Chapter 10
The Times: 1399-1485
This period, which begins with the reign of the usurper King, Henry IV, is dominated by war: the last half of the 100 year war with France, which, with the help of Joan of Arc, took all English land on the continent except the port of Calais, and the War of the Roses over the throne in England. The ongoing border fights with Wales and Scotland were fought by England's feudal army. But for fighting in France, the king paid barons and earls to raise their own fighting forces. When they returned to England, they fought to put their candidate on its throne, which had been unsteady since its usurpation by Henry IV. All the great houses kept bands of armed retainers. These retainers were given land or pay or both as well as liveries [uniforms or badges] bearing the family crest. In the system of "livery and maintenance", if the retainer was harassed by the law or by enemies, the lord protected him. The liveries became the badges of the factions engaged in the War of the Roses. The white rose was worn by the supporters of the house of York, and the red rose by supporters of the house of Lancaster. Great lords fought each other for property and made forcible entries usurping private property. Nobles employed men who had returned from fighting in war to use their fighting skill in local defense.Henry IV was the last true warrior king.
In both wars, the musket was used as well as the longbow. To use it, powder was put into the barrel, then a ball rammed down the barrel with a rod, and then the powder lit by a hot rod held with one hand while the other hand was used to aim the musket. Cannon were used to besiege castles and destroy their walls, so many castles were allowed to deteriorate. The existence of cannon also limited the usefulness of town walls for defense. But townspeople did not take part in the fighting.
Since the power of the throne changed from one faction to another, political and personal vindictiveness gave rise to many bills of attainder that resulted in lords being beheaded and losing their lands to the King. However, these were done by the form of law; there were no secret executions in England. Families engaged in blood feuds. Roving bands ravaged the country, plundering the people, holding the forests, and robbing collectors of Crown revenue. Some men made a living by fighting for others in quarrels. Individual life and property were insecure. Whole districts were in a permanent alarm of riot and robbery. The roads were not safe. There was fighting between lords and gangs of ruffians holding the roads, breaking into and seizing manor houses, and openly committing murders.
Peace was never well-kept nor was law ever well-executed, though fighting was suspended by agreement during the harvest. Local administration was paralyzed by party faction or lodged in some great lord or some clique of courtiers. The elections of members to Parliament were interfered with and Parliament was rarely held. Barons and earls fought their disputes in the field rather than in the royal courts. Litigation was expensive, so men relied increasingly on the protection of the great men of their neighborhood and less on the King's courts for the safety of their lives and land. Local men involved in court functions usually owed allegiance to a lord which compromised the exercise of justice. Men serving in an assize often lied to please their lord instead of telling the truth. Lords maintained, supported, or promoted litigation with money or aid supplied to one party to the detriment of justice. It was not unusual for lords to attend court with a great force of retainers behind them. Many Justices of the Peace wore liveries of magnates and accepted money from them. Royal justices were flouted or bribed. The King's writ was denied or perverted. For 6-8s., a lord could have the king instruct his sheriff to impanel a jury which would find in his favor. A statute against riots, forcible entries, and, excepting the King, magnates' liveries of uniform, food, and badges to their retainers, except in war outside the nation, was passed, but was difficult to enforce because the offenders were lords, who dominated the Parliament and the council.
With men so often gone to fight, their wives managed the household alone. The typical wife had maidens of equal class to whom she taught household management, spinning, weaving, carding wool with iron wool-combs, heckling flax, embroidery, and making garments. There were foot-treadles for spinning wheels. She taught the children. Each day she scheduled the activities of the household including music, conversation, dancing, chess, reading, playing ball, and gathering flowers. She organized picnics, rode horseback and went hunting, hawking to get birds, and hare-ferreting. She was nurse to all around her. If her husband died, she usually continued to manage the household because most men named their wife as executor of their will with full power to act as she thought best. The wives of barons shared their right of immunity from arrest by the processes of common law and to be tried by their peers.
