The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866

Among the greater nobles, the details of the daily life were sometimes on a more magnificent scale; but the leading features were as we have described them. Rude pomp and barbaric splendor marked the establishments of some of the powerful barons and ecclesiastical dignitaries. At tilt and tournament, the contending knights strove to outshine each other in gorgeousness of equipment, as well as in deeds of arms. Nor were the ladies averse to richness of attire in their own persons. Costly robes and dainty furs were worn, and jewels and gems of price sparkled when the dames and demoiselles appeared at great gatherings, or on occasions of state and ceremony. The extravagance of dress in both sexes had grown to be so great an evil, that stringent sumptuary laws were passed, but without producing any effect.

The moral state of even the highest classes of society was not of a flattering character. Europe was one huge camp and battle-field, in which all the chivalry of the day had been educated,—no good school for purity of life and delicacy of language. The literature of the time, at least that portion of it which penetrated to ladies' chambers, was of an amorous, and too frequently of an indelicate character. A debased and sensual clergy swarmed over the land, finding their way into every household, and gradually corrupting those with whom their sacred office brought them into contact. The manners and habits of the time afforded every facility for the gratification of debased passions and indulgence in immoral practices.

Whilst the barons feasted and fought, the ladies intrigued, and the clergy violated every principle of the religion they professed, the great mass of the population lived on, with scarcely a thought bestowed on them by their social superiors. Between the Anglo-Norman baron and the Anglo-Saxon laborer, or "villain," there was a great gulf fixed. The antipathy of an antagonistic and conquered race to its conquerors was intensified by years of oppression and wrong, and the laborer cherished a burning desire to break the bonds of thraldom in which most of the poor were held.

By the laws of the feudal system, the tenants and laborers on the property of a baron were his "villains," or slaves. They were divided into two classes;—the "villains regardant," who were permitted to occupy and cultivate small portions of land, on condition of rendering certain stipulated services to their lord, and were therefore considered in the light of slaves to the land; and the "villains in gross," who were the personal slaves of the landowner, and were compelled to do the work they were set to perform in consideration of their food and clothing. Besides these two classes a third had recently come into existence, and, owing to various causes, was fast increasing in extent and importance,—that of free laborers, who worked for hire. This class was recruited in various ways from the ranks of the "villains in gross." Some were manumitted by their dying masters, as an act of piety in atonement for the deeds of violence done during life; but by far the greater number effected their freedom by escaping to distant parts of the country, where but little search would be made for them, or by seeking the refuge of the walled towns and cities, where a residence of a year and a day would give them freedom by law. The citizens were always ready to give asylum to those fugitives, for they supplied the growing need for laborers, and enabled the cities, by the increase of population, to maintain their independence against the pretensions of the barons.

The condition of the "villain" was bad at the best; and numerous petty acts of oppression in most instances increased the bitterness of his lot. Himself the property of another, he could not legally hold possessions of any kind. Not only the land he tilled, and the rude implements of husbandry with which he painfully cultivated the soil, but the cattle with which he worked, the house in which he lived, the few chattels he gathered around him, and the scanty store of money earned by hard labor, all belonged to his master, who could at any time dispossess him of them. The "villain" who obtained a livelihood by working the few acres of land which had been held from father to son, on condition of performing personal labor or other services on the estate of the landowner, was subject not only to the demands of his master, but to the tithing of the Church; to the doles exacted by the swarms of begging friars, who, like Irish beggars of the present day, invoked cheap blessings on the cheerful giver, and launched bitter curses at the heads of those who refused alms; to the impositions of the wandering "pardoners," with their charms and relics; and to the tyrannical exactions of the "summoners," who, under pretence of writs from ecclesiastical courts, robbed all who were not in position to resist their fraudulent demands. What these spared was frequently swept away by the visits of the king's purveyors and the officers of others in power, who, not content with robbing the poor husbandman of the proceeds of his toil, treated the men with violence and the women with outrage. Complaint was useless. The "churl" had no rights which those in office were bound to respect.

Ignorant, superstitious, and condemned to a life of unrequited toil and unredressed wrongs, the mental and moral condition of the agricultural poor was wretchedly low. Huddled together in mud cottages, through the rotten thatches of which the rain penetrated; clothed with rough garments that were seldom changed night or day; feeding on coarse food, and that in insufficient quantities,—their physical condition was one of extreme misery. The usual daily allowance of food to the bond laborer of either class, when working for the owner of the land, was two herrings, milk for cheese, and a loaf of bread, with the addition in harvest of a small allowance of beer. Occasionally, salted meats or stockfish were substituted for the herrings.

The condition of the free laborer was measurably better; but even he was condemned to a life of privation and wretchedness, relieved only by the knowledge that his scanty earnings were his own, and that he could change the scene of his labors if he saw fit. The ordinary agricultural laborer, at the wages usually given, would have to work more than a week for a bushel of wheat. At harvest-time and other periods when the demand for labor was unusually great, as it was after the pestilences that swept the land about the time of which we write, the free laborers demanded higher wages; and although laws were passed to prevent their obtaining more than the usual rates, necessity frequently compelled their employment at the advanced prices. The receipt of higher wages only temporarily bettered their condition. Accustomed to griping hunger and short allowances of food, when better days came, they thought only of enjoying the present, and took no heed of the future. After harvest, with its high wages and cheapness of provision, the laborer frequently became wasteful and improvident. Instead of the stinted allowance of salted meat or fish, with the pinched loaf of bean-flour, and an occasional draught of weak beer, his fastidious appetite demanded fresh meat or fish, white bread, vegetables freshly gathered, and ale of the best. As long as his store lasted, he worked as little as possible, and grumbled at the fortune that made him a laborer. But these halcyon days were few, and soon passed away, to be followed by decreasing allowances of the commonest food, fierce pangs of hunger, and miserable destitution. A bad harvest inflicted untold wretchedness on the poor. Ill lodged, ill fed, and scantily clothed, disease cut them down like grass before the scythe. A deadly pestilence swept over the land in 1348, carrying off about two thirds of the people; and nearly all the victims were from among the poorest classes. In 1361, another pestilence carried off thousands, again spreading terror and dismay through the country. Seven years later a third visitation desolated England. Here and there one of the better class fell a victim to the destroyer; but the great mass were from the ranks of the half-starved and poorly lodged laborers.

