Chapter IX · [a] (continued 2)

Manufactures of France and Germany.

A manufacturing district, as we see in our own country, sends out, as it were, suckers into all its neighbourhood. Accordingly, the woollen manufacture spread from Flanders along the banks of the Rhine and into the northern provinces of France.[s] I am not, however, prepared to trace its history in these regions. In Germany the privileges conceded by Henry V. to the free cities, and especially to their artisans, gave a soul to industry; though the central parts of the empire were, for many reasons, very ill-calculated for commercial enterprise during the middle ages.[t] But the French towns were never so much emancipated from arbitrary power as those of Germany or Flanders; and the evils of exorbitant taxation, with those produced by the English wars, conspired to retard the advance of manufactures in France. That of linen made some little progress; but this work was still, perhaps, chiefly confined to the labour of female servants.[u]

Baltic trade.

The manufactures of Flanders and England found a market, not only in these adjacent countries, but in a part of Europe which for many ages had only been known enough to be dreaded. In the middle of the eleventh century a native of Bremen, and a writer much superior to most others of his time, was almost entirely ignorant of the geography of the Baltic; doubting whether any one had reached Russia by that sea, and reckoning Esthonia and Courland among its islands.[x] But in one hundred years more the maritime regions of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, inhabited by a tribe of heathen Sclavonians, were subdued by some German princes; and the Teutonic order some time afterwards, having conquered Prussia, extended a line of at least comparative civilization as far as the gulf of Finland. The first town erected on the coasts of the Baltic was Lubec, which owes its foundation to Adolphus count of Holstein, in 1140. After several vicissitudes it became independent of any sovereign but the emperor in the thirteenth century. Hamburgh and Bremen, upon the other side of the Cimbric peninsula, emulated the prosperity of Lubec; the former city purchased independence of its bishop in 1225. A colony from Bremen founded Riga in Livonia about 1162. The city of Dantzic grew into importance about the end of the following century. Konigsberg was founded by Ottocar king of Bohemia in the same age.

But the real importance of these cities is to be dated from their famous union into the Hanseatic confederacy. The origin of this is rather obscure, but it may certainly be nearly referred in point of time to the middle of the thirteenth century,[y] and accounted for by the necessity of mutual defence, which piracy by sea and pillage by land had taught the merchants of Germany. The nobles endeavoured to obstruct the formation of this league, which indeed was in great measure designed to withstand their exactions. It powerfully maintained the influence which the free imperial cities were at this time acquiring. Eighty of the most considerable places constituted the Hanseatic confederacy, divided into four colleges, whereof Lubec, Cologne, Brunswic, and Dantzic were the leading towns. Lubec held the chief rank, and became, as it were, the patriarchal see of the league; whose province it was to preside in all general discussions for mercantile, political, or military purposes, and to carry them into execution. The league had four principal factories in foreign parts, at London, Bruges, Bergen, and Novogorod; endowed by the sovereigns of those cities with considerable privileges, to which every merchant belonging to a Hanseatic town was entitled.[z] In England the German guildhall or factory was established by concession of Henry III.; and in later periods the Hanse traders were favoured above many others in the capricious vacillations of our mercantile policy.[a] The English had also their factories on the Baltic coast as far as Prussia and in the dominions of Denmark.[b]

Rapid progress of English trade.

This opening of a northern market powerfully accelerated the growth of our own commercial opulence, especially after the woollen manufacture had begun to thrive. From about the middle of the fourteenth century we find continual evidences of a rapid increase in wealth. Thus, in 1363, Picard, who had been lord mayor some years before, entertained Edward III. and the Black Prince, the kings of France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with many of the nobility, at his own house in the Vintry, and presented them with handsome gifts.[c] Philpot, another eminent citizen in Richard II.'s time, when the trade of England was considerably annoyed by privateers, hired 1000 armed men, and despatched them to sea, where they took fifteen Spanish vessels with their prizes.[d] We find Richard obtaining a great deal from private merchants and trading towns. In 1379 he got 5000l. from London, 1000 marks from Bristol, and in proportion from smaller places. In 1386 London gave 4000l. more, and 10,000 marks in 1397.[e] The latter sum was obtained also for the coronation of Henry VI.[f] Nor were the contributions of individuals contemptible, considering the high value of money. Hinde, a citizen of London, lent to Henry IV. 2000l. in 1407, and Whittington one half of that sum. The merchants of the staple advanced 4000l. at the same time.[g] Our commerce continued to be regularly and rapidly progressive during the fifteenth century. The famous Canynges of Bristol, under Henry VI. and Edward IV., had ships of 900 tons burthen.[h] The trade and even the internal wealth of England reached so much higher a pitch in the reign of the last-mentioned king than at any former period, that we may perceive the wars of York and Lancaster to have produced no very serious effect on national prosperity. Some battles were doubtless sanguinary; but the loss of lives in battle is soon repaired by a flourishing nation; and the devastation occasioned by armies was both partial and transitory.

Intercourse with the south of Europe.

A commercial intercourse between these northern and southern regions of Europe began about the early part of the fourteenth century, or, at most, a little sooner. Until, indeed, the use of the magnet was thoroughly understood, and a competent skill in marine architecture, as well as navigation, acquired, the Italian merchants were scarce likely to attempt a voyage perilous in itself and rendered more formidable by the imaginary difficulties which had been supposed to attend an expedition beyond the straits of Hercules. But the English, accustomed to their own rough seas, were always more intrepid, and probably more skilful navigators. Though it was extremely rare, even in the fifteenth century, for an English trading vessel to appear in the Mediterranean,[i] yet a famous military armament, that destined for the crusade of Richard I., displayed at a very early time the seamanship of our countrymen. In the reign of Edward II. we find mention in Rymer's collection of Genoese ships trading to Flanders and England. His son was very solicitous to preserve the friendship of that opulent republic; and it is by his letters to his senate, or by royal orders restoring ships unjustly seized, that we come by a knowledge of those facts which historians neglect to relate. Pisa shared a little in this traffic, and Venice more considerably; but Genoa was beyond all competition at the head of Italian commerce in these seas during the fourteenth century. In the next her general decline left it more open to her rival; but I doubt whether Venice ever maintained so strong a connexion with England. Through London and Bruges, their chief station in Flanders, the merchants of Italy and of Spain transported oriental produce to the farthest parts of the north. The inhabitants of the Baltic coast were stimulated by the desire of precious luxuries which they had never known; and these wants, though selfish and frivolous, are the means by which nations acquire civilization, and the earth is rendered fruitful of its produce. As the carriers of this trade the Hanseatic merchants resident in England and Flanders derived profits through which eventually of course those countries were enriched. It seems that the Italian vessels unloaded at the marts of London or Bruges, and that such part of their cargoes as were intended for a more northern trade came there into the hands of the German merchants. In the reign of Henry VI. England carried on a pretty extensive traffic with the countries around the Mediterranean, for whose commodities her wool and woollen cloths enabled her to pay.

Commerce of the Mediterranean countries.

Amalfi.

The commerce of the southern division, though it did not, I think, produce more extensively beneficial effects upon the progress of society, was both earlier and more splendid than that of England and the neighbouring countries. Besides Venice, which has been mentioned already, Amalfi kept up the commercial intercourse of Christendom with the Saracen countries before the first crusade.[k] It was the singular fate of this city to have filled up the interval between two periods of civilization, in neither of which she was destined to be distinguished. Scarcely known before the end of the sixth century, Amalfi ran a brilliant career, as a free and trading republic, which was checked by the arms of a conqueror in the middle of the twelfth. Since her subjugation by Roger king of Sicily, the name of a people who for a while connected Europe with Asia has hardly been repeated, except for two discoveries falsely imputed to them, those of the Pandects and of the compass.

Pisa, Genoa, Venice.

But the decline of Amalfi was amply compensated to the rest of Italy by the constant elevation of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the twelfth and ensuing ages. The crusades led immediately to this growing prosperity of the commercial cities. Besides the profit accruing from so many naval armaments which they supplied, and the continual passage of private adventurers in their vessels, they were enabled to open a more extensive channel of oriental traffic than had hitherto been known. These three Italian republics enjoyed immunities in the Christian principalities of Syria; possessing separate quarters in Acre, Tripoli, and other cities, where they were governed by their own laws and magistrates. Though the progress of commerce must, from the condition of European industry, have been slow, it was uninterrupted; and the settlements in Palestine were becoming important as factories, an use of which Godfrey and Urban little dreamed, when they were lost through the guilt and imprudence of their inhabitants.[m] Villani laments the injury sustained by commerce in consequence of the capture of Acre, "situated, as it was, on the coast of the Mediterranean, in the centre of Syria, and, as we might say, of the habitable world, a haven for all merchandize, both from the East and the West, which all the nations of the earth frequented for this trade."[n] But the loss was soon retrieved, not perhaps by Pisa and Genoa, but by Venice, who formed connexions with the Saracen governments, and maintained her commercial intercourse with Syria and Egypt by their licence, though subject probably to heavy exactions. Sanuto, a Venetian author at the beginning of the fourteenth century, has left a curious account of the Levant trade which his countrymen carried on at that time. Their imports it is easy to guess, and it appears that timber, brass, tin, and lead, as well as the precious metals, were exported to Alexandria, besides oil, saffron, and some of the productions of Italy, and even wool and woollen cloths.[o] The European side of the account had therefore become respectable.

