Social England ... Edited by H. D. Traill. (Revised and partly re-written.)

Front matter

SOCIAL ENGLAND Jl Ktcoro nf trjc progress of trjc people In Religion, Laws, Learning, Arts, Industry, Commerce, Science, Literature and Manners, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day By Various Writers EDITED BY H. D. TRAILL, D.C.L. SOMETIME FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD Volume 1 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD THE FIRST CASSELL and COMPANY, Limited LONDON, PARIS &■ MELBOURNE 189S ALL RIGHTS RESERVED First Edition October 1893. Reprinted J anuarv 1894, 1895. Revised and partly re-written January 189S. CONTENTS. PAr.r. List of Contributors xi Introduction . , xiii

Chapter I. England Before The English

Celtic Britain ......... i Koman Britain ......... 10 Heathen Britain ......... 30 Christian Britain 30 Military Aspects of Roman Britain 4-_" Art and Architecture . . ... . . 04 Trade and Industry : Pre-Roman ..... S4 Trade and Industry : Romano-British . ... 90 Social Life and Manners ....... 03 The English before England 110 Authorities . 114

CHAPTER IL THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN POWER.

A.D. 287-150. BRITAIN UNDER ENGLISH AND DANES, 4"0-106t*. The Coming of the English UG Britain under the English. ...... 121 The Danish Invasion CONTESTS. VIII PACK Anglo-Saxon Paganism 149 The English Church 153 Old English Law ........ 1G4 Public Health ......... 173 Military Organisation : Old English ..... 176 Military Organisation : Danish . . . . . . 1S0 Old English Literature ....... 134 Old English Art and Architecture . . . . .193 Old English Trade and Industry ..... 20) The Normans in Normandy ...... 219 Authorities . . ...... 22S

Chapter III

from the conquest to the charter. iocg-1216. The Norman Conquest ........ 231 Domesday Book ......... 236 William Rufus — Henry 1. ...... . 244 The Church and the Conquest 248 Stephen — Henry II. — Richard I. — John .... -255 The Church during the Anarchy — Thomas Becket. The Church under Richard and John .... 267 English Law under Norman Rule ..... 274 The History of Trial by Jury ...... 285 Norman Warfare ......... 299 The Norman Fleet: Maritime Affairs, 106C — 1216 . . 304 Norman and Early English Architecture and Art . . 319 Learning and Science ........ 332 Literature and Language ....... 344 Trade and Industry ........ 356 Public Health 367 Social Life, and Manners . . . . . . .371 Authorities, 1066 — 1216 3S8 CONTENTS. IX

Chapter IV. From Charter To Parliament

1216-1273. PAGE The Reign of Henry III 391 The Genesis of Parliament 396 The Church under Henry HI 403 The Growth of Jurisprudence ...... 408 The Development of the Art of War . . . .411 The Navy of England 411 Art and Architecture . . . . . . .415 Learning and Science : History of the Universities . 429 Language and Literature ....... 440 Agriculture .......... 450 Trade and Industry 457 The Jews in England . . . . . . .471 Public Health . . ....... 4S2 Social Life and Manners ....... 4S4 Authorities, 1216—1273 49o INDEX **03 CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS VOLUME. Camber-Williams, Rev. R., B.A., Keble College, Oxford ; formerly Ban" or Diocesan Lecturer in Church History ; Lecturer in Theology at St. David's College, Lampeter ; Author of A History of the Church in Wales (in Welsh). Clowes, W. Laird, Fellow of King's College, London ; Gold Medallist U.S. Naval Institute.

Corbett, W. J., M.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Creighton, O, M.A., M.D. ; Author of A History of Epidemics in Britain. Edwards, Owen M., M.A.. Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford ; Lecturer in Modern History at Lincoln and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford. Hall, Hubert, F.S.A., Public Record Office ; Author of A History of the Customs Revenue. HASSALL, A.. M.A., Student and Tutor of Christ Church. Oxford, and sometime Examiner in the Honour School of Modern History ; Author of Bolingbrolte ("Statesmen " Series), and Louis XI I'. (-'Heroes of the Nations" Series); Joint Editor of and Contributor to Constitutional Essays ; Contributor to Periods of European History. Haverfield, F., M.A.. Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford ; Corresponding Member of the German Imperial Archæological Institute.

