Part 43

The office of Justice of the Peace was created for every county to deal with rioting and vagrants. Cooperation by officials of other counties was mandated to deal with fugitives from its justice.

The Black Death visited again in 1361 and in 1369. The Black Death reduced the population from about 5 million to about 2 1/2 million. It was to rise to about 4 million by 1600.

When there were attempts to enforce the legal servitude of the villeins, they spread rhymes of their condition and need to revolt. A secret league, called the "Great Society" linked the centers of intrigue. A high poll tax, graduated from 20s. to 12d., that was to be raised for a war with France, touched off a spontaneous riot all over the nation in 1381. This tax included people not taxed before, such as laborers, the village smith, and the village tiler. Each area had its own specific grievances. There was no common political motive, except maladministration in general.

In this Peasants' Revolt, mobs overran the counties around London. The upper classes fled to the woods. Written records of the servitude of villeins were burned in their halls, which were also looted. Title deeds of landlords were burned. Rate rolls of general taxation were destroyed. Prisoners were released from gaols. Men connected with tax collection, law enforcement, attorneys, and alien merchants were beheaded. The Chief Justice was murdered while fleeing. The archbishop, who was a notoriously exploitive landlord, the chancellor, and the treasurer were murdered. Severed heads were posted on London Bridge. A mob took control of the king's empty bedchamber in the Tower. The villeins demanded that service to a lord be by agreement instead of by servitude, a commutation of villein service for rents of a maximum of 4d. per acre yearly, abolition of a lord's right for their work on demand (e.g. just before a hail storm so only his crops were saved), and the right to hunt and fish. The sokemen protested having to use the lord's mill and having to attend his court.

The revolt was suppressed and its leaders punished. The king issued proclamations forbidding unauthorized gatherings and ordering tenants of land to perform their customary services. The poll tax was dropped. For the future, the duty to deal with rioting and vagrants was given to royal justices, sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, and constables as well as the Justices of the Peace. There was a high Peace in each hundred and a petty constable in each parish. Justices of the Peace could swear in neighbors as unpaid special constables when disorder broke out.

The sheriff was responsible for seeing that men of the lower classes were organized into groups of ten for police and surety purposes, and for holding of hundred and county courts, arresting suspects, guarding prisoners awaiting trial, carrying out the penalties adjudged by the courts, and collecting Crown revenue through his bailiffs. Royal writs were addressed to the sheriff. Because many sheriffs had taken fines and ransoms for their own use, a term limit of one year was imposed. Sheriffs, hundreders, and bailiffs had to have lands in the same counties or bailiwicks [so they could be held answerable to the King].

Efforts were made to keep laborers at the plough and cart rather than learn a craft or entering and being educated by the church. The new colleges at the universities ceased to accept villeins as students.

Due to the shortage of labor, landlords' returns had decreased from about 20% to about 5%. But some found new methods of using land that were more profitable than the customary services of villeins who had holdings of land or the paid labor of practically free men who paid a money rent for land holdings. One method was to turn the land to sheep breeding. Others leased their demesne land, which transferred the burden of getting laborers from the landlord to the lessee-tenant. The payment was called a "farm" and the tenant a "farmer". First, there were stock-and-land leases, in which both the land and everything required to cultivate it were let together. After 50 years, when the farmers had acquired assets, there were pure land leases. Landlords preferred to lease their land at will instead of for a term of years to prevent the tenant from depleting the soil with a few richer crops during the last years of his tenancy. The commutation of labor services into a money payment developed into a general commutation of virtually all services. Lords in need of money gladly sold manumissions to their villeins.

The lord and lady of some manors now ate with their family and entertained guests in a private parlor [from French word 'to speak"] or great chamber, where they could converse and which had its own fireplace. The great chamber was usually at the dais end of the great hall. The great hall had been too noisy for conversation and now was little used. There were also separate chambers or bed-sitting rooms for guests or members the family or household, in which one slept, received visitors, played games, and occasionally ate.