The commercial cities enjoyed as great privileges at Constantinople as in Syria, and they bore an eminent part in the vicissitudes of the Eastern empire. After the capture of Constantinople by the Latin crusaders, the Venetians, having been concerned in that conquest, became, of course, the favoured traders under the new dynasty; possessing their own district in the city, with their magistrate or podestà, appointed at Venice, and subject to the parent republic. When the Greeks recovered the seat of their empire, the Genoese, who, from jealousy of their rivals, had contributed to that revolution, obtained similar immunities. This powerful and enterprising state, in the fourteenth century, sometimes the ally, sometimes the enemy, of the Byzantine court, maintained its independent settlement at Pera. From thence she spread her sails into the Euxine, and, planting a colony at Caffa in the Crimea, extended a line of commerce with the interior regions of Asia, which even the skill and spirit of our own times has not yet been able to revive.[p]

The French provinces which border on the Mediterranean Sea partook in the advantages which it offered. Not only Marseilles, whose trade had continued in a certain degree throughout the worst ages, but Narbonne, Nismes, and especially Montpelier, were distinguished for commercial prosperity.[q] A still greater activity prevailed in Catalonia. From the middle of the thirteenth century (for we need not trace the rudiments of its history) Barcelona began to emulate the Italian cities in both the branches of naval energy, war and commerce. Engaged in frequent and severe hostilities with Genoa, and sometimes with Constantinople, while their vessels traded to every part of the Mediterranean, and even of the English Channel, the Catalans might justly be reckoned among the first of maritime nations. The commerce of Barcelona has never since attained so great a height as in the fifteenth century.[r]

Their manufactures.

The introduction of a silk manufacture at Palermo, by Roger Guiscard in 1148, gave perhaps the earliest impulse to the industry of Italy. Nearly about the same time the Genoese plundered two Moorish cities of Spain, from which they derived the same art. In the next age this became a staple manufacture of the Lombard and Tuscan republics, and the cultivation of mulberries was enforced by their laws.[s] Woollen stuffs, though the trade was perhaps less conspicuous than that of Flanders, and though many of the coarser kinds were imported from thence, employed a multitude of workmen in Italy, Catalonia, and the south of France.[t] Among the trading companies into which the middling ranks were distributed, those concerned in silk and woollens were most numerous and honourable.[u]

Invention of the mariner's compass.

A property of a natural substance, long overlooked even though it attracted observation by a different peculiarity, has influenced by its accidental discovery the fortunes of mankind more than all the deductions of philosophy. It is, perhaps, impossible to ascertain the epoch when the polarity of the magnet was first known in Europe. The common opinion, which ascribes its discovery to a citizen of Amalfi in the fourteenth century, is undoubtedly erroneous. Guiot de Provins, a French poet, who lived about the year 1200, or, at the latest, under St. Louis, describes it in the most unequivocal language. James de Vitry, a bishop in Palestine, before the middle of the thirteenth century, and Guido Guinizzelli, an Italian poet of the same time, are equally explicit. The French, as well as Italians, claim the discovery as their own; but whether it were due to either of these nations, or rather learned from their intercourse with the Saracens, is not easily to be ascertained.[x] For some time, perhaps, even this wonderful improvement in the art of navigation might not be universally adopted by vessels sailing within the Mediterranean, and accustomed to their old system of observations. But when it became more established, it naturally inspired a more fearless spirit of adventure. It was not, as has been mentioned, till the beginning of the fourteenth century that the Genoese and other nations around that inland sea steered into the Atlantic Ocean towards England and Flanders. This intercourse with the northern countries enlivened their trade with the Levant by the exchange of productions which Spain and Italy do not supply, and enriched the merchants by means of whose capital the exports of London and of Alexandria were conveyed into each other's harbours.

Maritime laws.

The usual risks of navigation, and those incident to commercial adventure, produce a variety of questions in every system of jurisprudence, which, though always to be determined, as far as possible, by principles of natural justice, must in many cases depend upon established customs. These customs of maritime law were anciently reduced into a code by the Rhodians, and the Roman emperors preserved or reformed the constitutions of that republic. It would be hard to say how far the tradition of this early jurisprudence survived the decline of commerce in the darker ages; but after it began to recover itself, necessity suggested, or recollection prompted, a scheme of regulations resembling in some degree, but much more enlarged than those of antiquity. This was formed into a written code, Il Consolato del Mare, not much earlier, probably, than the middle of the thirteenth century; and its promulgation seems rather to have proceeded from the citizens of Barcelona than from those of Pisa or Venice, who have also claimed to be the first legislators of the sea.[y] Besides regulations simply mercantile, this system has defined the mutual rights of neutral and belligerent vessels, and thus laid the basis of the positive law of nations in its most important and disputed cases. The king of France and count of Provence solemnly acceded to this maritime code, which hence acquired a binding force within the Mediterranean Sea; and in most respects the law merchant of Europe is at present conformable to its provisions. A set of regulations, chiefly borrowed from the Consolato, was compiled in France under the reign of Louis IX., and prevailed in their own country. These have been denominated the laws of Oleron, from an idle story that they were enacted by Richard I., while his expedition to the Holy Land lay at anchor in that island.[z] Nor was the north without its peculiar code of maritime jurisprudence; namely, the Ordinances of Wisbuy, a town in the isle of Gothland, principally compiled from those of Oleron, before the year 1400, by which the Baltic traders were governed.[a]

Frequency of piracy.

Law of reprisals.

There was abundant reason for establishing among maritime nations some theory of mutual rights, and for securing the redress of injuries, as far as possible, by means of acknowledged tribunals. In that state of barbarous anarchy which so long resisted the coercive authority of civil magistrates, the sea held out even more temptation and more impunity than the land; and when the laws had regained their sovereignty, and neither robbery nor private warfare was any longer tolerated, there remained that great common of mankind, unclaimed by any king, and the liberty of the sea was another name for the security of plunderers. A pirate, in a well-armed quick-sailing vessel, must feel, I suppose, the enjoyments of his exemption from control more exquisitely than any other freebooter; and darting along the bosom of the ocean, under the impartial radiance of the heavens, may deride the dark concealments and hurried flights of the forest robber. His occupation is, indeed, extinguished by the civilization of later ages, or confined to distant climates. But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a rich vessel was never secure from attack; and neither restitution nor punishment of the criminals was to be obtained from governments who sometimes feared the plunderer and sometimes connived at the offence.[b] Mere piracy, however, was not the only danger. The maritime towns of Flanders, France, and England, like the free republics of Italy, prosecuted their own quarrels by arms, without asking the leave of their respective sovereigns. This practice, exactly analogous to that of private war in the feudal system, more than once involved the kings of France and England in hostility.[c] But where the quarrel did not proceed to such a length as absolutely to engage two opposite towns, a modification of this ancient right of revenge formed part of the regular law of nations, under the name of reprisals. Whoever was plundered or injured by the inhabitant of another town obtained authority from his own magistrates to seize the property of any other person belonging to it, until his loss should be compensated. This law of reprisal was not confined to maritime places; it prevailed in Lombardy, and probably in the German cities. Thus, if a citizen of Modena was robbed by a Bolognese, he complained to the magistrates of the former city, who represented the case to those of Bologna, demanding redress. If this were not immediately granted, letters of reprisals were issued to plunder the territory of Bologna till the injured party should be reimbursed by sale of the spoil.[d] In the laws of Marseilles it is declared, "If a foreigner take anything from a citizen of Marseilles, and he who has jurisdiction over the said debtor or unjust taker does not cause right to be done in the same, the rector or consuls, at the petition of the said citizen, shall grant him reprisals upon all the goods of the said debtor or unjust taker, and also upon the goods of others who are under the jurisdiction of him who ought to do justice, and would not, to the said citizen of Marseilles."[e] Edward III. remonstrates, in an instrument published by Rymer, against letters of marque granted by the king of Aragon to one Berenger de la Tone, who had been robbed by an English pirate of 2000l., alleging that, inasmuch as he had always been ready to give redress to the party, it seemed to his counsellors that there was no just cause for reprisals upon the king's or his subjects' property.[f] This passage is so far curious as it asserts the existence of a customary law of nations, the knowledge of which was already a sort of learning. Sir E. Coke speaks of this right of private reprisals as if it still existed;[g] and, in fact, there are instances of granting such letters as late as the reign of Charles I.

Liability of aliens for each other's debts.

A practice, founded on the same principles as reprisal, though rather less violent, was that of attaching the goods or persons of resident foreigners for the debts of their countrymen. This indeed, in England, was not confined to foreigners until the statute of Westminster I. c. 23, which enacts that "no stranger who is of this realm shall be distrained in any town or market for a debt wherein he is neither principal nor surety." Henry III. had previously granted a charter to the burgesses of Lubec, that they should "not be arrested for the debt of any of their countrymen, unless the magistrates of Lubec neglected to compel payment."[h] But by a variety of grants from Edward II. the privileges of English subjects under the statute of Westminster were extended to most foreign nations.[i] This unjust responsibility had not been confined to civil cases. One of a company of Italian merchants, the Spini, having killed a man, the officers of justice seized the bodies and effects of all the rest.[k]

Great profits of trade,

and high rate of interest.

