Chapter XX: Part II (2)

To these succeeded the castellated houses of the fifteenth century, such as Herstmonceux in Sussex, Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, and the older part of Knowle in Kent.[659] They resembled fortified castles in their strong gateways, their turrets and battlements, to erect which a royal licence was necessary; but their defensive strength could only have availed against a sudden affray or attempt at forcible dispossession. They were always built round one or two court-yards, the circumference of the first, when they were two, being occupied by the offices and servants' rooms, that of the second by the state-apartments. Regular quadrangular houses, not castellated, were sometimes built during the same age, and under Henry VII. became universal in the superior style of domestic architecture.[660] The quadrangular form, as well from security and convenience as from imitation of conventual houses, which were always constructed upon that model, was generally preferred--even where the dwelling-house, as indeed was usual, only took up one side of the enclosure, and the remaining three contained the offices, stables, and farm-buildings, with walls of communication. Several very old parsonages appear to have been built in this manner.[661] It is, however, not very easy to discover any large fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III., or even to trace them by engravings in the older topographical works, not only from the dilapidations of time, but because very few considerable mansions had been erected by that class. A great part of England affords no stone fit for building, and the vast though unfortunately not inexhaustible resources of her oak forests were easily applied to less durable and magnificent structures. A frame of massive timber, independent of walls and resembling the inverted hull of a large ship, formed the skeleton, as it were, of an ancient hall--the principal beams springing from the ground naturally curved, and forming a Gothic arch overhead. The intervals of these were filled up with horizontal planks; but in the earlier buildings, at least in some districts, no part of the walls was of stone.[662] Stone houses are, however, mentioned as belonging to citizens of London, even in the reign of Henry II.;[663] and, though not often perhaps regularly hewn stones, yet those scattered over the soil or dug from flint quarries, bound together with a very strong and durable cement, were employed in the construction of manerial houses, especially in the western counties and other parts where that material is easily procured.[664] Gradually even in timber buildings the intervals of the main beams, which now became perpendicular, not throwing off their curved springers till they reached a considerable height, were occupied by stone walls, or where stone was expensive, by mortar or plaster, intersected by horizontal or diagonal beams, grooved into the principal piers.[665] This mode of building continued for a long time, and is still familiar to our eyes in the older streets of the metropolis and other towns, and in many parts of the country.[666] Early in the fourteenth century the art of building with brick, which had been lost since the Roman dominion, was introduced probably from Flanders. Though several edifices of that age are constructed with this material, it did not come into general use till the reign of Henry VI.[667] Many considerable houses as well as public buildings were erected with bricks during his reign and that of Edward IV., chiefly in the eastern counties, where the deficiency of stone was most experienced. Few, if any, brick mansion-houses of the fifteenth century exist, except in a dilapidated state; but Queen's College and Clare Hall at Cambridge, and part of Eton College, are subsisting witnesses to the durability of the material as it was then employed.

[Sidenote: Meanness of ordinary mansion-houses.]

It is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in stately or even in well-sized houses. Generally speaking, their dwellings were almost as inferior to those of their descendants in capacity as they were in convenience. The usual arrangement consisted of an entrance-passage running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above, and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices.[668] Such was the ordinary manor-house of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as appears not only from the documents and engravings, but as to the latter period, from the buildings themselves, sometimes, though not very frequently, occupied by families of consideration, more often converted into farm-houses or distinct tenements. Larger structures were erected by men of great estates during the reigns of Henry IV. and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced higher; and such has been the effect of time, still more through the advance or decline of families and the progress of architectural improvement, than the natural decay of these buildings, that I should conceive it difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman and not belonging to the order of castles, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. The instances at least must be extremely few.[669]

France by no means appears to have made a greater progress than our own country in domestic architecture. Except fortified castles, I do not find in the work of a very miscellaneous but apparently diligent writer,[670] any considerable dwellings mentioned before the reign of Charles VII., and very few of so early a date.[671] Jacques Coeur, a famous merchant unjustly persecuted by that prince, had a handsome house at Paris, as well as another at Bourges.[672] It is obvious that the long calamities which France endured before the expulsion of the English must have retarded this eminent branch of national improvement.

Even in Italy, where from the size of her cities and social refinements of her inhabitants, greater elegance and splendour in building were justly to be expected, the domestic architecture of the middle ages did not attain any perfection. In several towns the houses were covered with thatch, and suffered consequently from destructive fires. Costanzo, a Neapolitan historian near the end of the sixteenth century, remarks the change of manners that had occurred since the reign of Joanna II. one hundred and fifty years before. The great families under the queen expended all their wealth on their retainers, and placed their chief pride in bringing them into the field. They were ill lodged, not sumptuously clothed, nor luxurious in their tables. The house of Caracciolo, high steward of that princess, one of the most powerful subjects that ever existed, having fallen into the hands of persons incomparably below his station, had been enlarged by them, as insufficient for their accommodation.[673] If such were the case in the city of Naples so late as the beginning of the fifteenth century, we may guess how mean were the habitations in less polished parts of Europe.

[Sidenote: Invention of chimneys and glass windows.]