For ladies, close-fitting jackets came to be worn over close- fitting long gowns with low, square-cut necklines and flowing sleeves, under which was worn a girdle or corset of stout linen reinforced by stiff leather or even iron. Her skirt was provocatively slit from knee to ankle. All her hair was confined by a hair net. Headdresses were very elaborate and heavy, trailing streamers of linen. Some were in the shape of hearts, butterflies, crescents, double horns, steeples, or long cones. Men also wore hats rather than hoods. They wore huge hats of velvet, fur, or leather. Their hair was cut into a cap-like shape on their heads, and later was shoulder-length. They wore doublets with thick padding over the shoulders or short tunics over the trucks of their bodies and tightened at the waist to emphasize the shoulders. Their collars were high. Their sleeves were long concoctions of velvet, damask, and satin, sometimes worn wrapped around their arms in layers. Their legs and hips were covered with hosen, often in different colors. Codpieces worn between the legs emphasized the sensuality of the age as did ladies' tight and low- cut gowns. Men's shoes were pointed with upward pikes at the toes that impeded walking. At another time, their shoes were broad with blunt toes. Both men and women wore much jewelry and ornamentation. But, despite the fancy dress, the overall mood was a macabre preoccupation with mortality, despair, and a lack of confidence in the future. Cannon and mercenaries had reduced the military significance of knighthood, so its chivalric code deteriorated into surface politeness, ostentation, and extravagance.
Master and servants ceased to eat together in the same hall, except for great occasions, on feast days, and for plays. The lord, and his lady, family, and guests took their meals in a great chamber, usually up beneath the roof next to the upper floor of the great hall. The chimney-pieces and windows were often richly decorated with paneled stonework, tracery and carving. There was often a bay or oriel window with still expensive glass. Tapestries, damask, and tablecloths covered the tables. The standard number of meals was three: breakfast, dinner, and supper. There was much formality and ceremonial ritual, more elaborate than before, during dinners at manorial households, including processions bringing and serving courses, and bowing, kneeling, and curtseying. There were many courses of a variety of meats, fish, stews, and soups, with a variety of spices and elaborately cooked. Barons, knights, and their ladies sat to the right of the lord above the salt and were served by the lord's sewer [served the food] and carver and gentlemen waiters; their social inferiors such as "gentlemen of worship" sat below the salt and were served by another sewer and yeomen. The lord's cupbearer looked after the lord alone. A knights' table was waited on by yeomen. The gentlemen officers, gentlemen servants and yeomen officers were waited on by their own servants. The amount of food dished out to each person varied according to his rank. The almoner said grace and distributed the leftovers to the poor gathered at the gate. The superior people's hands were washed by their inferiors. Lastly, the trestle tables were removed while sweet wine and spices were consumed standing. Then the musicians were called into the hall and dancing began. The lord usually slept in a great bed in this room.
The diet of an ordinary family such as that of a small shopholder or yeoman farmer included beef, mutton, pork, a variety of fish, both fresh and salted, venison, nuts, peas, oatmeal, honey, grapes, apples, pears, and fresh vegetables. Cattle and sheep were driven from Wales to English markets. This droving lasted for five centuries.
Many types of people besides the nobility and knights now had property and thus were considered gentry: female lines of the nobility, merchants and their sons, attorneys, auditors, squires, and peasant-yeomen. The burgess grew rich as the knight dropped lower. The great merchants lived in mansions which could occupy whole blocks. In towns these mansions were entered through a gate through a row of shops on the street.Typically, there would be an oak-paneled great hall, with adjoining kitchen, pantry, and buttery on one end and a great parlor to receive guests, bedrooms, wardrobes, servants' rooms, and a chapel on the other end or on a second floor. A lesser dwelling would have these rooms on three floors over a shop on the first floor. An average Londoner would have a shop, a storeroom, a hall, a kitchen, and a buttery on the first floor, and three bedrooms on the second floor. Artisans and shopkeepers of more modest means lived in rows of dwellings, each with a shop and small storage room on the first floor, and a combination parlor-bedroom on the second floor. The humblest residents crowded their shop and family into one 6 by 10 foot room for rent of a few shillings a year. All except the last would also have a small garden. The best gardens had a fruit tree, herbs, flowers, a well, and a latrine area. There were common and public privies for those without their own. Kitchen slops and casual refuse continued to be thrown into the street. Floors of stone or planks were strewn with rushes. There was some tile flooring. Most dwellings had glass windows. Candles were used for lighting at night. Torches and oil-burning lanterns were portable lights. Furnishings were still sparse. Men sat on benches or joint stools and women sat on cushions on the floor. Hall and parlor had a table and benches and perhaps one chair. Bedrooms had beds that were surrounded by heavy draperies to keep out cold drafts. The beds had pillows, blankets, and sheets. Clothes were stored in a chest, sometimes with sweet-smelling herbs such as lavender, rosemary, and southernwood. Better homes had wall hanging and cupboards displaying plate. Laundresses washed clothes in the streams, rivers, and public conduits. Country peasants still lived in wood, straw, and mud huts with earth floors and a smoky hearth in the center or a kitchen area under the eaves of the hut.
