by a fixed boundary or mark,5 whence the whole land thus separated off was called a mark. Within this mark was the primitive village or “township,” where each member of the community had his house, and where each had a common share in the land. This land was of three kinds—(1) The forest, or waste land, from which the mark had been originally cleared, useful for rough natural pasture, but uncultivated. (2) The pasture land, sometimes enclosed and sometimes open, in which each mark-man looked after his own hay, and stacked it for the winter, and which was divided into allotments for each member. (3) The arable land, which also was divided into allotments for each mark-man. To settle any question relating to the division and use of the land, or to any other business of common importance, the members of the mark, or mark-men, met in a common council called the mark-moot, an institution of which relics survived for many centuries. This council, and the mark generally, formed the political, social, and economic unit of the early English tribes. How far it actually existed when these tribes occupied England it is difficult to say, and it is probable that it had already undergone considerable transformation towards what is called the manorial {7} system. But this much is certain, that in England, as in Germany, traces of communal life still remain. Our commons, still numerous in spite of hundreds of enclosures, and the names of places ending in ing, which termination frequently implies a primitive family settlement, are evidences which remain among us to-day. And it is only comparatively recently that the “common fields,” yearly divided among the commoners of a parish, together with the “three-field system,” which this allotment involved, have disappeared from our English agriculture.

 5 For a criticism of the mark theory see Industry in England, pp. 47–61.

§ 2. The Manor

—But when we come to the time when the Anglo-Saxons had made a final settlement, and were ruled by one king, we find a different system prevailing—i.e. the manorial system. The word “manor” is a Norman name for the Saxon “township,” or community, and it differs from the mark in this: the mark6 was a group of households organized and governed on a common, democratic basis, while in the manor we find an autocratic organization and government, whereby a group of tenants acknowledge the superior position and authority of a “lord of the manor.” But although “manor” is a Norman name, the change from the old mark system had taken place long before the Norman Conquest, and even if perhaps occasional independent communities still existed, they were completely abolished under the Norman rule. The great feature of the manor was, that it was subject to a “lord,” who owned absolutely a certain portion of the land therein, and had rights of rent (paid in services, or food, or money, or in all three) over the rest of the land. It is probable that the lord of the manor had gained his position under a promise of aiding and protecting his humbler brethren; but, even in later {8} times, he had to acknowledge certain rights belonging to them.

 6 i.e. supposing it ever existed.

§ 3. Combined Agriculture

—In the manor, just as in the earlier stage, all agriculture was carried on collectively by the tenants of the manor. Men gathered together their oxen to form the usual team of eight wherewith to drag the plough, pastured their cattle in common, and employed a common swineherd or shepherd for their pigs and sheep.

The distinctive feature of this combined agriculture was the three-field system. All the arable land near a village was divided into three strips, and was sown in the following manner:—A field was sown with wheat or rye in the autumn of one year; but owing to the slowness of primitive farming this crop would not be reaped in time for autumn sowing the next year, so the sowing took place in the following spring, the next crop being oats or barley; after this crop the land lay fallow for a year. Hence, of these three strips, every year one had wheat or rye, another oats or barley, while the third was fallow. The land of each individual was necessarily scattered between the various plots of his neighbours, so that each might have a fair share in land of good quality. This style of agriculture, of course, produced very meagre results, but it seems to have been sufficient for the simple wants of the occupiers of that epoch.

§ 4. The Feudal System

—In the next period we shall see this manorial system consolidated and organized under the Norman rule, and so may defer a full description of a typical manor till then. Here we may say that the manor is closely connected with the feudal system, which, it must be remembered, had begun a considerable time before the Norman Conquest. For the manor afforded a convenient political and social unit for the estimation of {9} feudal services, and the lord of the manor became more and more a feudal chief. But it must be understood that the manorial system was not the same as the feudal system, though it helped to prepare the way for it; and eventually the lords of the manors became nominally the protectors, but really the masters of the village husbandmen dwelling around them. The lord professed to take them under his protection if they surrendered their independence to him, and it was probably owing to the frequent incursions of the Danes that the system grew as it did. In Canute’s reign we find it in full force, for at this time the kingdom was divided into great military districts, or earldoms, the “earl” being responsible to the king and receiving the profits of his district. When William the Norman conquered England he did not, as is often supposed, impose a feudal system upon the people. The system was there already, developed from the old manors, and all William I. did was to reorganize it, and give the English people Norman instead of Anglo-Saxon or Danish lords.

