In further explanation of civil costume from MSS. illuminations we refer the artist to the Harleian “Romance of the Rose” (Harl. 4,425, f. 47), where he will find a beautiful drawing, in which appears a man in a long blue gown, open a little at the breast and showing a pink under-robe, a black hat, and a liripipe of the kind already given in the citizens of Paris p. 54; he wears his purse by his side, and is presenting money to a beggar. At f. 98 is another in similar costume, with a “penner” at his belt in addition to his purse. There is nothing to prove that these men are merchants, except that they are represented in the streets of a town, and that their costume is such as was worn by merchants of the time.
With these costumes of civilians before our eyes we wish to use them in illustration of a subject which was touched upon in a former section of this work, viz., the Secular Clergy of the Middle Ages. We there devoted some pages to a discussion of the ordinary every-day costume of the clergy, and stated that there was no professional peculiarity about it, but that it was in shape like that worn by contemporary civilians of the better class, and in colour blue and red and other colours, but seldom black. If the reader will turn back to pp. 244, 245, and 246, he will find some woodcuts of the clergy in ordinary costume; let him compare them now with these costumes of merchants. For example, take the woodcut of Roger the Chaplain, on p. 245, and compare it with the brass from Northleach, p. 522. The style of art is very different, but in spite of this the resemblance in costume will be readily seen; the gown reaching to the ankle, and over it the cloak fastened with three buttons at the right shoulder, with the hood falling back over the shoulders; the half-gloves are the same in both, and the shoes with their latchet over the instep. Then turn to the priest on p. 246, and it will be seen that he wears the gown girded at the waist, with a purse hung at the girdle, and the flat cap with long liripipe, which we have described in the costumes of these merchants. Lastly, let the reader look at these brasses of wool-staplers, and compare the gown they wore with the cassock now adopted by the clergy, and it will be seen that they are identical—i.e. the clergy continue to wear the gown which all civilians wore three or four hundred years ago; and in the same manner the academic gown which the clergy wear, in common with all university men, is only the gown which all respectable citizens wore in the time of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.
CHAPTER VI.
MEDIÆVAL TOWNS.
ediæval towns in England had one of four origins; some were those of ancient Roman foundation, which had lived through the Saxon invasion, like Lincoln, Chester, and Colchester. Others again grew up gradually in the neighbourhood of a monastery. The monastery was founded in a wilderness, but it had a number of artisans employed about it; travellers resorted to its hospitium as to an inn; it was perhaps a place of pilgrimage; the affairs of the Lord Abbot, and the business of the large estates of the convent, brought people constantly thither; and so gradually a town grew up, as at St. Alban’s, St. Edmundsbury, &c. In other cases it was not a religious house, but a castle of some powerful and wealthy lord, which drew a population together under the shelter of its walls—as at Norwich, where the lines of the old streets follow the line of the castle-moat; or Ludlow, on the other side of the kingdom, which gathered round the Norman Castle of Ludlow. But there is a third category of mediæval towns which did not descend from ancient times, or grow by accidental accretion in course of time, but were deliberately founded and built in the mediæval period for specific purposes; and in these we have a special interest from our present point of view.
There was a period, beginning in the latter part of the eleventh and extending to the close of the fourteenth century, when kings and feudal lords, from motives of high policy, fostered trade with anxious care; encouraged traders with countenance, protection, and grants of privileges; and founded commercial towns, and gave them charters which made them little independent, self-governing republics, in the midst of the feudal lords and ecclesiastical communities which surrounded them.
In England we do not find so many of these newly founded towns as on the Continent; here towns were already scattered abundantly over the land, and what was needed was to foster their growth; but our English kings founded such towns in their continental dominions. Edward I. planted numerous free towns, especially in Guienne and Aquitaine, in order to raise up a power in his own interest antagonistic to that of the feudal lords. Other continental sovereigns did the same, e.g. Alphonse of Poitiers, the brother of St. Louis, in his dominion of Toulouse. But in England we have a few such cases. The history of the foundation of Hull will afford us an example. When Edward I. was returning from Scotland after the battle of Dunbar, he visited Lord Wakes of Barnard Castle. While hunting one day, he was led by the chase to the hamlet of Wyke-upon-Hull, belonging to the convent of Meaux. The king perceived at once the capabilities of the site for a fortress for the security of the kingdom, and a port for the extension of commerce. He left the hunt to take its course, questioned the shepherds who were on the spot about the depth of the river, the height to which the tides rose, the owner of the place, and the like. He sent for the Abbot of Meaux, and exchanged with him other lands for Wyke. Then he issued a proclamation offering freedom and great commercial privileges to all merchants who would build and inhabit there. He erected there a manor-house for himself; incorporated the town as a free borough in 1299 A.D.; by 1312 the great church was built; by 1322 the town was fortified with a wall and towers; and the king visited it from time to time on his journeys to the north. The family of De la Pole, who settled there from the first, ably seconded the king’s intentions. Kingston-upon-Hull became one of the great commercial towns of the kingdom. The De la Poles rose rapidly to wealth and the highest rank. Michael de la Pole “builded a goodly-house of brick, against the west end of St. Mary’s Church, like a palace, with a goodly orchard and garden at large, enclosed with brick. He builded also three houses in the town besides, whereof every one hath a tower of brick.” Leland the antiquary, of the time of Queen Elizabeth, has left us a description and bird’s-eye plan of the town in his day, which is highly interesting. Of our English towns, those which are of Roman origin were laid out at first on a comprehensive plan, and they have the principal streets tolerably straight, and crossing at right angles. The great majority of the towns which grew as above described are exceedingly irregular; but this irregularity, so important an element in the picturesqueness of mediæval towns, is quite an accidental one. When the mediæval builders laid out a town de novo, they did it in the most methodical manner; laying out the streets wide, straight, at equal distances, and crossing rectangularly; appropriating proper sites for churches, town-halls, and other public purposes, and regulating the size and plan of the houses. It is to the continental towns we must especially look for examples; but we find when Edward I. was building his free towns there, he sent for Englishmen to lay them out for him. A similar opportunity occurred at Winchelsea, where the same plan was pursued. The old town of Winchelsea was destroyed by the sea in 1287, and the king determined to rebuild this cinque-port. The chief owners of the new site were a knight, Sir J. Tregoz, one Maurice, and the owners of Battle Abbey. The king compounded with them for their rights over seventy acres of land, and sent down the Bishop of Ely, who was Lord Treasurer, to lay out the new town. The monarch accorded the usual privileges to settlers, and gave help towards the fortifications. The town was laid out in streets which divided the area into rectangular blocks; two blocks were set apart for churches, and there were two colleges of friars within the town. Somehow the place did not flourish; it was harried by incursions of the French before the fortifications were completed, people were not attracted to it, the whole area was never taken up, and it continues to this day shrunk up into one corner of its walled area. Three of the old gates, and part of the walls, and portions of three or four houses, are all that remain of King Edward’s town.