The two most essential improvements in architecture during this period, one of which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome, were chimneys and glass windows. Nothing apparently can be more simple than the former; yet the wisdom of ancient times had been content to let the smoke escape by an aperture in the centre of the roof; and a discovery, of which Vitruvius had not a glimpse, was made, perhaps in this country, by some forgotten semi-barbarian. About the middle of the fourteenth century the use of chimneys is distinctly mentioned in England and in Italy; but they are found in several of our castles which bear a much older date.[674] This country seems to have lost very early the art of making glass, which was preserved in France, whence artificers were brought into England to furnish the windows in some new churches in the seventh century.[675] It is said that in the reign of Henry III. a few ecclesiastical buildings had glazed windows.[676] Suger, however, a century before, had adorned his great work, the abbey of St. Denis, with windows, not only glazed but painted;[677] and I presume that other churches of the same class, both in France and England, especially after the lancet-shaped window had yielded to one of ampler dimensions, were generally decorated in a similar manner. Yet glass is said not to have been employed in the domestic architecture of France before the fourteenth century;[678] and its introduction into England was probably by no means earlier. Nor indeed did it come into general use during the period of the middle ages. Glazed windows were considered as moveable furniture, and probably bore a high price. When the earls of Northumberland, as late as the reign of Elizabeth, left Alnwick Castle, the windows were taken out of their frames, and carefully laid by.[679]

[Sidenote: Furniture of houses.]

But if the domestic buildings of the fifteenth century would not seem very spacious or convenient at present, far less would this luxurious generation be content with their internal accommodations. A gentleman's house containing three or four beds was extraordinarily well provided; few probably had more than two. The walls were commonly bare, without wainscot or even plaster; except that some great houses were furnished with hangings, and that perhaps hardly so soon as the reign of Edward IV. It is unnecessary to add, that neither libraries of books nor pictures could have found a place among furniture. Silver plate was very rare, and hardly used for the table. A few inventories of furniture that still remain exhibit a miserable deficiency.[680] And this was incomparably greater in private gentlemen's houses than among citizens, and especially foreign merchants. We have an inventory of the goods belonging to Contarini, a rich Venetian trader, at his house in St. Botolph's Lane, A.D. 1481. There appear to have been no less than ten beds, and glass windows are especially noticed as moveable furniture. No mention however is made of chairs or looking-glasses.[681] If we compare this account, however trifling in our estimation, with a similar inventory of furniture in Skipton Castle, the great honour of the earls of Cumberland, and among the most splendid mansions of the north, not at the same period, for I have not found any inventory of a nobleman's furniture so ancient, but in 1572, after almost a century of continual improvement, we shall be astonished at the inferior provision of the baronial residence. There were not more than seven or eight beds in this great castle; nor had any of the chambers either chairs, glasses, or carpets.[682] It is in this sense, probably, that we must understand AEneas Sylvius, if he meant any thing more than to express a traveller's discontent, when he declares that the kings of Scotland would rejoice to be as well lodged as the second class of citizens at Nuremberg.[683] Few burghers of that town had mansions, I presume, equal to the palaces of Dumferlin or Stirling, but it is not unlikely that they were better furnished.

[Sidenote: Farm-houses and cottages.]

In the construction of farm-houses and cottages, especially the latter, there have probably been fewer changes; and those it would be more difficult to follow. No building of this class can be supposed to exist of the antiquity to which the present work is confined; and I do not know that we have any document as to the inferior architecture of England, so valuable as one which M. de Paulmy has quoted for that of France, though perhaps more strictly applicable to Italy, an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, being a translation of Crescentio's work on agriculture, illustrating the customs, and, among other things, the habitations of the agricultural class. According to Paulmy, there is no other difference between an ancient and a modern farm-house than arises from the introduction of tiled roofs.[684] In the original work of Crescentio, a native of Bologna, who composed this treatise on rural affairs about the year 1300, an Italian farm-house, when built at least according to his plan, appears to have been commodious both in size and arrangement.[685] Cottages in England seem to have generally consisted of a single room without division of stories. Chimneys were unknown in such dwellings till the early part of Elizabeth's reign, when a very rapid and sensible improvement took place in the comforts of our yeomanry and cottagers.[686]

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical architecture.]

