Medieval England

Mary Bateson

• Publisher: Ozymandias Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781531286132
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

My object has been to keep social rather than political facts in view, and throughout to supply by illustration from contemporary accounts some of the characteristic detail which is apt to be crowded out in political histories. The story of social evolution may fairly be called the national story. The political story brings to view the procession of great events, the social story the procession of dead ancestors who acted, howsoever humbly, their part in shaping those events. In political history we see the trophies borne along in the triumphal cars, and in social history the groups of ordinary men, women, and children who fill the carriages or stream along on foot. There is not one way, but rather there are many ways of telling a nation's story: the growth of governmental institutions, fluctuations in territorial expansion, the spread of commerce, changes in foreign relations, the history of methods of thought, all make urgent claim to consideration. But not the least truthful measure of progress lies in those superficial indications of civilisation which are set aside as the province of social history. In the medieval Englishman's domesticity there is an epitome of the life of the nation: English private life has its unity, its episodes and catastrophes, which reflect the shifting lights and shadows of the national story. The private history of kings and princes, nobility, clergy and commons, has become now, with the progress of historical study, a theme more easy of treatment than it was a while ago. Changes in the social relations of the classes of men can now be traced, changes that have had their part in shaping the story of a nation, no less than the evolution of the agencies of government, the historic series of victories and defeats, gains and losses of territory, the happy or the luckless political chance, the fateful power of the point of time.

PART I. NORMAN FEUDALISM (1066-1154)

I. THE KING AND HIS HOUSEHOLD

1. NATURE OF THE Conqueror’s feudalism — 2. The officers of the royal household and their fees — 3. Royal residences and building of the Tower — 4. Character of the royal expenses, dress, manners, and education.

1. During the reigns of the four Norman kings, England was as it were violently caught up by the irresistible Norman torrent and swept out of its back-water into the main stream of continental civilisation. Saxon England had had a civilisation of its own, and brought a wealth of treasure and of ideas to its new governors so great as to secure for it the first place among its lord’s possessions. England was no mere appendage to Normandy, with London suffragan to Rouen; from the first it was clear that the kingdom would precede the duchy. To the newly-conquered kingdom the conquerors brought all they had to give, and the chief part of their wealth lay in their continental ideas, which put new life into Church and State. As he owed much to the papacy, which was now to enter upon a new era, characterised by novel and ambitious schemes, it was certain that William I. would bring the English church into line with his Norman church: he was prepared to distinguish things spiritual from things temporal, and let his own masterful wielding of the temporal sword measure the strength of the spiritual. In his time there would be no war on the frontier of the spiritual and temporal kingdoms. Further he brought with him men of all ranks of society and from many countries, imbued with the doctrines of continental feudalism. William and his ministers found English society already half feudalised, but without cohesion and almost anarchic, with tribal elements still only half absorbed, a society so wanting in symmetry and system as to have little to commend it to Norman ideas of government. But as in feudalism there was danger of conflict among the many temporal swords, here, too, William the Conqueror saw to it that the royal sword, while he wielded it, should be supreme. The feudalism which he brought with him placed him merely as “primus inter pares”: that was a position not good enough for him; he aimed at and secured a mastery.

The fabric of society as it was woven by him was of course to be woven of tenurial relations, for no western European could conceive of social relations of any other web, but in woof and warp he introduced a strand of governmental power which was not of tenure. With marvellous vigour king after king carried on his work. Only the reign of Stephen shows by contrast how great was the accomplishment of his predecessors and successors. It was then and then only that the spiritual sword and the baronial swords were uppermost.

What manner of men were these great rulers? Can they be approached at all in their daily lives and be seen otherwise than as governors? Little attention, comparatively speaking, has been paid to the social life of the Normans in England, and yet many difficulties in the understanding of larger themes are best removed by understanding the many characteristic phrases or expressions descriptive of daily life which give colour to the chronicles of the past. The Normans were capable of carrying out schemes of a particular nature, partly by reason of their peculiar domestic civilisation. The evidence descriptive of the life of the Norman kings in England is not abundant, for their palaces are almost wholly swept away; almost all the records of their expenses have vanished; their letters are few in number and formal in character; no chronicle describes their courts in detail. Furthermore, much of their life was spent across the Channel, and their interests were centred largely in the land they came from, so that some of the evidence we have is relevant rather to the Norman duchy than to the English realm. Nevertheless, the fragments of evidence that remain, the entries in Domesday Book, and the statements made touching Henry I.’s reforms in his court are not inadequate to give a detailed picture.

