CHAPTER XII

HOW THE PEOPLE LIVED

In this and the next chapters I propose to attempt a sketch of the way in which the tribes of the Goths lived, whether in the Empire of Charlemagne or in our own island. And because the island story must be of the greater interest to us, seeing that it is our own, I shall try to describe the mode of life of the people there, and will ask you to accept that description as giving the type or pattern of the life on the Continent also.

The feudal system did not develop in England precisely as it developed on the Continent of Europe.

This is a statement which may surprise you, for you will no doubt know that the feudal system did exist in England at a rather later date and that the principal part of England's story for many a year was made up of fights between the feudal barons themselves and of combinations of the barons against the king. But this feudalism was brought into England by the Norman kings, after William I.'s conquest in 1066, and again there was a fresh importation of feudal practices under those French kings of the House of Anjou--thence called Angevins--who reigned both over England and over a large slice of France.

But it did not spring up in England like a growth from the soil, as it did in Charlemagne's empire. It had not the same roots in England. The Anglo-Saxon had not quite the same customs of the _comitatus_, {92} the body-guard devoted to the king or chief, as the Franks had, nor was England as familiar as France with the Roman customs of the _patrocinium_--the relation of patron and client--and the _precarium_--the tenure of land granted in answer to a prayer--out of which the relations between the feudal lord and his vassal so easily grew. Moreover, you will remember that the Anglo-Saxon possession of our England did not include the whole of the island. There were still Britons along the western fringe and there were Picts north of the Forth. And even the land that the Anglo-Saxon did hold was not one kingdom, but divided into three main divisions, to say nothing of some lesser divisions. There were the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, to name them in their order from north to south.

At one time we hear of the "Heptarchy," or seven kingdoms, but the number really might be stated equally well as more or less than seven, according as this or the other collection of tribes were reckoned as independent.

Therefore the kingdoms were small, so that the kings, if they had any strong rule at all, could make their ruling strength felt all over their kingdoms. We have seen that one of the reasons why the feudal system came into being on the Continent was that the king was not able, in disturbed times, to make good his authority far from his own headquarters. That failure to make good was less likely to occur to the ruler of the small kingdoms into which England was divided.

[Sidenote: The English lose their freedom]

But what did happen in England was that the free man, the man who owned his own piece of land as a freehold, gradually became less free. In the system of tribal government which the Gothic tribes brought westward with them, it had been the custom for the free men of the tribe (the ceorls, or churls) to come {93} together at certain times and pass laws and try cases that arose under the laws. They were called together by the king and by the chief men (the eorls, or earls) and they voted on any subject that came before the assembly. And still, in England, the freemen had the right to come up to the assemblies and vote. But, though the kingdoms were not very large, they were larger, no doubt, than the territories held by the tribes in their Eastern homes. It was a long way for the voters to come to the assemblies. They had their business, as towns began to grow, to occupy them. Perhaps their agriculture, their mill, or their cattle needed their attention. At all events, however it happened, they ceased to go to the assemblies, and the result, of course, was that the king and the earls got more and more of the law-making and of the decision of cases into their own hands, and the ordinary freeman, though still in name free, and still with his right to vote, came to have less and less power and had to obey the decisions of the king and his council of earls more and more. They had no arrangement by which they might make their wishes known at the assembly by means of a representative appointed by themselves, as our voters now are able to make their wishes known by appointing their Member of Parliament and sending him to Westminster to speak for them. In theory all the old English voters were members of their parliament, so to call it. They could all go to it and speak and vote. But, owing to the difficulties of going, and the distance, the result was that they did not go at all, and so had no one to represent their views in the government under which they were supposed to be free, and in which they were all supposed to have an equal share in governing. They continued, however, to have the power to vote in their more local assemblies, in the "hundred court," which was something like an enlarged parish council {94} of a few villages, and in the "shire court," or council of the shire, formed by the union of many villages. How these courts were formed, you shall read in the next chapter. It seems to be rather doubtful whether the people availed themselves much of these powers. They probably became more and more content to leave the business of government to the chief men.