HEATH, H. Frank. Ph.D. Strasburg; Professor of English Language and Literature at Bedford College, London. Hughes. Reginald, D.C.L., sometime Exhibitioner at St. John's College. Oxford. Hutton, Rev. W. H., M.A., Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, and Examiner in the Honour School of Modern History at Oxford ; Author of The Marquess Wcllesley ; and of the Misrule of Henry III., Simon de Montfort and, his Cause, aud St. Thomas of Canterbury, in English History from Contemporary Writers. JACOBS, Joseph. B.A., late Scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge ; President of the Jewish Historical Society of England, and Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid and of the American Jewish Historical Society at Philadelphia ; Author of The Jews of Anger in England ; Sources of the History of the Jews of Spain : Jewish Ideals, etc.

Maitland, F. W., LL.D., Downing Professor of Law in the University of Cambridge. Mann, A. H., M.A., sometime Exhibitioner of Jesus College. Oxford. Maude, Rev. J. H., MA., Fellow, Dean, and Lecturer of Hertford College, Oxford. Medley, D. J., M.A., Tutor of Keble Coilege, and Examiner in the Honour School of Modern History at Oxford ; Author of A Student's Manual of English Constitutional History. Oman, C, M.A., Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford ; Author of The Art of War in the Middle Ages; Warwick the King-Malier ; T/te History of Europe, 470-918, etc. Poole, Reginald L., M.A., Ph.D., Lecturer of Jesus College, Oxford; Assistant Editor of the English Historical Review ; Author of Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought. Powell, F. York, M. A., Regius Professor of Modern History; Fellow of Oriel College, and Student of Christ Church.

Oxford; Author of A School History of England to 1509 ; Co-Editor of Corpus Pocticum Boreale. Richards, F. T., M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College. Oxford. Smith, A. L., M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford.

Introduction

. A civilised nation has many aspects, and the story of its li'e might be told in as many ways. But, broadly speaking, the forms under which it presents itself to observation may be reduced to three. We may consider it either as a Society, as a Polity, or as a State among States. The first and simplest conception of it is, of course, as a Society — a body of individuals associated, primarily, for purposes of mutual support in the struggle with the hostile forces of Nature, and of common advantage in the acquisition and distribution of her products. Association, however, necessarily creates rights and duties ; from rights and duties spring law and government ; with law and government the Polity is born ; and from the intercourse of one polity with another arises the still wider conception of the State among States.

Under which of these three aspects we propose to review the life of the English nation in the following pages is sufficiently indicated by the title of the work. It is with our career as a Society, and not as a Polity, nor as a State among States, that this history is concerned. At the outset, however, it may be as well to guard against the risk of any misconception as to the sense in which our title is employed and the limits within which it applies. Every civilised Society is in the nature of an organism, the shape and direction of whose evolution depend in part upon the action of internal forces and in part upon the influence of its surroundings. Among those surroundings the laws and institutions of every such Society form a most important element and play a very potent part. True as it may be that they often owe both their origin and complexion, wholly or in large measure, to the character of the people who devise or who accept them, it is no less true that they react powerfully upon that character and materially affect its development. Still more obvious is it that, whatever may have been a nation's

INTRODUCTION.

. XIV natural tendencies of growth, they are liable to be profoundly influenced by the nature of its relations with other States — with States from whom it may learn arts and industries or derive wealth — with States whom it may conquer or be con quered by — with States who may strengthen it by alliances or exhaust it in wars. In strictness of language, therefore, the social history of any country is not, and cannot be' absolutely separable from the history of its political events, its legal and administrative institutions, and its international fortunes. The undue prominence formerly given by historians to these matters has produced a reaction, which is, perhaps, in some danger of running to excess ; and the influence of politics upon social progress is again, perhaps, beginning to assert itself as a force of greater activity and potency than a certain modern school of historical writers are disposed to acknow ledge.