NOTE.—The theory of the mark (which is now regarded as very doubtful) is dealt with more fully in ch. iv. of my Industry in England, where also the evidences of communal village life are discussed; and I must refer my readers to this for more recent views.

PERIOD II FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE REIGN OF HENRY III. (A.D. 1066–1216)

CHAPTER I DOMESDAY BOOK AND THE MANORS

§ 1. Domesday Book

—It was very natural that, when William the Norman conquered England, he should wish to ascertain the capabilities of his kingdom both in regard to military defence and for taxation; and that he should endeavour to gain a comprehensive idea of the results of his conquest. So he ordered a grand survey of the kingdom to be made, and sent commissioners into each district to make it. These officials were bidden to inquire about all the estates in the realm—who held them, what was the value of each, how many men occupied it and how many cattle each supported. The results of this survey form our earliest and most reliable statistics for English industrial history; and it is to be regretted that no general table or analysis of this great work has yet been made, or that historians do not use it more copiously for gaining a knowledge of the social and economic conditions of the time. For this latter purpose it is absolutely unrivalled.7

 7 For recent works on Domesday Book, see p. 242.

§ 2. Economic condition of the country as shown in Domesday

—From it we may gather the following few facts {11} as to the economic condition of England about the time of the Norman Conquest. The population numbered about 2,000,000, three-fourths of whom lived by agricultural labour, the remaining fourth being townsfolk, gentry, and churchmen. The East and South, especially the county of Kent, were the best tilled, richest, and most populous parts of the country. “The downs and wolds gave fine pasturage for sheep, the copses and woods formed fattening grounds for swine, and the hollows at the downs’ foot, the river flats, and the low, gravel hills, were the best and easiest land to plough and crop. Far the largest part of the country was forest—i.e. uncleared and undrained moor, wood, or fen.”8 The chief towns were London, Canterbury, Chester, Lincoln, Oxford, York, Hereford, and Winchester; but these were trading centres rather than seats of manufacturing industry. A small foreign export trade was done in wool and lead, the imports being chiefly articles of luxury. There were 9250 villages or manors in the land; in these about three-fifths of each is waste—i.e. untilled, common land—one-fifth pasture, and one-fifth arable.

 8 V. Industry in England, p. 69.

§ 3. The Manors and their owners

—Now each of these manors after the Norman Conquest was held by a “lord,” who held it more or less remotely from the king. For it is the distinguishing feature of the Conquest, that William the Norman made himself the supreme landlord of the country, so that all land was held under him. He himself of course held a good many manors, which were farmed by his bailiffs, and for each of these manors he was the lord. But the majority of the manors were held by his followers, the Norman nobles, and nearly all of them had several manors apiece. Now it was impossible for a noble to look after all his manors himself, and they {12} found it was not always the best plan to put their bailiffs in to work them; so they used to sublet some of their manors to other tenants, often to Englishmen who had submitted to the Norman Conquest. The nobles who held the land direct from the king were called tenants in chief,9 the tenants to whom they sublet it were called tenants in mesne.10 If a noble let a manor to a tenant in mesne the tenant then took his place, and became the lord of the manor. Thus, then, we have some manors owned directly by the king, others by the great nobles, and others again by tenants in mesne. For instance, in the part of Domesday relating to Oxfordshire, we find that one Milo Crispin, a tenant in chief, held several manors from the king, but also let some of them to sub-tenants, that of Cuxham, e.g., being let to one Alured, who was therefore its lord. So in Warwickshire the manor of Estone (now Aston) was one of those belonging to William Fitz-Ansculf, but he had let it to Godmund, an Englishman, who was then “lord of the manor of Estone.”

 9 Or, in capite.

10 i.e. sub-tenants.