It must be remembered that I have introduced this disadvantageous representation of civil architecture, as a proof of general poverty and backwardness in the refinements of life. Considered in its higher departments, that art is the principal boast of the middle ages. The common buildings, especially those of a public kind, were constructed with skill and attention to durability. The castellated style displays these qualities in great perfection; the means are well adapted to their objects, and its imposing grandeur, though chiefly resulting no doubt from massiveness and historical association, sometimes indicates a degree of architectural genius in the conception. But the most remarkable works of this art are the religious edifices erected in the twelfth and three following centuries. These structures, uniting sublimity in general composition with the beauties of variety and form, intricacy of parts, skilful or at least fortunate effects of shadow and light, and in some instances with extraordinary mechanical science, are naturally apt to lead those antiquaries who are most conversant with them into too partial estimates of the times wherein they were founded. They certainly are accustomed to behold the fairest side of the picture. It was the favourite and most honourable employment of ecclesiastical wealth, to erect, to enlarge, to repair, to decorate cathedral and conventual churches. An immense capital must have been expended upon these buildings in England between the Conquest and the Reformation. And it is pleasing to observe how the seeds of genius, hidden as it were under the frost of that dreary winter, began to bud in the first sunshine of encouragement. In the darkest period of the middle ages, especially after the Scandinavian incursions into France and England, ecclesiastical architecture, though always far more advanced than any other art, bespoke the rudeness and poverty of the times. It began towards the latter part of the eleventh century, when tranquillity, at least as to former enemies, was restored, and some degree of learning reappeared, to assume a more noble appearance. The Anglo-Norman cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished above other works of man in their own age, as the more splendid edifices of a later period. The science manifested in them is not, however, very great; and their style, though by no means destitute of lesser beauties, is upon the whole an awkward imitation of Roman architecture, or perhaps more immediately of the Saracenic buildings in Spain and those of the lower Greek empire.[687] But about the middle of the twelfth century, this manner began to give place to what is improperly denominated the Gothic architecture;[688] of which the pointed arch, formed by the segments of two intersecting semicircles of equal radius and described about a common diameter, has generally been deemed the essential characteristic. We are not concerned at present to inquire whether this style originated in France or Germany, Italy or England, since it was certainly almost simultaneous in all these countries;[689] nor from what source it was derived--a question of no small difficulty. I would only venture to remark, that whatever may be thought of the origin of the pointed arch, for which there is more than one mode of accounting, we must perceive a very oriental character in the vast profusion of ornament, especially on the exterior surface, which is as distinguishing a mark of Gothic buildings as their arches, and contributes in an eminent degree both to their beauties and to their defects. This indeed is rather applicable to the later than the earlier stage of architecture, and rather to continental than English churches. Amiens is in a far more florid style than Salisbury, though a contemporary structure. The Gothic species of architecture is thought by most to have reached its perfection, considered as an object of taste, by the middle or perhaps the close of the fourteenth century, or at least to have lost something of its excellence by the corresponding part of the next age; an effect of its early and rapid cultivation, since arts appear to have, like individuals, their natural progress and decay. The mechanical execution, however, continued to improve, and is so far beyond the apparent intellectual powers of those times, that some have ascribed the principal ecclesiastical structures to the fraternity of freemasons, depositaries of a concealed and traditionary science. There is probably some ground for this opinion; and the earlier archives of that mysterious association, if they existed, might illustrate the progress of Gothic architecture, and perhaps reveal its origin. The remarkable change into this new style, that was almost contemporaneous in every part of Europe, cannot be explained by any local circumstances, or the capricious taste of a single nation.[690]

[Sidenote: Agriculture in some degree progressive.]

It would be a pleasing task to trace with satisfactory exactness the slow, and almost perhaps insensible progress of agriculture and internal improvement during the latter period of the middle ages. But no diligence could recover the unrecorded history of a single village; though considerable attention has of late been paid to this interesting subject by those antiquaries, who, though sometimes affecting to despise the lights of modern philosophy, are unconsciously guided by their effulgence. I have already adverted to the wretched condition of agriculture during the prevalence of feudal tenures, as well as before their general establishment.[691] Yet even in the least civilized ages, there were not wanting partial encouragements to cultivation, and the ameliorating principle of human industry struggled against destructive revolutions and barbarous disorder. The devastation of war from the fifth to the eleventh century rendered land the least costly of all gifts, though it must ever be the most truly valuable and permanent. Many of the grants to monasteries, which strike us as enormous, were of districts absolutely wasted, which would probably have been reclaimed by no other means. We owe the agricultural restoration of a great part of Europe to the monks. They chose, for the sake of retirement, secluded regions which they cultivated with the labour of their hands.[692] Several charters are extant, granted to convents, and sometimes to laymen, of lands which they had recovered from a desert condition, after the ravages of the Saracens.[693] Some districts were allotted to a body of Spanish colonists, who emigrated, in the reign of Louis the Debonair, to live under a Christian sovereign.[694] Nor is this the only instance of agricultural colonies. Charlemagne transplanted part of his conquered Saxons into Flanders, a country at that time almost unpeopled; and at a much later period, there was a remarkable reflux from the same country, or rather from Holland to the coasts of the Baltic Sea. In the twelfth century, great numbers of Dutch colonists settled along the whole line between the Ems and the Vistula. They obtained grants of uncultivated land on condition of fixed rents, and were governed by their own laws under magistrates of their own election.[695]