Some farmers achieved enough wealth to employ others as laborers on their farms. The laborers lived with their employer in his barn, sleeping on hay in the loft, or in mud huts outside the barn. The farmer's family lived at one end of the barn around an open fire. Their possessions typically were: livestock, a chest, a trestle table, benches, stools, an iron or bronze cauldron and pots, brooms, wooden platters, wooden bowls, spoons, knives, wooden or leather jugs, a salt box, straw mattresses, wool blankets, linen towels, iron tools, and rush candles [used the pith of a rush reed for the wick]. Those who could not afford rush candles could get a dim light by using a little grease in a shallow container, with a few twisted strands of linen thread afloat in it. The peasants ate dark bread and beans and drank water from springs. Milk and cheese were a luxury for them. Those who could not afford bread instead ate oat cakes made of pounded beans and bran, cheese, and cabbage. They also had leeks, onions, and peas as vegetables. Some farmers could afford to have a wooden four-posted bedstead, hens, geese, pigs, a couple of cows, a couple of sheep, or two-plough oxen. July was the month when the divide between rich and poor became most apparent. The rich could survive on the contents of their barns, but the poor tried to survive by grinding up the coarsest of wheat bran and shriveled peas and beans to make some sort of bread. Grain and bread prices soared during July. Farming still occupied the vast majority of the population. Town inhabitants and university students went into the fields to help with the harvest in the summer. Parliament was suspended during the harvest.

Town people had more wealth than country people. Most townspeople slept in nightgowns and nightcaps in beds with mattresses, blankets, linen sheets, and pillows. Beds were made every morning. Bathing was by sponging hot water from a basin over the body, sometimes with herbs in it, rinsing with a splash of warm water, and drying off with a towel. Tubs used only for baths came into use. There were drapery rugs hung around beds, handheld mirrors of glass, and salt cellars. The first meal of the day was a light breakfast, which broke the fast that had lasted the night. Meals were often prepared according to recipes from cook books which involved several preparation procedures using flour, eggs, sugar, cheese, and grated bread, rather than just simple seasoning. Menus were put together with foods that tasted well together and served on plates in several courses. Sheffield cutlery was world famous. Table manners included not making sounds when eating, not playing with one's spoon or knife, not placing one's elbows on the table, keeping one's mouth clean with a napkin, and not being boisterous. There were courtesies such as saying "Good Morning" when meeting someone and not pointing one's finger at another person. King Richard II invented the handkerchief for sneezing and blowing one's nose. There were books on etiquette. Cats were the object of superstition, but there was an Ancient and Honorable Order of the Men Who Stroke Cats.

New burgesses were recruited locally, usually from within a 20 mile radius of town. Most of the freemen of the larger boroughs, like Canterbury and London, came from smaller boroughs. An incoming burgess was required to buy his right to trade either by way of a seven year apprenticeship or by payment of an entry fee. To qualify, he needed both a skill and social respectability.

Towns started acquiring from the king the right to vacant sites and other waste places, which previously was the lord's right. The perpetuality of towns was recognized by statutes of 1391, which compared town-held property to church-held property. The right of London to pass ordinances was confirmed by charter. Some towns had a town clerk, who was chief of full-time salaried officers. There was a guildhall to maintain, a weigh-house, prison, and other public buildings, municipal water supplies, wharves, cranes, quays, wash-houses, and public lavatories.

After the experience of the black death, some sanitary measures were taken. The notorious offenders in matters of public hygiene in the towns, such as the butchers, the fishmongers, and the leather tanners were assigned specific localities where their trades would do least harm. The smiths and potters were excluded from the more densely populated areas because they were fire risks. In the town of Salisbury, there was Butcher Row, Ox Row, Fish Row, Ironmongers' Row, Wheelwrights' Row, Smiths' Row, Pot Row, Silver Street, Cheese Market, and Wool Market.

For water, most communities depended on rivers that ran near by or on public wells that were dug to reach the water underground. Some towns had water public water supply systems. Fresh water was brought into the town from a spring or pond above the town by wood or lead pipes or open conduits. Sometimes tree trunks were hollowed out and tapered at the ends to fit into the funnel-shaped end of another. But they leaked a lot. In London, a conduit piped water underground to a lead tank, from which it was delivered to the public by means of pipes and brass taps in the stone framework. This was London's chief water supply. Water carriers carried water in wooden devices on their backs to houses.

