Women of England

by Bartlett Burleigh James

Finding that he had endangered his safety and the success of his plans by his indiscretion, Hereward slipped away unobserved, and, with his companions, lay in ambush the next day along the road by which he knew the bride would be conducted by her father to her new home. As the bridal procession passed, and with it the Irish prisoners, Hereward rushed out upon the unsuspecting company; and while his companions released the prisoners, he seized the lady and bore her away in true knightly fashion. It may well be believed that the bride was soon united in wedlock to the husband of her choice.

One other circumstance in the history of this man, whose life was a series of bold undertakings, serves to illustrate the superstitions of the times. When King William had besieged the island of Ely, which was the headquarters of Hereward and his large following of Saxon warriors, and had failed to subdue them, he gave heed to the counsel of one of his courtiers, to have recourse to a celebrated witch for aid in the destruction of his foes. Hereward, to spy upon his adversary and discover his plans, disguised himself as a potter, and stopped at the house of the old woman whose magic was to be used against him; that night he followed her and another crone out into the fields, where they engaged in their curious rites. From their conversation he learned of the scheme against him, which was to have a platform erected in the marshes surrounding the island; the hag was to repeat thrice her charm, when he and his followers would be destroyed. Accordingly, when the platform was erected and the besiegers drew as near as they could, expectantly awaiting Hereward's destruction, he and his companions, under the cover of the brush, crept close to the platform and, taking advantage of the favorable direction of the wind, set fire to the reeds. The witch, who was about to repeat her charm for the third time, leaped from the platform in terror, and was killed, while in the panic many of the soldiers lost their lives by fire or by water. The scene here depicted bears a remarkable similarity to the weird rites of the ancient British Druidesses, and doubtless represents a continuance of the mysteries of that order, which came down in forms of magic and witchcraft through many centuries.

This glimpse of the witchcraft that was to become more prominent, or at least with which we become more familiar at a later period, will suffice to show that the plane of general intelligence was not yet high. Education was limited to subjects that have no special interest for us to-day. Such as it was, it was accessible to the lower classes as well as to the upper. There were schools connected with the churches and the monasteries. Apparently, there was no distinction in the subjects pursued by the sexes, excepting in the case of the nobility, whose sons were trained for the positions they were to occupy. It would appear that some priests were so zealous for the prosperity of their schools that they sought to entice scholars from other schools to their own. A law to correct the practice provided "that no priest receive another's scholar without leave of him whom he had previously followed." Latin was in the list of the studies pursued by the ladies, but few could read in the vernacular.

At that day there was the same tendency that is familiar to-day,—to cast alleged feminine inconsistencies into the form of adages. One of these proverbs is found in the instructions of a baron who was counselling his son on his going out from the paternal roof: "If you should know anything that you would wish to conceal," says this generalizer from a personal experience, "tell it by no means to your wife, if you have one; for if you let her know it, you will repent of it the first time you displease her."

The amusements that were popular in the Anglo-Saxon days continued during the Norman period, but hunting and hawking, by reason of the stringent game laws, were sports practically limited to the upper class. The lady kept her falcons and knew well how to set them on the quarry, and with the men she could ride in the hunt to the baying of the hounds. It is interesting to note that with women the usual method of riding was on a side-saddle; seldom are they found seated otherwise in the representations of riding scenes. Among all classes dancing seems to have been in favor. The exercise was more graceful and intricate than the dance of the Saxons. Among the young people of the lower classes it was the chief amusement, and was attended by much mirth and boisterousness. Games of chance were popular among both sexes, and chess was a favorite pastime.