Money dealings of the Jews.

If under all these obstacles, whether created by barbarous manners, by national prejudice, or by the fraudulent and arbitrary measures of princes, the merchants of different countries became so opulent as almost to rival the ancient nobility, it must be ascribed to the greatness of their commercial profits. The trading companies possessed either a positive or a virtual monopoly, and held the keys of those eastern regions, for the luxuries of which the progressive refinement of manners produced an increasing demand. It is not easy to determine the average rate of profit;[m] but we know that the interest of money was exceedingly high throughout the middle ages. At Verona, in 1228, it was fixed by law at twelve and a half per cent.; at Modena, in 1270, it seems to have been as high as twenty.[n] The republic of Genoa, towards the end of the fourteenth century, when Italy had grown wealthy, paid only from seven to ten per cent. to her creditors.[o] But in France and England the rate was far more oppressive. An ordinance of Philip the Fair, in 1311, allows twenty per cent. after the first year of the loan.[p] Under Henry III., according to Matthew Paris, the debtor paid ten per cent. every two months;[q] but this is absolutely incredible as a general practice. This was not merely owing to scarcity of money, but to the discouragement which a strange prejudice opposed, to one of the most useful and legitimate branches of commerce. Usury, or lending money for profit, was treated as a crime by the theologians of the middle ages; and though the superstition has been eradicated, some part of the prejudice remains in our legislation. This trade in money, and indeed a great part of inland trade in general, had originally fallen to the Jews, who were noted for their usury so early as the sixth century.[r] For several subsequent ages they continued to employ their capital and industry to the same advantage, with little molestation from the clergy, who always tolerated their avowed and national infidelity, and often with some encouragement from princes. In the twelfth century we find them not only possessed of landed property in Languedoc, and cultivating the studies of medicine and Rabbinical literature in their own academy at Montpelier, under the protection of the count of Toulouse, but invested with civil offices.[s] Raymond Roger, viscount of Carcasonne, directs a writ "to his bailiffs, Christian and Jewish."[t] It was one of the conditions imposed by the church on the count of Toulouse, that he should allow no Jews to possess magistracy in his dominions.[u] But in Spain they were placed by some of the municipal laws on the footing of Christians, with respect to the composition for their lives, and seem in no other European country to have been so numerous or considerable.[x] The diligence and expertness of this people in all pecuniary dealings recommended them to princes who were solicitous about the improvement of their revenue. We find an article in the general charter of privileges granted by Peter III. of Aragon, in 1283, that no Jew should hold the office of a bayle or judge. And two kings of Castile, Alonzo XI. and Peter the Cruel, incurred much odium by employing Jewish ministers in their treasury. But, in other parts of Europe, their condition had, before that time, begun to change for the worse—partly from the fanatical spirit of the crusades, which prompted the populace to massacre, and partly from the jealousy which their opulence excited. Kings, in order to gain money and popularity at once, abolished the debts due to the children of Israel, except a part which they retained as the price of their bounty. One is at a loss to conceive the process of reasoning in an ordinance of St. Louis, where, "for the salvation of his own soul and those of his ancestors, he releases to all Christians a third part of what was owing by them to Jews."[y] Not content with such edicts, the kings of France sometimes banished the whole nation from their dominions, seizing their effects at the same time; and a season of alternative severity and toleration continued till, under Charles VI., they were finally expelled from the kingdom, where they never afterwards possessed any legal settlement.[z] They were expelled from England under Edward I., and never obtained any legal permission to reside till the time of Cromwell. This decline of the Jews was owing to the transference of their trade in money to other hands. In the early part of the thirteenth century the merchants of Lombardy and of the south of France[a] took up the business of remitting money by bills of exchange,[b] and of making profit upon loans. The utility of this was found so great, especially by the Italian clergy, who thus in an easy manner drew the income of their transalpine benefices, that in spite of much obloquy, the Lombard usurers established themselves in every country, and the general progress of commerce wore off the bigotry that had obstructed their reception. A distinction was made between moderate and exorbitant interest; and though the casuists did not acquiesce in this legal regulation, yet it satisfied, even in superstitious times, the consciences of provident traders.[c] The Italian bankers were frequently allowed to farm the customs in England, as a security perhaps for loans which, were not very punctually repaid.[d] In 1345 the Bardi at Florence, the greatest company in Italy, became bankrupt, Edward III. owing them, in principal and interest, 900,000 gold florins. Another, the Peruzzi, failed at the same time, being creditors to Edward for 600,000 florins. The king of Sicily owed 100,000 florins to each of these bankers. Their failure involved, of course, a multitude of Florentine citizens, and was a heavy misfortune to the state.[e]

Banks of Genoa and others.

The earliest bank of deposit, instituted for the accommodation of private merchants, is said to have been that of Barcelona, in 1401.[f] The banks of Venice and Genoa were of a different description. Although the former of these two has the advantage of greater antiquity, having been formed, as we are told, in the twelfth century, yet its early history is not so clear as that of Genoa, nor its political importance so remarkable, however similar might be its origin.[g] During the wars of Genoa in the fourteenth century, she had borrowed large sums of private citizens, to whom the revenues were pledged for repayment. The republic of Florence had set a recent, though not a very encouraging example of a public loan, to defray the expense of her war against Mastino della Scala, in 1336. The chief mercantile firms, as well as individual citizens, furnished money on an assignment of the taxes, receiving fifteen per cent. interest, which appears to have been above the rate of private usury.[h] The state was not unreasonably considered a worse debtor than some of her citizens, for in a few years these loans were consolidated into a general fund, or monte, with some deduction from the capital and a great diminution of interest; so that an original debt of one hundred florins sold only for twenty-five.[i] But I have not found that these creditors formed at Florence a corporate body, or took any part, as such, in the affairs of the republic. The case was different at Genoa. As a security, at least, for their interest, the subscribers to public loans were permitted to receive the produce of the taxes by their own collectors, paying the excess into the treasury. The number and distinct classes of these subscribers becoming at length inconvenient, they were formed, about the year 1407, into a single corporation, called the bank of St. George, which was from that time the sole national creditor and mortgagee. The government of this was intrusted to eight protectors. It soon became almost independent of the state. Every senator, on his admission, swore to maintain the privileges of the bank, which were confirmed by the pope, and even by the emperor. The bank interposed its advice in every measure of government, and generally, as is admitted, to the public advantage. It equipped armaments at its own expense, one of which subdued the island of Corsica; and this acquisition, like those of our great Indian corporation, was long subject to a company of merchants, without any interference of the mother country.[k]

Increase of domestic expenditure.

The increasing wealth of Europe, whether derived from internal improvement or foreign commerce, displayed itself in more expensive consumption, and greater refinements of domestic life. But these effects were for a long time very gradual, each generation making a few steps in the progress, which are hardly discernible except by an attentive inquirer. It is not till the latter half of the thirteenth century that an accelerated impulse appears to be given to society. The just government and suppression of disorder under St. Louis, and the peaceful temper of his brother Alfonso, count of Toulouse and Poitou, gave France leisure to avail herself of her admirable fertility. England, that to a soil not greatly inferior to that of France united the inestimable advantage of an insular position, and was invigorated, above all, by her free constitution and the steady industriousness of her people, rose with a pretty uniform motion from the time of Edward I. Italy, though the better days of freedom had passed away in most of her republics, made a rapid transition from simplicity to refinement. "In those times," says a writer about the year 1300, speaking of the age of Frederic II., "the manners of the Italians were rude. A man and his wife ate off the same plate. There was no wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather unlined: scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress. The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in summer. A small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women were small; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was to be well provided with arms and horses; that of the nobility to have lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But now frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; every thing exquisite is sought after in dress; gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs. Foreign wines and rich meats are required. Hence usury, rapine, fraud, tyranny," &c.[m] This passage is supported by other testimonies nearly of the same time. The conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou in 1266 seems to have been the epoch of increasing luxury throughout Italy. His Provençal knights with their plumed helmets and golden collars, the chariot of his queen covered with blue velvet and sprinkled with lilies of gold, astonished the citizens of Naples.[n] Provence had enjoyed a long tranquillity, the natural source of luxurious magnificence; and Italy, now liberated from the yoke of the empire, soon reaped the same fruit of a condition more easy and peaceful than had been her lot for several ages. Dante speaks of the change of manners at Florence from simplicity and virtue to refinement and dissoluteness, in terms very nearly similar to those quoted above.[o]

Throughout the fourteenth century there continued to be a rapid but steady progression in England of what we may denominate elegance, improvement, or luxury; and if this was for a time suspended in France, it must be ascribed to the unusual calamities which befell that country under Philip of Valois and his son. Just before the breaking out of the English wars an excessive fondness for dress is said to have distinguished not only the higher ranks, but the burghers, whose foolish emulation at least indicates their easy circumstances.[p] Modes of dress hardly perhaps deserve our notice on their own account; yet so far as their universal prevalence was a symptom of diffused wealth, we should not overlook either the invectives bestowed by the clergy on the fantastic extravagances of fashion, or the sumptuary laws by which it was endeavoured to restrain them.

Sumptuary laws.