§ 4. The inhabitants of the manors

—Besides the lord himself (whether king, noble, or sub-tenant), with his personal retainers, and generally a parish priest or some monks, there were three other classes of inhabitants. (1) First came the villeins, who formed 38 per cent. of the whole population recorded in Domesday, and who held their land in virgates, a virgate being some thirty acres of arable land, scattered of course in plots (cf. p. 20) among the common fields of the manor, together with a house and messuage in the village. These villeins were often called virgarii (or yardlings), from this term virgate. (2) Below the villeins came the cottars, or bordars, a class distinct from and below the former, who probably held {13} only some five or ten acres of land and a cottage, and did not even possess a plough, much less a team of oxen, apiece, but had to combine among themselves for the purpose of ploughing. They form 32 per cent. of the Domesday population. Finally came (3) the slaves, who were much smaller in numbers than is commonly supposed, forming only 9 per cent. of the Domesday population. Less than a century after the Conquest these disappear and merge into the cottars.

§ 5. The condition of these inhabitants

—The chief feature of the social condition of these classes of people was that they were subject to a lord. They each depended upon a superior, and no man could be either lordless or landless; for all persons in villeinage, which included everyone below the lord of the manor, were subject to a master, and bound to the land, except, of course, “free tenants” (p. 15). But even against their lord the villeins had certain rights which had to be recognized. They had, moreover, many comforts and little responsibility, except to pay their dues to their lord. Moreover, it was possible for a villein to purchase a remission of his services, and become a “free tenant.” Or he might become such by residing in a town for a year and a day, and being a member of a town gild, as long as during that period he was unclaimed by his lord. And in course of time the villein’s position came to be this—he owed his lord the customary services (see p. 14) whereby his lord’s land was cultivated; but his lord could not refuse him his customary rights in return—“his house and lands, and rights of wood and hay”—and in relation to everyone but his lord he was a perfectly free citizen. His condition tended to improve, and up to the time of the Great Plague (1348) a large number of villeins had become actually free, having commuted their services {14} for money payments. What these services were we shall now explain. But finally, we wish to point out that the state of villeinage and of serfage was practically the same thing in two aspects; the first implying the fact that the villein was bound to the soil, the second that he was subject to a master. A serf was not a slave; and, as we saw above, slaves became extinct soon after the Norman Conquest.

§ 6. Services due to the lord from his tenants in villeinage

—Under the manorial system rent was paid in a very different manner from that in which it is paid to-day, for it was a rent not so much of money, though that was employed, as of services. The services thus rendered by tenants in villeinage, whether villeins or cottars, may be divided into week-work, and boon-days or work on special days. The week-work consisted of ploughing or reaping, or doing some other agricultural work for the lord of the manor for two or three days in the week, or at fixed times, such as at harvest; while boon-day work was rendered at times not fixed, but whenever the lord of the manor might require it, though the number of boon-days in a year was limited. When, however, the villein or cottar had performed these liabilities, he was quite free to do work on his own land, or for that matter on any one else’s land, as indeed the cottars frequently did, for they had not much land of their own, and so often had time and labour to spare. It was from this cottar class with time to spare that a distinct wage-earning class, like our modern labourers, arose, who lived almost entirely by wages. We shall hear more of them later on; but at the time of the Conquest they hardly existed.

§ 7. Money payments and rents

—It was also usual for a tenant, besides rendering these servile services, to pay his lord a small rent either in money or kind, generally {15} in both. Thus on Cuxham manor we find a villein (or serf) paying his lord ½d. on November 12th every year and 1d. whenever he brews. He also pays, in kind, 1 quarter of seed-wheat at Michaelmas; 1 peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3 hens on 12th November; also 1 cock and 2 hens, and 2d. worth of bread every Christmas. His services are—to plough and till ½ acre of the lord’s land, to give 3 days’ labour at harvest, and other days when required by the bailiff. This was the rent for about 12 or 15 acres of land (half a virgate), and upon a calculation of the worth of labour and provisions at that time (end of thirteenth century) comes to about 6d. an acre for his land, and 3s. a year for his house and the land about it (curtilage).