These three kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex were constantly striving together for the mastery. Our unfortunate land can have known very little peace until Egbert, who ruled all England from 827 to 836, did succeed in bringing the kingdoms under his sole authority. The rulers of the Franks do not seem to have made any attempt to extend their wide empire so as to include our islands. Charlemagne, however, took much interest in the course of affairs in England, and at one time there was a project of marrying his son to a daughter of the King of Mercia. The project was not accomplished; and at a moment when Mercia was at her strongest, so that there did seem a possibility of her overcoming the other divisions of the country and uniting all under one rule, Charlemagne's influence was exerted to restore the King of Northumbria to his throne. The fact is that the Frankish policy towards England was, not to attempt its conquest, but to thwart its own efforts towards unity, so as to keep it divided, and by reason of its divisions, weak. But to the English generally, Charlemagne showed much favour and they were well received at his court. He had assumed the position of head, with the Pope, of the Catholic Church, and that position in itself gave him a reason and an excuse for interfering, as he did, with Church matters in England.

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[Illustration: CANTERBURY.]

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I have said that the English were well received at the court of the great Emperor. You may take that to mean that the English were by no means, at this far-away date, shut up in their own island. They {96} often went to and from the Continent and even to Rome; and Roman emissaries, priests and bishops, were constantly coming to England.

To get a true picture in your minds of the country, both in England and in other parts of Europe, it is almost necessary first to dismiss from your minds the picture as you know it to-day. Whereas, now, you see for the most part, as you travel by train or motor, cleared land, open fields, and here and there woodland, you have to imagine a land at that time universally covered by wood, with only here and there clearances made by man. Along the tops of the downs, however, exposed to the high winds, there would be very little growth of trees. The woodland would be full of game and of wild creatures. There would be deer, and wolves preying on the deer.

You must imagine a population extraordinarily less numerous than it is now. Even in 1087, when Domesday Book, which contained a "census" of all England, was made, the population is given at 1,500,000. For the most part we may suppose the people living rather after the manner in which the Gothic tribes lived in their own country--in clearances, or what we might call villages, in the midst of the wild wood and in the river valleys. But there would be some towns, larger villages gradually growing, and these towns you would probably find beginning to be surrounded by a protecting wall of raised earth and palings with gates that were shut at nightfall. Generally the houses, both in the villages and in the towns, would be of timber and clay, built as I will shortly describe; but after a while the churches and the great men's houses, and the fortified castles would be of stone. There is what we call Saxon stonework still to be seen both in England and in other parts of Europe.

Now through this green wood, which generally {97} covered our England, there would be roads and tracks. All the travelling by land would be on foot or on horseback. The use of wheels for vehicles was known even to the Britons before the coming of the English, for they had their war-chariots; but even where the Romans had made their fine roads it is not likely that, after all the years since the Romans left the island, these roads would not have fallen into such disrepair that no wheeled thing could go along them far without sticking in the mud.

[Sidenote: Modes of travel]

For another fact, that you have to realise about the country of that day, is that it was not only far more wooded than it is now: it was also far more marshy. The rivers ran more broadly, their banks were wider. All the neighbourhood of Westminster, for instance, was a swamp, and the Thames, because it was so wide, was far less deep and it was fordable there. Men and horses could walk through it, perhaps on some stones thrown into the bed, and certainly it must have been far less deep and far more wide than it is now.

Because of this marshiness of the lower grounds, the roads by which people travelled went as much as possible along the upper, the harder and drier, ground, sometimes following a line near the top of the downs. The tracks or byways from the woodland and valley villages rose up out of the lowland as quickly as the ground would allow and went up to join the older roads along the downs. But, in spite of all that, you must realise that the rivers were really the great means of communication. They were the chief roads and highways; and the proof of that is that it is always low down, by a river, that all the old towns and the big church establishments and buildings were made. There are Canterbury, London, Winchester, Oxford, Paris, Rouen and very many more that you will think of. Not a river of any size that did not have a town springing up on its banks, and not a town of any size springing up anywhere except on a river's bank.

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And the way in which the English and other Gothic people formed their homes and lived their lives appears to have been very different from the way of life of the older Celts. We have seen that the Anglo-Saxons, when they came to England, established themselves in the river valleys and in the woodland country; but there is evidence that those earliest inhabitants of whom we know anything, the Celts, who were here before the Romans, lived more on the upper lands, on the Downs. This is shown by the relics which the plough and the spade discover for us, on these upper levels, and also by those extraordinary large stone rings of which the most famous is that at Stonehenge, although it is certain that only a few hundred years ago the stones at Avebury near Marlborough must have encircled a very much larger area. Most of the Avebury stones have been broken up now by the farmers to make roads and houses.