There cannot be a more striking proof of the low condition of English agriculture in the eleventh century, than is exhibited by Domesday Book. Though almost all England had been partially cultivated, and we find nearly the same manors, except in the north, which exist at present, yet the value and extent of cultivated ground are inconceivably small. With every allowance for the inaccuracies and partialities of those by whom that famous survey was completed,[696] we are lost in amazement at the constant recurrence of two or three carucates in demesne, with other lands occupied by ten or a dozen villeins, valued altogether at forty shillings, as the return of a manor, which now would yield a competent income to a gentleman. If Domesday Book can he considered as even approaching to accuracy in respect of these estimates, agriculture must certainly have made a very material progress in the four succeeding centuries. This however is rendered probable by other documents. Ingulfus, abbot of Croyland under the Conqueror, supplies an early and interesting evidence of improvement.[697] Richard de Rules, lord of Deeping, he tells us, being fond of agriculture, obtained permission from the abbey to inclose a large portion of marsh for the purpose of separate pasture, excluding the Welland by a strong dike, upon which he erected a town, and rendering those stagnant fens a garden of Eden.[698] In imitation of this spirited cultivator, the inhabitants of Spalding and some neighbouring villages by a common resolution divided their marshes amongst them; when some converting them to tillage, some reserving them for meadow, others leaving them in pasture, they found a rich soil for every purpose. The abbey of Croyland and villages in that neighbourhood followed this example.[699] This early instance of parochial inclosure is not to be overlooked in the history of social progress. By the statute of Merton, in the 20th of Henry III., the lord is permitted to approve, that is, to inclose the waste lands of his manor, provided he leave sufficient common of pasture for the freeholders. Higden, a writer who lived about the time of Richard II., says, in reference to the number of hydes and vills of England at the Conquest, that by clearing of woods, and ploughing up wastes, there were many more of each in his age than formerly.[700] And it might be easily presumed, independently of proof, that woods were cleared, marshes drained, and wastes brought into tillage, during the long period that the house of Plantagenet sat on the throne. From manerial surveys indeed and similar instruments, it appears that in some places there was nearly as much ground cultivated in the reign of Edward III. as at the present day. The condition of different counties however was very far from being alike, and in general the northern and western parts of England were the most backward.[701]

The culture of arable land was very imperfect. Fleta remarks, in the reign of Edward I. or II., that unless an acre yielded more than six bushels of corn, the farmer would be a loser, and the land yield no rent.[702] And Sir John Cullum, from very minute accounts, has calculated that nine or ten bushels were a full average crop on an acre of wheat. An amazing excess of tillage accompanied, and partly, I suppose, produced this imperfect cultivation. In Hawsted, for example, under Edward I., there were thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of arable, and only forty-five of meadow ground. A similar disproportion occurs almost invariably in every account we possess.[703] This seems inconsistent with the low price of cattle. But we must recollect, that the common pasture, often the most extensive part of a manor, is not included, at least by any specific measurement, in these surveys. The rent of land differed of course materially; sixpence an acre seems to have been about the average for arable land in the thirteenth century,[704] though meadow was at double or treble that sum. But the landlords were naturally solicitous to augment a revenue that became more and more inadequate to their luxuries. They grew attentive to agricultural concerns, and perceived that a high rate of produce, against which their less enlightened ancestors had been used to clamour, would bring much more into their coffers than it took away. The exportation of corn had been absolutely prohibited. But the statute of the 15th Henry VI. c. 2, reciting that "on this account, farmers and others who use husbandry, cannot sell their corn but at a low price, to the great damage of the realm," permits it to be sent any where but to the king's enemies, so long as the quarter of wheat shall not exceed 6_s._ 8_d._ in value, or that of barley 3_s._

The price of wool was fixed in the thirty-second year of the same reign at a minimum, below which no person was suffered to buy it, though he might give more;[705] a provision neither wise nor equitable, but obviously suggested by the same motive. Whether the rents of land were augmented in any degree through these measures, I have not perceived; their great rise took place in the reign of Henry VIII., or rather afterwards.[706] The usual price of land under Edward IV. seems to have been ten years' purchase.[707]

[Sidenote: Its condition in France and Italy.]

It may easily be presumed that an English writer can furnish very little information as to the state of agriculture in foreign countries. In such works relating to France as have fallen within my reach, I have found nothing satisfactory, and cannot pretend to determine, whether the natural tendency of mankind to ameliorate their condition had a greater influence in promoting agriculture, or the vices inherent in the actual order of society, and those public misfortunes to which that kingdom was exposed, in retarding it.[708] The state of Italy was far different; the rich Lombard plains, still more fertilized by irrigation, became a garden, and agriculture seems to have reached the excellence which it still retains. The constant warfare indeed of neighbouring cities is not very favourable to industry; and upon this account we might incline to place the greatest territorial improvement of Lombardy at an era rather posterior to that of her republican government; but from this it primarily sprung; and without the subjugation of the feudal aristocracy, and that perpetual demand upon the fertility of the earth which an increasing population of citizens produced, the valley of the Po would not have yielded more to human labour than it had done for several preceding centuries.[709] Though Lombardy was extremely populous in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, she exported large quantities of corn.[710] The very curious treatise of Crescentius exhibits the full details of Italian husbandry about 1300, and might afford an interesting comparison to those who are acquainted with its present state. That state indeed in many parts of Italy displays no symptoms of decline. But whatever mysterious influence of soil or climate has scattered the seeds of death on the western regions of Tuscany, had not manifested itself in the middle ages. Among uninhabitable plains, the traveller is struck by the ruins of innumerable castles and villages, monuments of a time when pestilence was either unfelt, or had at least not forbad the residence of mankind. Volterra, whose deserted walls look down upon that tainted solitude, was once a small but free republic; Siena, round whom, though less depopulated, the malignant influence hovers, was once almost the rival of Florence. So melancholy and apparently irresistible a decline of culture and population through physical causes, as seems to have gradually overspread that portion of Italy, has not perhaps been experienced in any other part of Europe, unless we except Iceland.