" Drum-and-trumpet histories," no doubt, deserve much of the contempt which the late Mr. Green, by implica tion, cast upon them in the preface to his famous work ; but nevertheless there are passages in the epic of a nation's life which seem imperatively to require recitation to the strains of these martial instruments. Without such an accompani ment, indeed, the historical narratives would sometimes be not only inadequate, but positively unintelligible. Yet, although we cannot entirely detach the history of the Society from that of the Polity and State, although we cannot escape the necessity of combining with our narrative of the material, moral, and intellectual progress of the people some parallel record of their politics at home and abroad, we can approximate sufficiently for our present purpose to a separr tion of the two subjects.

It is open to us, and it has been tne object aimed at in these pages, to abstract from the political, and to isolate the social facts of our history wherever this can be done ; to deal as concisely as the demands of clearness will permit with matters of war and conquest, of treaty and alliance, of constitutional conflict and dynastic struggle ; but to treat at length and in detail of the various stages of our English civilisation, whether as marked by recognisable epochs in moral and intellectual advance, or as indirectly traceable through those accretions of wealth which, by in creasing comfort and enlarging leisure, do so much to promote the intellectual development, and, within certain limits, tho

INTRODUCTION.

. XV moral improvement of peoples. It is possible, and it is here intended, to dwell mainly on such matters as the growth and economic movements of the population, the progressive expansion of industry and commerce, the gradual spread of education and enlightenment, the advance of arts and sciences, the steady diffusion, in short, of all the refining influences of every description which make for the " humane life." Such a treatment of the history of a people must obviously follow one or other of two methods. Either their forward movement, from the first rude and simple beginnings of Society to the complexity of modern life, may be viewed throughout as a whole ; or the progress made by them in all the various departments of human activity may be examined period by period, in detail. In other words, we may take up a position from which we can survey the entire array of our civilising forces in their wide-winged advance ; or we may collect reports from those who have separately followed the onward march of each of the great divisions of which the army is composed.

Either method has its advantages, and either its drawbacks. The former undoubtedly presents us with a picture more impressive to the eye, but the latter yields results less bewildering to the mind. What is lost to the imagination through the employment of this method is the gain of the understanding, and perhaps no other justification is needed for its adoption in a work of this kind. For it may at least be claimed for a Social History of England compiled on this principle, that if it will not of itself enable the reader to comprehend the entire subject in all its vast proportions, it is the best preparation which he could have for an attempt to grapple with that formidable task. A powerful imagination, aided by exceptional clearness of head and tenacity of memory, might possibly attack so many-sided a subject en bloc with some prospect of success; but for the great majority of mankind a patient study of it, detail by detail, must precede any attempt to survey it as a whole.

There is also, I venture to think, another convenience, and an additional aid to fulness of comprehension, in the method which has been here adopted. By the plan of tracing our social progress through the various departments of activity which sum up the life of a people, that continuous movement from the general to the special, from the simple to the

INTRODUCTION.

. complex, from unity to multiplicity, which the advance of civilisation involves, and indeed implies, is brought before the reader in, perhaps, the most conspicuous of all possible ways. It " leaps to the eye," so to say, from the very table of contents. As the centuries roll on, the six or seven great categories under which the various forms and forces of social life may at first be divided become unequal to the needs of classification. The accumulating facts under each of them grow too various in character to be massed together without risk of confusion. New activities arise which refuse to class themselves under the old headings. Divisions of the subject throw off subdivisions which themselves require later on to be further subdivided. In every department of our national life there is the same story of evolutionary growth — continuous in some of them, intermittent in others, but unmistakable in all.

