Chapter XXIV: Part II (6)

[582] In 1295 Edward I. made masters of neutral ships in English ports find security not to trade with France. Rymer, t. ii. p. 679.

[583] Rymer, t. iv. p. 491, &c. Fuller draws a notable picture of the inducements held out to the Flemings. "Here they should feed on fat beef and mutton, till nothing but their fulness should stint their stomachs; their beds should be good, and their bedfellows better, seeing the richest yeomen in England would not disdain to marry their daughters unto them, and such the English beauties that the most envious foreigners could not but commend them." Fuller's Church History, quoted in Blomefield's Hist. of Norfolk.

[584] Rymer, t. v. p. 137, 430, 540.

[585] In 1409 woollen cloths formed great part of our exports, and were extensively used over Spain and Italy. And in 1449, English cloths having been prohibited by the duke of Burgundy, it was enacted that, until he should repeal this ordinance, no merchandise of his dominions should be admitted into England. 27 H. VI. c. 1. The system of prohibiting the import of foreign wrought goods was acted upon very extensively in Edward IV.'s reign.

[586] Stat. 11 E. III. c. 1. Blackstone says that transporting wool out of the kingdom, to the detriment of our staple manufacture, was forbidden at common law (vol. iv. c. 19), not recollecting that we had no staple manufactures in the ages when the common law was formed, and that the export of wool was almost the only means by which this country procured silver, or any other article of which it stood in need, from the continent. In fact, the landholders were so far from neglecting this source of their wealth, that a minimum was fixed upon it, by a statute of 1343 (repealed indeed the next year, 18 E. III. c. 3), below which price it was not to be sold; from a laudable apprehension, as it seems, that foreigners were getting it too cheap. And this was revived in the 32nd of H. VI., though the act is not printed among the statutes. Rot. Parl. t. v. p. 275. The exportation of sheep was prohibited in 1338--Rymer, t. v. p. 36; and by act of Parliament in 1425--3 H. VI. c. 2. But this did not prevent our importing the wool of a foreign country, to our own loss. It is worthy of notice that English wool was superior to any other for fineness during these ages. Henry II., in his patent to the Weavers' Company, directs that, if any weaver mingled Spanish wool with English, it should be burned by the lord mayor. Macpherson, p. 382. An English flock transported into Spain about 1348 is said to have been the source of the fine Spanish wool. Ibid. p. 539. But the superiority of English wool, even as late as 1438, is proved by the laws of Barcelona forbidding its adulteration. p. 654. Another exportation of English sheep to Spain took place about 1465, in consequence of a commercial treaty. Rymer, t. xi. p. 534 et alibi. In return, Spain supplied England with horses, her breed of which was reckoned the best in Europe; so that the exchange was tolerably fair. Macpherson, p. 596. The best horses had been very dear in England, being imported from Spain and Italy. Ibid.

[587] Schmidt, t. iv. p. 18.

[588] Considerable woollen manufactures appear to have existed in Picardy about 1315. Macpherson ad annum. Capmany, t. iii. part 2, p. 151.

[589] The sheriffs of Wiltshire and Sussex are directed in 1253 to purchase for the king 1000 ells of fine linen, lineae telae pulchrae et delicate. This Macpherson supposes to be of domestic manufacture, which, however, is not demonstrable. Linen was made at that time in Flanders; and as late as 1417 the fine linen used in England was imported from France and the Low Countries. Macpherson, from Rymer, t. ix. p. 334. Velly's history is defective in giving no account of the French commerce and manufactures, or at least none that is at all satisfactory.

[590] Adam Bremensis, de Situ Daniae, p. 13. (Elzevir edit.)

[591] Schmidt, t. iv. p. 8. Macpherson, p. 392. The latter writer thinks they were not known by the name of Hanse so early.

[592] Pfeffel, t. i. p. 443; Schmidt, t. iv. p. 18; t. v. p. 512; Macpherson's Annals, vol. i. p. 693.

[593] Macpherson, vol. i. passim.

[594] Rymer, t. viii. p. 360.

[595] Macpherson (who quotes Stow), p. 415.

[596] Walsingham, p. 211.

[597] Rymer, t. vii. p. 210, 341; t. viii. p. 9.

[598] Rymer, t. x. p. 461.

[599] Rymer, t. viii. p. 488.

[600] Macpherson, p. 667.

[601] Richard III., in 1485, appointed a Florentine merchant to be English consul at Pisa, on the ground that some of his subjects intended to trade to Italy. Macpherson, p. 705, from Rymer. Perhaps we cannot positively prove the existence of a Mediterranean trade at an earlier time; and even this instrument is not conclusive. But a considerable presumption arises from two documents in Rymer, of the year 1412, which inform us of a great shipment of wool and other goods made by some merchants of London for the Mediterranean, under supercargoes, whom, it being a new undertaking, the king expressly recommended to the Genoese republic. But that people, impelled probably by commercial jealousy, seized the vessels and their cargoes; which induced the king to grant the owners letters of reprisal against all Genoese property. Rymer, t. viii. p. 717, 773. Though it is not perhaps evident that the vessels were English, the circumstances render it highly probable. The bad success, however, of this attempt, might prevent its imitation. A Greek author about the beginning of the fifteenth century reckons the Inglenoi among the nations who traded to a port in the Archipelago. Gibbon, vol. xii. p. 52. But these enumerations are generally swelled by vanity or the love of exaggeration; and a few English sailors on board a foreign vessel would justify the assertion. Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveller, pretends that the port of Alexandria, about 1160, contained vessels not only from England, but from Russia, and even _Cracow_. Harris's Voyages, vol. i. p. 554.

[602] The Amalfitans are thus described by William of Apulia, apud Muratori, Dissert. 30.

Urbs haec dives opum, populoque referta videtur,
Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus, auro.
Partibus innumeris ac plurimus urbe moratur
Nauta, maris coelique vias aperire peritus.
Huc et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe,
Regis et Antiochi. Haec [etiam?] freta plurima transit.
Hic Arabes, Indi, Siculi noscuntur, et Afri.
Haec gens est totum prope nobilitata per orbem,
Et mercanda ferens et amans mercata referre.