The principle of sumptuary laws was partly derived from the small republics of antiquity, which might perhaps require that security for public spirit and equal rights—partly from the austere and injudicious theory of religion disseminated by the clergy. These prejudices united to render all increase of general comforts odious under the name of luxury; and a third motive more powerful than either, the jealousy with which the great regard anything like imitation in those beneath them, co-operated to produce a sort of restrictive code in the laws of Europe. Some of these regulations are more ancient; but the chief part were enacted, both in France and England, during the fourteenth century, extending to expenses of the table as well as apparel. The first statute of this description in our own country was, however, repealed the next year;[q] and subsequent provisions were entirely disregarded by a nation which valued liberty and commerce too much to obey laws conceived in a spirit hostile to both. Laws indeed designed by those governments to restrain the extravagance of their subjects may well justify the severe indignation which Adam Smith has poured upon all such interference with private expenditure. The kings of France and England were undoubtedly more egregious spendthrifts than any others in their dominions; and contributed far more by their love of pageantry to excite a taste for dissipation in their people than by their ordinances to repress it.

Domestic manners of Italy.

Mussus, an historian of Placentia, has left a pretty copious account of the prevailing manners among his countrymen about 1388, and expressly contrasts their more luxurious living with the style of their ancestors seventy years before, when, as we have seen, they had already made considerable steps towards refinement. This passage is highly interesting, because it shows the regular tenor of domestic economy in an Italian city rather than a mere display of individual magnificence, as in most of the facts collected by our own and the French antiquaries. But it is much too long for insertion in this place.[r] No other country, perhaps, could exhibit so fair a picture of middle life: in France the burghers, and even the inferior gentry, were for the most part in a state of poverty at this period, which they concealed by an affectation of ornament; while our English yeomanry and tradesmen were more anxious to invigorate their bodies by a generous diet than to dwell in well furnished houses, or to find comfort in cleanliness and elegance.[s] The German cities, however, had acquired with liberty the spirit of improvement and industry. From the time that Henry V. admitted their artisans to the privileges of free burghers they became more and more prosperous;[t] while the steadiness and frugality of the German character compensated for some disadvantages arising out of their inland situation. Spire, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, and Augsburg were not indeed like the rich markets of London and Bruges, nor could their burghers rival the princely merchants of Italy; but they enjoyed the blessings of competence diffused over a large class of industrious freemen, and in the fifteenth century one of the politest Italians could extol their splendid and well furnished dwellings, their rich apparel, their easy and affluent mode of living, the security of their rights and just equality of their laws.[u]

Civil architecture.

No chapter in the history of national manners would illustrate so well, if duly executed, the progress of social life as that dedicated to domestic architecture. The fashions of dress and of amusements are generally capricious and irreducible to rule; but every change in the dwellings of mankind, from the rudest wooden cabin to the stately mansion, has been dictated by some principle of convenience, neatness, comfort, or magnificence. Yet this most interesting field of research has been less beaten by our antiquaries than others comparatively barren. I do not pretend to a complete knowledge of what has been written by these learned inquirers; but I can only name one book in which the civil architecture of our ancestors has been sketched, loosely indeed, but with a superior hand, and another in which it is partially noticed. I mean by the first a chapter in the Appendix to Dr. Whitaker's History of Whalley; and by the second Mr. King's Essays on Ancient Castles in the Archæologia.[x] Of these I shall make free use in the following paragraphs.

The most ancient buildings which we can trace in this island, after the departure of the Romans, were circular towers of no great size, whereof many remain in Scotland, erected either on a natural eminence or on an artificial mound of earth. Such are Conisborough Castle in Yorkshire and Castleton in Derbyshire, built perhaps, according to Mr. King, before the Conquest.[y] To the lower chambers of those gloomy keeps there was no admission of light or air except through long narrow loop-holes and an aperture in the roof. Regular windows were made in the upper apartments. Were it not for the vast thickness of the walls, and some marks of attention both to convenience and decoration in these structures, we might be induced to consider them as rather intended for security during the transient inroad of an enemy than for a chieftain's usual residence. They bear a close resemblance, except by their circular form and more insulated situation, to the peels, or square towers of three or four stories, which are still found contiguous to ancient mansion-houses, themselves far more ancient, in the northern counties,[z] and seem to have been designed for places of refuge.

In course of time, the barons who owned these castles began to covet a more comfortable dwelling. The keep was either much enlarged, or altogether relinquished as a place of residence except in time of siege; while more convenient apartments were sometimes erected in the tower of entrance, over the great gateway, which led to the inner ballium or court-yard. Thus at Tunbridge Castle, this part of which is referred by Mr. King to the beginning of the thirteenth century, there was a room, twenty-eight feet by sixteen, on each side of the gateway; another above of the same dimensions, with an intermediate room over the entrance; and one large apartment on the second floor occupying the whole space, and intended for state. The windows in this class of castles were still little better than loop-holes on the basement story, but in the upper rooms often large and beautifully ornamented, though always looking inwards to the court. Edward I. introduced a more splendid and convenient style of castles, containing many habitable towers, with communicating apartments. Conway and Carnarvon will be familiar examples. The next innovation was the castle-palace—of which Windsor, if not quite the earliest, is the most magnificent instance. Alnwick, Naworth, Harewood, Spofforth, Kenilworth, and Warwick, were all built upon this scheme during the fourteenth century, but subsequent enlargements have rendered caution necessary to distinguish their original remains. "The odd mixture," says Mr. King, "of convenience and magnificence with cautious designs for protection and defence, and with the inconveniences of the former confined plan of a close fortress, is very striking." The provisions for defence became now, however, little more than nugatory; large arched windows, like those of cathedrals, were introduced into halls, and this change in architecture manifestly bears witness to the cessation of baronial wars and the increasing love of splendour in the reign of Edward III.

To these succeeded the castellated houses of the fifteenth century, such as Herstmonceux in Sussex, Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, and the older part of Knowle in Kent.[a] They resembled fortified castles in their strong gateways, their turrets and battlements, to erect which a royal licence was necessary; but their defensive strength could only have availed against a sudden affray or attempt at forcible dispossession. They were always built round one or two court-yards, the circumference of the first, when they were two, being occupied by the offices and servants' rooms, that of the second by the state-apartments. Regular quadrangular houses, not castellated, were sometimes built during the same age, and under Henry VII. became universal in the superior style of domestic architecture.[b] The quadrangular form, as well from security and convenience as from imitation of conventual houses, which were always constructed upon that model, was generally preferred—even where the dwelling-house, as indeed was usual, only took up one side of the enclosure, and the remaining three contained the offices, stables, and farm-buildings, with walls of communication. Several very old parsonages appear to have been built in this manner.[c] It is, however, not very easy to discover any large fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III., or even to trace them by engravings in the older topographical works, not only from the dilapidations of time, but because very few considerable mansions had been erected by that class. A great part of England affords no stone fit for building, and the vast though unfortunately not inexhaustible resources of her oak forests were easily applied to less durable and magnificent structures. A frame of massive timber, independent of walls and resembling the inverted hull of a large ship, formed the skeleton, as it were, of an ancient hall—the principal beams springing from the ground naturally curved, and forming a Gothic arch overhead. The intervals of these were filled up with horizontal planks; but in the earlier buildings, at least in some districts, no part of the walls was of stone.[d] Stone houses are, however, mentioned as belonging to citizens of London, even in the reign of Henry II.;[e] and, though not often perhaps regularly hewn stones, yet those scattered over the soil or dug from flint quarries, bound together with a very strong and durable cement, were employed in the construction of manerial houses, especially in the western counties and other parts where that material is easily procured.[f] Gradually even in timber buildings the intervals of the main beams, which now became perpendicular, not throwing off their curved springers till they reached a considerable height, were occupied by stone walls, or where stone was expensive, by mortar or plaster, intersected by horizontal or diagonal beams, grooved into the principal piers.[g] This mode of building continued for a long time, and is still familiar to our eyes in the older streets of the metropolis and other towns, and in many parts of the country.[h] Early in the fourteenth century the art of building with brick, which had been lost since the Roman dominion, was introduced probably from Flanders. Though several edifices of that age are constructed with this material, it did not come into general use till the reign of Henry VI.[i] Many considerable houses as well as public buildings were erected with bricks during his reign and that of Edward IV., chiefly in the eastern counties, where the deficiency of stone was most experienced. Few, if any, brick mansion-houses of the fifteenth century exist, except in a dilapidated state; but Queen's College and Clare Hall at Cambridge, and part of Eton College, are subsisting witnesses to the durability of the material as it was then employed.

Meanness of ordinary mansion-houses.

It is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in stately or even in well-sized houses. Generally speaking, their dwellings were almost as inferior to those of their descendants in capacity as they were in convenience. The usual arrangement consisted of an entrance-passage running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above, and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices.[k] Such was the ordinary manor-house of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as appears not only from the documents and engravings, but as to the latter period, from the buildings themselves, sometimes, though not very frequently, occupied by families of consideration, more often converted into farm-houses or distinct tenements. Larger structures were erected by men of great estates during the reigns of Henry IV. and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced higher; and such has been the effect of time, still more through the advance or decline of families and the progress of architectural improvement, than the natural decay of these buildings, that I should conceive it difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman and not belonging to the order of castles, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. The instances at least must be extremely few.[m]

France by no means appears to have made a greater progress than our own country in domestic architecture. Except fortified castles, I do not find in the work of a very miscellaneous but apparently diligent writer,[n] any considerable dwellings mentioned before the reign of Charles VII., and very few of so early a date.[o] Jacques Cœur, a famous merchant unjustly persecuted by that prince, had a handsome house at Paris, as well as another at Bourges.[p] It is obvious that the long calamities which France endured before the expulsion of the English must have retarded this eminent branch of national improvement.