2. The increase in royal dignity which followed on the Norman Conquest was merely one symptom of the nature of the change that had come over England. The Norman court was better planned than the royal household of Anglo-Saxon times, so far as we know it. Both had grown out of the Germanic idea of the household, with its reeve, dish-thegn, cup-bearer, and staller, but in the Norman ducal household these officers had been reinforced by many others. Household departments were multiplied, and under each head of a department (whose office tended to become hereditary and one of dignity only), there were the numerous servants doing the domestic duties. The Norman “curia” was capable of Protean changes of character, adapting itself according to circumstance as an ambulatory household, a camp, a tribunal, a council of war, an administrative or political assembly. Inasmuch as the king’s household was the nursery in which were trained and reared the great officers of State, a peculiar interest attaches to offices that sound humble enough. The king’s household, and the separate households of the queen and the royal children have all left their mark on Domesday Book, for, in return for services past and future, stallers, marshals, chamberlains, cooks, bed-chamber-attendants, stewards, jesters, managers of the king’s transport, of his hunting and hawking expeditions, must all be given a landed provision, in the days when the king is rich in land and not in money.

But a precise description of the daily allowances of the palace servants comes from an Exchequer record of a somewhat later date. The record is believed to represent the reformed household of Henry I., and there is evidence that it was written soon after his death in 1135. Henry found it necessary to correct many abuses that had come in under Rufus’s management and he ordered that his Chancellor should receive five shillings a day, and bread, wine, and candles in fixed quantity. The stewards had a like “livery” or stipend, and so also the butler, master chamberlain, treasurer, and constables. The solid part of the board, which is not mentioned, was of course provided at the king’s table; these liveries, or “buttery commons” as we should call them, of bread, wine, and candles were for private consumption. All these officers being en pension appear as strictly household officers, though they were, from another point of view, officers of state. This same record shows that in the Chancellor’s office there was a master of the writing-room with a staff of clerks and scribes; it is the office of a man who was Secretary of State for all departments And in close association, for the Chancellor is an ecclesiastic,comes the chapel department, with its two sumpter-men employed in the transport of its furniture when the royal household moves. The supply of lights for the chapel was fixed with precision by the thrifty Norman king at two large candles on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with a torch nightly before the relics and thirty bunches of small candles. The chapel had further a provision of a gallon of wine for mass, and a measure on Absolution Day (Thursday before Good Friday) to wash the altar.

The steward or master-dispenser and his servants got a similar “livery” and a salary which varied according as they were living within the house of the king or without. In the steward’s department was a naperer to look after the linen, an usher and a bread-counter. The bearer of the alms-dish or “scuttle” fed in the house. In the larder department slaughterers were employed, receiving “customary” food. In the bakery two bakers fed in the house, and two travelling bakers were at wages. The number of loaves they were to make out of a given quantity of flour was fixed by the careful king, no doubt in order to put a stop to abuses. The making of the royal wafers was the duty of a “nebularius.”

The king’s kitchen and the great or “hall” kitchen were clearly distinguished, each with its separate staff. The cook of the “demesne” or king’s own kitchen fed in the house and had 1 1/2 d. a day for his man; ushers and vessel-keeper and sumpter-man or pack-carrier had the same. The “great” kitchen had a larger staff with numbers of spit-men. The kitchen spits played a large part in the medieval table-service as many contemporary illustrations remind us.

Owing to the disorder which reigned at William Rufus’s great feasts at Westminster Hall, even he, who was not a reformer like Henry I., appointed ushers of hall, and kitchen, and doorkeepers, in all three hundred of them, armed with rods to use upon occasion, for the protection of guests and cooks alike from the press of the rabble. Such is the story of Rufus’s contemporary Gaimar, who gives an amusing description of the scenes at royal feasts, of the greedy clutching at dishes as they passed from kitchen offices, with many a spill.

Each department had its own carters and sumpter-men, answerable for the transport when the king travelled, and perhaps also for the provision of supplies. The chamberlain’s department was answerable for the king’s bedroom service, and included the king’s bed-bearer and a water-man who travelled with the king and got an extra salary when his master put him to the trouble of preparing a bath, except on the three great Church festivals when the king was bound to bathe, and the water-man must bathe him without extra charge. “Concerning the washerwoman there is uncertainty,” says the writer of this curious record; that is, it is not clear whether she belongs to the household and has court-rations or not. The treasury is spoken of under the “camera,” for the idea that in the sleeping quarters treasure is safest is a very old one. It was the bedchamber staff that was to provide most of the officers of the Exchequer.