[There must be, I suspect, some exaggeration about the commerce and opulence of Amalfi, in the only age when she possessed any at all. The city could never have been considerable, as we may judge from its position immediately under a steep mountain; and what is still more material, has a very small port. According to our notions of trade, she could never have enjoyed much; the lines quoted from William of Apulia are to be taken as a poet's panegyric. It is of course a question of degree; Amalfi was no doubt a commercial republic to the extent of her capacity; but those who have ever been on the coast must be aware how limited that was. At present she has, I believe, no foreign trade at all. 1848.]

[603] The inhabitants of Acre were noted, in an age not very pure, for the excess of their vices. In 1291 they plundered some of the subjects of a neighbouring Mohammedan prince, and, refusing reparation, the city was besieged and taken by storm. Muratori, ad ann. Gibbon, c. 59.

[604] Villani, 1. vii. c. 144.

[605] Macpherson, p. 490.

[606] Capmany, Memorias Historicas, t. iii. preface, p. 11; and part 2, p. 131. His authority is Balducci Pegalotti, a Florentine writer upon commerce about 1340, whose work I have never seen. It appears from Balducci that the route to China was from Asoph to Astrakan, and thence, by a variety of places which cannot be found in modern maps, to Cambalu, probably Pekin, the capital city of China, which he describes as being one hundred miles in circumference. The journey was of rather more than eight months, going and returning; and he assures us it was perfectly secure, not only for caravans, but for a single traveller with a couple of interpreters and a servant. The Venetians had also a settlement in the Crimea, and appear, by a passage in Petrarch's letters, to have possessed some of the trade through Tartary. In a letter written from Venice, after extolling in too rhetorical a manner the commerce of that republic, he mentions a particular ship that had just sailed for the Black Sea. Et ipsa quidem Tanaim it visura, nostri enim maris navigatio non ultra tenditur; eorum vero aliqui, quos haec fert, illic iter [instituent] eam egressuri, nec antea substituri, quam Gange et Caucaso superato, ad Indos atque extremos Seres et Orientalem perveniatur Oceanum. En quo ardens et inexplebilis habendi sitis hominum mentes rapit! Petrarcae Opera, Senil. 1. ii. ep. 3, p. 760 edit. 1581.

[607] Hist. de Languedoc, t. iii. p. 531; t. iv. p. 517. Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xxxvii.

[608] Capmany, Memorias Historicas de Barcelona, t. i. part 2. See particularly p. 36.

[609] Muratori, Dissert. 30. Denina, Rivoluzione d'Italia, 1. xiv. c. 11. The latter writer is of opinion that mulberries were not cultivated as an important object till after 1300, nor even to any great extent till after 1500; the Italian manufacturers buying most of their silk from Spain or the Levant.

[610] The history of Italian states, and especially Florence, will speak for the first country; Capmany attests the woollen manufacture of the second--Mem. Hist. de Barcel. t. i. part 3, p. 7, &c.; and Vaissette that of Carcassonne and its vicinity--Hist. de Lang. t. iv. p. 517.

[611] None were admitted to the rank of burgesses in the town of Aragon who used any manual trade, with the exception of dealers in fine cloths. The woollen manufacture of Spain did not at any time become a considerable article of export, nor even supply the internal consumption, as Capmany has well shown. Memorias Historicas, t. iii. p. 325 et seqq., and Edinburgh Review, vol. x.

[612] Boucher, the French translator of Il Consolato del Mare, says that Edrissi, a Saracen geographer who lived about 1100, gives an account, though in a confused manner, of the polarity of the magnet. t. ii. p. 280. However, the lines of Guiot de Provins are decisive. These are quoted in Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. ix. p. 199; Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. t. xxi. p. 192; and several other works. Guinizzelli has the following passage, in a canzone quoted by Ginguene, Hist. Litteraire de l'Italie, t. i. p. 413:--

In quelle parti sotto tramontana,
Sono li monti della calamita,
Che dan virtute all'aere
Di trarre il ferro; ma perche lontana,
Vole di simil pietra aver aita,
A far la adoperare,
_E dirizzar lo ago in ver la stella._

We cannot be diverted, by the nonsensical theory these lines contain, from perceiving the positive testimony of the last verse to the poet's knowledge of the polarity of the magnet. But if any doubt could remain, Tiraboschi (t. iv. p. 171) has fully established, from a series of passages, that this phenomenon was well known in the thirteenth century; and puts an end altogether to the pretensions of Flavio Gioja, if such a person, ever existed. See also Macpherson's Annals, p. 364 and 418. It is provoking to find an historian like Robertson asserting, without hesitation, that this citizen of Amalfi was the inventor of the compass, and thus accrediting an error which had already been detected.

It is a singular circumstance, and only to be explained by the obstinacy with which men are apt to reject improvement, that the magnetic needle was not generally adopted in navigation till very long after the discovery of its properties, and even after their peculiar importance had been perceived. The writers of the thirteenth century, who mention the polarity of the needle, mention also its use in navigation; yet Capmany has found no distinct proof of its employment till 1403, and does not believe that it was frequently on board Mediterranean ships at the latter part of the preceding age. Memorias Historicas, t. iii. p. 70. Perhaps however he has inferred too much from his negative proof; and this subject seems open to further inquiry.

[613] Boucher supposes it to have been compiled at Barcelona about 900; but his reasonings are inconclusive, t. i. p. 72; and indeed Barcelona at that time was little, if at all, better than a fishing-town. Some arguments might be drawn in favour of Pisa from the expressions of Henry IV.'s charter granted to that city in 1081. Consuetudines, quas habent de mari, sic iis observabimus sicut illorum est consuetudo. Muratori Dissert. 45. Giannone seems to think the collection was compiled about the reign of Louis IX. 1. xi. c. 6. Capmany, the last Spanish editor, whose authority ought perhaps to outweigh every other, asserts and seems to prove them to have been enacted by the mercantile magistrates of Barcelona, under the reign of James the Conqueror which is much the same period. Codigo de las Costumbres Maritimas de Barcelona, Madrid, 1791. But, by whatever nation they were reduced into their present form, these laws were certainly the ancient and established usages of the Mediterranean states: and Pisa may very probably have taken a great share in first practising what a century or two afterwards was rendered more precise at Barcelona.