Even in Italy, where from the size of her cities and social refinements of her inhabitants, greater elegance and splendour in building were justly to be expected, the domestic architecture of the middle ages did not attain any perfection. In several towns the houses were covered with thatch, and suffered consequently from destructive fires. Costanzo, a Neapolitan historian near the end of the sixteenth century, remarks the change of manners that had occurred since the reign of Joanna II. one hundred and fifty years before. The great families under the queen expended all their wealth on their retainers, and placed their chief pride in bringing them into the field. They were ill lodged, not sumptuously clothed, nor luxurious in their tables. The house of Caracciolo, high steward of that princess, one of the most powerful subjects that ever existed, having fallen into the hands of persons incomparably below his station, had been enlarged by them, as insufficient for their accommodation.[q] If such were the case in the city of Naples so late as the beginning of the fifteenth century, we may guess how mean were the habitations in less polished parts of Europe.

Invention of chimneys and glass windows.

The two most essential improvements in architecture during this period, one of which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome, were chimneys and glass windows. Nothing apparently can be more simple than the former; yet the wisdom of ancient times had been content to let the smoke escape by an aperture in the centre of the roof; and a discovery, of which Vitruvius had not a glimpse, was made, perhaps in this country, by some forgotten semi-barbarian. About the middle of the fourteenth century the use of chimneys is distinctly mentioned in England and in Italy; but they are found in several of our castles which bear a much older date.[r] This country seems to have lost very early the art of making glass, which was preserved in France, whence artificers were brought into England to furnish the windows in some new churches in the seventh century.[s] It is said that in the reign of Henry III. a few ecclesiastical buildings had glazed windows.[t] Suger, however, a century before, had adorned his great work, the abbey of St. Denis, with windows, not only glazed but painted;[u] and I presume that other churches of the same class, both in France and England, especially after the lancet-shaped window had yielded to one of ampler dimensions, were generally decorated in a similar manner. Yet glass is said not to have been employed in the domestic architecture of France before the fourteenth century;[x] and its introduction into England was probably by no means earlier. Nor indeed did it come into general use during the period of the middle ages. Glazed windows were considered as moveable furniture, and probably bore a high price. When the earls of Northumberland, as late as the reign of Elizabeth, left Alnwick Castle, the windows were taken out of their frames, and carefully laid by.[y]

Furniture of houses.

But if the domestic buildings of the fifteenth century would not seem very spacious or convenient at present, far less would this luxurious generation be content with their internal accommodations. A gentleman's house containing three or four beds was extraordinarily well provided; few probably had more than two. The walls were commonly bare, without wainscot or even plaster; except that some great houses were furnished with hangings, and that perhaps hardly so soon as the reign of Edward IV. It is unnecessary to add, that neither libraries of books nor pictures could have found a place among furniture. Silver plate was very rare, and hardly used for the table. A few inventories of furniture that still remain exhibit a miserable deficiency.[z] And this was incomparably greater in private gentlemen's houses than among citizens, and especially foreign merchants. We have an inventory of the goods belonging to Contarini, a rich Venetian trader, at his house in St. Botolph's Lane, A.D. 1481. There appear to have been no less than ten beds, and glass windows are especially noticed as moveable furniture. No mention however is made of chairs or looking-glasses.[a] If we compare this account, however trifling in our estimation, with a similar inventory of furniture in Skipton Castle, the great honour of the earls of Cumberland, and among the most splendid mansions of the north, not at the same period, for I have not found any inventory of a nobleman's furniture so ancient, but in 1572, after almost a century of continual improvement, we shall be astonished at the inferior provision of the baronial residence. There were not more than seven or eight beds in this great castle; nor had any of the chambers either chairs, glasses, or carpets.[b] It is in this sense, probably, that we must understand Æneas Sylvius, if he meant any thing more than to express a traveller's discontent, when he declares that the kings of Scotland would rejoice to be as well lodged as the second class of citizens at Nuremberg.[c] Few burghers of that town had mansions, I presume, equal to the palaces of Dumferlin or Stirling, but it is not unlikely that they were better furnished.

Farm-houses and cottages.

In the construction of farm-houses and cottages, especially the latter, there have probably been fewer changes; and those it would be more difficult to follow. No building of this class can be supposed to exist of the antiquity to which the present work is confined; and I do not know that we have any document as to the inferior architecture of England, so valuable as one which M. de Paulmy has quoted for that of France, though perhaps more strictly applicable to Italy, an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, being a translation of Crescentio's work on agriculture, illustrating the customs, and, among other things, the habitations of the agricultural class. According to Paulmy, there is no other difference between an ancient and a modern farm-house than arises from the introduction of tiled roofs.[d] In the original work of Crescentio, a native of Bologna, who composed this treatise on rural affairs about the year 1300, an Italian farm-house, when built at least according to his plan, appears to have been commodious both in size and arrangement.[e] Cottages in England seem to have generally consisted of a single room without division of stories. Chimneys were unknown in such dwellings till the early part of Elizabeth's reign, when a very rapid and sensible improvement took place in the comforts of our yeomanry and cottagers.[f]

Ecclesiastical architecture.

It must be remembered that I have introduced this disadvantageous representation of civil architecture, as a proof of general poverty and backwardness in the refinements of life. Considered in its higher departments, that art is the principal boast of the middle ages. The common buildings, especially those of a public kind, were constructed with skill and attention to durability. The castellated style displays these qualities in great perfection; the means are well adapted to their objects, and its imposing grandeur, though chiefly resulting no doubt from massiveness and historical association, sometimes indicates a degree of architectural genius in the conception. But the most remarkable works of this art are the religious edifices erected in the twelfth and three following centuries. These structures, uniting sublimity in general composition with the beauties of variety and form, intricacy of parts, skilful or at least fortunate effects of shadow and light, and in some instances with extraordinary mechanical science, are naturally apt to lead those antiquaries who are most conversant with them into too partial estimates of the times wherein they were founded. They certainly are accustomed to behold the fairest side of the picture. It was the favourite and most honourable employment of ecclesiastical wealth, to erect, to enlarge, to repair, to decorate cathedral and conventual churches. An immense capital must have been expended upon these buildings in England between the Conquest and the Reformation. And it is pleasing to observe how the seeds of genius, hidden as it were under the frost of that dreary winter, began to bud in the first sunshine of encouragement. In the darkest period of the middle ages, especially after the Scandinavian incursions into France and England, ecclesiastical architecture, though always far more advanced than any other art, bespoke the rudeness and poverty of the times. It began towards the latter part of the eleventh century, when tranquillity, at least as to former enemies, was restored, and some degree of learning reappeared, to assume a more noble appearance. The Anglo-Norman cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished above other works of man in their own age, as the more splendid edifices of a later period. The science manifested in them is not, however, very great; and their style, though by no means destitute of lesser beauties, is upon the whole an awkward imitation of Roman architecture, or perhaps more immediately of the Saracenic buildings in Spain and those of the lower Greek empire.[g] But about the middle of the twelfth century, this manner began to give place to what is improperly denominated the Gothic architecture;[h] of which the pointed arch, formed by the segments of two intersecting semicircles of equal radius and described about a common diameter, has generally been deemed the essential characteristic. We are not concerned at present to inquire whether this style originated in France or Germany, Italy or England, since it was certainly almost simultaneous in all these countries;[i] nor from what source it was derived—a question of no small difficulty. I would only venture to remark, that whatever may be thought of the origin of the pointed arch, for which there is more than one mode of accounting, we must perceive a very oriental character in the vast profusion of ornament, especially on the exterior surface, which is as distinguishing a mark of Gothic buildings as their arches, and contributes in an eminent degree both to their beauties and to their defects. This indeed is rather applicable to the later than the earlier stage of architecture, and rather to continental than English churches. Amiens is in a far more florid style than Salisbury, though a contemporary structure. The Gothic species of architecture is thought by most to have reached its perfection, considered as an object of taste, by the middle or perhaps the close of the fourteenth century, or at least to have lost something of its excellence by the corresponding part of the next age; an effect of its early and rapid cultivation, since arts appear to have, like individuals, their natural progress and decay. The mechanical execution, however, continued to improve, and is so far beyond the apparent intellectual powers of those times, that some have ascribed the principal ecclesiastical structures to the fraternity of freemasons, depositaries of a concealed and traditionary science. There is probably some ground for this opinion; and the earlier archives of that mysterious association, if they existed, might illustrate the progress of Gothic architecture, and perhaps reveal its origin. The remarkable change into this new style, that was almost contemporaneous in every part of Europe, cannot be explained by any local circumstances, or the capricious taste of a single nation.[k]

Agriculture in some degree progressive.