Coupled with the “camera” comes the Constable’s and next the Marshal’s department. The first seems to have already lost its association with the stable (comes stabuli), while the Marshal (marescalcus, horse-servant) retains his link with the stable and farriery department (compare Fr. maréchal). It seems probable that horseshoeing first became customary in England after the Norman Conquest.

Both Constable and Marshal were to be prominent in the Exchequer department, for their chief duty is the payment of the king’s knights and hunting-servants. By Henry I.’s “constitution” the wages of the Marshal’s servants when the king’s household moved from place to place were precisely determined, and the perquisites of the watchmen, the fuel-man, the tent-keeper, the four horn-blowers and twenty servants, whose duty was probably that of bodyguard. Then follow the servants who were responsible for the king’s sport, the fewterer or keeper of greyhounds, keepers of the hawks’ mews, the wild-cat hunters, the “berner” in charge of running hounds, the huntsman of the hart, the keeper of the “braches,” dogs of keen scent; these and the wolf-hunters all had their “liveries” for themselves and their horses and dogs and hounds. The archers carrying the king’s bow took 5d. a day.

Subsequent records of the organisation of the king’s household, of which there are several of various dates, show how the above scheme expanded, and go to prove that the Norman royal housekeeping, though an advance on the Saxon, was still rude. The list of liveries, for instance, becomes much longer in later times.

The household offices were at least nominally presided over by the highest of the king’s men, but undoubtedly they delegated to others the services which they did not care to do themselves. We must not credit the legend of the Colchester monks, that their earl became “dapifer” because William fitz-Osbern, the king’s trusted minister, served up an underdone crane before his master. But Gaimar’s story of the origin of the Earl of Chester’s golden wand may be truer. Four earls, he tells us, were to carry state swords before Rufus to the great feast at Westminster Hall. Earl Hugh, of Chester, was too proud to carry anything, for he said he was not a servant. Thereupon the king offered him a golden wand and made the bearing of it an office for him and his heirs.

It will be seen that this scheme for the royal household took its character largely from the fact that the court was ambulatory, as it remained when far more highly organised. The story of Henry I.’s reorganisation is borne out from several independent sources. Eadmer, as the biographer of Anselm, claims that the change was due to his beloved patron’s advice, and he gives a vivid account of the sufferings of the people when called upon to provide for the necessities of the ravaging horde of courtiers under the old system. Till the number of hangers-on was reduced, the villagers fled before the advent of the court, taking refuge in the woods. William of Malmesbury, writing as a contemporary, and Walter Map, writing under Henry II., both speak of Henry I.’s new system as marking progress in discipline and economy. In his time the royal travels were so regular that as the “camp” moved along its needs were supplied “as easily as at a fair.” The officials were sure of their wages, and the merchants who sold food to the court were sure of their pay.

This “Constitutio Domus Regis” of Henry I. has seemed worth analysing carefully, because it is the earliest account, and one full of vivid detail, which describes the royal housekeeping. It serves as a picture not only of the royal household, but, as will be shown later, of the household of the king’s great men.

3. The three first Norman kings spent the greater part of their time out of England, and when in England their travels were seldom broken by periods of repose. Punitive expeditions summoned the Conqueror over the length and breadth of his realm, and his successors were scarcely less active within a. more limited area. These travels were partly a means of supporting the court, partly for judicial purposes, partly to make known the king’s power. All the great forest districts were visited in turn for the pleasures of the chase, and in each the king had a fixed habitation. Thus the great Councils, such as those held at Rockingham, Clarendon, Woodstock, take their names from favourite hunting-seats, for all the kings knew how to combine business with pleasure.

William the Conqueror, after his not too peaceful coronation at Westminster, withdrew to the safety of a camp, and before London could be made a safe centre for operations, fortifications, which resulted in the building of the Tower, had to be begun. The first defences seem to have been temporary, but after the advantages of the site had been experienced, the Conqueror decided to build a great keep or tower, such as probably already stood at Rouen. This was the first keep to be built in England, and the architect was Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, 1077-1108, at one time a clerk of Rouen cathedral, and a monk of Bee, when Lanfranc was prior. Lanfranc brought him to England in 1070. That he was still presiding over the works of the White Tower when bishop, is known from an agreement made between him and a London burgess in whose house he was lodging, a record which his Rochester monks preserved.