§ 8. Free Tenants. Soke-men

In Domesday, we find that the Eastern and East-central counties were those in which “free” tenants or soke-men were most prevalent. There they form from 27 to 45 per cent. of the inhabitants of those parts, though, taking all England into view, they only form 4 per cent. of the total population. The number of free tenants, however, was constantly increasing, even among tenants in villeinage, for the lord often found it more useful to have money, and was willing to allow commutation of services; or again, he might prefer not to cultivate all his own land (his demesne), but to let it for a fixed money rent to a villein to do what he could with it; and thus the villein became a free man, while the lord was sure of a fixed sum from his land every year, whether the harvest were good or bad.

§ 9. Illustrations of old manors. (1) Estone

—To make clear what I have said in this chapter, it will perhaps be well to give two illustrations drawn from the Domesday Book (eleventh century) and from bailiffs’ accounts of a later period (end of thirteenth century).

First we will take a manor in Warwickshire in the Domesday Survey (1089)—Estone, now Aston, near Birmingham. It was one of a number belonging to William, the son of Ansculf, who was tenant in chief, but had let it to one Godmund, a sub-tenant in mesne. The Survey runs: “William Fitz-Ansculf holds of the King Estone, and Godmund of him. There are 8 hides.11 The arable employs 20 ploughs; in the demesne the arable employs 6 ploughs, but now there are no ploughs. There are 30 villeins with a priest, and 1 bondsman, and 12 bordars [i.e. cottars]. They have 18 ploughs. A mill pays 3 {17} shillings. The woodland is 3 miles long and half a mile broad. It was worth £4; now 100 shillings.”

11 A hide varied in size, and was (after the Conquest) equal to a carucate, which might be anything from 80 to 120 or 180 acres. Perhaps 120 is a fair average, though some say 80.

Here we have a good example of a manor held by a sub-tenant, and containing all the three classes mentioned in § 4 of this chapter—villeins, cottars, and slaves (i.e. bondsmen). The whole manor must have been about 5000 acres, of which 1000 were probably arable land, which was of course parcelled out in strips among the villeins, the lord, and the priest. As there were only 18 ploughs among 30 villeins, it is evident some of them at least had to use a plough and oxen in common. The demesne land does not seem to have been well cultivated by Godmund the lord, for there were no ploughs on it, though it was large enough to employ six. Perhaps Godmund, being an Englishman, had been fighting the Normans in the days of Harold, and had let it go out of cultivation, or perhaps the former owner had died in the war, and Godmund had rented the land from the Norman noble to whom William gave it.

§ 10. Cuxham Manor in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries

—Our second illustration can be described at two periods of its existence—at the time of Domesday and 200 years later. It was only a small manor of some 490 acres, and was held by a sub-tenant from a Norman tenant in chief, Milo Crispin. It is found in the Oxfordshire Domesday, in the list of lands belonging to Milo Crispin. The Survey says: “Alured [the sub-tenant] now holds 5 hides for a manor in Cuxham. Land to 4 ploughs; now in the demesne, 2 ploughs and 4 bondsmen. And 7 villeins with 4 bordars have 3 ploughs. There are 3 mills of 18 shillings; and 18 acres of meadow. It was worth £3, now £6.” Here, again, our three classes of villeins, cottars or bordars, and slaves are represented. The manor was evidently a good one, for though smaller than Estone it {18} was worth more, and has three mills and good meadow land as well. Now, by the end of the thirteenth century this manor had passed into the hands of Merton College, Oxford, which then represented the lord, but farmed it by means of a bailiff. Professor Thorold Rogers gives us a description of it,12 drawn from the annual accounts of this bailiff, which he has examined along with a number of others from other manors. We find one or two changes have taken place, for the bondsmen have entirely disappeared, as indeed they did in less than a century after the Conquest all through the land. The number of villeins and bordars has increased. There are now 13 villeins and 8 cottars, and 1 free tenant. There is also a prior, who holds land (6 acres) in the manor but does not live in it; also two other tenants, who do not live in the manor, but hold “a quarter of a knight’s fee” (here some 40 or 50 acres)—a knight’s fee comprising an area of land varying from 2 hides to 4 or even 6 hides, but in any case worth some £20. As the Cuxham land was good, the quantity necessary for the valuation of a fee would probably be only the small hide or carucate of 80 acres, and the quarter of it of course 20 acres or a little more. The 13 serfs hold 170 acres, but the 8 cottars only 30 acres, including their tenements. The free tenant holds 12⁠¾ acres, and Merton College as lord of the manor some 240 acres of demesne. There are now two mills instead of three, one belonging to the prior, and the other to another tenant. There were altogether, counting the families of the villeins and cottars, but not the two tenants of military fees, about 60 or 70 inhabitants, the most important being the college bailiff and the miller.