It would be a pleasing task to trace with satisfactory exactness the slow, and almost perhaps insensible progress of agriculture and internal improvement during the latter period of the middle ages. But no diligence could recover the unrecorded history of a single village; though considerable attention has of late been paid to this interesting subject by those antiquaries, who, though sometimes affecting to despise the lights of modern philosophy, are unconsciously guided by their effulgence. I have already adverted to the wretched condition of agriculture during the prevalence of feudal tenures, as well as before their general establishment.[m] Yet even in the least civilized ages, there were not wanting partial encouragements to cultivation, and the ameliorating principle of human industry struggled against destructive revolutions and barbarous disorder. The devastation of war from the fifth to the eleventh century rendered land the least costly of all gifts, though it must ever be the most truly valuable and permanent. Many of the grants to monasteries, which strike us as enormous, were of districts absolutely wasted, which would probably have been reclaimed by no other means. We owe the agricultural restoration of a great part of Europe to the monks. They chose, for the sake of retirement, secluded regions which they cultivated with the labour of their hands.[n] Several charters are extant, granted to convents, and sometimes to laymen, of lands which they had recovered from a desert condition, after the ravages of the Saracens.[o] Some districts were allotted to a body of Spanish colonists, who emigrated, in the reign of Louis the Debonair, to live under a Christian sovereign.[p] Nor is this the only instance of agricultural colonies. Charlemagne transplanted part of his conquered Saxons into Flanders, a country at that time almost unpeopled; and at a much later period, there was a remarkable reflux from the same country, or rather from Holland to the coasts of the Baltic Sea. In the twelfth century, great numbers of Dutch colonists settled along the whole line between the Ems and the Vistula. They obtained grants of uncultivated land on condition of fixed rents, and were governed by their own laws under magistrates of their own election.[q]

There cannot be a more striking proof of the low condition of English agriculture in the eleventh century, than is exhibited by Domesday Book. Though almost all England had been partially cultivated, and we find nearly the same manors, except in the north, which exist at present, yet the value and extent of cultivated ground are inconceivably small. With every allowance for the inaccuracies and partialities of those by whom that famous survey was completed,[r] we are lost in amazement at the constant recurrence of two or three carucates in demesne, with other lands occupied by ten or a dozen villeins, valued altogether at forty shillings, as the return of a manor, which now would yield a competent income to a gentleman. If Domesday Book can he considered as even approaching to accuracy in respect of these estimates, agriculture must certainly have made a very material progress in the four succeeding centuries. This however is rendered probable by other documents. Ingulfus, abbot of Croyland under the Conqueror, supplies an early and interesting evidence of improvement.[s] Richard de Rules, lord of Deeping, he tells us, being fond of agriculture, obtained permission from the abbey to inclose a large portion of marsh for the purpose of separate pasture, excluding the Welland by a strong dike, upon which he erected a town, and rendering those stagnant fens a garden of Eden.[t] In imitation of this spirited cultivator, the inhabitants of Spalding and some neighbouring villages by a common resolution divided their marshes amongst them; when some converting them to tillage, some reserving them for meadow, others leaving them in pasture, they found a rich soil for every purpose. The abbey of Croyland and villages in that neighbourhood followed this example.[u] This early instance of parochial inclosure is not to be overlooked in the history of social progress. By the statute of Merton, in the 20th of Henry III., the lord is permitted to approve, that is, to inclose the waste lands of his manor, provided he leave sufficient common of pasture for the freeholders. Higden, a writer who lived about the time of Richard II., says, in reference to the number of hydes and vills of England at the Conquest, that by clearing of woods, and ploughing up wastes, there were many more of each in his age than formerly.[x] And it might be easily presumed, independently of proof, that woods were cleared, marshes drained, and wastes brought into tillage, during the long period that the house of Plantagenet sat on the throne. From manerial surveys indeed and similar instruments, it appears that in some places there was nearly as much ground cultivated in the reign of Edward III. as at the present day. The condition of different counties however was very far from being alike, and in general the northern and western parts of England were the most backward.[y]

The culture of arable land was very imperfect. Fleta remarks, in the reign of Edward I. or II., that unless an acre yielded more than six bushels of corn, the farmer would be a loser, and the land yield no rent.[z] And Sir John Cullum, from very minute accounts, has calculated that nine or ten bushels were a full average crop on an acre of wheat. An amazing excess of tillage accompanied, and partly, I suppose, produced this imperfect cultivation. In Hawsted, for example, under Edward I., there were thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of arable, and only forty-five of meadow ground. A similar disproportion occurs almost invariably in every account we possess.[a] This seems inconsistent with the low price of cattle. But we must recollect, that the common pasture, often the most extensive part of a manor, is not included, at least by any specific measurement, in these surveys. The rent of land differed of course materially; sixpence an acre seems to have been about the average for arable land in the thirteenth century,[b] though meadow was at double or treble that sum. But the landlords were naturally solicitous to augment a revenue that became more and more inadequate to their luxuries. They grew attentive to agricultural concerns, and perceived that a high rate of produce, against which their less enlightened ancestors had been used to clamour, would bring much more into their coffers than it took away. The exportation of corn had been absolutely prohibited. But the statute of the 15th Henry VI. c. 2, reciting that "on this account, farmers and others who use husbandry, cannot sell their corn but at a low price, to the great damage of the realm," permits it to be sent any where but to the king's enemies, so long as the quarter of wheat shall not exceed 6s. 8d. in value, or that of barley 3s.

The price of wool was fixed in the thirty-second year of the same reign at a minimum, below which no person was suffered to buy it, though he might give more;[c] a provision neither wise nor equitable, but obviously suggested by the same motive. Whether the rents of land were augmented in any degree through these measures, I have not perceived; their great rise took place in the reign of Henry VIII., or rather afterwards.[d] The usual price of land under Edward IV. seems to have been ten years' purchase.[e]

Its condition in France and Italy.

It may easily be presumed that an English writer can furnish very little information as to the state of agriculture in foreign countries. In such works relating to France as have fallen within my reach, I have found nothing satisfactory, and cannot pretend to determine, whether the natural tendency of mankind to ameliorate their condition had a greater influence in promoting agriculture, or the vices inherent in the actual order of society, and those public misfortunes to which that kingdom was exposed, in retarding it.[f] The state of Italy was far different; the rich Lombard plains, still more fertilized by irrigation, became a garden, and agriculture seems to have reached the excellence which it still retains. The constant warfare indeed of neighbouring cities is not very favourable to industry; and upon this account we might incline to place the greatest territorial improvement of Lombardy at an era rather posterior to that of her republican government; but from this it primarily sprung; and without the subjugation of the feudal aristocracy, and that perpetual demand upon the fertility of the earth which an increasing population of citizens produced, the valley of the Po would not have yielded more to human labour than it had done for several preceding centuries.[g] Though Lombardy was extremely populous in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, she exported large quantities of corn.[h] The very curious treatise of Crescentius exhibits the full details of Italian husbandry about 1300, and might afford an interesting comparison to those who are acquainted with its present state. That state indeed in many parts of Italy displays no symptoms of decline. But whatever mysterious influence of soil or climate has scattered the seeds of death on the western regions of Tuscany, had not manifested itself in the middle ages. Among uninhabitable plains, the traveller is struck by the ruins of innumerable castles and villages, monuments of a time when pestilence was either unfelt, or had at least not forbad the residence of mankind. Volterra, whose deserted walls look down upon that tainted solitude, was once a small but free republic; Siena, round whom, though less depopulated, the malignant influence hovers, was once almost the rival of Florence. So melancholy and apparently irresistible a decline of culture and population through physical causes, as seems to have gradually overspread that portion of Italy, has not perhaps been experienced in any other part of Europe, unless we except Iceland.

Gardening.

The Italians of the fourteenth century seem to have paid some attention to an art, of which, both as related to cultivation and to architecture, our own forefathers were almost entirely ignorant. Crescentius dilates upon horticulture, and gives a pretty long list of herbs both esculent and medicinal.[i] His notions about the ornamental department are rather beyond what we should expect, and I do not know that his scheme of a flower-garden could be much amended. His general arrangements, which are minutely detailed with evident fondness for the subject, would of course appear too formal at present; yet less so than those of subsequent times; and though acquainted with what is called the topiary art, that of training or cutting trees into regular figures, he does not seem to run into its extravagance. Regular gardens, according to Paulmy, were not made in France till the sixteenth or even seventeenth century;[k] yet one is said to have existed at the Louvre, of much older construction.[m] England, I believe, had nothing of the ornamental kind, unless it were some trees regularly disposed in the orchard of a monastery. Even the common horticultural art for culinary purposes, though not entirely neglected, since the produce of gardens is sometimes mentioned in ancient deeds, had not been cultivated with much attention.[n] The esculent vegetables now most in use were introduced in the reign of Elizabeth, and some sorts a great deal later.

Changes in value of money.

I should leave this slight survey of economical history still more imperfect, were I to make no observation on the relative values of money. Without something like precision in our notions upon this subject, every statistical inquiry becomes a source of confusion and error. But considerable difficulties attend the discussion. These arise principally from two causes; the inaccuracy or partial representations of historical writers, on whom we are accustomed too implicitly to rely, and the change of manners, which renders a certain command over articles of purchase less adequate to our wants than it was in former ages.

