A Short History of Social Life in England/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
Fifteenth Century
CHURCH AND PEOPLE
"For all we thought and loved and did
And hoped and suffered, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit."
IT is impossible to turn from the manners and customs of the Middle Ages without noting the immense influence of the Church on the social life of the people. In her "yet unbroken unity," she "appealed with overpowering force to the imagination of her children. Her ceremonies were associated with every important phase of private life from the cradle to the grave; her cathedrals and parish churches were the only public buildings to which every class had the same rights and opportunities of access … her sanctuaries alone could give passing shelter to the hunted criminal or outlaw, her holidays alone brought rest and freedom to the serf."
In the very midst of town and hamlet stood the parish church—the pride and joy of the people. Gradually the Norman style, already described, had been replaced by the pointed arch of Gothic architecture, and after a period of transition, during which the nave of Durham Cathedral and the choir of Canterbury arose, the Early English style came in, and was first used on a large scale in Lincoln Cathedral, to be replaced in its turn by the Perpendicular. While their homes, judged by our modern standards, were yet bare and comfortless, our ancestors lavished money and thought on the decoration of their church. To adorn and beautify it was a labour of love in which every class of society shared. The poor man gave his toil, the prosperous burgher presented painted glass windows, the successful gilds bestowed altar-cloths, the traveller brought back Eastern silks, the wealthy gave silver chalices, embroidered copes, costly hangings, banners, lamps, shrines; no man died without bequeathing what he could to his parish church. So likewise the local artist carved the seats, local scribes wrote the Mass-books and psalters; a sense of personal possession pervaded all classes. To the church the busy trader would wend his way after a day of stir and turmoil, there to listen to the chanting of vespers, or to tell his beads before the image of some favourite saint. Not only did the people keep their church for prayer and meditation, but, if necessary, they stored in it their grain and wool; here councillors met for consultation on local affairs; here, in the long, dim aisles, lay at times the sick and the dying. No line sundered matters of religion from the affairs of daily life: State and Church were blended into one; the people looked to the priests in matters secular as well as in matters spiritual. The education of the children was entirely in the hands of ecclesiastics, for they were the only scholars in the country; they taught the children a little Latin, the rudiments of reading and writing, grammar and deportment One sorrow of childhood was spared the children of the Middle Ages: they had no spelling to learn; phonetic spelling was general; the letters of one word are constantly varied, and we have the word "chancellor" spelt in five different ways in a single deed of Oxford University. Boys and girls were taught together for the most part, but the sixteen grammar schools founded during this period were exclusively for boys. Besides these, were the new schools of Winchester and Eton, which take such a leading part in the educational world of to-day. Both were established for the supply of educated clergy—Winchester with a warden and some seventy scholars "to study grammar and to live together to the honour and glory of God and our Lady,"
Not only was all education—public and private—under ecclesiastical control, but to the Church was due the elaborate pilgrimages, which were such a characteristic feature of these times. True, the movement had lost much of the simple enthusiasm and artless faith of former days, and too often resembled a party of holiday-makers, merely journeying together for company and protection. A love of wayfaring, gossip, and good company, together with the merry incidents of the road, attracted many under the guise of pilgrims to undertake the journey to the famous English shrines of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury or Our Lady of Walsingham, To cross the rough Channel and tramp the long distance across France to the tombs of SS. Peter and Paul, one of the severest penitential disciplines enjoined by the Church, was a pilgrimage undertaken only by the most sincere, for the journey took three months, and the discomforts of the way were great.
Sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, journeyed the medieval pilgrim. Twenty miles a day was the ordinary rate of progression, but much time was spent in the taverns by the way, and in changing horses at roadside inns. For Canterbury they started from the famous Tabard Inn in Southwark, paying twelvepence to Rochester and another twelvepence for a horse to Canterbury. Chaucer, in his well-known "Canterbury Tales" gives us the whole atmosphere of the fourteenth century pilgrimage with graphic candour. We see the "verray perfight gentil knight" in cassock and coat of mail, with his curly-headed squire beside him, fresh as the May morning, and behind them the brown-faced yeoman in his coat and hood of green, with the good bow in his hand. A group of ecclesiastics light up for us the medieval Church—the brawny, hunt-loving monk, whose bridle jingles as loud and clear as the chapel-bell; the wanton friar, first among the beggars and harpers of the country side; the poor parson, threadbare, learned and devout; the summoner, with his fiery face; the pardoner, with his wallet "bret-full of pardons, come from Rome all hot"; the lively prioress with her courtly French lisp, her soft, little red mouth, and "Amor vincit omnia" graven on her brooch. Learning is there in the portly person of the doctor of physic, rich with the profits of the pestilence; the busy serjeant-of-law, "that ever seemed busier than he was"; the hollow-cheeked clerk of Oxford, with his love of books, and short, sharp sentences that disguise a latent tenderness which breaks out at last in the story of Griseldis. Around them crowd types of English industry: the merchant; the franklin, in whose house "it snowed of meat and drink"; the sailor fresh from frays in the Channel; the buxom wife of Bath; the broad-shouldered miller; the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, tapestry-maker, each in the livery of his craft; and last, the honest ploughman, who would dyke and delve for the poor without hire.