[Sidenote: Gardening.]

The Italians of the fourteenth century seem to have paid some attention to an art, of which, both as related to cultivation and to architecture, our own forefathers were almost entirely ignorant. Crescentius dilates upon horticulture, and gives a pretty long list of herbs both esculent and medicinal.[711] His notions about the ornamental department are rather beyond what we should expect, and I do not know that his scheme of a flower-garden could be much amended. His general arrangements, which are minutely detailed with evident fondness for the subject, would of course appear too formal at present; yet less so than those of subsequent times; and though acquainted with what is called the topiary art, that of training or cutting trees into regular figures, he does not seem to run into its extravagance. Regular gardens, according to Paulmy, were not made in France till the sixteenth or even seventeenth century;[712] yet one is said to have existed at the Louvre, of much older construction.[713] England, I believe, had nothing of the ornamental kind, unless it were some trees regularly disposed in the orchard of a monastery. Even the common horticultural art for culinary purposes, though not entirely neglected, since the produce of gardens is sometimes mentioned in ancient deeds, had not been cultivated with much attention.[714] The esculent vegetables now most in use were introduced in the reign of Elizabeth, and some sorts a great deal later.

[Sidenote: Changes in value of money.]

I should leave this slight survey of economical history still more imperfect, were I to make no observation on the relative values of money. Without something like precision in our notions upon this subject, every statistical inquiry becomes a source of confusion and error. But considerable difficulties attend the discussion. These arise principally from two causes; the inaccuracy or partial representations of historical writers, on whom we are accustomed too implicitly to rely, and the change of manners, which renders a certain command over articles of purchase less adequate to our wants than it was in former ages.

The first of these difficulties is capable of being removed by a circumspect use of authorities. When this part of statistical history began to excite attention, which was hardly perhaps before the publication of Bishop Fleetwood's Chronicon Preciosum, so few authentic documents had been published with respect to prices, that inquirers were glad to have recourse to historians, even when not contemporary, for such facts as they had thought fit to record. But these historians were sometimes too distant from the times concerning which they wrote, and too careless in their general character, to merit much regard; and even when contemporary, were often credulous, remote from the concerns of the world, and, at the best, more apt to register some extraordinary phenomenon of scarcity or cheapness, than the average rate of pecuniary dealings. The one ought, in my opinion, to be absolutely rejected as testimonies, the other to be sparingly and diffidently admitted.[715] For it is no longer necessary to lean upon such uncertain witnesses. During the last century a very laudable industry has been shown by antiquaries in the publication of account-books belonging to private persons, registers of expenses in convents, returns of markets, valuations of goods, tavern-bills, and in short every document, however trifling in itself, by which this important subject can be illustrated. A sufficient number of such authorities, proving the ordinary tenor of prices rather than any remarkable deviations from it, are the true basis of a table, by which all changes in the value of money should be measured. I have little doubt but that such a table might be constructed from the data we possess with tolerable exactness, sufficient at least to supersede one often quoted by political economists, but which appears to be founded upon very superficial and erroneous inquiries.[716]

It is by no means required that I should here offer such a table of values, which, as to every country except England, I have no means of constructing, and which, even as to England, would be subject to many difficulties.[717] But a reader unaccustomed to these investigations ought to have some assistance in comparing the prices of ancient times with those of his own. I will therefore, without attempting to ascend very high, for we have really no sufficient data as to the period immediately subsequent to the Conquest, much less that which preceded, endeavour at a sort of approximation for the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., previously to the first debasement of the coin by the latter in 1301, the ordinary price of a quarter of wheat appears to have been about four shillings, and that of barley and oats in proportion. A sheep was rather sold high at a shilling, and an ox might be reckoned at ten or twelve.[718] The value of cattle is, of course, dependent upon their breed and condition, and we have unluckily no early account of butcher's meat; but we can hardly take a less multiple than about thirty for animal food and eighteen or twenty for corn, in order to bring the prices of the thirteenth century to a level with those of the present day.[719] Combining the two, and setting the comparative dearness of cloth against the cheapness of fuel and many other articles, we may perhaps consider any given sum under Henry III. and Edward I. as equivalent in general command over commodities to about twenty-four or twenty-five times their nominal value at present. Under Henry VI. the coin had lost one-third of its weight in silver, which caused a proportional increase of money prices;[720] but, so far as I can perceive, there had been no diminution in the value of that metal. We have not much information as to the fertility of the mines which supplied Europe during the middle ages; but it is probable that the drain of silver towards the East, joined to the ostentatious splendour of courts, might fully absorb the usual produce. By the statute 15 H. VI., c. 2, the price up to which wheat might be exported is fixed at 6_s._ 8_d._, a point no doubt above the average; and the private documents of that period, which are sufficiently numerous, lead to a similar result.[721] Sixteen will be a proper multiple when we would bring the general value of money in this reign to our present standard.[722] [1816.]

