A still more fatal cause of the decay of chivalry, perhaps, lay in the growing prosperity of the merchant class. Even distinguished historians have written misleadingly concerning the ideal of material prosperity and middle-class comfort, as though it had been born only with the Reformation. It seems in fact an inseparable bye-product of civilization: whether healthy or unhealthy need not be discussed here. As the Dark Ages brightened into the Middle Ages, as mere club-law grew weaker and weaker, so the longing for material comforts grew stronger and stronger. The great monasteries were among the leaders in this as in so many other respects. In 12th-century England, the nearest approach to the comfort of a modern household would probably have been found either in rich Jews’ houses or in the more favoured parts of abbeys like Bury and St. Albans. Already in the 13th century the merchant class begins to come definitely to the fore. As the early 14th-century Renart le Contrefait complains—

“Bourgeois du roi est pair et comte;
De tous états portent l’honneur.
Riches bourgeois sont bien seigneurs!”[185]

Italy and the south of France were particularly advanced in this respect; and Dante’s paternal house was probably richer in material comforts than any castle or palace in England, as his surroundings were in many other ways more civilized. Even the feudal aristocracy, as will presently be seen, learned much in these ways from the citizen-class: and, meanwhile, a slow but sure intermingling process began between the two classes themselves. First only by way of abuse, but presently by open procedure of law, the rich plebeian began to buy for himself the sacred rank of Knighthood. Long before the end of the 13th century, there were districts of France in which rich citizens claimed knighthood as their inalienable right. In England, the order was cheapened by Edward I.’s statute of Distraint of Knighthood (1278), in which some have seen a deliberate purpose to undermine the feudal nobility. By this law, all freeholders possessing an estate of £20 a year were not only permitted, but compelled to become knights; and the superficiality of the strict chivalric ideal is shown clearly by the facts that such a law could ever be passed, and that men tried so persistently to evade it. If knighthood had been in reality, even at the end of the 12th century, anything like what its formal codes represent, then no such attempt as this could have been made in 1235 by a King humbly devoted to the Church—for, as early as that year, Henry III. had anticipated his son’s enactments.

Where Royal statutes and popular tendencies work together against an ancient institution, it soon begins to crumble away; and the knighthood which Chaucer knew was far removed from that of a few generations before. We read in “Piers Plowman” that, while “poor gentle blood” is refused, “soapsellers and their sons for silver have been knights.” An Italian contemporary, Sacchetti, complains that he has seen knighthood conferred on “mechanics, artisans, even bakers; nay, worse still, on woolcarders, usurers, and cozening ribalds”; and Eustache Deschamps speaks scarcely less strongly.[186] Several 14th-century mayors of London were knighted, including John Chaucer’s fellow-vintner Picard, and Geoffrey’s colleagues at the Customs, Walworth, Brembre, and Philipot.

But Brembre and Philipot, Sir Walter Besant has reminded us, were probably members of old country families, who had come to seek their fortunes in London.[187] True; but this only shows us the decay of chivalry on another side. Nothing could be more honourable, or better in the long run for the country, than that there should be such a double current of circulation, fresh healthy blood flowing from the country manor to the London counting-house, and hard cash trickling back again from the city to the somewhat impoverished manor. It was magnificent, but it was not chivalry, at any rate in the medieval sense. Gower reminded his readers that even civil law forbade the knight to become merchant or trader; but the movement was far too strong to be checked by law. The old families had lost heavily by the crusades, by the natural subdivision of estates, and by their own extravagance. Moreover, the growing luxury of the times made them feel still more acutely the limitation of their incomes; and the moneylenders of Chaucer’s day found their best customers among country magnates. “The city usurer,” writes Gower, “keeps on hire his brokers and procurers, who search for knights, vavasours and squires. When these have mortgaged their lands, and are driven by need to borrow, then these rascals lead them to the usurers; and presently that trick will be played which in modern jargon is called the chevisance of money.... Ah! what a bargain, which thus enriches the creditor and will ruin the debtor!”[188] In an age which knew knight-errantry no longer, nothing but the most careful husbandry could secure the old families in their former pre-eminence; and well it was for England that these were early forced by bitter experience to recognise the essential dignity of honest commerce. Edward I., under the financial pressure of his great wars, insisted that he was “free to buy and sell like any other.” All the Kings were obliged to travel from one Royal manor to another, as M. Jusserand has pointed out, from sheer motives of economy.[189] We have already seen how Edward III., even in his pleasures, kept business accounts with a regularity which earned him a sneer from King John of France. The Cistercians, who were probably the richest religious body in England, owed their wealth mainly to their success in the wool trade. But perhaps the most curious evidence of this kind may be found in the invaluable collections from the Berkeley papers made in the 17th century by John Smyth of Nibley, and published by the Bristol and Gloucester Archæological Society. We there find a series of great barons, often holding distinguished offices in peace or war, but always exploiting their estates with a dogged unity of purpose which a Lombard might have envied. Thomas I., who held the barony from 1220 to 1243, showed his business foresight by letting a great deal of land on copyhold. His son (1243-1281) was “a careful husband, and strict in all his bargains.” This Thomas II., who served with distinction in twenty-eight campaigns, kept in his own hands from thirteen to twenty manors, farming them with the most meticulous care. His accounts show that “when this lord was free from foreign employment, he went often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another, scarce two miles asunder, making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and directing the above-mentioned husbandries.” Lady Berkeley went on similar rounds from manor to manor in order to inspect the dairies. Smyth gives amusing instances of the baron’s frugalities, side by side with his generosity. He followed a policy of sub-letting land in tail to tenants, calculating “that the heirs of such donees being within age should be in ward to him, ... and so the profit of the land to become his own again, and the value of the marriage also to boot”: a calculation which the reader will presently be in a better position to understand. He “would not permit any freeman’s widow to marry again unless she first made fine with him” (one poor creature who protested against this rule was fined £20 in modern money); and he fixed a custom, which survived for centuries on his manors, of seizing into his own hands the estates of all copyholders’ widows who re-married, or were guilty of incontinence. He vowed a crusade, but never performed it; his grandson paid a knight £100 to go instead of the dead baron. Lady Berkeley’s “elder years were weak and sickly, part of whose physic was sawing of billets and sticks, for which cause she had before her death yearly bought certain fine hand-saws, which she used in her chamber, and which commonly cost twopence a piece.”