Industries multiply and ramify ; Commerce begets child after child ; Art, however slowly in this country as compared with others, diversifies its forms ; Learning breaks from its mediæval tutelage and enters upon its world-wide patrimony ; Literature, after achieving a poetic utterance the most noble to which man has ever attained, perfects a prose more powerful than that of any living competitor, and more flexible than all save one ; and finally, Science, latest of birth, but most marvellous of growth, rises suddenly to towering stature, stretches forth its hundred hands of power, extending immeasurably the reach of human energies, and, through the reaction of a transformed external life upon man's inner nature, profoundly and irreversibly, if still to some extent obscurely, modifies the earthly destinies of the race.

It is surely no reproach to the intellectual faculties of the average modern Englishman that he should require the aids of classification and arrangement to assist him to realise this mighty and manifold advance. To attempt to review the whole line of a moving army through stage after stage of its march might well confuse the perceptions of all save the trained military expert, and dazzle any but the most practised eye. And some such effect could hardly fail to be produced by a Social History of England which, in chapter after chapter, and sometimes even in paragraph after paragraph, should interweave the story of our progress in arts or letters with the record of the growth of our industries and the

INTRODUCTION.

. XVII expansion of our commerce. It is with the view, as has been said, of avoiding such confusion that the plan of these volumes has been determined on. (To those responsible for its selection it has seemed best to tteat of each great department of our social life in severalty, and as far as possible (though this, of course, is not always entirely possible) in strict segregation from the rest ; and so to arrange the work as that each chapter should carry on the history of our progress in every such department from the point at which the preceding chapter left it. It may be objected to this arrangement that it inevitably entails a certain amount of repetition. The objection is just, but not, as it has seemed to the projectors of this work, of any considerable weight. Certain events and influences do un doubtedly touch our social history on more than one of its sides, and certain historic personages belong to it in more than one capacity.

Economic movements, for instance, are sometimes inseparably associated with changes in manners, arts and industries occasionally overlap each other, the religious leader in early periods is often the promoter of learning, not infrequently also the eminent man-of-letters. All such things and persons require, of course, to be dealt with under more than one section, and have been so dealt with in fact. But it will be found, I venture to think, that these unavoid able duplications are neither numerous nor important enough to weigh against the general convenience of the adopted arrangement. The various heads, then, under which our Social History may be considered are as follow : — I. Civil Organisation. II. Keligion. III. Learning and Science. IV. Literature. V. Art. VI. Trade and Industry. VII.

Manners. The general character of the contents of Section I. may be gathered from the foregoing remarks. It will contain a concisely-summarised account of the more important political events of each period, especially of such as have an immediate I Voi. I.

INTRODUCTION.

. XVIII bearing on the social life of the people ; but it will be mainly devoted to tracing the development of our administrative institutions (the history of English law and of our judicial system being dealt with in a separate section), and will, in fact, render a continuous account of the various modes in which the Society has expressed and expresses itself as the Polity. Our progress in the arts of military and naval defence, which would properly fall, perhaps, to be treated of under this section, is the subject of a special contribution. In Section II. we shall deal with the subject of Religion under each of the three distinct forms in which it has influ enced our social life — the forms, namely, of faith, worship, and discipline. We shall treat of it, that is to say, not only in its inner aspect as a force, in promoting, directing, or modi fying, both by ritual and doctrine, the spiritual energies of the individual citizen, but also in its outward aspect as a system of injunctions and observances affecting civil life as a whole.

The twofold or threefold character of this treatment will not at first necessitate any subdivisions of the subject. Throughout those centuries during which the faith of the nation was formulated, its worship directed, and its discipline prescribed by a single authority, the history of the Church of England covers the history of national religion. It is not till after the Reformation and until the centrifugal influences of Protestantism come into full play in the multiplication of nonconforming sects, that it will be necessary to expand this section for the inclusion of all the religious influences bearino; upon our Social History. The combined treatment of Learning and Science in Section III. will, of course, be only possible in the earlier volumes of the work. But during the period covered by those volumes the two titles were, in fact, names of the same thing.

Where Science indeed, has from the first depended to some extent on experiment, as in the case of medicine, we begin at once to give it separate treatment; but it is not till it becomes exclusively and universally experimental that it ceases to belong to the household of Learning and claims an " establishment " of its own. Before that time, both alike begin and end in the study of written records. In this section, however, we shall deal, not only with the subject of the acquisition but with that of the diffusion of secular

INTRODUCTION.