[Sidenote: Lines of travel]

The great stone circles had to do with the religion of which the Druids were the priests, and you should note that this Avebury, near Marlborough, is a very central spot, in England. It is on high ground, and we know that many tracks or roadways led from it as a centre, going out like spokes of a wheel. Also you may notice that many of the rivers radiate out from that central high ground and find their way thence in different directions to the sea. Probably that part of the country was looked on as particularly sacred because it was so central.

Now for people coming to England from the Continent of Europe, the easiest way to come, because it was the shortest sea-passage, would be across the Channel at, or near, Dover. Thence, if they wanted to get into the heart of England, they would be prevented from going northward by the Thames. They could not cross the Thames on foot or on horse till they came to London, where the Romans made their {99} Watling Street, as it was called, across the river and thence up to Chester.

But as a matter of fact they were more likely to wish to go westward than northward, because it was in the west of England that those things of value lay for which, in the old days, people did come from the Continent to England--that is the lead and tin that were in the mines. These lay in the west of England and in Ireland. In Ireland, in the Wicklow mountains, some gold was found. So, then, going westward, these people came to the meeting of the roads at or about Avebury and the Salisbury Plain country.

On those high downs and on that thin soil there would be few and small trees. The woodland would be all below, say rising not much more than 500 feet above sea-level. Therefore this high country gave the best and easiest land for the living of a people who were in the pastoral stage; that is, had flocks and herds. It was, and it still is, good sheep land. And it did not need clearing.

The Anglo-Saxons came with somewhat different habits. They had been used to living in the woodlands and the river valleys, rather than on open downs; and therefore it was to the lower lands that they naturally resorted. They established themselves in villages there, as they had been established in their homes across the Channel.

I would remind you again that I am trying to tell you the story of how these people came and settled in England, and how the kind of life that they lived has developed into the kind of life that we lead now, not only because it is our very own English story, and therefore of the closest interest to us, but also because it is in much the same way that the Gothic tribes settled and developed over most of the Frankish Empire and also where the Visigoths lived, in Spain, both while they were the actual rulers of Spain and {100} also in the times of the Moorish conquest of that country. So that it is the story of a great part of the world, and of the part most important for the world's progress, that we may see being enacted on a small scale in our own island.

[Sidenote: Saxon houses]

In the river valleys, then, these incoming Saxons would establish themselves on some firm and not too marshy bit of land. There they would build the houses of their villages. And the houses, at first, were built in this manner: they would either leave four tree stems, as they cleared the woodland, or else would drive four poles into the ground, to form the corners of the projected house, which we will call [Illustration: ABCD]. Then they would bring together and fasten together, at their tops, the trunks or poles A and B and the poles C and D, so that they came like this [Illustration: house shape]. Thus they got the shape of the house. You may note that this is somewhat the shape of that Gothic arch, which became so important in later building. The house, at first, was divided into two rooms, at most, in one of which the men lived and in the other the women. The builders threw a roofing pole across, from the top of one of the arches--that is to say, from the point at which the poles A and B were fastened together, to the top of the other arch, where C and D were fastened together. This made the "roof tree." Then they put struts, or strengthening pieces of wood, across from one pole to the other, about at the height where the poles began to bend most sharply so as to come together. The usual distance from each of the poles, as between A and B, and also between C and D, where they entered the ground, was 16 feet. Thus they had the frame of the house constructed.

Then they would apply slighter rods of timber to the sides, in the kind of weaving way in which you {101} must have seen those hurdles made which are used very generally in England for penning sheep. It is what is called wattle work--the rods going in and out, under and over each other. Then they would plaster up the crevices with clay, "daubing" it, as it is called, so that the whole work is called "wattle and daub." That is how their houses were made, or somehow like that. I will not affirm that it was just in the order that I have mentioned that each of the processes was performed, but it is tolerably sure that it was somewhat thus that those Saxons and most of the German tribes made their houses.

[Illustration: AN ANGLO-SAXON MANSION.]

As a rule the houses were thatched, but sometimes tiled with roofing tiles, after the fashion of the villas that the Romans had built. The floor might also be tiled.

In the houses of the wealthier people the walls were often hung with tapestry, woven and worked by the Anglo-Saxon ladies, who were skilful in spinning and in needlework. These tapestries were hung from hooks, {102} tenter-hooks, from which we have our proverb of "being on tenter-hooks." They served to exclude the draught, as well as for adornment, for probably the "wattle and daub" was not always wind proof.

