Chapter XV

EDUCATION.--LITERARY MEN AND SCRIBES.--PUNISHMENTS; THE STOCKS; THE
GALLOWS.

I put together in a short chapter two parts of my subject which may at the first glance seem somewhat discordant, but which, I think, on further consideration, will be found to be rather closely related--they are, education and punishment for offences against the law. It can hardly be doubted, indeed, that, as education becomes more general and better regulated, if the necessity of punishment is not entirely taken away, its cruelty is greatly diminished.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was certainly a general feeling of the necessity of extending and improving education. It was during this period that our great universities rose into existence, and flourished, and these schools, which provided for the higher development of the mind, had their thousands of students, instead of the hundreds who frequent them at the present day. But the need of some provision for education was felt most in regard to that less elevated degree of instruction which was required for the more youthful mind,--in fact, it was long before the people of the middle ages could be persuaded that literary education was of any use at all, except for those who were to be made great scholars; the clergy itself, unfortunately, did not see the necessity of popular education, and although the schools in parish churches were long continued, they appear to have been conducted more and more with negligence. It was the mercantile class in the towns which made the first step in advance, by the establishment of those foundations which have continued to the present time under the name of grammar schools. These schools are traced back to the thirteenth century, when the merchant guilds, by whom they were founded, began to assume a greater degree of importance, and they were usually intended for the general benefit of the town, but were combined with an ecclesiastical establishment for performing services for the souls of the members of the guilds, in consequence of which, at the Reformation, they became involved in the superstitious uses, and were dissolved and refounded in the reign of Edward VI., so that they are now generally known as king Edward’s foundations. The great object of these schools was to give the instruction necessary for admission into the universities; and they were in some degree the answer to an appeal which came deeply from the mass of the people,--for there was at this time a great spontaneous eagerness for learning, both for the sake of the learning itself, and because it was a road to high distinction, which was not open to the masses in any other direction. It was a very common practice for poor youths to go about the country during vacation time, to beg money to keep them at school during term. In Piers Ploughman, among the objects of legitimate charity, the writer enumerates money given to--

_Sette scolers to scole,_
_Or to som othere craftes._
--Piers Ploughman, Vis., l. 4,525.

And in the popular complaints of the burden of taxation, involuntary and voluntary, the alms given to poor scholars are often enumerated.

Independent, however, of what may be considered more especially as scholarship, a considerable amount of instruction began now to be spread abroad. Reading and writing were becoming much more general accomplishments, especially among ladies. Among the amusements of leisure hours, indeed, reading began now to occupy a much larger place than had been given to it in former ages. Even still, popular literature--in the shape of tales, and ballads and songs--was, in a great measure, communicated orally. But much had been done during the fourteenth century towards spreading a taste for literature and knowledge; books were multiplied, and were extensively read; and wants were already arising which soon led the way to that most important of modern discoveries, the art of printing. Most gentlemen had now a few books, and men of wealth had considerable libraries. The wills of this period, still preserved, often enumerate the books possessed by the testator, and show the high value which was set upon them. Many of the illuminations of the fourteenth century present us with ingenious, and sometimes fantastic, forms of book-cases and book-stands. In our cut No. 227, from a manuscript of metrical relations of miracles of the Virgin Mary, now preserved in the library of the city of Soissons in France, we have a monk reading, seated before a book-stand, the table of which moves up and down on a screw. Upon this table is the inkstand, and below it apparently the inkbottle; and the table has in itself receptacles for books and paper or parchment. In the wall of the room are cupboards, also for the reception of books, as we see by one lying loose in them. The man is here seated on a stool; but in our cut No. 228, taken from a manuscript in the National Library in Paris (No. 6985), he is seated in a chair, with a writing-desk attached to it. The scribe holds in his hand a pen, with which he is writing, and a knife to scratch the parchment where anything may need erasion. The table here is also of a curious construction, and it is covered with books. Other examples are found, which show that considerable ingenuity was employed in varying the forms of such library tables.

The next cut (No. 229) is taken from one of the illuminations to a manuscript of the “Moralization of Chess,” by Jacques de Cessoles (MS. Reg. 19 C. xi.), and is intended as a sort of figurative representation of the industrial class of society. It is curious because the figure is made to carry some of the principal implements of the chief trades or manufactures, and thus gives us their ordinary forms. We need only repeat the enumeration of these from the text. It is, we are told, a man who holds in his right hand a pair of shears (_unes forces_); in his left hand he has a great knife (_un grant coustel_); “and he must have at his girdle an inkstand (_une escriptoire_), and on his ear a pen for writing (_et sur l’oreille une penne à escripre_).” Accordingly we see the ink-pot and the case for writing implements suspended at the girdle, but by accident the pen does not appear on the ear in our engraving. It is curious through how great a length of time the practice of placing the pen behind the ear has continued in use.