. XIX knowledge. It will be a combined history of research and of education. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to observe that Section IV. cannot always, from the nature of the case, be completely separated from the preceding section. The dividing-line between Literature and Science is frequently effaced, even in these days — sometimes, agreeably enough, through the literary gifts of scientific men ; at other times, less desirably, through the scientific affectations of contemporary men-of-letters But in earlier times, when poetry Avas still in its infancy, and romance and drama and criticism were as yet unbegotten, much of the existing national literature was the literature of Learning, and the appearance of the names of many early writers and their works, both in this and in the foregoinjr division, was, therefore, inevitable.

Nevertheless, the capacities in which they will thus appear being distinguishable from each other, they have a right to the double mention. Primi tive epic, for instance, and ancient chronicle may be one ; but the influence of the bard on the future of letters and of the language is something quite distinct from his contribution to contemporary learning and to our own knowledge of his time. His achievements in each capacity must be separately studied if his place in the history of English Social Life is to be accurately adjudged. Still, it is only in the earliest volume of this work that cases of this kind will be likely to occur. Later on the distinction between Literature and Learning will become and remain sufficiently well marked. The subject of Section V. is from the outset more clearly defined.

It is, indeed, in its earliest stages that Art is most distinctly independent and self-sufficing — most clearly the product of the natural human striving after the beautiful. In the story of almost every nation the progress of this struggle has an interest of its own, irrespectively of the measure of its success, and it is far from being wanting in such interest in our own country. For a long time, however, the record of success, or at least of distinguished success, is with us, in a certain sense, a limited one. The history of English art is, for many ages, the history of a great architecture — mainly, in deed, of a great religious architecture alone. With the two other leading art-forms — with painting and sculpture — it is long before English Social History has to concern itself; and b

INTRODUCTION.

. XX we approach almost within sight of our own time before the subject of this section so expands as to compel its subdivision. It is in the section which follows that the need of special isation is soonest felt. Under the joint heading of Trade and Industry we have been able at the outset to deal in one and the same article with the entire history of national industry and of national and international exchange, whether of natural or manufactured products. But at an early stage of the work the urban industries claim separation from agriculture ; pro duction and exchange soon after part company ; and it may be that at last the ever-growing volume of our foreign com merce will require to be treated apart from the history of inland trade. To the comprehensive title of Section VII. it may be objected that it is of somewhat indefinite import and extent; but it is on that account all the more fitted to describe the miscellaneous character of the matter which it covers, and to enable us to sum up under it all that remains to be recorded in the history of social progress.

Needless to say, perhaps, it makes no pretence to be scientific, and indeed it so far departs from strictly logical principles of classification as to introduce a new order of phenomena to the group. For it will, of course, be observed that whereas Religion, Industry, Learning, and the other titles which have been already under consideration, represent forces as well as their realised effects, the title now to be considered has not that duality of mean ing. It is, in fact, only a name for the resultant of all the forces in question. The manners of a people are simply such as its industries, its religion, its art and learning and literature combine to make them ; for upon the first of" these factors depends that wealth which determines the material aspect of manners, while the other factors represent the humanising, refining, and sanctifying influences to which their moral aspect at any given stage of a people's social history is due.

Hence, no doubt, it may be said with truth that every phenomenon recorded in our sections on manners is, strictly speaking, referable to one or more of the sections into which the work is divided. For where it is not the expression of som& physical fact or material force, it is the product of some moraL

INTRODUCTION.

. XXI or spiritual agent in the formation of a national character, which has, or should have been, already dealt with elsewhere. Nevertheless, the phenomena in question are so multitudinous that in the vast majority of cases it is only possible to note them in the mass, and without endeavouring to correlate them Avith each other, or to trace them to their creative causes. To the senses of most of us the social state of any country at any given stage of its civilisation is expressed by— is, indeed, almost identical with— the condition of its manners ; and however thoroughly a social history may investigate the inner forces which have made for the civilisation and advancement of the community, it could not complete the picture to the eye, and still less to the imagination of a reader, Avithout devoting an ample, perhaps even a relatively greater space to the presentment of the outward aspect of their fives.

