CHAPTER IV. How the Classes Connected With the Land Lived in the Middle Ages

HOW THE CLASSES CONNECTED WITH THE LAND LIVED IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The castles of the great landowners have been so often described that there is no need to do this again. The popular idea of a baron of the Middle Ages is of a man who when he was not fighting was jousting or hunting. Such were, no doubt, his chief recreations; so fond was he of hunting, indeed, that his own broad lands were not enough, and he was a frequent trespasser on those of others; the records of the time are full of cases which show that poaching was quite a fashionable amusement among the upper classes. But among the barons were many men who, like their successors to-day, did their duty as landlords. Of one of the Lords of Berkeley in the fourteenth century, it was said he was 'sometyme in husbandry at home, sometyme at sport in the field, sometyme in the campe, sometyme in the Court and Council of State, with that promptness and celerity that his body might have bene believed to be ubiquitary'. Many of them were farmers on a very large scale, though they might not have so much time to devote to it as those excellent landlords the monks.

Thomas Lord Berkeley, who held the Berkeley estates from 1326 to 1361, farmed the demesnes of a quantity of manors, as was the custom, and kept thereon great flocks of sheep, ranging from 300 to 1,500 on each manor. The stock of the Bishop of Winchester, by an inquisition taken at his death in 1367, amounted to 127 draught horses, 1,556 head of black cattle, and 12,104 sheep and lambs. Almost every manor had one or two pigeon houses, and the number of pigeons reared is astonishing; from one manor Lord Berkeley obtained 2,151 pigeons in a single year. No one but the lord was allowed to keep them, and they were one of the chief grievances of the villeins, who saw their seed devoured by these pests without redress. Their dung, too, was one of the most valued manures. Lord Berkeley, like other landlords, went often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another, making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and directing the husbandry. The castle of the great noble consumed an enormous amount of food in the course of the year; from two manors on the Berkeley estate came to the 'standinghouse' of the lord in twelve months, 17,000 eggs, 1,008 pigeons, 91 capons, 192 hens, 288 ducks, 388 chickens, 194 pigs, 45 calves, 315 quarters of wheat, 304 quarters of oats; and from several other manors came the like or greater store, besides goats, sheep, oxen, butter, cheese, nuts, honey, &c. Even the lavish hospitality of the lords, and the great number of their retainers, must have had some difficulty in disposing of these huge supplies.

The examining of their bailiff's accounts must have taken a considerable portion of the landlord's time, for those of each manor were kept most minutely, and set forth, among other items, 'in what sort he husbanded' the demesne farms, 'what sorts of cattle he kept in them, and what kinds of graine he yearly sowed according to the quality and condition of the ground, and how those kinds of graine each second or third yeare were exchanged or brought from one manor to another as the vale corne into an upland soyle, and contrarily'. And we are told incidentally he 'set with hand, not sowed his beanes'. He was also accustomed to move his live stock from one manor to another, as they needed it.

The accounts also stated what days' works were due from each tenant according to the season of the year, and at the end of each year there was a careful valuation of live and dead stock.

The difference between the smaller gentry and the more important yeomen who farmed their own land must have been very slight. No doubt both of them were very rough and ignorant men, who knew a great deal about the cultivation of their land and very little about anything else. We may be sure that the ordinary house of both was generally of wood; as there is no stone in many parts of England, and bricks were not reintroduced till the fourteenth century and spread slowly. Even in Elizabeth's reign, Harrison tells us that 'the ancient houses of our gentry are yet for the most part of strong timber', and he even thinks that houses made of oak were luxurious, for in times past men had been contented with houses of willow, plum, and elm, but now nothing but oak was good enough; and he quaintly says that the men who lived in the willow houses were as tough as oak, and those who lived in the oak as soft as willow. There are very few mansions left of the time before Edward III, for being of timber they naturally decayed.

In a lease, dated 1152, of a manor house belonging to S. Paul's Cathedral, is a description of a manor house which contained a hall 35 feet long, 30 feet broad, and 22 feet high; that is, 11 feet to the tie beam and 11 feet from that to the ridge board; showing that the roof was open and that there were no upper rooms. There was a chamber between the hall and the thalamus or inner room which was 12 feet long, 17 feet broad, and 17 feet high, the roof being open as in the hall; and the thalamus was 22 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 18 feet high. About the same date the Manor house of Thorp was larger, and contained a hall, a chamber, tresantia (apparently part of the hall or chamber separated by a screen to form an antechamber), two private rooms, a kitchen, brew-house, malt-house, dairy, ox shed, and three small hen-houses.

