The markets were, first, Billingsgate for fish, salt, onions, other fruits and roots, wheat and all kinds of grain; every great ship paid for “standage” twopence; every small ship one penny; a lesser ship one penny; a lesser boat a halfpenny; for every two quarters of corn the King was to have one farthing; on a comb of corn, one penny; on every tun of ale going out of England, fourpence; on every thousand herrings, a farthing, etc. Queenhithe, or Edred’s Hithe, was probably of later date than Billingsgate.
London had already among her inhabitants many merchants of foreign descent; they came from Caen and from Rouen, from Germany and from Flanders. The “Emperor’s Men” had already set up their steelyard and begun to trade within walls of their own, protected by strong gates, and possessed of extensive privileges. The men of Lubeck, Hamburg, and the Flemings, who did not belong to the “Gildhalla Teutonicorum,” also set up their fortified trading-houses. I do not suppose that the connection which was afterwards established between London and the country gentry had yet been established; indeed it is impossible, seeing that most of the manors of England had been granted to the Norman followers of King William, and as yet these new masters of the soil were in no sense English. But, as we have seen, many of the nobles already had their town houses in London.
In the “Dialogus Scaccario,” printed in full in Madox’sHistory of the Exchequer, and in Stubbs’sSelect Charters, there is a most valuable passage on the fusion of the Normans and the English. It is as follows:—
“In the early condition of the Kingdom after the Conquest, those who were left of the subject English used to lay snares secretly against the race of Normans suspected and hateful to them: here and there, wherever the chance offered, they murdered Normans in their forests and remote places, in punishment for which, when the Kings and their ministers for several years raged against the English with exquisite modes of torture, yet found that they would not wholly desist, it was at length resolved that the Hundred in which a Norman was found murdered, if the murderer was not discovered or took to flight, should be condemned to pay a large sum of money, sometimes as much as thirty-six or even forty-three pounds, according to the character of the place and the frequency of the crime....”
“Now, however, the English and the Normans living together and intermarrying with each other, the two nations are so mixed that it is difficult to distinguish, among free men, who is English and who is Norman by descent.”
BUILDING A HOUSE
Claud MS. B. IV. (11th Century).
The fusion of the races was more easy in London than in the country, partly because the Normans had already been settled in the place and were carrying on the very considerable trade which existed with Rouen, Caen, and other northern ports: partly, because there was no rankling sense of injury, such as that which filled the hearts of dispossessed Saxon Thanes. The Norman king kept his word with London; he oppressed no citizen; he deprived no citizen of his property. Moreover, the Normans appear to have taken the lead in many things. Their superior refinement has been somewhat exaggerated, especially when we read of the accomplishments and the learning of the Anglo-Saxon ladies. But there can be no doubt that they introduced habits of temperance in the matter of strong drink. The Norman merchant was held in honour by the Norman knight, and the Norman noble had his town house in the City. Young Thomas Becket was a friend of Richer de l’Aigle of Pevensey; ecclesiastical dignitaries were his father’s guests; and in the chapter which follows on a Norman family, we shall see how they intermarried—Saxon and Norman, noble and burgher.
FitzStephen’s account, though most interesting, leaves out a great many things which we should like to know. He brings before our eyes a city cheerful and busy: the young people delighting in games of all kinds, especially archery, wrestling, mock fights, skating; he shows us a place of great plenty and containing within its walls as much freedom and as much happiness as any mediæval city could expect; he shows us the craftsmen living each in his own quarters; he shows us the monastic houses and the schools of children; he shows us a town in which all went well so long, he says, with significance, as there was a good king. Now the Norman kings were not without their faults, but one thing must be allowed them,—they were strong kings, and at this time and for many centuries to come, London wanted above all things a strong king, and if you look back at history you will find that a strong king meant a just king. In fact, though we are as yet far off from an ideal London, FitzStephen makes us understand that the people already possessed in Norman London an amount of liberty which was greater than that enjoyed by any city of France or Spain, and equal probably to that enjoyed by the people of Ghent and Bruges.