All these types we can picture as they journeyed over the rough and almost impassable roads of medieval England. For the roads and bridges were indeed of the most hopeless description; moreover, they were infested with beggars of every kind, robbers and banditti lay in wait for the unwary, the forests were filled with outlaws, ready to slay the pilgrim and plunder the solitary merchant Fortunately, there were plenty of inns on all the main roads, though they must have been rough and uncomfortable.
"William," advises a traveller who has had a disturbed night at one of these wayside inns, "William, undress and wash your legs, and then dry them with a cloth, and rub them well for love of the fleas, that they may not leap on your legs, for there is a pack of them lying in the dust under the rushes. Hi! the fleas bite me so!"
Here, notwithstanding dirt and discomfort, wayfarers supped and slept, pursuing their journey at daybreak. In addition to the inns there were ale-houses by the road side, indicated by a long stake on which hung a garland or bush, giving rise to the proverb "Good wine needs no bush." Here was much drinking and merry-making, and though no spirits were as yet invented, the atmosphere and conviviality remind one of the modern public-house. "Many come here," says a woman writer of the times, "in order to drink, and they spend here, 'tis perfectly true, more than they have gained all day."
With such roads, it is small wonder that even Kings preferred making their journeys on horseback to using the cumbrous and awkward vehicles which constituted the carriages of these days. They were mounted on four wheels and drawn by several horses harnessed in a row, or two and two in teams, ridden by postilions with short, many-thonged whips and spurs. From the solid beams of wood which rested on the axles rose a framework like an archway, rounded in the manner of a painted and gilded tunnel. The inside was hung with tapestry, on the wooden seats were embroidered cushions, and the square windows were hung with silk curtains. Inside this cumbrous vehicle sat the unfortunate ladies, whose fate it was to move in state from one place to another. With groaning wheels, the heavy machine advanced by fits and starts, now descending into rotten hollows, now in peril of capsizing over some uneven surface, now sticking altogether in the deep mire, or splashing through some low-lying part of the road flooded by a neighbouring stream.
No wonder they mostly preferred riding on horseback to sitting in these cumbrous carriages for any long distance. The woman of the period loved the open air and was an undoubted addition to the merry parties on horseback that wended their way ceaselessly along the bad roads either on pilgrimage or for purposes of merchandise. Indeed, the equality of the sexes is a characteristic feature of the Middle Ages. Men and women from the cradle to the grave shared life equally and naturally, neither was there any idea at this time of debarring them from taking their part in public affairs. Boys and girls were educated together, they had their games in common; together they hunted, together they went shooting. It was also an age of romance, of love-making and of great immorality, for the which both sexes were punished equally. Women took part in the pilgrimages; they took their place in the growing world of trade. They were members of the old social and religious gilds established for good fellowship during life, for due burial, prayers, and Masses after death, and the charitable assistance of needy survivors. Thus the Gild of Corpus Christi, Hull, was founded in the fourteenth century by eighteen men and twenty-five women, while the Gild of the Holy Cross, Stratford-on-Avon, had half its members men, and half women. The Trades Gilds also admitted women as sisters, with equal rights with the men: they could wear the livery, take apprentices, and sit at the election feasts; they belonged to the Drapers' Company, the Brewers' Company, the Fishmongers, Weavers, Grocers, and Stationers. Neither do they seem to have abused this right in the Middle Ages. For any fraud they took their place with the men in the stocks; for any insubordination they were apparently still beaten by their husbands. Again, women and noblewomen of position and property could be Marshals, High Constables, Sheriffs, patrons of livings, peeresses in their own right, and as such liable to be called to Parliament in person; they might be burgesses—in fact, they had full municipal and parliamentary rights. Thus the spirit and letter of Magna Charta were carried out simply and naturally by our medieval ancestors: "To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay the right of justice.'
This inclusion of women in the public life of the nation did not preclude women from taking their part in household matters. They were the family nurses and doctors: they knew what herbs to use in cases of cut fingers, bruises, and small ailments; they could all spin and embroider and knit. Some of them, too, were fairly accomplished in the arts of painting and music, professions hitherto restricted to the clergy.
Even as the fifteenth century dies, we find the power of the clergy waning. The early Mystery and Miracle Plays, drawn from Scripture and the legends of the saints for the instruction and amusement of the people, had degenerated into the Morality Play, which, though professedly religious in character, had departed from the old earnestness of earlier days. The plays reflect the life of the period, being personifications of the vices and virtues of the age, rudely represented and coarsely conceived.
If the Middle Ages die away in a wail of sadness, if the rude manners, low morality, coarse tastes, and gross ignorance of the people seem in strong contrast with the influence of the Medieval Church, it must be remembered that degeneration invariably precedes renaissance, that the darkest hour is before the dawn, and that a new life was about to burst over England, pregnant with a new morality, a new refinement of tastes, a new enthusiasm for learning, and a more generous interpretation of the needs of humanity by the Church of England.