A short history of social life in England. Margaret Bertha Synge
The clergy, after the Conquest, had much to contend with. The Church was in a deplorable condition. The Saxon clergy had grown illiterate and ignorant; the discipline of the monastic houses was lax; monks had cast aside their habit to enter into the sports and secular life of the people. Inasmuch as the Norman Conquest bore the character of a religious mission, and a banner blessed by the Pope had waved over the victorious Normans at Senlac, it is natural to find great changes taking place in the Church, An age of vigorous growth was now ushered in, an age of "great men, of grand ideals and noble ventures." The substitution of Norman ecclesiastics for Saxon was at once begun, and such names as those of Lanfranc, Anselm, and Becket speak to us of reform within and without. Scholars, statesmen, enthusiasts—each had his message to an age of violence and turbulence. Separate legislation for matters spiritual and temporal, the revival of learning among the clergy, together with a stricter celibacy and the closer connection of the Norman Church in England with the great centre of civilisation in Rome—these were among the important reforms of the thirteenth century.
The Norman prelates brought into England a passion for building. Abbey churches, minsters, and cathedrals began to arise in every diocese. The sees of bishops were transferred from villages to popular towns; thus the Bishop of Thetford migrated to Norwich, and Dorchester to Lincoln. To-day we love and reverence the simplicity and strength of all that remains to us of early Norman architecture. Its chief characteristics are well-known—the low round arch, the stupendous columns, and the stern style of decoration, good examples of which may be seen still at Durham, Canterbury, and Peterborough. Though the secret of mortar-making had not gone with the Romans, yet much early Norman work has perished. The tower of Winchester Cathedral, built in 1093, fell fourteen years later, and though at the time the catastrophe was attributed to Divine displeasure, it was undoubtedly due to bad mortar! Within the great minsters some few organs were now built for Church music. There was a famous one at Winchester with 400 pipes and twenty-six bellows, worked by seventy strong men, "covered with perspiration." Two monks played on two sets of keys simultaneously, with the somewhat natural result that an overwhelming roar was heard all over the city.
In connection with the cathedral was the monastery. As in the old days, those who wished to live the highest Christian life took refuge in monastic discipline and rule. The paths of life were few and sharply defined. All men were warriors; the warriors of God must be monks. As heretofore, monasteries were the centres of learning: here Norman and Saxon children alike learnt to read and to write and to sing; here books were copied and illuminated and chronicles kept—imperfect and untrustworthy, but beyond all words precious. Here, too, were the hospitals, where the sick poor were provided with food and clothing; here were the wooden houses for those stricken with that scourge of the Middle Ages, leprosy.
It is this spirit or consciousness of sacrifice made ungrudgingly for the sick and suffering that gave rise to the spirit of Chivalry, which was such a characteristic of this age. For it is to the new life breathed into Christianity by direct contact with Europe after the Conquest that we owe the spirit of knighthood, suggestive of a new ideal and more generous impulses than any hitherto known in this country. Knighthood in the Middle Ages was no lightly earned title, as it is to-day. The ceremonies then were entirely of a religious character. After bathing, typical of baptism, the candidate for knighthood was clothed in a white tunic, symbol of purity; then a red robe, symbolical of the blood he might be called upon to shed in the defence of the oppressed; over which garments was placed a black tight gown, representing the mystery of death to be solved here after. Left alone for twenty-four hours to fast and pray, the young man then made his confession, received the sacrament, attended Mass, and listened to an address on his new life and duties. This over, a sword was hung round his neck; he was dressed in new garments, spurs, armour, a coat of mail, cuirass, gauntlets were presented, and he kneeled before his lord, who pronounced over him: "In the name of God, of St. Michael and St. George, I make thee knight Be valiant, fearless, and loyal."
These words were accompanied by three taps on the shoulder with a sword, and the young man rose a knight, member of the great Christian brotherhood of chivalry, one of
"A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world."
The whole spirit of knighthood lifts us into another atmosphere, and it seems strange to mark the co-existing condition of brutality, murder, highway robbery and cruelty that characterises the same age. The Crusading fever is but the result of the new-born desire to minister to those in need and to relieve the oppressed.
By the year 1204, Saxon, Dane, and Norman were practically one people. "Sons of one mother," they soon learnt to speak the same language, to obey the same King, and to worship the same God. The Norman Conquerors were gradually lost in the great mass of the English people, but in the process they left their indelible mark, and England is the richer for their coming. The brighter, loftier, and more enthusiastic Norman temper mingled happily with the stolid, resolute nature of the Anglo-Saxon. Norman severity was necessary to strengthen Anglo-Saxon patriotism; the Norman genius for order and organisation was able to define and concentrate existing Anglo-Saxon institutions. The Normans did not sweep and destroy, they strengthened and added. Perhaps our language illustrates this rich addition best. Such words as sceptre, royalty, homage, duke, palace, castle, were used for the first time. Synonyms exist, the one homely Anglo-Saxon, the other ornate Norman, as "heavy" and "ponderous," "earthly" and "terrestial," " shining" and "radiant," while even to-day our language bears traces of the Conquest, and the very words separate master from servant. Thus, in the fields animals were called sheep, oxen, and calves, fed by poor Englishmen; at table they became mutton, beef, and veal, eaten by the Normans. Both peoples had to pass through a fiery ordeal, but there rose as from a furnace a new product—the English national character; and to its fusion of Norman fire with Saxon earnestness we owe the noblest scenes in our "rough island story." It is the "Norman graft upon the sturdy Saxon tree" that has made the English people great, and produced the scholars, soldiers and sailors that are the pride of her history. It is likewise this blend of Norman, Saxon, and Dane, this single race of Englishmen, that has built up the young nation across the restless Atlantic. Our kin are their kin, our forefathers are their forefathers, while we are bound together not only in blood and in speech, but by a rich inheritance of noble achievement and glorious association.
CHAPTER VI
Circa 1204—1250
AN AGE OF PROMISE
"To none will we sell or deny or delay right or justice."
Magna Charta.
EMERGING from the dark days of turbulence after the Norman Conquest, when the Englishman's castle was in very deed and truth his home, we turn to the thirteenth century to find considerable development in the social life of our forefathers. The days of warfare past, the English home no longer required the strong defensive construction of the castle, with its frowning battlements and towers. Smaller dwellings with less gloomy surroundings now succeeded the fortress home, and the English manor-house sprang into existence. The Norman hall still played a large part in its construction. Though no longer built over dark dungeons for the imprisonment of human foes, it was, nevertheless, built over strongly vaulted cellars. It was dark and it was draughty. True, the long narrow windows of the castle had been enlarged, and wooden shutters constructed to cover them, but glass was still too dear for anything but Royal palaces. It cost six shillings a foot, and it was risky work carting it over the rough roads of this period. Hence we get a Royal command in 1238 to place a window of white glass in the Queen's bedroom at Winchester, "so that the chamber be not so windy as it used to be," but the houses even of the rich barons were exposed to all the winds of heaven.
Tapestry covered the walls as of old, worked with patience and ability by the English ladies, who had plenty of time on their hands—plenty of imagination and sentiment too, to cover their walls with inspiring representations of noble deeds and knightly heroism. There were few carpets