In 1442, bricks began to be manufactured in the nation and so there was more use of bricks in buildings. Chimneys were introduced into manor houses where stone had been too expensive. This was necessary if a second floor was added, so the smoke would not damage the floor above it and would eventually go out of the house.
Nobles and their retinue moved from manor to manor, as they had for centuries, to keep watch upon their lands and to consume the produce thereof; it was easier to bring the household to the estate than to transport the yield of the estate to the household. Also, at regular intervals sewage had to be removed from the cellar pits. Often a footman walked or ran on foot next to his master or mistress when they rode out on horseback or in a carriage. He was there primarily for prestige.
Jousting tournaments were held for entertainment purposes only and were followed by banquets of several courses of food served on dishes of gold, silver, pewter, or wood on a linen cloth covering the table. Hands were washed before and after the meal. People washed their faces every morning after getting up. Teeth were cleaned with powders. Fragrant leaves were chewed for bad breath. Garlic was used for indigestion and other ailments. Feet were rubbed with salt and vinegar to remove calluses. Good manners included not slumping against a post, fidgeting, sticking one's finger into one's nose, putting one's hands into one's hose to scratch the privy parts, spitting over the table or too far, licking one's plate, picking one's teeth, breathing stinking breath into the face of the lord, blowing on one's food, stuffing masses of bread into one's mouth, scratching one's head, loosening one's girdle to belch, and probing one's teeth with a knife.
Fishing and hunting were reserved for the nobility rather than just the King.
As many lords became less wealthy because of the cost of war, some peasants, villein and free, became prosperous, especially those who also worked at a craft, e.g. butchers, bakers, smiths, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, and cloth workers.
An agricultural slump caused poorer soils to fall back into waste. The better soils were leased by peasants, who, with their families, were in a better position to farm it than a great lord, who found it hard to hire laborers at a reasonable cost. Further, peasants' sheep, hens, pigs, ducks, goats, cattle, bees, and crop made them almost self-sufficient in foodstuffs. They lived in a huddle of cottages, pastured their animals on common land, and used common meadows for haymaking. They subsisted mainly on boiled bacon, an occasional chicken, worts and beans grown in the cottage garden, and cereals. They wore fine wool cloth in all their apparel. Brimless hats were replacing hoods. They had an abundance of bed coverings in their houses. And they had more free time. Village entertainment included traveling jesters, acrobats, musicians, and bear-baiters. Playing games and gambling were popular pastimes.
Most villeins were now being called "customary tenants" or "copy- holders" of land because they held their acres by a copy of the court-roll of the manor, which listed the number of teams, the fines, the reliefs, and the services due to the lord for each landholder. The Chancery court interpreted many of these documents to include rights of inheritance. The common law courts followed the lead of the Chancery and held that marriage land could be inherited as was land at common law. Evictions by lords decreased.
The difference between villein and freeman lessened but landlords usually still had profits of villein bondage, such as heriot, merchet, and chevage.
Social mobility was most possible in the towns, where distinctions were usually only of wealth. So a poor apprentice could aspire to become a master, a member of the livery of his company, a member of the council, an alderman, a mayor, and then an esquire for life. The distance between baron and a country knight and between a yeoman and knight was wider. Manor custom was strong. But a yeoman could give his sons a chance to become gentlemen by entering them in a trade in a town, sending them to university, or to war. Every freeman was to some extent a soldier, and to some extent a lawyer, serving in the county or borough courts. A burgess, with his workshop or warehouse, was trained in warlike exercises, and he could keep his own accounts, and make his own will and other legal documents, with the aid of a scrivener or a chaplain, who could supply an outline of form. But law was growing as a profession. Old-established London families began to choose the law as a profession for their sons, in preference to an apprenticeship in trade. Many borough burgesses in Parliament were attorneys.
A class of laborers was arising who depended entirely on the wages of industry for their subsistence. The cloth workers in rural areas were isolated and weak and often at the mercy of middlemen for employment and the amount of their wages. When rural laborers went to towns to seek employment in the new industries, they would work at first for any rate. This deepened the cleavage of the classes in the towns. The artificers in the town and the cottagers and laborers in the country lived from hand to mouth, on the edge of survival, but better off than the old, the diseased, the widows, and the orphans. However, the 1400s were the most prosperous time for laborers considering their wages and the prices of food. Meat and poultry were plentiful and grain prices low.