[Larger Image]

SIR GEOFFREY LOUTERELL WITH HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER
(LOUTERELL PSALTER. EARLY 14TH CENTURY.)

Maurice III. (1321-1326) continued, or rather improved upon, his father’s exact methods. Thomas III. (1326-1361) was almost as great a warrior as his grandfather, though less fortunate. Froissart tells in his own picturesque style how he pressed so far forward at Poitiers as to get himself badly wounded and taken prisoner, and how the squire who took him bought himself a knighthood out of the ransom. (Globe ed., p. 127). Even more significant, perhaps, are the Royal commissions by which this lord was deputed to raise men for the great war, and to which I shall have occasion to refer later on. But, amidst all this public business, Thomas found time to farm himself about eighty manors! Like his grandfather, he was blessed with an equally business-like helpmeet, for when he was abroad on business or war, “his good and frugal lady withdrew herself for the most part to her houses of least resort and receipt, whether for her retirement or frugality, I determine not.” The doubt here expressed must be merely rhetorical, for Smyth later on records how she had a new gown made for herself “of cloth furred throughout with coney-skins out of the kitchen.” Indeed, most of the cloth and fur for the robes of this great household came from the estate itself. “In each manor, and almost upon each farmhouse, he had a pigeon-house, and in divers manors two, and in Hame and a few others three; from each house he drew yearly great numbers, as 1300, 1200, 1000, 850, 700, 650 from an house; and from Hame in one year 2151 young pigeons.” These figures serve to explain how the baronial pigeons, preying on the crops, and so sacred that no man might touch them on pain of life or limb, became one of the chief causes which precipitated the French Revolution. Like his grandfather—and indeed like all feudal lords, from the King downwards—he found justice a profitable business. He “often held in one year four leets or views of frankpledge in Berkeley borough, wherefrom, imposing fourpence and sixpence upon a brewing of ale, and renting out the toll or profit of the wharfage and market there to the lord of the town, he drew yearly from that art more than the rent of the borough.”[190] Again, he dealt in wardships, buying of Edward III. “for 1000 marks ... the marriage of the heir of John de la Ware, with the profits of his lands, until the full age of the heir.” He carried his business habits into every department of life. In founding a chantry at Newport he provided expressly by deed that the priest “should live chastely and honestly, and not come to markets, ale-houses, or taverns, neither should frequent plays or unlawful games; in a word, he made this his priest by these ordinances to be one of those honest men whom we mistakenly call puritans in these our days.” The accounts of his tournaments are most interesting, and throw a still clearer light on King John’s sneer. Smyth notes that this lord was a most enthusiastic jouster, and gives two years as examples from the accounts (1st and 2nd Ed. III.). Yet, in all the six tournaments which Lord Thomas attended in those two years, he spent only £90 18s., or £15 3s. per tournament; and this at a time when he was saving money at the rate of £450 a year, an economy which he nearly trebled later on.[191] He evidently knew, however, that a heavy outlay upon occasion will repay itself with interest, for we find him paying £108 for a tower in his castle; and, whereas the park fence had hitherto been of thorn, new-made every three years, Lord Thomas went to the expense of an oaken paling.

Maurice IV. (1361-1368), “in husbandry his father’s true apprentice,” not only made considerable quantities of wine, cider, and perry from his gardens at Berkeley, but turned an honest penny by selling the apples which had grown under the castle windows. Warned by failing health, he tried to secure the fortune of his eldest son, aged fourteen, by marrying him to the heiress of Lord Lisle. The girl was then only seven, so it was provided that she should live on in her father’s house for four years after the wedding. Maurice soon died, and Lord Lisle bought from the King the wardship of his youthful son-in-law for £400 a year—that is, for about a sixth of the whole revenue of the estates. This young Thomas IV., having at last become his own master (1368-1417), “fell into the old course of his father’s and grandfather’s husbandries.” Among other thrifty bargains, he “bought of Henry Talbot twenty-four Scottish prisoners, taken by him upon the land by the seaside, in way of war, as the King’s enemies.”[192] He left an only heiress, the broad lands were divided, and the long series of exact stewards’ accounts breaks suddenly off. The heir to the peerage, Lord James Berkeley, being involved in perpetual lawsuits, became “a continual borrower, and often of small sums; yea, of church vestments and altar-goods.” Not until 1481 did the good husbandry begin again.