The ordinary manor house of the Middle Ages contained three rooms at least, of mean aspect, the floor even of the hall, which was the principal eating and sleeping room, being of dirt; and when there was an upper room or solar added, which began to be done at the end of the twelfth century, access to it was often obtained by an outside staircase.

If the manor house belonged to the owner of many manors, it was sometimes inhabited by his bailiff.

The barns on the demesnes were often as important buildings as the manor houses; one at Wickham, belonging to the canons of S. Paul's in the twelfth century, was 55 feet long, 13 feet high from the floor to the principal beam, and 10-1/2 feet more to the ridge board; the breadth between the pillars was 19-1/2 feet, and on each side it had a wing or aisle 6-1/2 feet wide and 6-1/2 feet high. The amount of corn in the barn was often scored on the door-posts. In the manor houses chimneys rarely existed, the fire being made in the middle of the hall. Even in the early seventeenth century in Cheshire there were no chimneys in the farmhouses, and there the oxen were kept under the same roof as the farmer and his family. When chimneys did come in they were not much thought of. 'Now we have chimneys our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses (colds);' for the smoke not only hardened the timbers, but was said by Harrison to be an excellent medicine for man. Instead of glass there was much lattice, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak in checkerwise, and horn was also used. Beds, of course, were a luxury, the owner of the manor, his guests, and retainers flung themselves down on the hall floor after supper and all slept together, though sometimes rough mattresses were brought in.

Furniture was rude and scanty. In 1150 the farm implements and household furniture on the Manor of 'Waleton' was valued and consisted of 4 carts, 3 baskets, a basket used in winnowing corn, a pair of millstones, 10 tubs, 4 barrels, 2 boilers of lead with stoves, 2 wooden bowls, 3 three-legged tables, 20 dishes or platters, 2 tablecloths worth 6d., 6 metal bowls, half a load of the invaluable salt, 2 axes, a table with trestles (the usual form of table), and 5 beehives made of rushes. These articles were handed down from one generation to another, and in a lease made 150 years afterwards of the same manor most of them reappear. The greater part of the furniture, until the fifteenth century, was most likely made by migratory workmen, who travelled from village to village; for except the rudest pieces it was beyond the village carpenter, and shops there were none.

It is not to be expected that when the master lived in this manner the lot of the labourer was a very good one. His home was miserably poor, generally of 'wattle and dab', sometimes wholly of mud and clay; many with only one room for all purposes. A bill is still in existence for a house, if it can be called one, built in 1306 for two labourers by Queen's College, Oxford, which cost 20s. in all, and was a mere hovel without floor, ceiling, or chimney. Their wretched houses appear to have been built on the bare earth, and unfloored. Perhaps as time went on a rude upper storey was added, the floor of which was made of rough poles or hurdles and was reached by a ladder. The furniture was miserably poor; a few pots and pans, cups and dishes, and some tools would exhaust the list. The goods and chattels of a landless labourer in 1431 consisted of a dish, an adze, a brass pot, 2 plates, 2 augers, an axe, a three-legged stool, and a barrel. Englishmen of all classes were hopelessly dirty in their habits; even till the sixteenth century they were noted above other countries for the profuseness of their diet and their unclean ways. Erasmus spoke of the floor of his house as inconceivably filthy. To save fuel, the labourer's family in the cold season all lay huddled in a heap on the floor, 'pleasantly and hot', as Barclay the poet tells us; and if he ever had a bed it was a bundle of fern or straw thrown down, with his cloak as a coverlet, though thus he was just as well off as his social superiors, for with them the loose cloak of the day was a common covering for the night. He was constantly exposed to disease, for sanitary precautions were ignored; at the entrance of his hovel was a huge heap of decaying refuse, poisoning air and water. Even in the sixteenth century a foreigner noticed that 'the peasants dwell in small huts and pile up their refuse out of doors in heaps so high that you cannot see their houses'. Diseased animals were constantly eaten, vegetables were few, and in the winter there was no fresh meat for any one, except game and rabbits and, for the well-to-do, fish, but we may doubt if the peasant got any but salt fish. The consequence was that leprosy and kindred ailments were common; and we do not wonder that plagues were frequent and slew the people like flies. The peasants' food consisted largely of corn. In the bailiff's accounts of the Manor of Woodstock in 1242, six servants at Handborough received 41-1/2 bushels of corn each, 2 ox herds at Combe received the same, and 4 servants at Bladon had 36 bushels each. In 1274 at Bosham, and in 1288 at Stoughton in Sussex, the allowance was the same. The writer of the anonymous Treatise on Husbandry says that in his time, the thirteenth century, the average annual allowance of corn to a labourer was 36 bushels. Fish, too, seem to have formed a large portion of his diet; all classes ate enormous quantities of fish, before the Reformation, in Lent and on fast days, and the labourer was constantly given salt herrings as part of his pay. In 1359, at Hawsted, the villeins when working were allowed 2 herrings a day, some milk, a loaf, and some drink. Eden says his food consisted of a few fish, principally herrings, a loaf of bread, and some beer; but we must certainly add pork, which was his stand-by then as now. In the fourteenth century, at all events, there were three kinds of bread in use--white bread, ration bread, and black bread; and it was no doubt the latter that the peasant ate. Clothing was dear and cloth coarse, the most valuable personal property consisting of clothing and metal vessels. Shirts were the subject of charitable gifts. By 37 Edw. III, c. 14, labourers were not to wear any manner of cloth but 'blanket and russet wool of 12d.' and girdles of linen. If they wore anything more extravagant it was forfeited to the king.