In London, shopkeepers appealed to passersby to buy their goods, sometimes even seizing people by the sleeve. The drapers had several roomy shops containing shelves piled with cloths of all colors and grades, tapestries, pillows, blankets, bed draperies, and "bankers and dorsers" to soften hard wooden benches. A rear storeroom held more cloth for import or export. Many shops of skinners were on Fur Row. There were shops of leather sellers, hosiers, gold and silver cups, and silks. At the Stocks Market were fishmongers, butchers, and poulterers. London grocers imported spices, canvas, ropery, potions, unguents, soap, confections, garlic, cabbages, onions, apples, oranges, almonds, figs, dates, raisins, dyestuffs, woad, madder (plant for medicine and dye), scarlet grains, saffron, iron, and a primitive steel. They were retailers as well as wholesalers and had shops selling honey, licorice, salt, vinegar, rice, sugar loaves, syrups, spices, garden seeds, dyes, alum, soap, brimstone, paper, varnish, canvas, rope, musk, incense, treacle of Genoa, and mercury. The Grocers did some money lending, usually at 12% interest. The guilds did not restrict themselves to dealing in the goods for which they had a right of inspection, and so many dealt in wine that it was a medium of exchange. There was no sharp distinction between retail and wholesale trading.
London grocers sold herbs for medicinal as well as eating purposes. Breadcarts sold penny wheat loaves. Foreigners set up stalls on certain days of the week to sell meat, canvas, linen, cloth, ironmongery, and lead. There were great houses, churches, monasteries, inns, guildhalls, warehouses, and the King's Beam for weighing wool to be exported. In 1410, the Guildhall of London was built through contributions, proceeds of fines, and lastly, to finish it, special fees imposed on apprenticeships, deeds, wills, and letters-patent. The Mercers and Goldsmiths were in the prosperous part of town. The Goldsmiths' shops sold gold and silver plate, jewels, rings, water pitchers, drinking goblets, basins to hold water for the hands, and covered saltcellars. The grain market was on Cornhill. Halfway up the street, there was a supply of water which had been brought up in pipes. On the top of the hill was a cage where riotous folk had been incarcerated by the night watch and the stocks and pillory, where fraudulent schemers were exposed to ridicule. No work was to be done on Sundays, but some did work surreptitiously. The barbers kept their shops open in defiance of the church. Outside the London city walls were tenements, the Smithfield cattle market, Westminster Hall, green fields of crops, and some marsh land.
On the Thames River to London were large ships with cargoes; small boats rowed by tough boatmen offering passage for a penny; small private barges of great men with carved wood, gay banners, and oarsmen with velvet gowns; the banks covered with masts and tackle; the nineteen arch London Bridge supporting a street of shops and houses and a drawbridge in the middle; quays; warehouses, and great cranes lifting bales from ship to wharf. Merchant guilds which imported or exported each had their own wharves and warehouses. Downstream, pirates hung on gallows at the low-water mark to remain until three tides had overflowed their bodies. A climate change of about 1 1/2 degree Celcius lower caused the Thames to regularly freeze over in winter.
The large scale of London trade promoted the specialization of the manufacturer versus the merchant versus the shipper. Merchants had enough wealth to make loans to the government or for new commercial enterprises. Local reputation on general, depended upon a combination of wealth, trustworthiness of character, and public spirit; it rose and fell with business success. Some London merchants were knighted by the King. Many bought country estates thereby turning themselves into gentry.
The king granted London all common soils, improvements, wastes, streets, and ways in London and in the adjacent waters of the Thames River and all the profits and rents to be derived therefrom. Later the king granted London the liberty to purchase lands and tenements worth up to 2,667s. yearly. With this power, London had obtained all the essential features of a corporation: a seal, the right to make by-laws, the power to purchase lands and hold them "to them and their successors" (not simply their heirs, which is an individual and hereditary succession only), the power to sue and be sued in its own name, and the perpetual succession implied in the power of filling up vacancies by election. Since these powers were not granted by charters, London is a corporation by prescription. In 1446, the liverymen obtained the right with the council to elect the mayor, the sheriff, and certain other corporate officers.