12 In his Six Centuries of Work and Wages.

§ 11. Description of a manor village

—Now in both these country manors, as in all others, the central feature {19} would be the dwelling of the lord, or manor-house. It was substantially built, and served as a court-house for the annual sittings of the court baron and court leet.13 If the lord did not live in it, his bailiff did so, and then the lord would come once or twice a year to hold these courts. Near the manor-house generally stood the church, often large for the size of the village, because the nave was frequently used as a town-hall for meetings or for markets. Then there would be the house of the priest, possibly in the demesne; and after these two the most important building was the mill, which, if there was a stream, would be placed on its banks in order to use the water-power. The rest of the tenants generally inhabited the principal street or road of the village, near the stream, if one ran through the place. The houses of these villages were poor and dirty, not always made of stone, and never (till the fifteenth century) of brick, but built of posts wattled and plastered with clay or mud, with an upper storey of poles reached by a ladder. The articles of furniture would be very coarse and few, being necessarily of home manufacture; a few rafters or poles overhead, a bacon-rack, and agricultural tools being the most conspicuous objects. Chimneys were unknown, except in the manor-houses, and so too were windows, and the floor was of bare earth. Outside the door was the “mixen,” a collection of every kind of manure and refuse, which must have rendered the village street alike unsavoury, unsightly and unwholesome. But though their life was rude and rough, it seems that the villagers were fairly happy, and, considering all things, about as well off as are their descendants now.

13 See note 4. p. 243, on Manorial Courts.

§ 12. The kinds of land in a manor

—Before concluding this chapter, it is necessary, in order to complete our {20} sketch of the manorial system from the time of the Conquest onwards, to understand how the land was divided up. We may say that there were seven kinds of land altogether, (1) First came the lord’s land round about the manor-house, the demesne land, which was strictly his own, and generally cultivated by himself or his bailiff. All other land held by tenants was called land in villeinage. (2) Next came the arable land of the village held by the tenants in common fields. Now these fields were all divided up into many strips, and tenants held their strips generally in quite different places, all mixed up anyhow (cf. diagram, where the tenants are marked A, B. C, etc.). The lord and the parson might also have a few strips in these fields. There were at least three fields, in order to allow the rotation of crops mentioned before (p. 8). Each tenant held his strip only till harvest, after which all fences and divisions were taken away, and the cattle turned out to feed on the stubble. (3) Thirdly came the common pasture, for all the tenants. But each tenant was restricted or stinted in the number of cattle that he might pasture, lest he should put on too many, and thus not leave enough food for his neighbours’ cattle. Sometimes, however, we find pasture without stint, as in Port Meadow at Oxford to this day. (4) Then comes the forest or woodland, as in Estone, which belonged to the lord, who owned all the timber. But the tenants had rights, such as the right of lopping and topping certain trees, collecting fallen branches for fuel; and the right of “pannage”—i.e. of turning cattle, especially swine, into the woods to pick up what food they could. (5) There was also in most manors what is called the waste—i.e. uncultivated—land, affording rough pasture, and on which the tenants had the right of cutting turf and bracken for fuel and fodder. Then near the stream there would {21} 

DIAGRAM OF A MANOR

THE KING (supreme landlord)

TENANT IN CHIEF, owning various manors.

A SUB-TENANT, or tenant in mesne, the lord of the manor below.

perhaps be some (6) Meadow land, as at Cuxham; but this always belonged to the lord, and if he let it out, he always charged an extra rent (say eightpence instead of sixpence an acre), for it was very valuable as affording a good supply of hay for the winter. Lastly, if the tenant could afford it, and wanted to have other land besides the common fields, where he could let his cattle lie, or to cultivate the ground more carefully, he could occupy (7) a close, or a portion of land specially marked off and let separately. The lord always had a close on his demesne, and the chief tenants would generally have one or two as well. The close land was of course rented more highly than land in the common fields.

