[STATE OF SOCIETY.]
1216–1399.
Although the narration of political facts implies much of the history of the country, it leaves out of sight much that touches the real life of the people. During the last hundred years great social changes had been going on, and great social progress made. In fact, till the end of the reign of King John, the social, like the political history of the country scarcely deserves the name of national. The description of any feudal society will in a great measure suit it. But the national existence had been worked out in the reign of Henry III., and was completed and finally established by the great time of Edward I. From that time onwards, continuous change and growth had been visible, and that growth had been national. The great fact of all modern history is the breaking up of the feudal and ecclesiastical system of the middle ages, and the introduction, as political and social elements of weight, of the middle and industrial classes. It is the beginning of that process which constitutes therefore the history of this period. The points to observe will be, therefore, the growth and advance of the commons, the decay of the aristocracy. But it is as yet quite impossible to speak of the commons as one body. The line which divided the class which sent its representatives to Parliament, and which was already becoming of political importance, from the mass of the labouring part of the nation, was very clearly drawn, and the characteristics, the employments, and the feelings of the one class, as well as the causes of their advance, will be very different from those of the other. A brief sketch has been already given of the gradual introduction of the commons into Parliament. But it still remains to explain and illustrate the sources of their wealth, their aristocratic tendencies, and the prevalence among them of a strong distaste for the pre-eminent position occupied by the Church. It was their wealth which gained them admission to Parliament, and the way in which that wealth was gained which greatly influenced their views after they had been admitted.
Trade.
The staple.
Trade, on which their riches depended, was as yet in its infancy; and the views which regulated its management as yet too crude to be spoken of by such a dignified title as political economy. As far as they went, however, they were very clear, and were, in fact, though afterwards improved, the same in spirit as those which existed in England before the time of Adam Smith. Observing only the obvious fact, that the possession of money enabled a man to purchase whatever he wanted, early traders conceived the idea that money was wealth, and that nothing else was. And as the wealth of the nation was of the last importance, both to the governor and to the governed, and as trade was the chief method by which money could be supplied, and by which money might be drawn from the country, the regulation of trade became one of the most important duties of the King and the Parliament. Now money being the sole wealth, in that regulation of trade it became necessary to aim first at the introduction of money; secondly, at its retention. It was to these objects that the frequent ordinances and statutes with regard to trade were directed. Although very various and, as such regulations were almost certain to be, frequently inefficacious, they were energetic and simple. England was not as yet a manufacturing country. Its trade was an export trade of raw materials, principally derived from sheep farming on the vast spaces of uncultivated land which then existed, and from its mineral wealth. Its principal commodities were wool, sheep-skins, or wool-fells, and leather, together with tin and lead.[70] Only the coarsest kind of cloth was manufactured; sometimes intentionally rough and coarse, to be changed into fine cloth afterwards in Flanders, but exported as cloth to avoid the tax on wool. Primitive trade, when the seas were beset with pirates, had been carried on chiefly inland, and great fairs, such as that of Troyes in France, had been established under the guardianship of feudal lords, who guaranteed the safety of the merchants for a toll. Domestic trade was carried on in the same way, and one of the forms of royal exaction was to open a fair, and insist upon all other shops and other places of sale being closed during its continuance.[71] As the seas became safer, and the mercantile spirit of the Flemings rose, the great free cities of Flanders became as it were perpetual fairs, and were known as staples, from the German “stapeln,” to keep up. In order that trade should be well under command, it was necessary that it should be carried on in few channels. The English government had therefore chosen some of these Flemish towns, and ordered that all the chief productions of England, which have been already mentioned, should be sold in those towns, and nowhere else. These goods were therefore called staple commodities; the merchants who traded in them, the merchants of the staple. And this staple trade was put under an organization—there being a mayor, a constable, and courts of the staple. At these staple towns, the King’s customers, or custom-house officers, by means of this organization, had every bargain under direct supervision; and every bargain thus supervised was obliged to be made for a certain sum of actual coin, the government thus securing a continual flow of silver into the hands of the English merchants. The staple towns were frequently changed. To reward any particularly faithful ally, or to raise the importance of any particular town, as for instance Calais, the