[614] Macpherson, p. 358. Boucher supposes them to be registers of actual decisions.

[615] I have only the authority of Boucher for referring the Ordinances of Wisbuy to the year 1400. Beckman imagines them to be older than those of Oleron. But Wisbuy was not enclosed by a wall till 1288, a proof that it could not have been previously a town of much importance. It flourished chiefly in the first part of the fourteenth century, and was at that time an independent republic, but fell under the yoke of Denmark before the end of the same age.

[616] Hugh Despenser seized a Genoese vessel valued at 14,300 marks, for which no restitution was ever made. Rym. t. iv. p. 701. Macpherson, A.D. 1336.

[617] The Cinque Ports and other trading towns of England were in a constant state of hostility with their opposite neighbours during the reigns of Edward I. and II. One might quote almost half the instruments in Rymer in proof of these conflicts, and of those with the mariners of Norway and Denmark. Sometimes mutual envy produced frays between different English towns. Thus, in 1254 the Winchelsea mariners attacked a Yarmouth galley, and killed some of her men. Matt. Paris, apud Macpherson.

[618] Muratori, Dissert. 53.

[619] Du Cange, voc. Laudum.

[620] Rymer, t. iv. p. 576. Videtur sapientibus et peritis, quod causa, de jure, non subfuit marcham seu reprisaliam in nostris, seu subditorum nostrorum, bonis concedendi. See too a case of neutral goods on board an enemy's vessel claimed by the owners, and a legal distinction taken in favour of the captors. t. vi. p. 14.

[621] 27 E. III. stat. ii. c. 17, 2 Inst. p. 205.

[622] Rymer, t. i. p. 839.

[623] Idem, t. iii. p. 458, 647, 678, et infra. See too the ordinances of the staple, in 27 Edw. III., which confirm this among other privileges, and contain manifold evidence of the regard paid to commerce in that reign.

[624] Rymer, t. ii. p. 891. Madox, Hist. Exchequer, c. xxii. s. 7.

[625] In the remarkable speech of the Doge Mocenigo, quoted in another place, vol. i. p. 465, the annual profit made by Venice on her mercantile capital is reckoned at forty per cent.

[626] Muratori, Dissert. 16.

[627] Bizarri, Hist. Genuens. p. 797. The rate of discount on bills, which may not have exactly corresponded to the average annual interest of money, was ten per cent. at Barcelona in 1435. Capmany t. i. p. 209.

[628] Du Cange, v. Usura.

[629] Muratori, Diss. 16.

[630] Greg. Turon. I. iv.

[631] Hist. de Languedoc, t. ii. p. 517; t. iii. p. 531.

[632] Id. t. iii. p. 121.

[633] Id. p. 163.

[634] Marina, Ensayo Historico-Critico, p. 143.

[635] Martenne Thesaurus Anecdotorum, t. i. p. 984.

[636] Velly, t. iv. p. 136.

[637] The city of Cahors, in Quercy, the modern department of the Lot, produced a tribe of money-dealers. The Caursini are almost as often noticed as the Lombards. See the article in Du Cange. In Lombardy, Asti, a city of no great note in other respects, was famous for the same department of commerce.

[638] There were three species of paper credit in the dealings of merchants: 1. General letters of credit, not directed to any one, which are not uncommon in the Levant: 2. Orders to pay money to a particular person: 3. Bills of exchange regularly negotiable. Boucher, t. ii. p. 621. Instances of the first are mentioned by Macpherson about 1200, p. 367. The second species was introduced by the Jews, about 1183 (Capmany, t. i. p. 297); but it may be doubtful whether the last stage of the progress was reached nearly so soon. An instrument in Rymer, however, of the year 1364 (t. vi. p. 495), mentions literae cambitoriae, which seem to have been negotiable bills; and by 1400 they were drawn in sets, and worded exactly as at present. Macpherson, p. 614, and Beckman, History of Inventions, vol. iii. p. 430, give from Capmany an actual precedent of a bill dated in 1404.

[639] Usury was looked upon with horror by our English divines long after the Reformation. Fleury, in his Institutions au Droit Ecclesiastique, t. ii. p. 129, has shown the subterfuges to which men had recourse in order to evade this prohibition. It is an unhappy truth, that great part of the attention devoted to the best of sciences, ethics and jurisprudence, has been employed to weaken principles that ought never to have been acknowledged.

One species of usury, and that of the highest importance to commerce, was always permitted, on account of the risk that attended it This was marine insurance, which could not have existed, until money was considered, in itself, as a source of profit. The earliest regulations on the subject of insurance are those of Barcelona in 1433; but the practice was, of course, earlier than these, though not of great antiquity. It is not mentioned in the Consolato del Mare, nor in any of the Hanseatic laws of the fourteenth century. Beckman, vol. i. p. 388. This author, not being aware of the Barcelonese laws on this subject published by Capmany, supposes, the first provisions regulating marine assurance to have been made at Florence in 1523.

[640] Macpherson, p. 487, et alibi. They had probably excellent bargains; in 1329 the Bardi farmed all the customs in England for 20_l._ a day. But in 1282 the customs had produced 8411_l._, and half a century of great improvement had elapsed.

[641] Villani, 1. xii. c. 55, 87. He calls these two banking-houses the pillars which sustained great part of the commerce of Christendom.

[642] Capmany, t. i. p. 213.

[643] Macpherson, p. 341, from Sanuto. The bank of Venice is referred to 1171.