But after ascertaining the proportional values of money at different periods by a comparison of the prices in several of the chief articles of expenditure, which is the only fair process, we shall sometimes be surprised at incidental facts of this class which seem irreducible to any rule. These difficulties arise not so much from the relative scarcity of particular commodities, which it is for the most part easy to explain, as from the change in manners and in the usual mode of living. We have reached in this age so high a pitch of luxury that we can hardly believe or comprehend the frugality of ancient times; and have in general formed mistaken notions as to the habits of expenditure which then prevailed. Accustomed to judge of feudal and chivalrous ages by works of fiction, or by historians who embellished their writings with accounts of occasional festivals and tournaments, and sometimes inattentive enough to transfer the manners of the seventeenth to the fourteenth century, we are not at all aware of the usual simplicity with which the gentry lived under Edward I. or even Henry VI. They drank little wine; they had no foreign luxuries; they rarely or never kept male servants except for husbandry; their horses, as we may guess by the price, were indifferent; they seldom travelled beyond their county. And even their hospitality must have been greatly limited, if the value of manors were really no greater than we find it in many surveys. Twenty-four seems a sufficient multiple when we would raise a sum mentioned by a writer under Edward I. to the same real value expressed in our present money, but an income of 10_l._ or 20_l._ was reckoned a competent estate for a gentleman; at least the lord of a single manor would seldom have enjoyed more. A knight who possessed 150_l._ per annum passed for extremely rich.[723] Yet this was not equal in command over commodities to 4000_l._ at present. But this income was comparatively free from taxation, and its expenditure lightened by the services of his villeins. Such a person, however, must have been among the most opulent of country gentlemen. Sir John Fortescue speaks of five pounds a year as "a fair living for a yeoman," a class of whom he is not at all inclined to diminish the importance.[724] So, when Sir William Drury, one of the richest men in Suffolk, bequeaths in 1493 fifty marks to each of his daughters, we must not imagine that this was of greater value than four or five hundred pounds at this day, but remark the family pride and want of ready money which induced country gentlemen to leave their younger children in poverty.[725] Or, if we read that the expense of a scholar at the university in 1514 was but five pounds annually, we should err in supposing that he had the liberal accommodation which the present age deems indispensable, but consider how much could be afforded for about sixty pounds, which will be not far from the proportion. And what would a modern lawyer say to the following entry in the churchwarden's accounts of St. Margaret, Westminster, for 1476: "Also paid to Roger Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel giving, 3_s._ 8_d._, _with four-pence for his dinner_"?[726] Though fifteen times the fee might not seem altogether inadequate at present, five shillings would hardly furnish the table of a barrister, even if the fastidiousness of our manners would admit of his accepting such a dole. But this fastidiousness, which considers certain kinds of remuneration degrading to a man of liberal condition, did not prevail in those simple ages. It would seem rather strange that a young lady should learn needlework and good breeding in a family of superior rank, paying for her board; yet such was the laudable custom of the fifteenth and even sixteenth centuries, as we perceive by the Paston Letters, and even later authorities.[727]

[Sidenote: Labourers better paid than at present.]

There is one very unpleasing remark which every one who attends to the subject of prices will be induced to make, that the labouring classes, especially those engaged in agriculture, were better provided with the means of subsistence in the reign of Edward III. or of Henry VI. than they are at present. In the fourteenth century Sir John Cullum observes a harvest man had fourpence a day, which enabled him in a week to buy a comb of wheat; but to buy a comb of wheat a man must now (1784) work ten or twelve days.[728] So, under Henry VI., if meat was at a farthing and a half the pound, which I suppose was about the truth, a labourer earning threepence a day, or eighteen pence in the week, could buy a bushel of wheat at six shillings the quarter, and twenty-four pounds of meat for his family. A labourer at present, earning twelve shillings a week, can only buy half a bushel of wheat at eighty shillings the quarter, and twelve pounds of meat at seven-pence.[729] Several acts of parliament regulate the wages that might be paid to labourers of different kinds. Thus the statute of labourers in 1350 fixed the wages of reapers during harvest at threepence a-day without diet, equal to five shillings at present; that of 23 H. VI., c. 12, in 1444, fixed the reapers' wages at five-pence and those of common workmen in building at 3-1/2_d._, equal to 6_s._ 8_d._ and 4_s._ 8_d._; that of 11 H. VII., c. 22, in 1496, leaves the wages of labourers in harvest as before, but rather increases those of ordinary workmen. The yearly wages of a chief hind or shepherd by the act of 1444 were 1_l._ 4_s._, equivalent to about 20_l._, those of a common servant in husbandry 18_s._ 4_d._, with meat and drink; they were somewhat augmented by the statute of 1496.[730] Yet, although these wages are regulated as a maximum by acts of parliament, which may naturally be supposed to have had a view rather towards diminishing than enhancing the current rate, I am not fully convinced that they were not rather beyond it; private accounts at least do not always correspond with these statutable prices.[731] And it is necessary to remember that the uncertainty of employment, natural to so imperfect a state of husbandry, must have diminished the labourers' means of subsistence. Extreme dearth, not more owing to adverse seasons than to improvident consumption, was frequently endured.[732] But after every allowance of this kind I should find it difficult to resist the conclusion that, however the labourer has derived benefit from the cheapness of manufactured commodities and from many inventions of common utility, he is much inferior in ability to support a family to his ancestors three or four centuries ago. I know not why some have supposed that meat was a luxury seldom obtained by the labourer. Doubtless he could not have procured as much as he pleased. But, from the greater cheapness of cattle, as compared with corn, it seems to follow that a more considerable portion of his ordinary diet consisted of animal food than at present. It was remarked by Sir John Fortescue that the English lived far more upon animal diet than their rivals the French; and it was natural to ascribe their superior strength and courage to this cause.[733] I should feel much satisfaction in being convinced that no deterioration in the state of the labouring classes has really taken place; yet it cannot, I think, appear extraordinary to those who reflect, that the whole population of England in the year 1377 did not much exceed 2,300,000 souls, about one-fifth of the results upon the last enumeration, an increase with which that of the fruits of the earth cannot be supposed to have kept an even pace.[734]