staple was removed to that Prince’s province, or to that town. The proportion of each bargain to be brought over in coin was also constantly varying. Indeed, the frequent interference of government in such matters was not among the least of the restrictions of trade. Edward III. was said, at one time of his life, to have had a different plan every month. Upon the whole, however, the principle was the same. Amongst the most remarkable plans of Edward III. was one for keeping the evident riches that accrued to the staple towns within the limits of England. In the twenty-seventh year of his reign he named nine towns in England which were to be the exclusive selling places of the English staple commodities. For an Englishman to carry such commodities beyond the seas was punishable by death. As Edward could not protect the foreign merchants visiting his staples, and as the additional trouble of purchasing goods at them naturally lowered prices, this plan did not answer. It was, in fact, suicidal for an island people, since it destroyed all object in the keeping up a mercantile navy. It was therefore speedily abandoned; and after the reign of Henry VI., Calais became the sole English staple town. A similar attempt was made in the fourteenth year of Richard II., when it was enacted that no Englishman should buy wool except of the owners of the sheep, and for his own use. The export trade was thus again for a time given over to the foreign merchant, for the sake of securing to the wool-grower the profits of the retail as well as the wholesale trade; the effect was naturally a decrease of purchasers, which reduced the growers to great distress. The government had, by insisting on money payments in every bargain, secured an influx of silver; but as the nation was too far advanced in civilization to do without foreign products, there were a certain number of foreign importers, who threatened in their turn to withdraw it again. One or two attempts were indeed made to confine English trade to the limits of the country. Thus, it was the view of Simon de Montfort, who disliked all extravagance in dress, that the production of the country was enough to supply its own inhabitants; and in 1261, and in 1271, exportation of English wool was forbidden, and people acquired the habit of dressing in undyed native cloth. Such primitive patriotism could not last in an advancing nation. Trade soon resumed its old course. The greater part of the foreign merchants were Germans, and to keep them under government supervision, they were formed into a guild, given certain privileges, allowed to possess a guild-hall, and are generally known as the Merchants of the Steelyard.[72] Other alien merchants there also were, who were protected by law; notably by the great statute of Edward I., “De mercatoribus.” But although the goods they brought were necessary, their bargains, no less than those of the staple merchants, were under supervision. They were bound to employ a certain proportion of the money obtained from their sales in English goods.[73] Moreover, all foreign merchants were held to be mutually responsible for each other’s debts. Thus the retention of the silver in England was also secured, while, to avoid any varieties in the value of money, English coin alone was current, and foreign coin had at once to be exchanged at the royal exchangers.
Coinage.
Since money was so important an object, the coinage was naturally regarded with great care. It was an exclusive royal monopoly, and in the reign of Edward III. the punishment of death was enacted against false coiners. There was a constant dread lest in the exchange England should be the loser. The belief was prevalent that the value of the money depended upon the denomination. It had not yet entered men’s minds to think that it was but another commodity, worth exactly its intrinsic value, which no change of name could alter. Up till the reign of Edward III., although clipped and lightened in use, and although Edward I. had begun the bad practice of depreciating the coin by diminishing its legal weight, the coinage had been on the whole but little tampered with. But between the years 1344 and 1351, the number of silver pennies made from the pound of silver had increased from 243 to 270. In that year, groats of the nominal value of 4d., but of the weight of only three and a half of the diminished penny, were issued. It is impossible to make any true estimate of the comparative value of money then and at the present time. The facts with regard to the actual amount of silver employed are these: The pound, which only nominally existed, was a full pound of silver, which would at present be coined into £2, 16s. 3d. The shilling, which seems also to have been a nominal coin, was the twentieth part of this, or 2s. 9¾d. The silver penny, which was, till the time of Edward III., almost the only coin, was therefore worth 2¾d. Edward introduced several new coins; some of gold, which, as there was no fixed proportion between them and silver, were not popular, and were recalled; and nobles of the value of 6s. 8d., or half a mark; together with the groats above mentioned. But of the purchasing value of the money thus made no fixed estimate can be given, as that of course depends upon the relative value of the articles purchased; and under the very different circumstances of those times the relative value of those articles was so different, that to compare the value of money with any one of them would give a totally false impression. It is usual to say roughly that to reach the present value of any sum mentioned it should be multiplied by fifteen.