[644] G. Villani, 1. xi. c. 49.

[645] Matt. Villani, p. 227 (in Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. t. xiv.).

[646] Bizarri, Hist. Genuens. p. 797 (Antwerp, 1579); Machiavelli, Storia Fiorentina, 1. viii.

[647] Ricobaldus Ferrarensis, apud Murat. Dissert. 23; Francisc. Pippinus, ibidem. Muratori endeavours to extenuate the authority of this passage, on account of some more ancient writers who complain of the luxury of their times, and of some particular instances of magnificence and expense. But Ricobaldi alludes, as Muratori himself admits, to the mode of living in the middle ranks, and not to that of courts, which in all ages might occasionally display considerable splendour. I see nothing to weaken so explicit a testimony of a contemporary, which in fact is confirmed by many writers of the next age, who, according to the practice of Italian chroniclers, have copied it as their own.

[648] Murat. Dissert. 23.

[649]
Bellincion Berti vid' io andar cinto
Di cuojo e d'osso, e venir dallo specchio
La donna sua senza 'l viso dipinto,
E vidi quel di Nerli, e quel del Vecchio
Esser contenti alla pelle scoverta,
E sue donne al fuso ed al pennechio.

Paradis. canto xv.

See too the rest of this canto. But this is put in the mouth of Cacciaguida, the poet's ancestor, who lived in the former half of the twelfth century. The change, however, was probably subsequent to 1250, when the times of wealth and turbulence began at Florence.

[650] Velly, t. xiii. p. 352. The second continuator of Nangis vehemently inveighs against the long beards and short breeches of his age; after the introduction of which novelties, he judiciously observes, the French were much more disposed to run away from their enemies than before. Spicilegium, t. iii. p. 105.

[651] 37 E. III. Rep. 38 E. III. Several other statutes of a similar nature were passed in this and the ensuing reign. In France, there were sumptuary laws as old as Charlemagne, prohibiting or taxing the use of furs; but the first extensive regulation was under Philip the Fair. Velly, t. vii. p. 64; t. xi. p. 190. These attempts to restrain what cannot be restrained continued even down to 1700. De la Mare, Traite de la Police, t. i. 1. iii.

[652] Muratori, Antichita Italiane, Dissert. 23, t. i. p. 325.

[653] "These English," said the Spaniards who came over with Philip II., "have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king." Harrison's Description of Britain, prefixed to Holingshed, vol. i. p. 315 (edit. 1807).

[654] Pfeffel, t. i. p. 293.

[655] AEneas Sylvius, de Moribus Germanorum. This treatise is an amplified panegyric upon Germany, and contains several curious passages: they must be taken perhaps with some allowance; for the drift of the whole is to persuade the Germans, that so rich and noble a country could afford a little money for the poor pope. Civitates quas vocant liberas, cum Imperatori solum subjiciuntur, cujus jugum est instar libertatis; nec profecto usquam gentium tanta libertas est, quanta fruuntur hujuscemodi civitates. Nam populi quos Itali vocant liberos, hi potissimum serviunt, sive Venetias inspectes, sive Florentiam aut Caenas, in quibus cives, praeter paucos qui reliquos ducunt, loco mancipiorum habentur. Cum nec rebus suis uti, ut libet, vel fari quae velint, et gravissimis opprimuntur pecuniarum exactionibus. Apud Germanos omnia laeta sunt, omnia jucunda; nemo suis privatur bonis. Salvo cuique sua haereditas est, nulli nisi nocenti magistratus nocent. Nec apud eos factiones sicut apud Italas urbes grassantur. Sunt autem supra centum civitates hac libertate fruentes. p. 1058.

In another part of his work (p. 719) he gives a specious account of Vienna. The houses, he says, had glass windows and iron doors. Fenestrae undique vitreae perlucent, et ostia plerumque ferrea. In domibus multa et munda supellex. Altae domus magnificaeque visuntur. Unum id dedecori est, quod tecta plerumque tigno contegunt, pauca latere. Caetera aedificia muro lapideo consistunt. Pictae domus et exterius et interius splendent. Civitatis populus 50,000 _communicantium_ creditur. I suppose this gives at least double for the total population. He proceeds to represent the manners of the city in a less favourable point of view, charging the citizens with gluttony and libertinism, the nobility with oppression, the judges with corruption, &c. Vienna probably had the vices of a flourishing city; but the love of amplification in so rhetorical a writer as AEneas Sylvius weakens the value of his testimony, on whichever side it is given.

[656] Vols. iv. and vi.

[657] Mr. Lysons refers Castleton to the age of William the Conqueror, but without giving any reasons. Lysons's Derbyshire, p. ccxxxvi. Mr. King had satisfied himself that it was built during the Heptarchy, and even before the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity; but in this he gave the reins, as usual, to his imagination, which as much exceeded his learning, as the latter did his judgment. Conisborough should seem, by the name, to have been a royal residence, which it certainly never was after the Conquest. But if the engravings of the decorative parts in the Archaeologia, vol. vi. p. 244, are not remarkably inaccurate, the architecture is too elegant for the Danes, much more for the unconverted Saxons. Both these castles are enclosed by a court or ballium, with a fortified entrance, like those erected by the Normans.

[No doubt is now entertained but that Conisborough was built late in the Norman period. Mr. King's authority, which I followed for want of a better, is by no means to be depended upon. 1848.]

[658] Whitaker's Hist. of Whalley; Lysons's Cumberland, p. ccvi.

[659] The ruins of Herstmonceux are, I believe, tolerably authentic remains of Henry VI.'s age, but only a part of Haddon Hall is of the fifteenth century.

[660] Archaeologia, vol. vi.

[661] Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. iii. p. 242.

[662] Whitaker's Hist. of Whalley.

[663] Lyttelton, t. iv. p. 130.

[664] Harrison says, that few of the houses of the commonalty, except here and there in the west country towns, were made of stone. p. 314. This was about 1570.

[665] Hist. of Whalley.