[Sidenote: Improvement in the moral character of Europe.]

The second head to which I referred, the improvements of European society in the latter period of the middle ages, comprehends several changes, not always connected, with each other, which contributed to inspire a more elevated tone of moral sentiment, or at least to restrain the commission of crimes. But the general effect of these upon the human character is neither so distinctly to be traced, nor can it be arranged with so much attention to chronology, as the progress of commercial wealth or of the arts that depend upon it. We cannot from any past experience indulge the pleasing vision of a constant and parallel relation between the moral and intellectual energies, the virtues and the civilization of mankind. Nor is any problem connected with philosophical history more difficult than to compare the relative characters of different generations, especially if we include a large geographical surface in our estimate. Refinement has its evils as well as barbarism; the virtues that elevate a nation in one century pass in the next to a different region; vice changes its form without losing its essence; the marked features of individual character stand out in relief from the surface of history, and mislead our judgment as to the general course of manners; while political revolutions and a bad constitution of government may always undermine or subvert the improvements to which more favourable circumstances have contributed. In comparing, therefore, the fifteenth with the twelfth century, no one would deny the vast increase of navigation and manufactures, the superior refinement of manners, the greater diffusion of literature. But should I assert that man had raised himself in the latter period above the moral degradation of a more barbarous age, I might be met by the question whether history bears witness to any greater excesses of rapine and inhumanity than in the wars of France and England under Charles VII., or whether the rough patriotism and fervid passions of the Lombards in the twelfth century were not better than the systematic treachery of their servile descendants three hundred years afterwards. The proposition must therefore be greatly limited; yet we can scarcely hesitate to admit, upon a comprehensive view, that there were several changes during the last four of the middle ages, which must naturally have tended to produce, and some of which did unequivocally produce, a meliorating effect, within the sphere of their operation, upon the moral character of society.

[Sidenote: Elevation of the lower ranks.]

The first and perhaps the most important of these, was the gradual elevation of those whom unjust systems of polity had long depressed; of the people itself, as opposed to the small number of rich and noble, by the abolition or desuetude of domestic and predial servitude, and by the privileges extended to corporate towns. The condition of slavery is indeed perfectly consistent with the observance of moral obligations; yet reason and experience will justify the sentence of Homer, that he who loses his liberty loses half his virtue. Those who have acquired, or may hope to acquire, property of their own, are most likely to respect that of others; those whom law protects as a parent are most willing to yield her a filial obedience; those who have much to gain by the good-will of their fellow citizens are most interested in the preservation of an honourable character. I have been led, in different parts of the present work, to consider these great revolutions in the order of society under other relations than that of their moral efficacy; and it will therefore be unnecessary to dwell upon them; especially as this efficacy is indeterminate, though I think unquestionable, and rather to be inferred from general reflections than capable of much illustration by specific facts.

[Sidenote: Police.]

We may reckon in the next place among the causes of moral improvement, a more regular administration of justice according to fixed laws, and a more effectual police. Whether the courts of judicature were guided by the feudal customs or the Roman law, it was necessary for them to resolve litigated questions with precision and uniformity. Hence a more distinct theory of justice and good faith was gradually apprehended; and the moral sentiments of mankind were corrected, as on such subjects they often require to be, by clearer and better grounded inferences of reasoning. Again, though it cannot be said that lawless rapine was perfectly restrained even at the end of the fifteenth century, a sensible amendment had been every where experienced. Private warfare, the licensed robbery of feudal manners, had been subjected to so many mortifications by the kings of France, and especially by St. Louis, that it can hardly be traced beyond the fourteenth century. In Germany and Spain it lasted longer; but the various associations for maintaining tranquillity in the former country had considerably diminished its violence before the great national measure of public peace adopted under Maximilian.[735] Acts of outrage committed by powerful men became less frequent as the executive government acquired more strength to chastise them. We read that St. Louis, the best of French kings, imposed a fine upon the lord of Vernon for permitting a merchant to be robbed in his territory between sunrise and sunset. For by the customary law, though in general ill observed, the lord was bound to keep the roads free from depredators in the day-time, in consideration of the toll he received from passengers.[736] The same prince was with difficulty prevented from passing a capital sentence on Enguerrand de Coucy, a baron of France, for a murder.[737] Charles the Fair actually put to death a nobleman of Languedoc for a series of robberies, notwithstanding the intercession of the provincial nobility.[738] The towns established a police of their own for internal security, and rendered themselves formidable to neighbouring plunderers. Finally, though not before the reign of Louis XI., an armed force was established for the preservation of police.[739] Various means were adopted in England to prevent robberies, which indeed were not so frequently perpetrated as they were on the continent, by men of high condition. None of these perhaps had so much efficacy as the frequent sessions of judges under commissions of gaol delivery. But the spirit of this country has never brooked that coercive police which cannot exist without breaking in upon personal liberty by irksome regulations, and discretionary exercise of power; the sure instrument of tyranny, which renders civil privileges at once nugatory and insecure, and by which we should dearly purchase some real benefits connected with its slavish discipline.