The White Tower as it now stands is Gundulfs work, adapted to the needs of succeeding centuries. The wall of the keep (12 to 15 feet thick) is said to have taken six weeks to pierce with modern appliances. The walls, diminishing in thickness at each stage upwards, were built of rubble, rudely coursed, with very open joints, while the plinth, quoins, and pilasters, characteristic of the Norman rectangular keep, are believed to be of Kentish rag. The chief features to notice in the plans, both because they are characteristic and because they show the creator’s architectural power, are the intersecting wall, the three well-staircases, the mural staircase to the chapel, the mural gallery on the top-floor (the lord’s dwelling), which communicated with the three well-stairs and with the chapel; the dark cellars used as storehouses of food and arms; and the loops, wide enough to shoot from, but not wide enough to admit fire-brands thrown from without. The floors, now brick, were originally doubtless of timber.

The account of Ralph Flambard’s escape from the Tower in 1100 goes to prove that the inner arrangements were then in the main much as they have remained. This splendid building stands alone to mark the highest point attained in castle architecture in the Conqueror’s clay. Under Rufus in 1097, a great wall was built encircling the Tower; and later a palace was included within one of the castle wards, to which Stephen at one time withdrew.

But the Tower was not often the Norman king’s dwelling-place. At the time when Rufus was levying forced labour for his castle-work from the shires round London, according to the old English plan, he took the opportunity to raise for himself a new palace at Westminster, with a hall of proportions magnificent enough to be thought very grand by his contemporaries. His famous boast that this hall should be completely surpassed by the rooms which he meant to build round it, he never carried out, and later sovereigns even deemed it necessary to rebuild his great hall on a statelier scale.

The Saxon royal house at Winchester was left to the use of the mother of the Confessor and his widow, and a new one was built for William, on ground which encroached upon the New Minster, and from which twelve burgesses had first to be evicted. The New Minster was strong enough to obtain compensation; not so perhaps the burgesses. Besides this palace, to which a great hall, the essential part of a palace, was attached (as we learn from the account of the destruction of this palace in Stephen’s reign), a castle was also built where the treasure, together with the regalia, was kept. When the king wore his crown at the three great Church festivals, it was fetched from Winchester, and when the Empress Matilda entered Winchester in Stephen’s reign to seek to reclaim her own, her first business was to go to the castle for the crown, as her father had done on William Rufus’s death. Other favourite dwellings were Windsor, improved by Henry I., and styled New Windsor, and in the Isle of Wight, a favourite starting-point for Normandy, a hall was early made at Carisbrooke. Henry I.’s name is also closely associated with Beaumont Hall, Oxford, now totally destroyed.

4. William the Conqueror, whilst he was in England, was oftener in camp than under a roof. Rufus’s court was less purely military, and if we may trust a mass of hostile evidence, it was degraded by scenes of debauchery that created the profoundest impression upon his time. Henry I. restored decency to the court, although he could not boast a clean domestic record like his father. He had, however, the tastes of a collector, and the arts prospered under his patronage. That he collected jewels is known from a letter written by a prior of Worcester to Eadmer, Anselm’s biographer, in which he suggests that for money Henry might be persuaded to part with some pearls; he collected also plate, and had a menagerie of rare animals at Woodstock, his favourite place for privacy and retirement; to Woodstock foreign kings sent lions, leopards, lynxes, camels, porcupines, and an ostrich.

A minute account of his expenses, where these were deducted from the sheriff’s accounts, is entered on the single Exchequer record which comes from his reign (1130). It states the cost of conveying wine, wheat, and garments for the king and queen from hunting-lodge to hunting-lodge, of carrying cuttle-fish, cheeses, venison, of “transportations” to Normandy, of building done at, the king’s expense, whether of castles as at Arundel and Carlisle, or of lodges of timber and daubed lath. The building or repair of London Bridge (Rufus had begun it), of Rochester Bridge, to be ready against the king’s coming, is noted here, and in these, our earliest building accounts, the minute particulars into which the sheriff enters are oft...

Table of contents

• PART I. NORMAN FEUDALISM (1066-1154)
• I. THE KING AND HIS HOUSEHOLD
• II. THE NOBILITY
• III. SECULAR AND REGULAR CLERGY
• IV. LEARNING, ART, AND EDUCATION
• V. TILLERS OF THE SOIL
• VI. THE BURGESSES
• PART II. THE LAWYERS’ FEUDALISM (1154-1250)
• VIII. THE NOBILITY
• IX. THE CHURCH AND THE MONASTERIES
• X. THE CHURCH, EDUCATION AND LEARNING
• XI. FARMING
• XII. TOWN LIFE
• PART III. DECADENT FEUDALISM (1250-1350)
• XIII. COURT LIFE
• XIV. BARONIAL HOUSEHOLDS
• XV. MONASTERIES AND THE CHURCH
• XVI. THE CHURCH AND THE NATION
• XVII. FARMING
• XVIII. TOWN LIFE