[666] "The ancient manors and houses of our gentlemen," says Harrison, "are yet and for the most part, of strong timber, in framing whereof our carpenters have been and are worthily preferred before those of like science among all other nations. Howbeit such as are lately builded are either of brick or hard stone, or both." p. 316.

[667] Archaeologia, vol. i. p. 143; vol. iv. p. 91.

[668] Hist. of Whalley. In Strutt's View of Manners we have an inventory of furniture in the house of Mr. Richard Fermor, ancestor of the earl of Pomfret, at Easton in Northamptonshire, and another in that of Sir Adrian Foskewe. Both these houses appear to have been of the dimensions and arrangement mentioned.

[669] Single rooms, windows, doorways, &c., of an earlier date may perhaps not unfrequently be found; but such instances are always to be verified by their intrinsic evidence, not by the tradition of the place. [Note II.]

[670] Melanges tires d'une grande bibliotheque, par M. de Paulmy, t. iii. et xxxi. It is to be regretted that Le Grand d'Aussy never completed that part of his Vie privee des Francais which was to have comprehended the history of civil architecture. Villaret has slightly noticed its state about 1380. t. ii. p. 141.

[671] Chenonceaux in Touraine was built by a nephew of Chancellor Duprat; Gaillon in the department of Eure by Cardinal Amboise; both at the beginning of the sixteenth century. These are now considered, in their ruins, as among the most ancient houses in France. A work by Ducerceau (Les plus excellens Batimens de France, 1607) gives accurate engravings of thirty houses; but with one or two exceptions, they seem all to have been built in the sixteenth century. Even in that age, defence was naturally an object in constructing a French mansion-house; and where defence is to be regarded, splendour and convenience must give way. The name of _chateau_ was not retained without meaning.

[672] Melanges tires, &c. t. iii. For the prosperity and downfall of Jacques Coeur, see Villaret, t. xvi. p. 11; but more especially Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. t. xx. p. 509. His mansion at Bourges still exists, and is well known to the curious in architectural antiquity. In former editions I have mentioned a house of Jacques Coeur at Beaumont-sur-Oise; but this was probably by mistake, as I do not recollect, nor can find, any authority for it.

[673] Giannone, Ist. di Napoli, t. iii. p. 280.

[674] Muratori, Antich. Ital. Dissert. 25, p. 390. Beckman, in his History of Inventions, vol. i., a work of very great research, cannot trace any explicit mention of chimneys beyond the writings of John Villani, wherein however they are not noticed as a new invention. Piers Plowman, a few years later than Villani, speaks of a "chambre with a chimney" in which rich men usually dined. But in the account-book of Bolton Abbey, under the year 1311, there is a charge pro faciendo camino in the rectory-house of Gargrave. Whitaker's Hist. of Craven, p. 331. This may, I think, have been only an iron stove or fire-pan; though Dr. W. without hesitation translates it a chimney. However, Mr. King, in his observations on ancient castles, Archaeol. vol. vi., and Mr. Strutt, in his View of Manners, vol. i., describe chimneys in castles of a very old construction. That at Conisborough in Yorkshire is peculiarly worthy of attention, and carries back this important invention to a remote antiquity.

In a recent work of some reputation, it is said:--"There does not appear to be any evidence of the use of chimney-shafts in England prior to the twelfth century. In Rochester Castle, which is in all probability the work of William Corbyl, about 1130, there are complete fireplaces with semicircular backs, and a shaft in each jamb, supporting a semicircular arch over the opening, and that is enriched with the zigzag moulding; some of these project slightly from the wall; the flues, however, go only a few feet up in the thickness of the wall, and are then turned out at the back, the apertures being small oblong holes. At the castle, Hedingham, Essex, which is of about the same date, there are fireplaces and chimneys of a similar kind. A few years later, the improvement of carrying the flue up the whole height of the wall appears; as at Christ Church, Hants; the keep at Newcastle; Sherborne Castle, &c. The early chimney-shafts are of considerable height, and similar; afterwards they assumed a great variety of forms, and during the fourteenth century they are frequently very short." Glossary of Ancient Architecture, p. 100, edit. 1845. It is said, too, here that chimneys were seldom used in halls till near the end of the fifteenth century; the smoke took its course, if it pleased, through a hole in the roof.

Chimneys are still more modern in France; and seem, according to Paulmy, to have come into common use since the middle of the seventeenth century. Jadis nos peres n'avoient qu'un unique chauffoir, qui etoit commun a toute une famille, et quelquefois a plusieurs. t. iii. p. 133. In another place, however, he says: Il parait que les tuyaux de cheminees etaient deja tres en usage en France, t. xxxi. p. 232.

[675] Du Cange, v. Vitreae; Bentham's History of Ely, p. 22.

[676] Matt Paris; Vitae Abbatum St. Alb. 122.

[677] Recueil des Hist. t. xii. p. 101.

[678] Paulmy, t. iii. p. 132. Villaret, t. xi. p. 141. Macpherson, p. 679.

[679] Northumberland Household Book, preface, p. 16. Bishop Percy says, on the authority of Harrison, that glass was not commonly used in the reign of Henry VIII.

[680] See some curious valuations of furniture and stock in trade at Colchester in 1296 and 1301. Eden's Introduct. to State of the Poor, p. 20 and 25, from the Rolls of Parliament. A carpenter's stock was valued at a shilling, and consisted of five tools. Other tradesmen were almost as poor; but a tanner's stock, if there is no mistake, was worth 9_l._ 7_s._ 10_d._, more than ten times any other. Tanners were principal tradesmen, the chief part of dress being made of leather. A few silver cups and spoons are the only articles of plate; and as the former are valued but at one or two shillings, they had, I suppose, but a little silver on the rim.