The first of these difficulties is capable of being removed by a circumspect use of authorities. When this part of statistical history began to excite attention, which was hardly perhaps before the publication of Bishop Fleetwood's Chronicon Preciosum, so few authentic documents had been published with respect to prices, that inquirers were glad to have recourse to historians, even when not contemporary, for such facts as they had thought fit to record. But these historians were sometimes too distant from the times concerning which they wrote, and too careless in their general character, to merit much regard; and even when contemporary, were often credulous, remote from the concerns of the world, and, at the best, more apt to register some extraordinary phenomenon of scarcity or cheapness, than the average rate of pecuniary dealings. The one ought, in my opinion, to be absolutely rejected as testimonies, the other to be sparingly and diffidently admitted.[o] For it is no longer necessary to lean upon such uncertain witnesses. During the last century a very laudable industry has been shown by antiquaries in the publication of account-books belonging to private persons, registers of expenses in convents, returns of markets, valuations of goods, tavern-bills, and in short every document, however trifling in itself, by which this important subject can be illustrated. A sufficient number of such authorities, proving the ordinary tenor of prices rather than any remarkable deviations from it, are the true basis of a table, by which all changes in the value of money should be measured. I have little doubt but that such a table might be constructed from the data we possess with tolerable exactness, sufficient at least to supersede one often quoted by political economists, but which appears to be founded upon very superficial and erroneous inquiries.[p]

It is by no means required that I should here offer such a table of values, which, as to every country except England, I have no means of constructing, and which, even as to England, would be subject to many difficulties.[q] But a reader unaccustomed to these investigations ought to have some assistance in comparing the prices of ancient times with those of his own. I will therefore, without attempting to ascend very high, for we have really no sufficient data as to the period immediately subsequent to the Conquest, much less that which preceded, endeavour at a sort of approximation for the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., previously to the first debasement of the coin by the latter in 1301, the ordinary price of a quarter of wheat appears to have been about four shillings, and that of barley and oats in proportion. A sheep was rather sold high at a shilling, and an ox might be reckoned at ten or twelve.[r] The value of cattle is, of course, dependent upon their breed and condition, and we have unluckily no early account of butcher's meat; but we can hardly take a less multiple than about thirty for animal food and eighteen or twenty for corn, in order to bring the prices of the thirteenth century to a level with those of the present day.[s] Combining the two, and setting the comparative dearness of cloth against the cheapness of fuel and many other articles, we may perhaps consider any given sum under Henry III. and Edward I. as equivalent in general command over commodities to about twenty-four or twenty-five times their nominal value at present. Under Henry VI. the coin had lost one-third of its weight in silver, which caused a proportional increase of money prices;[t] but, so far as I can perceive, there had been no diminution in the value of that metal. We have not much information as to the fertility of the mines which supplied Europe during the middle ages; but it is probable that the drain of silver towards the East, joined to the ostentatious splendour of courts, might fully absorb the usual produce. By the statute 15 H. VI., c. 2, the price up to which wheat might be exported is fixed at 6s. 8d., a point no doubt above the average; and the private documents of that period, which are sufficiently numerous, lead to a similar result.[u] Sixteen will be a proper multiple when we would bring the general value of money in this reign to our present standard.[x] [1816.]

But after ascertaining the proportional values of money at different periods by a comparison of the prices in several of the chief articles of expenditure, which is the only fair process, we shall sometimes be surprised at incidental facts of this class which seem irreducible to any rule. These difficulties arise not so much from the relative scarcity of particular commodities, which it is for the most part easy to explain, as from the change in manners and in the usual mode of living. We have reached in this age so high a pitch of luxury that we can hardly believe or comprehend the frugality of ancient times; and have in general formed mistaken notions as to the habits of expenditure which then prevailed. Accustomed to judge of feudal and chivalrous ages by works of fiction, or by historians who embellished their writings with accounts of occasional festivals and tournaments, and sometimes inattentive enough to transfer the manners of the seventeenth to the fourteenth century, we are not at all aware of the usual simplicity with which the gentry lived under Edward I. or even Henry VI. They drank little wine; they had no foreign luxuries; they rarely or never kept male servants except for husbandry; their horses, as we may guess by the price, were indifferent; they seldom travelled beyond their county. And even their hospitality must have been greatly limited, if the value of manors were really no greater than we find it in many surveys. Twenty-four seems a sufficient multiple when we would raise a sum mentioned by a writer under Edward I. to the same real value expressed in our present money, but an income of 10l. or 20l. was reckoned a competent estate for a gentleman; at least the lord of a single manor would seldom have enjoyed more. A knight who possessed 150l. per annum passed for extremely rich.[y] Yet this was not equal in command over commodities to 4000l. at present. But this income was comparatively free from taxation, and its expenditure lightened by the services of his villeins. Such a person, however, must have been among the most opulent of country gentlemen. Sir John Fortescue speaks of five pounds a year as "a fair living for a yeoman," a class of whom he is not at all inclined to diminish the importance.[z] So, when Sir William Drury, one of the richest men in Suffolk, bequeaths in 1493 fifty marks to each of his daughters, we must not imagine that this was of greater value than four or five hundred pounds at this day, but remark the family pride and want of ready money which induced country gentlemen to leave their younger children in poverty.[a] Or, if we read that the expense of a scholar at the university in 1514 was but five pounds annually, we should err in supposing that he had the liberal accommodation which the present age deems indispensable, but consider how much could be afforded for about sixty pounds, which will be not far from the proportion. And what would a modern lawyer say to the following entry in the churchwarden's accounts of St. Margaret, Westminster, for 1476: "Also paid to Roger Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel giving, 3s. 8d., with four-pence for his dinner"?[b] Though fifteen times the fee might not seem altogether inadequate at present, five shillings would hardly furnish the table of a barrister, even if the fastidiousness of our manners would admit of his accepting such a dole. But this fastidiousness, which considers certain kinds of remuneration degrading to a man of liberal condition, did not prevail in those simple ages. It would seem rather strange that a young lady should learn needlework and good breeding in a family of superior rank, paying for her board; yet such was the laudable custom of the fifteenth and even sixteenth centuries, as we perceive by the Paston Letters, and even later authorities.[c]

Labourers better paid than at present.

There is one very unpleasing remark which every one who attends to the subject of prices will be induced to make, that the labouring classes, especially those engaged in agriculture, were better provided with the means of subsistence in the reign of Edward III. or of Henry VI. than they are at present. In the fourteenth century Sir John Cullum observes a harvest man had fourpence a day, which enabled him in a week to buy a comb of wheat; but to buy a comb of wheat a man must now (1784) work ten or twelve days.[d] So, under Henry VI., if meat was at a farthing and a half the pound, which I suppose was about the truth, a labourer earning threepence a day, or eighteen pence in the week, could buy a bushel of wheat at six shillings the quarter, and twenty-four pounds of meat for his family. A labourer at present, earning twelve shillings a week, can only buy half a bushel of wheat at eighty shillings the quarter, and twelve pounds of meat at seven-pence.[e] Several acts of parliament regulate the wages that might be paid to labourers of different kinds. Thus the statute of labourers in 1350 fixed the wages of reapers during harvest at threepence a-day without diet, equal to five shillings at present; that of 23 H. VI., c. 12, in 1444, fixed the reapers' wages at five-pence and those of common workmen in building at 3-1/2d., equal to 6s. 8d. and 4s. 8d.; that of 11 H. VII., c. 22, in 1496, leaves the wages of labourers in harvest as before, but rather increases those of ordinary workmen. The yearly wages of a chief hind or shepherd by the act of 1444 were 1l. 4s., equivalent to about 20l., those of a common servant in husbandry 18s. 4d., with meat and drink; they were somewhat augmented by the statute of 1496.[f] Yet, although these wages are regulated as a maximum by acts of parliament, which may naturally be supposed to have had a view rather towards diminishing than enhancing the current rate, I am not fully convinced that they were not rather beyond it; private accounts at least do not always correspond with these statutable prices.[g] And it is necessary to remember that the uncertainty of employment, natural to so imperfect a state of husbandry, must have diminished the labourers' means of subsistence. Extreme dearth, not more owing to adverse seasons than to improvident consumption, was frequently endured.[h] But after every allowance of this kind I should find it difficult to resist the conclusion that, however the labourer has derived benefit from the cheapness of manufactured commodities and from many inventions of common utility, he is much inferior in ability to support a family to his ancestors three or four centuries ago. I know not why some have supposed that meat was a luxury seldom obtained by the labourer. Doubtless he could not have procured as much as he pleased. But, from the greater cheapness of cattle, as compared with corn, it seems to follow that a more considerable portion of his ordinary diet consisted of animal food than at present. It was remarked by Sir John Fortescue that the English lived far more upon animal diet than their rivals the French; and it was natural to ascribe their superior strength and courage to this cause.[i] I should feel much satisfaction in being convinced that no deterioration in the state of the labouring classes has really taken place; yet it cannot, I think, appear extraordinary to those who reflect, that the whole population of England in the year 1377 did not much exceed 2,300,000 souls, about one-fifth of the results upon the last enumeration, an increase with which that of the fruits of the earth cannot be supposed to have kept an even pace.[k]

Improvement in the moral character of Europe.