And then there was a hole at the top of the roof to let out the smoke of the fire, which would be lighted in the centre of the room, or hall. The houses had no chimneys. Sometimes they had windows for light, but these were only slits in the walls--not glazed.

They did know something of the use of glass, for they had glass drinking-vessels, as well as vessels of wood and of silver. The horns of the cattle were used for the same purpose. For the furniture of their houses they had tables, generally of a round shape. There are several quaint pictures, adorning old manuscripts, showing them seated, or standing, at dinner. They had benches and stools, but no movable seats, as it seems. The seat they called a "sett"--a thing to "settle," or "sit" on. We still use the word "settle" for a kind of sofa, and "stool" comes from the same Anglo-Saxon word. We are learning now not only the story of the beginning of our own ways of life, but also much of the story of our own words and way of talking.

In the better houses the seat and table at which the heads of the family sat were raised on a flooring a little above the level of the rest, on what was called a dais. This would only be in the bigger houses. The dinner and other meals were always served in the hall, or larger room, which really was the one important part of the house. The apartments for the women were sometimes adjoining the hall, under the same roof, but sometimes "the lady's bower," as it was called, was a small separate building. Bed places, like berths in a ship's cabin, were often arranged for the men along the sides of the great hall, screened off by a curtain. You will understand that the better and larger a {103} house was, and the wealthier its owner, the more it would have of these fittings and conveniences. Most of the houses in the ordinary village we may suppose to have been almost altogether without them.

[Illustration: AN ANGLO-SAXON DINNER-PARTY. (From Wright's _Homes of Other Days_.)]

For their food at table, even in the best houses, they do not seem to have had forks. They had knives, but how much they were used at table we hardly know. Fingers were the chief instruments; and they were careful to wash their hands before and after meals. Indeed washing, both of the person and of their clothes, seems to have been more carefully and more often done thus early than a little later in the story. I am not giving you any account of their clothes, because you will get an idea of them much more quickly and exactly from the illustrations.

Often, in the large houses, they would have one or more minstrels playing to them as they ate, for they were fond of music and of the dance, and of various games. The Romans had left, in Britain, the tradition {104} of their games and gladiators' exhibitions in the amphitheatres, and these had not been forgotten. The Saxons may have come into that tradition and adopted the games, or they may have brought their own. They had games that were a kind of mimic warfare, with bows and arrows and javelin or dart throwing, which no doubt served to keep them in practice for the frequent wars which the kings waged together and for which a contingent from each village was required.

Their chief food seems to have been bread, with butter, cheese, and milk. This shows how much they depended on their live-stock, even though they seldom, as we may suppose, ate fresh meat. But they had poultry and ate much fish, and had a few vegetables, such as beans, besides the wild produce of the woods, like blackberries, mushrooms, nuts, and so on. They brewed beer, and mixed it with honey to make the favourite drink called "mead." A little wine came in from the Continent; but only the rich men could afford that.

To give them light, we know that they had candles, made both of the tallow, the fat of animals, and of wax, from the bees, and they also used lamps, holding oil, with a wick from the spout, like the Roman lamps.

As a rule, in the villages established in the woodland, where the houses were not close together, on the sides of a road, or in a circle, but were scattered among the cleared places, a mound of earth with a hedge on top was thrown up round about it. It was called by the Saxon word from which we have our word "wall"; but it hardly was what we should call a wall. Perhaps it was partly to protect the home garden, which lay within it, from strolling cattle and wild creatures, and partly for defence against enemies. There is evidence that the Anglo-Saxon ladies were fond of flowers and of their gardens.

Where the houses lay alongside a road, and {105} especially beside what was called a "street" (which meant one of the paved Roman roads, from stratum, meaning a paved surface), this surrounding wall or mound would not be made.

[Sidenote: Walled houses]

As time passed they began to make improvements in their houses. The first improvement seems to have been to build walls, up to about the height of a man's head--timber walls only at first--making use of trunks that had grown with a bend in them, as the corner posts, for the arch. From that came the occasional use of stone for the walls, where stone was easily to be found, or of brick, where there was clay convenient for the baking; but for very many years wood was the usual material for the building of all except the great houses, churches, castles, and the like. Of course it was very inflammable, and you know how, even as late down in our story as the date (1666) of the great fire of London, the destruction was so complete because almost all the houses were of wood.

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