[681] Nicholl's Illustrations, p. 119. In this work, among several interesting facts of the same class, we have another inventory of the goods of "John Port, late the king's servant," who died about 1524: he seems to have been a man of some consideration and probably a merchant. The house consisted of a hall, parlour, buttery, and kitchen, with two chambers, and one smaller, on the floor above; a napery, or linen room, and three garrets, besides a shop, which was probably detached. There were five bedsteads in the house, and on the whole a great deal of furniture for those times; much more than I have seen in any other inventory. His plate is valued at 94_l._; his jewels at 23_l._; his funeral expenses come to 73_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ p. 119.

[682] Whitaker's Hist. of Craven, p. 289. A better notion of the accommodations usual in the rank immediately below may be collected from two inventories published by Strutt, one of Mr. Fermor's house at Easton, the other Sir Adrian Foskewe's. I have mentioned the size of these gentlemen's houses already. In the former, the parlour had wainscot, a table and a few chairs; the chambers above had two best beds, and there was one servant's bed; but the inferior servants had only mattresses on the floor. The best chambers had window shutters and curtains. Mr. Fermor, being a merchant, was probably better supplied than the neighbouring gentry. His plate however consisted only of sixteen spoons, and a few goblets and ale pots. Sir Adrian Foskewe's opulence appears to have been greater; he had a service of silver plate, and his parlour was furnished with hangings. This was in 1539; it is not to be imagined that a knight of the shire a hundred years before would have rivalled even this scanty provision of moveables. Strutt's View of Manners, vol. iii. p. 63. These details, trifling as they may appear, are absolutely necessary in order to give an idea with some precision of a state of national wealth so totally different from the present.

[683] Cuperent tam egregie Scotorum reges quam mediocres Nurembergae cives habitare. AEn. Sylv. apud Schmidt, Hist. des Allem. t. v. p. 510.

[684] t. iii. p. 127.

[685] Crescentius in Commodum Ruralium. (Lovaniae, absque anno.) This old edition contains many coarse wooden cuts, possibly taken from the illuminations which Paulmy found in his manuscript.

[686] Harrison's account of England, prefixed to Hollingshed's Chronicles. Chimneys were not used in the farm-houses of Cheshire till within forty years of the publication of King's Vale-royal (1656); the fire was in the midst of the house, against a hob of clay, and the oxen lived under the same roof. Whitaker's Craven, p. 334.

[687] The Saracenic architecture was once conceived to have been the parent of the Gothic. But the pointed arch does not occur, I believe, in any Moorish buildings; while the great mosque of Cordova, built in the eighth century, resembles, except by its superior beauty and magnificence, one of our oldest cathedrals; the nave of Gloucester, for example, or Durham. Even the vaulting is similar, and seems to indicate some imitation, though perhaps of a common model. Compare Archaeologia, vol. xvii. plate 1 and 2, with Murphy's Arabian Antiquities, plate 5. The pillars indeed at Cordova are of the Corinthian order, perfectly executed, if we may trust the engraving, and the work, I presume, of Christian architects; while those of our Anglo-Norman cathedrals are generally an imitation of the Tuscan shaft, the builders not venturing to trust their roofs to a more slender support, though Corinthian foliage is common in the capitals, especially those of smaller ornamental columns. In fact, the Roman architecture is universally acknowledged to have produced what we call the Saxon or Norman; but it is remarkable that it should have been adopted, with no variation but that of the singular horse-shoe arch, by the Moors of Spain.

The Gothic, or pointed arch, though very uncommon in the genuine Saracenic of Spain and the Levant, may be found in some prints from Eastern buildings; and is particularly striking in the facade of the great mosque at Lucknow, in Salt's designs for Lord Valentia's Travels. The pointed arch buildings in the Holy Land have all been traced to the age of the Crusades. Some arches, if they deserve the name, that have been referred to this class, are not pointed by their construction, but rendered such by cutting off and hollowing the projections of horizontal stones.

[688] Gibbon has asserted, what might justify this appellation, that "the image of Theodoric's palace at Verona, still extant on a coin, represents the oldest and most authentic model of Gothic architecture." vol. vii. p. 33. For this he refers to Maffei, Verona Illustrata, p. 31, where we find an engraving, not indeed of a coin, but of a seal; the building represented on which is in a totally dissimilar style. The following passages in Cassiodorus, for which I am indebted to M. Ginguene, Hist. Litter. de l'Italie, t. i. p. 55, would be more to the purpose: Quid dicamus columnarum junceam proceritatem? moles illas sublimissimas fabricarum quasi quibusdam erectis hastilibus contineri. These columns of reedy slenderness, so well described by juncea proceritas, are said to be found in the cathedral of Montreal in Sicily, built in the eighth century. Knight's Principles of Taste, p. 162. They are not however sufficient to justify the denomination of Gothic, which is usually confined to the pointed arch style.

[689] The famous abbot Suger, minister of Louis VI., rebuilt St. Denis about 1140. The cathedral of Laon is said to have been dedicated in 1114. Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. ix. p. 220. I do not know in what style the latter of these churches is built, but the former is, or rather was, Gothic. Notre Dame at Paris was begun soon after the middle of the twelfth century, and completed under St. Louis. Melanges tires d'une grande bibliotheque, t. xxxi. p. 108. In England, the earliest specimen I have seen of pointed arches is in a print of St. Botolphe's Priory at Colchester, said by Strutt to have been built in 1110. View of Manners, vol. i. plate 30. These are apertures formed by excavating the space contained by the intersection of semicircular, or Saxon arches; which are perpetually disposed, by way of ornament, on the outer as well as inner surface of old churches, so as to cut each other, and consequently to produce the figure of a Gothic arch; and if there is no mistake in the date, they are probably among the most ancient of that style in Europe. Those of the church of St. Cross near Winchester are of the reign of Stephen; and generally speaking, the pointed style, especially in vaulting, the most important object in the construction of a building, is not considered as older than Henry II. The nave of Canterbury cathedral, of the erection of which by a French architect about 1176 we have a full account in Gervase (Twysden, Decem Scriptores, col. 1289), and the Temple church, dedicated in 1183, are the most ancient English buildings altogether in the Gothic manner.