The morality of the poor was, as might be expected, at a low ebb. Modesty, chastity, and temperance could scarcely be looked for in wretched mud huts, where all ages and sexes herded together like swine. Men and women alike fled from their miserable homes to the ale-house, where they drank long draughts of cheap ale, and, in imitation of their superiors in station, listened to a low class of "japers" who recited "rhymes of Robin Hood," or told coarse and obscene stories for the sake of a share of the ale, or such few small coins as could be drawn from the ragged pouches of the bacchanals.

Between proud wealth and abject poverty there can be no friendly feeling. Stolid, brutish ignorance can alone render the bonds of the slave endurable. As his eyes are slowly opened by increasing knowledge, and he can compare his condition with that of the freeman, his fetters gall him, he becomes restive in his bonds, and at length turns in blind fury on his oppressors, striking mad blows with his manacled hands. Trodden into the dust by the iron heel of a tyrannical feudal power, the peasantry of France had turned on their oppressors, and wreaked a brief but savage vengeance for ages of wrong. The atrocious cruelties and mad excesses of the revolted Jacquerie could only have been committed by those who had been so long treated as brutes that they had acquired brutish passions and instincts. The English peasantry had not yet followed the example of their French compeers; but the gathering storm already darkened the sky, and the mutterings of the thunder were heard. Superstitiously religious, they hated the ministers of religion who violated its principles. Born slaves and hopelessly debased and ignorant, they began to ask the question,—

"When Adam delved and Eve span,Who then was the gentleman?"

Occasionally a rude ballad found its way among the people fiercely expressive of their scorn of the clergy and their hatred of the rich. One that was very popular, and has been transmitted to our day, asked,—

"While God was on earthAnd wandered wide,What was the reasonWhy he would not ride?Because he would have no groomTo go by his side,Nor grudging of no gadeling2To scold nor to chide.*   *   *   *"Hearken hitherward, horsemen,A tiding I you tell,That ye shall hangAnd harbor in hell!"

But no leader had as yet arisen to give proper voice to the desire for reformation that burned in the hearts of the common people. The writers of that age were breathing the intoxicating air of court favor, and heeded not the sufferings of the common rabble. Froissart, the courtly canon and chronicler of deeds of chivalry, was writing French madrigals and amorous ditties for the ear of Queen Philippa, and loved too well gay society, luxurious feasts, and dainty attire, not to shrink with disgust from thought of the dirty, uncouth, and miserable herd of "greasy caps." Gower was inditing fashionable love-songs. Chaucer, who years after was to direct such telling blows in his Canterbury Tales at the vices and corruptness of the clergy, was a favorite member of the retinue of the powerful "John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster," and had as yet only written long and stately poems on the history of Troilus and Cressida, the Parliament of Birds, and the Court of Love. Wycliffe, the great English reformer of the Church, was quietly living at his rectory of Fylingham, and preparing his first essays against the mendicant orders. John Ball, the "crazy priest of Kent," as Froissart calls him, was brooding over the miseries of his poor parishioners, and nursing in his mind that enmity to all social distinctions with which he afterwards inflamed the minds of the peasantry, and incited them to open rebellion.

But in the quarter least expected the oppressed people found an advocate. An unobtrusive monk, whose name is almost a doubtful tradition, stole out from his quiet cell in Malvern Abbey, and, whilst his brethren feasted, climbed the gentle slope of the Worcestershire hills, and drank in the beauties of the varied landscape at his feet. There, on a May morning, as he rested under a bank by the side of a brooklet, and was lulled to sleep by the murmuring of the water, he dreamed those dreams that set waking people to thinking, and gave a powerful impetus to the moral and social revolution that was just commencing.

The "Vision of Piers Plowman" is every way a singular production. Clothed in the then almost obsolete verse of a past age, it breathes wholly the spirit of the time in which it was written. The work of a monk, it is unsparing in its attacks on the monastic orders. Intended for the reading or hearing of the middle and lower classes, it gives more frequent glimpses of the social condition of all ranks of people than any other work of that age. As a philological monument, it is of great value; as a poem, it contains many passages of merit; and as a storehouse of allusions to the social life of the people in the fourteenth century, it is invaluable.

The poem consists of a series of visions or dreams, of an allegorical character, in which the dreamer seeks to find Truth and Righteousness on earth, meeting with but little success. The allegorical idea cannot be followed without weariness, and, in fact, the intentions of the writer are by no means clear, the allegory being frequently involved and contradictory. The beauty of the poem lies in its detached passages, its occasional poetic touches, its graphic pictures, biting satire, and withering denunciation of fraud, corruption, and tyranny. The measure adopted is the unrhymed alliterative, characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon literature, and which had long been disused, but which retained its hold on the affections of the common people, who were of Anglo-Saxon stock. In the extracts we give from the poem, the measure is retained, but the words modernized, so far as can be done without injuring the sense or metre.

The opening passage of the "Vision" has been so frequently reproduced, as a specimen of the poet's style, that it is probably familiar to many readers, but its exquisite naturalness and simplicity tempt us to quote it here.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

1

Garment.

2

Vagabond.