The punishments of the middle ages are remarkable, still more so in other countries than in England, for a mixture of a small amount of feeling of strict justice with a very large proportion of the mere feeling of vengeance. Savage ferocity in the commission of crime led to no less savage cruelty in retaliation. We have seen, in a former chapter, that this was not the sentiment of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, but that their criminal laws were extremely mild; but after the Norman conquest, more barbarous feelings on this subject were brought over from the Continent. Imprisonment itself, even before trial, was made frightfully cruel; the dungeons into which the accused were thrown were often filthy holes, sometimes with water running through them, and, as a refinement in cruelty, loathsome reptiles were bred in them, and the prisoners were not only allowed insufficient food, but they were sometimes stripped naked, and thrown into prison in that condition. In the early English romance of the “Seven Sages” (the text printed by Weber), when the emperor was persuaded by his wife to order her step-son for execution, he commanded that he should be taken, stripped naked of his clothes, and then hanged aloft--

_Quik he het_ (commanded) _his sone take,_
_And spoili him of clothes nake,_
_And beten him with scourges stronge,_
_And afterward him hegge_ (high) _anhonge_.
--Weber, iii. 21.

At the intercession of one of the wise men, the youth is respited and thrown into prison, but without his clothing; and when, on a subsequent occasion, he was brought out of prison for judgment, he remained still naked.

Our three cuts which follow illustrate the subject of mediæval punishments for crimes and offences. The first (No. 230) is taken from a well-known manuscript, in the British Museum, of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), and represents a monk and a lady, whose career has brought them into the stocks, an instrument of punishment which has figured in some of our former chapters. It is a very old mode of punishing offenders, and appears, under the Latin name of _cippus_, in early records of the middle ages. An old English poem, quoted by Mr. Halliwell in his Dictionary, from a manuscript at least as old as the fifteenth century, recounting the punishments to which some misdoers were condemned, says:--

_And twenty of thes oder ay in a pytt,_
_In stokkes and feturs for to sytt._

The stocks are frequently referred to in writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they have not yet become entirely obsolete. The _Leeds Mercury_ for April 14, 1860, informs us that, “A notorious character, named John Gambles, of Stanningley (Pudsey), having been convicted some months ago for Sunday gambling, and sentenced to sit in the stocks for six hours, left the locality, returned lately, and suffered his punishment by sitting in the stocks from two till eight o’clock on Thursday last.” They were formerly employed also, in place of fetters, in the inside of prisons--no doubt in order to cause suffering by irksome restraint; and this was so common that the Latin term _cippus_, and the French _ceps_, were commonly used to designate the prison itself. It may be remarked of these stocks, that they present a peculiarity which we may perhaps call a primitive character. They are not supported on posts, or fixed in any way to the spot, but evidently hold the people who are placed in them in confinement merely by their weight, and by the impossibility of walking with them on the legs, especially when more persons than one are confined in them. This is probably the way in which they were used in prisons.

A material part of the punishment of the stocks, when employed in the open air, consisted, of course, in the public disgrace to which the victim was exposed. We might suppose that the shame of such exposure was keenly felt in the middle ages, from the frequency with which it was employed. This exposure before the public was, we know, originally, the chief characteristic of the cucking-stool, for the process of ducking the victim in the water seems to have been only added to it at a later period. Our cut No. 231, taken from an illumination in the unique manuscript of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,” in the Hunterian Library, at Glasgow, represents a person thus exposed to the scorn and derision of the populace in the executioner’s cart, which is drawn through the streets of a town. To be carried about in a cart was always considered as especially disgraceful, probably because it was thus that malefactors were usually conducted to the gallows. In the early romances of the cycle of king Arthur we have an incident which forms an apt illustration of the prevalence of this feeling. Sir Lancelot, when hastening to rescue his lady, queen Guenever, has the misfortune to lose his horse, and, meeting with a carter, he seizes his cart as the only means of conveyance, for the weight of his armour prevented him from walking. Queen Guenever and her ladies, from a bay window of the castle of sir Meliagraunce, saw him approach, and one of the latter exclaimed, “See, madam, where as rideth in a cart a goodly armed knight! I suppose that he rideth to hanging.” Guenever, however, saw by his shield that it was sir Lancelot. “‘Ah, most noble knight,’ she said, when she saw him in this condition, ‘I see well that thou hast been hard bested, when thou ridest in a cart.’ Then she rebuked that lady that compared him to one riding in a cart to hanging. ‘It was foul mouthed,’ said the queen, ‘and evil compared, so to compare the most noble knight of the world in such a shameful death. Oh Jhesu! defend him and keep him,’ said the queen, ‘from all mischievous end.’”

Our next cut (No. 232) is taken from the same manuscript in the British Museum which furnished us with No. 230. The playful draughtsman has represented a scene from the world “upso-down,” in which the rabbits (or perhaps hares) are leading to execution their old enemy the dog.

The gallows and the wheel were instruments of execution of such common use in the middle ages that they were continually before people’s eyes. Every town, every abbey, and almost every large manorial lord, had the right of hanging, and a gallows or tree with a man hanging upon it was so frequent an object in the country that it seems to have been almost a natural ornament of a landscape, and it is thus introduced by no means uncommonly in mediæval manuscripts. The two examples given in our cut No. 233 are taken from the illuminations in the manuscript of the romance of the “Chevalereux comte d’Artois,” in the manuscript from which this romance was printed by M. Barrois.