The paving and proper drainage of the streets became a town concern. Building contracts began specifying the provision of adequate cesspits for the privies at town houses, whether the latrines were built into the house or as an outhouse. Also, in the better houses, there grew a practice of carting human and animal fecal matter at night to dung heaps outside the city walls. There was one public latrine in each ward and about twelve dung carts for the whole city. Country manor houses had latrines on the ground floor and/or the basement level. Stairwells between floors had narrow and winding steps.

In London, the Goldsmiths, Merchant Taylors [Tailors], Skinners, and Girdlers bought royal charters, which recognized their power of self-government as a company and their power to enforce their standards, perhaps throughout the country. The Goldsmiths, the Mercers, and the Saddlers became the first guilds to receive, in 1394-5, charters of incorporation, which gave them perpetual existence. As such they could hold land in "mortmain" [dead hand], thus depriving the king of rights that came to him on the death of a tenant-in-chief. They were authorized to bestow livery on their members and were called Livery Companies. The liverymen [freemen] of the trading companies elected London's representatives to Parliament.

In all towns, the organization of craft associations spread rapidly downwards through the trades and sought self-government. Craft guilds were gaining much power relative to the old merchant guilds in governing the towns. The greater crafts such as the fishmongers, skinners, and the corders (made rope, canvas, and pitch) organized and ultimately were recognized by town authorities as self-governing craft guilds. The building trade guilds such as the tilers, carpenters, masons, and joiners, became important. Masons were still itinerant, going to sites of churches, public buildings, or commanded by the king to work on castles. The guild was not necessarily associated with a specific product. For instance, a saddle and bridle were the result of work of four crafts: joiner (woodworker), painter, saddler (leather), and lorimer (metal trappings).

In London in 1392 craft guilds included: baker, fishmonger (cut up and sold fish), fruitier, brewer, butcher, bird dealer, cook, apothecary (sold potions he had ground up), cutler (made knives and spoons), barber, tailor, shoemaker, glover (made gloves), skinner (sold furs), girdler (made girdles of cloth to wear around one's waist), pouchmaker, armorer, sheathmaker, weaver, fuller, painter, carpenter, joiner (woodworker who finished interior woodwork such as doors and made furniture), tiler, mason (cut stone for buildings), smith (made metal tools for stonemasons and builders), tallow chandler (made candles and sometimes soap from the fat and grease the housewife supplied), wax chandler (made candles), stirrup maker, spurrier (made spurs), and hosteler (innkeeper). However, the merchant guilds of the goldsmiths, vintners (sold wine), mercers (sold cloth), grocers, and drapers (finished and sold English cloth) were still strong. It was a long custom in London that freemen in one company could practice the trade of another company. There were paint mills and saw mills replacing human labor. There were apothecary shops and women surgeons. Women who earned their own living by spinning were called "spinsters".

Some prices in London were: a hen pastry 5d., a capon pastry 8d., a roast pheasant 13d., a roast heron 18d., roast goose 7d., a hen 4d., a capon 6d., three roast thrushes 2d., ten larks 3d., ten finches 1d, and ten cooked eggs 1d.

Many of the guilds bought sites on which they built a chapel, which was later used as a secular meeting place. The guild officers commonly included an alderman, stewards, a dean, and a clerk, who were elected. The guild officers sat as a guild court to determine discipline for offenses such as false weights or measures or false workmanship or work and decided trade disputes. The brethren in guild fraternity were classified as masters, journeymen, or apprentices. They were expected to contribute to the support of the sick and impoverished in their fellowship. Their code required social action such as ostracizing a man of the craft who was living in adultery until he mended his ways.

The rules of the Company of Glovers were:

1. None but a freeman of the city shall make or sell gloves.

2. No glover may be admitted to the freedom of the city unless with the assent of the wardens of the trade.

3. No one shall entice away the servant of another.

4. If a servant in the trade makes away with his master's chattels to the value of 12d., the wardens shall make good the loss; and if the servant refuses to be judged by the wardens, he shall be taken before the mayor and aldermen.

5. No one may sell his goods by candlelight.

6. Any false work found shall be taken before the mayor and aldermen by the wardens.