The subject of ecclesiastical architecture in the middle ages has been so fully discussed by intelligent and observant writers since these pages were first published, that they require some correction. The oriental theory for the origin of the pointed architecture, though not given up, has not generally stood its ground; there seems more reason to believe that it was first adopted in Germany, as Mr. Hope has shown; but at first in single arches, not in the construction of the entire building.

The circular and pointed forms, instead of one having at once supplanted the other, were concurrent in the same building, through Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, for some centuries. I will just add to the instances mentioned by Mr. Hope and others, and which every traveller may corroborate, one not very well known, perhaps as early as any,--the crypt of the cathedral at Basle, built under the reign of the emperor Henry II., near the commencement of the eleventh century, where two pointed with three circular arches stand together, evidently from want of space enough to preserve the same breadth with the necessary height. The same circumstance will be found, I think, in the crypt of St. Denis, near Paris, which, however, is not so old. The writings of Hope, Rickman, Whewell, and Willis are prominent among many that have thrown light on this subject. The beauty and magnificence of the pointed style is acknowledged on all sides; perhaps the imitation of it has been too servile, and with too much forgetfulness of some very important changes in our religious aspect rendering that simply ornamental which was once directed to a great object. [1848.]

[690] The curious subject of freemasonry has unfortunately been treated only by panegyrists or calumniators, both equally mendacious. I do not wish to pry into the mysteries of the craft; but it would be interesting to know more of their history during the period when they were literally architects. They are charged by an act of parliament, 3 H. VI. c. i., with fixing the price of their labour in their annual chapters, contrary to the statute of labourers, and such chapters are consequently prohibited. This is their first persecution; they have since undergone others, and are perhaps reserved for still more. It is remarkable, that masons were never legally incorporated, like other traders; their bond of union being stronger than any charter. The article Masonry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica is worth reading.

[691] I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing a lively and eloquent passage from Dr. Whitaker. "Could a curious observer of the present day carry himself nine or ten centuries back, and ranging the summit of Pendle survey the forked vale of Calder on one side, and the bolder margins of Ribble and Hadder on the other, instead of populous towns and villages, the castle, the old tower-built house, the elegant modern mansion, the artificial plantation, the inclosed park and pleasure ground: instead of uninterrupted inclosures which have driven sterility almost to the summit of the fells, how great must then have been the contrast, when ranging either at a distance, or immediately beneath, his eye must have caught vast tracts of forest ground stagnating with bog or darkened by native woods, where the wild ox, the roe, the stag, and the wolf, had scarcely learned the supremacy of man, when, directing his view to the intermediate spaces, to the windings of the valleys, or the expanse of plains beneath, he could only have distinguished a few insulated patches of culture, each encircling a village of wretched cabins, among which would still be remarked one rude mansion of wood, scarcely equal in comfort to a modern cottage, yet then rising proudly eminent above the rest, where the Saxon lord, surrounded by his faithful cotarii, enjoyed a rude and solitary independence, owning no superior but his sovereign." Hist. of Whalley, p. 133. About a fourteenth part of this parish of Whalley was cultivated at the time of Domesday. This proportion, however, would by no means hold in the counties south of Trent.

[692] "Of the Anglo-Saxon husbandry we may remark," says Mr. Turner, "that Domesday Survey gives us some indication that the cultivation of the church lands was much superior to that of any other order of society. They have much less wood upon them, and less common of pasture; and what they had appears often in smaller and more irregular pieces; while their meadow was more abundant, and in more numerous distributions." Hist. of Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. p. 167.

It was the glory of St. Benedict's reform, to have substituted bodily labour for the supine indolence of oriental asceticism. In the East it was more difficult to succeed in such an endeavour, though it had been made. "The Benedictins have been," says Guizot, "the great clearers of land in Europe. A colony, a little swarm of monks, settled in places nearly uncultivated, often in the midst of a pagan population, in Germany, for example, or in Britany; there, at once missionaries and labourers, they accomplished their double service through peril and fatigue." Civilis. en France, Lecon 14. The north-eastern parts of France, as far as the Lower Seine, were reduced into cultivation by the disciples of St. Columban, in the sixth and seventh centuries. The proofs of this are in Mabillon's Acta Sanctorum Ord. Bened. See Mem. de l'Acad. des Sciences Morales et Politiques, iii. 708.

Guizot has appreciated the rule of St. Benedict with that candid and favourable spirit which he always has brought to the history of the church: anxious, as it seems, not only to escape the imputation of Protestant prejudices by others, but to combat them in his own mind; and aware, also, that the partial misrepresentations of Voltaire had sunk into the minds of many who were listening to his lectures. Compared with the writers of the eighteenth century, who were too much alienated by the faults of the clergy to acknowledge any redeeming virtues, or even with Sismondi, who, coming in a moment of reaction, feared the returning influence of mediaeval prejudices, Guizot stands forward as an equitable and indulgent arbitrator. In this spirit he says of the rule of St. Benedict--La pensee morale et la discipline generale en sont severes; mais dans le detail de la vie elle est humaine et moderee; plus humaine, plus moderee que les lois barbares, que les moeurs generales du temps; et je ne doute pas que les freres, renfermes dans l'interieur d'un monastere, n'y fussent gouvernes par une autorite, a tout prendre, et plus raisonnable, et d'une maniere moins dure qu'ils ne l'eussent ete dans la societe civile.

[693] Thus, in Marca Hispanica, Appendix, p. 770, we have a grant from Lothaire I. in 834, to a person and his brother, of lands which their father, ab eremo in Septimania trahens, had possessed by a charter of Charlemagne. See too p. 773, and other places. Du Cange, v. Eremus, gives also a few instances.

[694] Du Cange, v. Aprisio. Baluze, Capitularia, t. i. p. 549. They were permitted to decide petty suits among themselves, but for more important matters were to repair to the county-court. A liberal policy runs through the whole charter. See more on the same subject, id. p. 569.