The second head to which I referred, the improvements of European society in the latter period of the middle ages, comprehends several changes, not always connected, with each other, which contributed to inspire a more elevated tone of moral sentiment, or at least to restrain the commission of crimes. But the general effect of these upon the human character is neither so distinctly to be traced, nor can it be arranged with so much attention to chronology, as the progress of commercial wealth or of the arts that depend upon it. We cannot from any past experience indulge the pleasing vision of a constant and parallel relation between the moral and intellectual energies, the virtues and the civilization of mankind. Nor is any problem connected with philosophical history more difficult than to compare the relative characters of different generations, especially if we include a large geographical surface in our estimate. Refinement has its evils as well as barbarism; the virtues that elevate a nation in one century pass in the next to a different region; vice changes its form without losing its essence; the marked features of individual character stand out in relief from the surface of history, and mislead our judgment as to the general course of manners; while political revolutions and a bad constitution of government may always undermine or subvert the improvements to which more favourable circumstances have contributed. In comparing, therefore, the fifteenth with the twelfth century, no one would deny the vast increase of navigation and manufactures, the superior refinement of manners, the greater diffusion of literature. But should I assert that man had raised himself in the latter period above the moral degradation of a more barbarous age, I might be met by the question whether history bears witness to any greater excesses of rapine and inhumanity than in the wars of France and England under Charles VII., or whether the rough patriotism and fervid passions of the Lombards in the twelfth century were not better than the systematic treachery of their servile descendants three hundred years afterwards. The proposition must therefore be greatly limited; yet we can scarcely hesitate to admit, upon a comprehensive view, that there were several changes during the last four of the middle ages, which must naturally have tended to produce, and some of which did unequivocally produce, a meliorating effect, within the sphere of their operation, upon the moral character of society.

Elevation of the lower ranks.

The first and perhaps the most important of these, was the gradual elevation of those whom unjust systems of polity had long depressed; of the people itself, as opposed to the small number of rich and noble, by the abolition or desuetude of domestic and predial servitude, and by the privileges extended to corporate towns. The condition of slavery is indeed perfectly consistent with the observance of moral obligations; yet reason and experience will justify the sentence of Homer, that he who loses his liberty loses half his virtue. Those who have acquired, or may hope to acquire, property of their own, are most likely to respect that of others; those whom law protects as a parent are most willing to yield her a filial obedience; those who have much to gain by the good-will of their fellow citizens are most interested in the preservation of an honourable character. I have been led, in different parts of the present work, to consider these great revolutions in the order of society under other relations than that of their moral efficacy; and it will therefore be unnecessary to dwell upon them; especially as this efficacy is indeterminate, though I think unquestionable, and rather to be inferred from general reflections than capable of much illustration by specific facts.

Police.

We may reckon in the next place among the causes of moral improvement, a more regular administration of justice according to fixed laws, and a more effectual police. Whether the courts of judicature were guided by the feudal customs or the Roman law, it was necessary for them to resolve litigated questions with precision and uniformity. Hence a more distinct theory of justice and good faith was gradually apprehended; and the moral sentiments of mankind were corrected, as on such subjects they often require to be, by clearer and better grounded inferences of reasoning. Again, though it cannot be said that lawless rapine was perfectly restrained even at the end of the fifteenth century, a sensible amendment had been every where experienced. Private warfare, the licensed robbery of feudal manners, had been subjected to so many mortifications by the kings of France, and especially by St. Louis, that it can hardly be traced beyond the fourteenth century. In Germany and Spain it lasted longer; but the various associations for maintaining tranquillity in the former country had considerably diminished its violence before the great national measure of public peace adopted under Maximilian.[m] Acts of outrage committed by powerful men became less frequent as the executive government acquired more strength to chastise them. We read that St. Louis, the best of French kings, imposed a fine upon the lord of Vernon for permitting a merchant to be robbed in his territory between sunrise and sunset. For by the customary law, though in general ill observed, the lord was bound to keep the roads free from depredators in the day-time, in consideration of the toll he received from passengers.[n] The same prince was with difficulty prevented from passing a capital sentence on Enguerrand de Coucy, a baron of France, for a murder.[o] Charles the Fair actually put to death a nobleman of Languedoc for a series of robberies, notwithstanding the intercession of the provincial nobility.[p] The towns established a police of their own for internal security, and rendered themselves formidable to neighbouring plunderers. Finally, though not before the reign of Louis XI., an armed force was established for the preservation of police.[q] Various means were adopted in England to prevent robberies, which indeed were not so frequently perpetrated as they were on the continent, by men of high condition. None of these perhaps had so much efficacy as the frequent sessions of judges under commissions of gaol delivery. But the spirit of this country has never brooked that coercive police which cannot exist without breaking in upon personal liberty by irksome regulations, and discretionary exercise of power; the sure instrument of tyranny, which renders civil privileges at once nugatory and insecure, and by which we should dearly purchase some real benefits connected with its slavish discipline.

Religious sects.

I have some difficulty in adverting to another source of moral improvement during this period, the growth of religious opinions adverse to those of the established church, both on account of its great obscurity, and because many of these heresies were mixed up with an excessive fanaticism. But they fixed themselves so deeply in the hearts of the inferior and more numerous classes, they bore, generally speaking, so immediate a relation to the state of manners, and they illustrate so much that more visible and eminent revolution which ultimately rose out of them in the sixteenth century, that I must reckon these among the most interesting phenomena in the progress of European society.

Many ages elapsed, during which no remarkable instance occurs of a popular deviation from the prescribed line of belief; and pious Catholics console themselves by reflecting that their forefathers, in those times of ignorance, slept at least the sleep of orthodoxy, and that their darkness was interrupted by no false lights of human reasoning.[r] But from the twelfth century this can no longer be their boast. An inundation of heresy broke in that age upon the church, which no persecution was able thoroughly to repress, till it finally overspread half the surface of Europe. Of this religious innovation we must seek the commencement in a different part of the globe. The Manicheans afford an eminent example of that durable attachment to a traditional creed, which so many ancient sects, especially in the East, have cherished through the vicissitudes of ages, in spite of persecution and contempt. Their plausible and widely extended system had been in early times connected with the name of Christianity, however incompatible with its doctrines and its history. After a pretty long obscurity, the Manichean theory revived with some modification in the western parts of Armenia, and was propagated in the eighth and ninth centuries by a sect denominated Paulicians. Their tenets are not to be collected with absolute certainty from the mouths of their adversaries, and no apology of their own survives. There seems however to be sufficient evidence that the Paulicians, though professing to acknowledge and even to study the apostolical writings, ascribed the creation of the world to an evil deity, whom they supposed also to be the author of the Jewish law, and consequently rejected all the Old Testament. Believing, with the ancient Gnostics, that our Saviour was clothed on earth with an impassive celestial body, they denied the reality of his death and resurrection.[s] These errors exposed them to a long and cruel persecution, during which a colony of exiles was planted by one of the Greek emperors in Bulgaria.[t] From this settlement they silently promulgated their Manichean creed over the western regions of Christendom. A large part of the commerce of those countries with Constantinople was carried on for several centuries by the channel of the Danube. This opened an immediate intercourse with the Paulicians, who may be traced up that river through Hungary and Bavaria, or sometimes taking the route of Lombardy into Switzerland and France.[u] In the last country, and especially in its southern and eastern provinces, they became conspicuous under a variety of names; such as Catharists, Picards, Paterins, but above all, Albigenses. It is beyond a doubt that many of these sectaries owed their origin to the Paulicians; the appellation of Bulgarians was distinctively bestowed upon them; and, according to some writers, they acknowledged a primate or patriarch resident in that country.[x] The tenets ascribed to them by all contemporary authorities coincide so remarkably with those held by the Paulicians, and in earlier times by the Manicheans, that I do not see how we can reasonably deny what is confirmed by separate and uncontradicted testimonies, and contains no intrinsic want of probability.[y]

Waldenses.

But though, the derivation of these heretics called Albigenses from Bulgaria is sufficiently proved, it is by no means to be concluded that all who incurred the same imputation either derived their faith from the same country, or had adopted the Manichean theory of the Paulicians. From the very invectives of their enemies, and the acts of the Inquisition, it is manifest that almost every shade of heterodoxy was found among these dissidents, till it vanished in a simple protestation against the wealth and tyranny of the clergy. Those who were absolutely free from any taint of Manicheism are properly called Waldenses; a name perpetually confounded in later times with that of Albigenses, but distinguishing a sect probably of separate origin, and at least of different tenets. These, according to the majority of writers, took their appellation from Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, the parent, about the year 1160, of a congregation of seceders from the church, who spread very rapidly over France and Germany.[z] According to others, the original Waldenses were a race of uncorrupted shepherds, who in the valleys of the Alps had shaken off, or perhaps never learned, the system of superstition on which the Catholic church depended for its ascendency. I am not certain whether their existence can be distinctly traced beyond the preaching of Waldo, but it is well known that the proper seat of the Waldenses or Vaudois has long continued to be in certain valleys of Piedmont. These pious and innocent sectaries, of whom the very monkish historians speak well, appear to have nearly resembled the modern Moravians. They had ministers of their own appointment, and denied the lawfulness of oaths and of capital punishment. In other respects their opinions probably were not far removed from those usually called Protestant. A simplicity of dress, and especially the use of wooden sandals, was affected by this people.[a]