[Sidenote: Religious sects.]

I have some difficulty in adverting to another source of moral improvement during this period, the growth of religious opinions adverse to those of the established church, both on account of its great obscurity, and because many of these heresies were mixed up with an excessive fanaticism. But they fixed themselves so deeply in the hearts of the inferior and more numerous classes, they bore, generally speaking, so immediate a relation to the state of manners, and they illustrate so much that more visible and eminent revolution which ultimately rose out of them in the sixteenth century, that I must reckon these among the most interesting phenomena in the progress of European society.

Many ages elapsed, during which no remarkable instance occurs of a popular deviation from the prescribed line of belief; and pious Catholics console themselves by reflecting that their forefathers, in those times of ignorance, slept at least the sleep of orthodoxy, and that their darkness was interrupted by no false lights of human reasoning.[740] But from the twelfth century this can no longer be their boast. An inundation of heresy broke in that age upon the church, which no persecution was able thoroughly to repress, till it finally overspread half the surface of Europe. Of this religious innovation we must seek the commencement in a different part of the globe. The Manicheans afford an eminent example of that durable attachment to a traditional creed, which so many ancient sects, especially in the East, have cherished through the vicissitudes of ages, in spite of persecution and contempt. Their plausible and widely extended system had been in early times connected with the name of Christianity, however incompatible with its doctrines and its history. After a pretty long obscurity, the Manichean theory revived with some modification in the western parts of Armenia, and was propagated in the eighth and ninth centuries by a sect denominated Paulicians. Their tenets are not to be collected with absolute certainty from the mouths of their adversaries, and no apology of their own survives. There seems however to be sufficient evidence that the Paulicians, though professing to acknowledge and even to study the apostolical writings, ascribed the creation of the world to an evil deity, whom they supposed also to be the author of the Jewish law, and consequently rejected all the Old Testament. Believing, with the ancient Gnostics, that our Saviour was clothed on earth with an impassive celestial body, they denied the reality of his death and resurrection.[741] These errors exposed them to a long and cruel persecution, during which a colony of exiles was planted by one of the Greek emperors in Bulgaria.[742] From this settlement they silently promulgated their Manichean creed over the western regions of Christendom. A large part of the commerce of those countries with Constantinople was carried on for several centuries by the channel of the Danube. This opened an immediate intercourse with the Paulicians, who may be traced up that river through Hungary and Bavaria, or sometimes taking the route of Lombardy into Switzerland and France.[743] In the last country, and especially in its southern and eastern provinces, they became conspicuous under a variety of names; such as Catharists, Picards, Paterins, but above all, Albigenses. It is beyond a doubt that many of these sectaries owed their origin to the Paulicians; the appellation of Bulgarians was distinctively bestowed upon them; and, according to some writers, they acknowledged a primate or patriarch resident in that country.[744] The tenets ascribed to them by all contemporary authorities coincide so remarkably with those held by the Paulicians, and in earlier times by the Manicheans, that I do not see how we can reasonably deny what is confirmed by separate and uncontradicted testimonies, and contains no intrinsic want of probability.[745]

[Sidenote: Waldenses.]

But though, the derivation of these heretics called Albigenses from Bulgaria is sufficiently proved, it is by no means to be concluded that all who incurred the same imputation either derived their faith from the same country, or had adopted the Manichean theory of the Paulicians. From the very invectives of their enemies, and the acts of the Inquisition, it is manifest that almost every shade of heterodoxy was found among these dissidents, till it vanished in a simple protestation against the wealth and tyranny of the clergy. Those who were absolutely free from any taint of Manicheism are properly called Waldenses; a name perpetually confounded in later times with that of Albigenses, but distinguishing a sect probably of separate origin, and at least of different tenets. These, according to the majority of writers, took their appellation from Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, the parent, about the year 1160, of a congregation of seceders from the church, who spread very rapidly over France and Germany.[746] According to others, the original Waldenses were a race of uncorrupted shepherds, who in the valleys of the Alps had shaken off, or perhaps never learned, the system of superstition on which the Catholic church depended for its ascendency. I am not certain whether their existence can be distinctly traced beyond the preaching of Waldo, but it is well known that the proper seat of the Waldenses or Vaudois has long continued to be in certain valleys of Piedmont. These pious and innocent sectaries, of whom the very monkish historians speak well, appear to have nearly resembled the modern Moravians. They had ministers of their own appointment, and denied the lawfulness of oaths and of capital punishment. In other respects their opinions probably were not far removed from those usually called Protestant. A simplicity of dress, and especially the use of wooden sandals, was affected by this people.[747]