[695] I owe this fact to M. Heeren, Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades, p. 226. An inundation in their own country is supposed to have immediately produced this emigration; but it was probably successive, and connected with political as well as physical causes of greater permanence. The first instrument in which they are mentioned is a grant from the bishop of Hamburgh in 1106. This colony has affected the local usages, as well as the denominations of things and places along the northern coast of Germany. It must be presumed that a large proportion of the emigrants were diverted from agriculture to people the commercial cities which grew up in the twelfth century upon that coast.

[696] Ingulfus tells us that the commissioners were pious enough to favour Croyland, returning its possessions inaccurately, both as to measurement and value; non ad verum pretium, nec ad verum spatium nostrum monasterium librabant misericorditer, praecaventes in futurum regis exactionibus. p. 79. I may just observe by the way, that Ingulfus gives the plain meaning of the word Domesday, which has been disputed. The book was so called, he says, pro sua generalitate omnia tenementa totius terrae integre continente; that is, it was as general and conclusive as the last judgment will be.

[697] This of course is subject to the doubt as to the authenticity of Ingulfus.

[698] 1 Gale, XV Script. p. 77.

[699] Communi plebiscito viritim inter se diviserunt, et quidam suas portiones agricolantes, quidam ad foenum conservantes, quidam ut prius ad pasturam suorum animalium, separaliter jacere permittentes, terram pinguem et uberem repererunt. p. 94.

[700] 1 Gale, XV Script. p. 201.

[701] A good deal of information upon the former state of agriculture will be found in Cullum's History of Hawsted. Blomefield's Norfolk is in this respect among the most valuable of our local histories. Sir Frederic Eden, in the first part of his excellent work on the poor, has collected several interesting facts.

[702] 1. ii. c. 8.

[703] Cullum, p. 100, 220. Eden's State of Poor, &c. p. 48. Whitaker's Craven, p. 45, 336.

[704] I infer this from a number of passages in Blomefield, Cullum, and other writers. Hearne says, that an acre was often called Solidata terrae; because the yearly rent of one _on the best land_ was a shilling. Lib. Nig. Scacc. p. 31.

[705] Rot. Parl. vol. v. p. 275.

[706] A passage in Bishop Latimer's sermons, too often quoted to require repetition, shows that land was much underlet about the end of the fifteenth century. His father, he says, kept half a dozen husbandmen, and milked thirty cows, on a farm of three or four pounds a year. It is not surprising that he lived as plentifully as his son describes.

[707] Rymer, t. xii. p. 204.

[708] Velly and Villaret scarcely mention this subject; and Le Grand merely tells us that it was entirely neglected; but the details of such an art, even in its state of neglect, might be interesting.

[709] Muratori, Dissert. 21.

[710] Denina, 1. xi. c. 7.

[711] Denina, 1. vi.

[712] t. iii. p. 145; t. xxxi. p. 258.

[713] De la Mare, Traite de la Police, t. iii. p. 380.

[714] Eden's State of Poor, vol. i. p. 51.

[715] Sir F. Eden, whose table of prices, though capable of some improvement, is perhaps the best that has appeared, would, I think, have acted better, by omitting all references to mere historians, and relying entirely on regular documents. I do not however include local histories, such as the Annals of Dunstaple, when they record the market-prices of their neighbourhood, in respect of which the book last mentioned is almost in the nature of a register. Dr. Whitaker remarks the inexactness of Stowe, who says that wheat sold in London, A.D. 1514, at 20_s._ a quarter: whereas it appears to have been at 9_s._ in Lancashire, where it was always dearer than in the metropolis. Hist. of Whalley, p. 97. It is an odd mistake, into which Sir F. Eden has fallen, when he asserts and argues on the supposition, that the price of wheat fluctuated in the thirteenth century, from 1_s._ to 6_l._ 8_s._ a quarter, vol. i. p. 18. Certainly, if any chronicler had mentioned such a price as the latter, equivalent to 150_l._ at present, we should either suppose that his text was corrupt, or reject it as an absurd exaggeration. But, in fact, the author has, through haste, mistaken 6_s._ 8_d._ for 6_l._ 8_s._, as will appear by referring to his own table of prices, where it is set down rightly. It is observed by Mr. Macpherson, a very competent judge, that the arithmetical statements of the best historians of the middle ages are seldom correct, owing partly to their neglect of examination, and partly to blunders of transcribers. Annals of Commerce, vol. i, p. 423.

[716] The table of comparative values by Sir George Shuckburgh (Philosoph. Transact. for 1798, p. 196) is strangely incompatible with every result to which my own reading has led me. It is the hasty attempt of a man accustomed to different studies; and one can neither pardon the presumption of obtruding such a slovenly performance on a subject where the utmost diligence was required, nor the affectation with which he apologizes for "descending from the dignity of philosophy."

[717] M. Guerard, editor of "Paris sous Philippe le Bel," in the Documens Inedits (1841, p. 365), after a comparison of the prices of corn, concludes that the value of silver has declined since that reign, in the ratio of five to one. This is much less than we allow in England. M. Leber (Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. Nouvelle Serie, xiv. 230) calculates the power of silver under Charlemagne, compared with the present day, to have been as nearly eleven to one. It fell afterwards to eight, and continued to sink during the middle ages; the average of prices during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, taking corn as the standard, was six to one; the comparison is of course only for France. This is an interesting paper, and contains tables worthy of being consulted.

[718] Blomefield's History of Norfolk, and Sir J. Cullum's of Hawsted, furnish several pieces even at this early period. Most of them are collected by Sir F. Eden. Fleta reckons 4_s._ the average price of a quarter of wheat in his time. 1. ii. c. 84. This writer has a digression on agriculture, whence however less is to be collected than we should expect.

[719] The fluctuations of price have unfortunately been so great of late years, that it is almost as difficult to determine one side of our equation as the other. Any reader, however, has it in his power to correct my proportions, and adopt a greater or less multiple, according to his own estimate of current prices, or the changes that may take place from the time when this is written [1816].