To the labourer of modern times the life of his forefathers would have seemed unutterably dull. No books, no newspapers, no change of scene by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics. The very cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous. But there were bright spots in his existence: the village church not only afforded him the consolations of religion but also entertainments and society. Religion in the Middle Ages was a part of the people's daily life, and its influence permeated even their amusements. Miracles and mystery plays, played in the churches and churchyards, were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, 'a common mill ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a common smith worked at a common forge.' His existence, moreover, was enlivened by a considerable number of sports. A statute at the end of the fourteenth century (12 Ric. II, c. 6) says he was fond of playing at tennis(!), football, quoits, dice, casting the stone, and other games, which this statute forbad him, and enacted that he should use his bow and arrows on Sundays and holidays instead of such idle sport. This is a foretaste of the modern sentiment that seeks to wean him from watching football matches and take to miniature rifle clubs. He was also, like some of his successors, fond of poaching, though he appears to have been rash enough to indulge in it by day. 13 Ric. II, c. 13, says he was prone on holidays, when good Christian people be in church hearing divine service, to go hunting with greyhounds and other dogs, in the parks and warrens of the lord and of others, and sometimes these hunts were turned into conferences and conspiracies,' for to rise and disobey their allegiance', such as preceded the Peasants' Revolt of 1381; and accordingly no one who did not own lands worth 40s. a year was to keep a dog to hunt, or ferrets other 'engines': the first game law on the English statute book.

FOOTNOTES:

Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 302. No doubt the riches of the Berkeleys were considerably greater than those of many of the barons.

Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 166. There is no reason to doubt Smyth, as he wrote with the original accounts before him.

Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 156.

The yeoman is said to have made his appearance in the fifteenth century, but the small freeholders of the manor before that date were to all intents and purposes yeomen. No doubt, as trade grew in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries successful tradesmen bought small freeholds in the country and swelled the numbers of yeomen.

Harrison, Description of Britain, F.J. Furnivall edn., p. 337.

Domesday of S. Paul, Camden Society, p. 129.

Turner, Domestic Architecture, i. 59.

Domesday of S. Paul, p. 123.

Historical MSS. Commission Report, v. 444.

Ormerod, History of Cheshire, i. 129.

Domesday of S. Paul, p. xcvii.

Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century.

Eden, State of the Poor, i. 21.

See Cullum, History of Hawsted.

Harrison, Description of Britain, Appendix ii, lxxxi. In some manors, however, there were careful regulations for public health. According to the Durham Halmote Rolls, published by the Surtees Society, village officials watched over the water supply, prevented the fouling of streams; bye-laws were enacted as to the regulation of the common place for clothes washing, and the times for emptying and cleansing ponds and mill-dams.

Ballard, Domesday, Antiquary Series, p. 209.

Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 75.

Cullum, Hawsted, 1784 ed., p. 182.

State of the Poor, i. 15.

Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 32.

See Knights Hospitallers in England, Camden Society, Introduction.

Thorold Rogers, op. cit. i. 66.