I. Civil Organisation. It is difficult for those Avho are confronted as we are at every turn by that endless intertexture of institutions of Avhich contemporary society is made up, to realise the begin nings of our English life. Civil organisation among the earliest inhabitants of these islands — Avhat Avas it ? What meaning Avould the words have had? Or, if the Avords themselves are too abstract, what things and thoughts Avhich Ave should noAva days contemplate under that subject-name were before the eyes and in the minds of the men among Avhom Cæsar's legionaries sprang, SAvord in hand, from their galleys on a certain day in the fifty-fifth year before the birth of Christ ? Can " Civil Organisation " of any sort be predicated of them ; or are not the words, it may be asked, altogether too big to describe appropriately the rude and primitive arrangements of their common life ?

Modern research is not of that opinion. It is not so very lonsr, it is true, since the youthful student of this era of our history was not taught to see anything in the men who resisted the Roman invasion but a mere horde of naked barbarians, as little entitled to the name, and as destitute of any of the characteristics, of a civil society as a band of Blackfeet or of Sioux. This yelling, woad-bedaubed savage, however,

INTRODUCTION.

. has been by this time expelled, it may be hoped for good, from the popular imagination Much, no doubt, is yet to learn about the race on AA-hose shores the Roman conqueror planted his eagles before the dawn of the Christian era; but enough is knoAvn to satisfy us that the words in question are far from being unapt of application to their mode of ordering their lives. Cæsar, in fact, descended upon a country which. had been the scene of repeated invasions and of successive conquests before his arrival ; and so far were its people from being Avithout civd organisation that they possessed a polity and society, in some measure compounded of and often visibly traceable to preceding ones, which it had in part assimilated and in part displaced. At some early stage or other in that Avestward movement of peoples Avhich has continued from prehistoric periods down to our own times, a wave of non- Aryan immigrants, short of stature and SAvarthy of complexion, had SAvept over the island, to be folloAved in course of time by first one and then another incursion of Aryans — of Gaelic, that is to say, and Brythonic Celts ; and when Cæsar came, the mixed community deposited by these succeeding floods of invaders shoAved a distinctly legible history of social groAvth.

The earliest settler, the dark Iberian, had long since been subdued and enslaved by the tall and fair-hued Celt who had followed him, and from whom in language, in character, in mode of life, and form of institutions, the conquered Iberian conspicuously differed. But the Aryan tribesman, with his pride of race and his more advanced conception of property as of a subject not of common but of family ownership, had declined to the condition of a despised villager, so far as social and political importance Avere concerned, before the Roman conquest. The tribal chief had by that time groAvn into the tribal king ; the free land of the tribe, alike Avith the common land of the villagers, had become tributary to him ; and the two communities, family and communistic, Avere alike his subjects. It was through the strife of tribal kings, with its consequences of the flight, the exile, and the appeal for Roman assistance of those Avho had been worsted in the struggle, that the way was opened for the conquest of Britain to the conquerors of Gaul. A people Avho had already passed through such a history are surely well entitled to a record of their civil organisation.

INTRODUCTION.

. XXIII But the claim of the inhabitant of pre-Roman Britain is stronger and more enduring than this ; for the social system which grew up in these islands betAveen the date of their earliest settlement by westward-journeying explorers and their subjugation by the Mistress of the World has left ineffaceable marks behind it to this day. Dim with the dust of centuries, yet still distinctly visible in dialect and tradition, in boundary lines of shire and diocese, and in the strange survivals of prehistoric feud, the tribal divisions of Celtic England can still be traced, while " the rule of the Roman has been forgotten, even where his villa and his storied gravestone remain." Long, indeed, as was the period of Roman domination, its four centuries must be regarded from the point of vieAV of our civil progress as a mere interval of arrested groAvth.