The art of the Anglo-Saxon gleemen and maidens under the Normans was represented by two classes of public entertainers, the minstrels and the jongleurs. The minstrels confined themselves for the most part to music and poetry; while the jongleurs were the jugglers, tricksters, and exhibitors of trained animals. But the distinction was not sharply drawn, although in general the minstrels were considered to afford a higher form of entertainment than did the jongleurs. Both sexes were represented in these bands of itinerant amusement purveyors. Companies of them were more or less permanently attached to the retinues of the great barons, for the whiling away of the long evenings and the entertainment of the guests. The sentiments of the songs and stories of these people were full of suggestiveness and coarseness. The merry and licentious lives of the disreputable traffickers in amusement brought them under moral reprobation, even in that rude age. They drew into their ranks many persons of depraved life, who, when the times improved, contributed, by their abandon, to create sentiment against all profligate strollers. Yet these minstrels represented the beginnings of music and of vernacular literature after the conquest of England.

In the matter of dress there was a marked departure from the Anglo-Saxon costume, which varied little. Just as long as England was not in touch with continental ideas and customs, the women of the country wore the costumes of their ancestors. That dress is cosmopolitan never entered into their conceptions, any more than it does into those of any of the Eastern nations who in modern times have been brought suddenly into the stream of European customs and manners. But with the coming of the Normans, national conservatism yielded to comparison with the fashions of other peoples, and fashion assumed the sceptre that it has continued to wield over the English woman. The changes in dress were at first slight, but by the end of the twelfth century they had become sufficiently marked to be the target of witticism and the subject of satire. The foibles of the women were little regarded by the writers of the time. The dress of the men was not passed over in like silence, however; it drew from the censors of the day the severest strictures on account of its flaunting meagreness and its improprieties in the eyes of its monkish critics. The same condemnation was visited upon the practice of the men of dyeing their hair or otherwise coloring it, wearing flowing locks, and painting their faces. Such fashions were styled reprehensible and effeminate. It would have been instructive to subsequent generations if these censorious critics had not been so gallant toward women, and had given to us the spicy descriptions of feminine attire that, in their indignation, they have afforded us of that of the men. Had they but realized that it was the sex whose sins of dress they passed over so lightly, with charity or indifference, that was to follow the inconsequential wake of fashion into the wildest vagaries of costume and adornment, they would have let the men have their brief day, and massed their strictures against those who were to elevate fashion to an art and make of its following a devotion. As it is, for our knowledge of the dress of the weaker sex we are dependent upon the illuminations, whose brilliant coloring and faithfulness of detail left little for the text to elucidate. That the new styles were not received with approbation by the clerical artists is clear enough from the caricatures and exaggerations of them that appear in their drawings. The inordinate length of the sleeves, reaching as they did, in a long, mandolin-shaped pocket, to the knees of the wearer, made them surely hideous enough to draw out the indignation of those who had artistic sensibilities to be shocked.

That the notion of fashionable dress as Satanic is very old is shown by one of the representations of his infernal majesty, where he is portrayed dressed in the height of feminine fashion. One of the sleeves of his gown is short and full, while the other, in caricature of the style of the day, is so long that it has to be tied in a knot to get it out of the way. The gown, also, being of impossible length and fulness, is disposed of by the simple expedient of knotting.

In the dress of Satan, as an exponent of the iniquity of feminine attire, there also appears unmistakable evidence of a tight bodice of stays, the lacing of which, after drawing his majesty's waist into approved dimensions, hangs carelessly down to view and terminates in a tag. As stays were not commonly worn, and as a writer at a little later time is found vehemently inveighing against them, it is fair to conclude that their presence on Satan is to indicate, in the eyes of the better element of the day, the indelicacy and impropriety of their use. Ridiculous and unsightly as were the long sleeves and other novelties of dress, the particular displeasure with which they were regarded by the element whose views the ecclesiastics reflected must be attributed somewhat to their foreign origin. Although they were introduced into the country by the Normans, the long sleeves, at least, appear to have originated in Italy. Down to the twelfth century, there was sufficient conservatism remaining to deprecate the introduction of foreign novelties, just as in Elizabeth's days the economists strongly protested against bringing into the country "foreign gewgaws."