Many boroughs sought and obtained formal incorporation with the same essential features as London. This tied up the loose language of their early charters of liberties. Often, a borough would have its own resident Justice of the Peace. Each incorporation involved a review by a Justice of the Peace to make sure the charter of incorporation rule didn't conflict with the law of the nation. A borough typically had a mayor accompanied by his personal sword- bearer and serjeants-at-mace bearing the borough regalia, bailiffs, a sheriff, and chamberlains or a steward for financial assistance. At many boroughs, aldermen, assisted by their constables, kept the peace in their separate wards. There might be coroners, a recorder, and a town clerk, with a host of lesser officials including beadles In all towns, the wealthiest and most influential guilds were the merchant traders of mercers, drapers, grocers, and goldsmiths. From their ranks came most of the mayors, and many began to intermarry with the country knights and gentry. Next came the shopholders of skinners, tailors, ironmongers, and corvisors [shoemakers]. Thirdly came the humbler artisans, the sellers of victuals, small shopkeepers, apprentices, and journeymen on the rise. Lastly came unskilled laborers, who lived in crowded tenements and hired themselves out. The first three groups were the free men who voted, paid scot and bore lot, and belonged to guilds. Scot was a ratable proportion in the payments levied from the town for local or national purposes. Merchant guilds in some towns merged their existence into the town corporation, and their guild halls became the common halls of the town, and their property became town property. In London, the Cutlers' Company was chartered in 1415, the There were craft guilds in the towns, at least 65 in London. In fact, every London trade of twenty men had its own guild. The guild secured good work for its members and the members maintained the reputation of the work standards of the guild. Bad work was punished and night work prohibited as leading to bad work. The guild exercised moral control over its members and provided sickness and death benefits for them. There was much overlapping in the two forms of association: the craft guild and the religious fraternity. Apprentices were taken in to assure an adequate supply of competent workers for the future. The standard indenture of an apprentice bound him to live in his master's house; serve him diligently; obey reasonable commands; keep his master's secrets; protect him from injury; abstain from dice, cards and haunting of taverns; not marry; commit no fornication, and not absent himself without permission. In return the master undertook to provide the boy or girl with bed, board, and lodging and to instruct him or her in the trade, craft, or mystery. When these apprentices had enough training they were made journeymen with a higher rate of pay. Journeymen traveled to see the work of their craft in other towns. Those journeymen rising to master had the highest pay rate. Occupations free of guild restrictions included horse dealers, marbelers, bookbinders, jewelers, organ makers, feathermongers, pie makers, basket makers, mirrorers, quilters, and parchment makers. Non-citizens of London could not be prevented from selling leather, metalwares, hay, meat, fruit, vegetables, butter, cheese, poultry, and fish from their boats, though they had to sell in the morning and sell all their goods before the market closed. In the towns, many married women had independent businesses and wives also played an active part in the businesses of their husbands. Wives of well-to-do London merchants embroidered, sewed jewelry onto clothes, and made silk garments. Widows often continued in their husband's businesses, such as managing a large import-export trade, tailoring, brewing, and metal shop. Socially lower women often ran their own breweries, bakeries, and taverns. It was possible for wives to be free burgesses in their own right in some towns. Some ladies were patrons of writers. Some women were active in prison reform in matters of reviews to insure that no man was in gaol without due cause, overcharges for bed and board, brutality, and regulation of prisoners being placed in irons. Many men and women left money in their wills for food and clothing for prisoners, especially debtors. Wills often left one-third of the wealth to the church, the poor, prisoners, infirmaries, young girls' education; road, wall, and bridge repair; water supply, markets and almshouses. Some infirmaries were for the insane, who were generally thought to be possessed by the devil or demons. Their treatment was usually by scourging the demons out of their body by flogging. If this didn't work, torture could be used to drive the demons from the body. The guilds were being replaced by associations for the investment of capital. In associations, journeymen were losing their chance of rising to be a master. Competition among associations was starting to supplant custom as the mainspring of trade.
Haberdashers' Company in 1417, the Grocers' Company in 1428, the
Drapers' and Cordwainers' companies in 1429, the Vintners' and Brewers'
companies in 1437, the Leathersellers' Company in 1444, the Girdlers'
Company in 1448, the Armourers' and Brassiers' companies in 1453, the
Barbers' Company in 1461, the Tallow Chandlers' Company in 1462, the
Ironmongers' Company in 1464, the Dyers' Company in 1471, the
Musicians' Company in 1472, the Carpenters' Company in 1477, the Cooks'
Company in 1481, and the Waxchandlers' Company in 1483. The
Fishmongers, which had been chartered in 1399, were incorporated in
1433, the Cordwainers in 1439, and the Pewterers in 1468.