[c] Schmidt, Hist. des Allem, t. ii. p. 146; Heeren, sur l'Influence des Croisades, p. 316. In Baluze we find a law of Carloman, brother to Charlemagne: Ut mancipia Christiana paganis non vendantur. Capitularia, t. i. p. 150, vide quoque, p. 361.
[d] William of Malmsbury accuses the Anglo-Saxon nobility of selling their female servants, even when pregnant by them, as slaves to foreigners, p. 102. I hope there were not many of these Yaricoes; and should not perhaps have given credit to an historian rather prejudiced against the English, if I had not found too much authority for the general practice. In the canons of a council at London in 1102 we read, Let no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by which men of England have hitherto been sold like brute animals. Wilkins's Concilia, t. i. p. 383. And Giraldus Cambrensis says that the English before the Conquest were generally in the habit of selling their children and other relations to be slaves in Ireland, without having even the pretext of distress or famine, till the Irish, in a national synod, agreed to emancipate all the English slaves in the kingdom. Id. p. 471. This seems to have been designed to take away all pretext for the threatened invasion of Henry II. Lyttelton, vol. iii. p. 70.
Progress of Commercial Improvement in Germany, Flanders, and England—in the North of Europe—in the Countries upon the Mediterranean Sea—Maritime Laws—Usury—Banking Companies—Progress of Refinement in Manners—Domestic Architecture—Ecclesiastical Architecture—State of Agriculture in England—Value of Money—Improvement of the Moral Character of Society—its Causes—Police—Changes in Religious Opinion—Various Sects—Chivalry—its Progress, Character, and Influence—Causes of the Intellectual Improvement of European Society—1. The Study of Civil Law—2. Institution of Universities—their Celebrity—Scholastic Philosophy—3. Cultivation of Modern Languages—Provençal Poets—Norman Poets—French Prose Writers—Italian—early Poets in that Language—Dante—Petrarch—English Language—its Progress—Chaucer—4. Revival of Classical Learning—Latin Writers of the Twelfth Century—Literature of the Fourteenth Century—Greek Literature—its Restoration in Italy—Invention of Printing.
European commerce.
The geographical position of Europe naturally divides its maritime commerce into two principal regions—one comprehending those countries which border on the Baltic, the German and the Atlantic oceans; another, those situated around the Mediterranean Sea. During the four centuries which preceded the discovery of America, and especially the two former of them, this separation was more remarkable than at present, inasmuch as their intercourse, either by land or sea, was extremely limited. To the first region belonged the Netherlands, the coasts of France, Germany, and Scandinavia, and the maritime districts of England. In the second we may class the provinces of Valencia and Catalonia, those of Provence and Languedoc, and the whole of Italy.
Woollen manufacture of Flanders.
1. The former, or northern division, was first animated by the woollen manufacture of Flanders. It is not easy either to discover the early beginnings of this, or to account for its rapid advancement. The fertility of that province and its facilities of interior navigation were doubtless necessary causes; but there must have been some temporary encouragement from the personal character of its sovereigns, or other accidental circumstances. Several testimonies to the flourishing condition of Flemish manufactures occur in the twelfth century, and some might perhaps be found even earlier.[a] A writer of the thirteenth asserts that all the world was clothed from English wool wrought in Flanders.[] This, indeed, is an exaggerated vaunt; but the Flemish stuffs were probably sold wherever the sea or a navigable river permitted them to be carried. Cologne was the chief trading city upon the Rhine; and its merchants, who had been considerable even under the emperor Henry IV., established a factory at London in 1220. The woollen manufacture, notwithstanding frequent wars and the impolitic regulations of magistrates,[c] continued to flourish in the Netherlands (for Brabant and Hainault shared it in some degree with Flanders), until England became not only capable of supplying her own demand, but a rival in all the marts of Europe. "All Christian kingdoms, and even the Turks themselves," says an historian of the sixteenth century, "lamented the desperate war between the Flemish cities and their count Louis, that broke out in 1380. For at that time Flanders was a market for the traders of all the world. Merchants from seventeen kingdoms had their settled domiciles at Bruges, besides strangers from almost unknown countries who repaired thither."[d] During this war, and on all other occasions, the weavers both of Ghent and Bruges distinguished themselves by a democratical spirit, the consequence, no doubt, of their numbers and prosperity.[e] Ghent was one of the largest cities in Europe, and, in the opinion of many, the best situated.[f] But Bruges, though in circuit but half the former, was more splendid in its buildings, and the seat of far more trade; being the great staple both for Mediterranean and northern merchandise.[g] Antwerp, which early in the sixteenth century drew away a large part of this commerce from Bruges, was not considerable in the preceding ages; nor were the towns of Zealand and Holland much noted except for their fisheries, though those provinces acquired in the fifteenth century some share of the woollen manufacture.
Export of wool from England.
For the first two centuries after the Conquest our English towns, as has been observed in a different place, made some forward steps towards improvement, though still very inferior to those of the continent. Their commerce was almost confined to the exportation of wool, the great staple commodity of England, upon which, more than any other, in its raw or manufactured state, our wealth has been founded. A woollen manufacture, however, indisputably existed under Henry II.;[h] it is noticed in regulations of Richard I.; and by the importation of woad under John it may be inferred to have still flourished. The disturbances of the next reign, perhaps, or the rapid elevation of the Flemish towns, retarded its growth, though a remarkable law was passed by the Oxford parliament in 1261, prohibiting the export of wool and the importation of cloth. This, while it shows the deference paid by the discontented barons, who predominated in that parliament, to their confederates the burghers, was evidently too premature to be enforced. We may infer from it, however, that cloths were made at home, though not sufficiently for the people's consumption.[]