The accompanying diagram shows a typical manor, held by a sub-tenant from a tenant in chief, who holds it of the king. It contains all the different kinds of land, though of course they did not always exist all in one manor. It also shows the manor-house, church, mill and village.14

14 See note 5, p. 244, on Decay of Manorial System.

CHAPTER II THE TOWNS AND THE GILDS

§ 1. The origin of towns

—As in the case of the manor, which was the Norman name for the Saxon “townships,” the town, in the modern sense of the word, had its origin from the primitive settlement known as the mark (p. 6). The only difference between a town and a manor originally lay in the number of its population, and in the fact that the town was a more defensible place than the {23} “township,” or rural manor, probably having a mound or moat surrounding it, instead of the hedges which ran round the villages. In itself it was merely a manor or group of manors; as Professor Freeman puts it, “one part of the district where men lived closer together than elsewhere.” The town had at first a constitution like that of a primitive village in the mark, but its inhabitants had gradually gained certain rights and functions of a special nature. These rights and privileges had been received from the lord of the manor on which the town had grown up; for towns, especially provincial towns, were at first only dependent manors, which gained safety and solidity under the protection of some great noble, prelate, or the king himself, who finally would grant the town thus formed a charter.

§ 2. Rise of towns in England

—Towns first became important in England towards the end of the Saxon period Saxon England had never been a settlement of towns, but of villages and townships, or manors. But gradually towns did grow up, though differing widely in the circumstances and manner of their rise. Some grew up in the fortified camps of the invaders themselves, as being in a secure position; some arose from a later occupation of the once sacked and deserted Roman towns. Many grew silently in the shadow of a great abbey or monastery. Of this class was Oxford, which first came into being round the monasteries of St Frideswide and Osney. Others clustered round the country houses of some Saxon king or earl. Several important boroughs owed their rise to the convenience of their site as a port or a trading centre. This was the origin of the growth of Bristol, whose rise resulted directly from trade; and London of course had always been a port of high commercial rank. A few other towns, like Scarborough and Grimsby, were at first {24} small havens for fishermen. But all the English towns were far less flourishing before the arrival of the Normans than they afterwards became.

§ 3. Towns in Domesday: London

—If, now, we once more go back to our great authority, the survey made by William the Norman, we find that the status of these towns or boroughs is clearly recognized, though they are regarded as held by the lord of the manor “in demesne,” or in default of a lord, as part of the king’s demesne. Thus Northampton at that time was a town in the king’s demesne; Beverley was held in demesne by the Archbishop of York. It was possible, too, that one town might belong to several lords, because it spread over, or was an aggregate of, several manors or townships. Thus Leicester seems to have included four manors, which were thus held in demesne by four lords—one by the king, another by the Bishop of Lincoln, another by a noble, Simon de Senlis, and the fourth by Ivo of Grantmesnil, the sheriff. In later times it was held under one lord, Count Robert of Meulan.

Now, in the Domesday Book there is mention made of forty-one provincial cities or boroughs, most of them being the county towns of the present day. There are also ten fortified towns of greater importance than the others. They are Canterbury, York, Nottingham, Oxford, Hereford, Leicester, Lincoln, Stafford, Chester, and Colchester. London was a town apart, as it had always been, and was the only town which had a civic constitution, being regulated by a port-reeve and a bishop, and having a kind of charter, though afterwards the privileges of this charter were much increased. London was of course a great port and trading centre, and had many foreign merchants in it. It was then, as well as in subsequent centuries, the centre of English national life, and {25} the voice of its citizens counted for something in national affairs. The other great ports of England at that time were Bristol, Southampton, and Norwich, and as trade grew and prospered, many other ports rose into prominence (see p. 64).

