I can find no trace at this period of any difficulty in obtaining service. Bishop Grossetête assures the Countess of Lincoln that she can easily obtain servers if she needs them, and the young men addressed in the rhyming exhortations preserved in “Meals and Manners” evidently regard it as promotion almost beyond their hopes to become members of a lord’s household. Whether this would be equally the case if we had information about the smaller households, it is not easy to say. But when we remember that the alternatives were laborious and monotonous work at agriculture or the chance of finding a place in the gilds or fraternities which monopolised the trade in towns at that period, we can believe that the plentiful fare, the lively society, and the not too strenuous[51] work required of a serving-groom 155 or yeoman would be regarded as a prize worth striving for and worth keeping.
It would be interesting, had I more space at my disposal, to discuss mediæval town life and the domestic arrangements of the monasteries, which are very fully and interestingly described in Abbé Gasquet’s book, “English Monastic Life.” But I must content myself solely with one or two extracts illustrating the household furniture of the mediæval town-dwellers.
In 1303, a certain Alan de Bedeford, a baker of London, was sold up for arrears of taxes, and the following were the goods seized by the inexorable tax-gatherer: “One brass pot weighing 18 lbs., value 2s. 6d., and another brass pot weighing 13 lbs., value 21d., and one kettle value 14d., the total whereof amounts to 5s 5d.”[52]
In 1337, an inventory was preserved of the goods of a felon. It was probably exhaustive, and may therefore be taken as indicating with tolerable precision the standard of household comfort of a London burgess at that time. It is too long to quote in full (the list of garments in particular is rather tedious), but it is interesting to note that it includes a mattress, three feather-beds, five cushions, six blankets, seven linen-sheets, four table-cloths, six whole brass pots of varying value and one broken one, one candlestick and two plates of metal, two basins and 156 one washing-vessel, a spit, a frying-pan, and a funnel.[53]
Further study of wills and inventories would yield a fresh store of information with regard to mediæval household equipment, and might not improbably upset some preconceived ideas as to the ordinary standard of life at that time.
(b) The Position of the Household from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
(1) The First Industrial Revolution and its Effects
The fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century were marked by great economic changes. The manorial system, modified before this period by the gradual commutation of labour dues and especially by the catastrophe of the Black Death, was replaced on the one hand by enclosures for sheep-farming and on the other by convertible husbandry, when the farmer possessed or rented his own separate holding and managed it as he pleased, using the same land alternately for pasturage and as arable.[54] At the same time, the gild organisation of industry was replaced by the system commonly known as domestic manufacture. This spread largely in the country 157 districts, and profoundly influenced home life and the position of women. At the same time both home and foreign trade greatly increased, and “natural economy” was almost entirely replaced by “money economy,” the necessities of life being no longer produced by the family for their own use; men worked instead for payment, and then with the money so earned bought in the market the goods they required.[55] These changes, like the corresponding changes at the end of the eighteenth century, brought greater wealth and pomp to some classes, increased comfort to the bulk of the people, but called into existence a new class of landless labourers, whose needs and importunities finally led to the establishment of the poor-law.
It would require a volume to describe how these changes reflected themselves in the daily life of the people, and at present I must content myself with noting very briefly the main effects of this first industrial revolution.
In the country two classes appeared: the labourer, who, although he might possess a small piece of land of his own[56] or at the least had grazing rights over a neighbouring common, yet 158 depended for his livelihood on the wages paid by his master. So far I have not discovered any reliable source of information with regard to the family expenditure of this class.[57]