§ 4. Special privileges of towns

—Even at the time of the Conquest most towns, though small, were of sufficient importance to have a certain status of their own, with definite privileges. The most important of these was the right of composition for taxation, i.e. the right of paying a fixed sum, or rent, to the Crown, instead of the various tallages, taxes, and imposts that might be required of other places. This fixed sum, or composition, was called the firma burgi, and by the time of the Conquest was nearly always paid in money. Previously it had been paid both in money and kind, for we find Oxford paying to Edward the Confessor six sectaries of honey as well as £20 in coin; while to William the Norman it paid £60 as an inclusive lump sum. By the end of the Norman period all the towns had secured the firma burgi, and the right of assessing it themselves, instead of being assessed by the sheriff; they had the right also of choosing a mayor of their own, instead of the king’s bailiff or reeve. They had, moreover, their own tribunals, a charter for their customs, and special rules of local administration, and, generally speaking, gained entire judicial and commercial freedom.

§ 5. How the towns obtained their charters

—It is interesting to see what circumstances helped forward this emancipation of the towns from the rights possessed by the nobles and the abbeys, or by the king. The chief cause of the readiness of the nobles and kings to grant charters during this period (from the Conquest to Henry III.) was their lack of ready money. Everyone knows {26} how fiercely the nobles fought against each other in Stephen’s reign, and how enthusiastically they rushed to the Crusades under Richard I. They could not indulge their love of fighting, which in their eyes was their main duty, without money to pay for their fatal extravagances in this direction, and to get money they frequently parted with their manorial rights over the towns that had grown up on their estates. Especially was this the case when a noble, or king, was taken prisoner, and wanted the means of his ransom. In this way Portsmouth and Norwich gained their charters by paying part of Richard I.’s ransom (1194). Again, Rye and Winchelsea gained theirs by supplying the same king (in 1191) with two ships for one of his Eastern crusades. Many other instances might be quoted from the cases of nobles who also gave charters when setting out upon these extraordinary religious and sentimental expeditions. Indeed, the Crusades had a very marked influence in this way upon the growth of English towns. Someone had to pay for the wars in which the aristocracy delighted, and it is well to remember the fact that the expenses of all our wars—and they have been both numerous and costly—have been defrayed by the industrial portion of the community. And the glories and cruelties of that savage age of so-called knightly chivalry, which has been idealized and gilded by romancers and history-mongers, with its tournaments and torture-chambers, were paid for by that despised industrial population of the towns and manors which contained the real life and wealth of mediæval England.

§ 6. The gilds and the towns. Various kinds of gilds

—But besides the indirect effect of the Crusades, there was another powerful factor in the growth and emancipation of the towns after the Conquest. I refer to the merchant {27} gilds, which were becoming more and more prominent all through this period, though the height of their power was reached in the fourteenth century. These merchant gilds were one out of four other kinds of gilds, all of which seem to have been similar in origin. The earliest gilds are found in Saxon times, and were very much what we understand by clubs. At first they were associations of men for more or less religious and charitable purposes, and formed a sort of artificial family, whose members were bound by the bond not of kinship, but of an oath; while the gild-feast, held once a month in the common hall, replaced the family gatherings of kinsfolk. These gilds were found both in towns and manors, but chiefly in the former, where men were brought more closely together. Besides (1) the religious gilds, we find in Saxon times (2) the frith gilds, formed for mutual assistance in case of violence, wrong, or false accusation, or in any legal affairs. But this class of gilds died out after the Conquest. The most important were (3) the merchant gilds mentioned above, which existed certainly in Edward the Confessor’s time, being called in Saxon ceapemanne gilds, and they were recognized at the time of the Conquest, for they are recorded in Domesday here and there as possessing lands. The merchant members of these gilds had various privileges, such as a monopoly of the local trade of a town, and freedom from certain imposts. They had a higher rank than the members of the (4) craft gilds. These last were associations of handicraftsmen, or artisans, and were separate from the merchant gilds, though also of great importance. If a town was large enough, each craft or manufacture had a gild of its own, though in smaller towns members of various crafts would form only one gild. Such gilds were found, too, not only in towns but in country villages, as is known, e.g., in the case of some {28} Norfolk villages, and remains of their halls in villages have been found. Their gild feasts are probably represented to this day in the parish feasts, survivals of ancient custom.