Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History

I may be excused for marshalling all these well-known points before the public by the consideration that they must serve to show how intimately these views are connected with the general principles of a great school. The stress laid by Kemble on property in land ought to be noticed especially: land gets to be the basis of all political and social condition. This is going much further than Palgrave ever went; though not further than Eichhorn. What actually severs Kemble from the Romantics is his estimate of the free element in the people. He does not try to picture a kind of political Arcadia in Saxon England, but there is no more talk about the rightless condition of the ceorls or the predominance of aristocracy. The Teutonic race towers above everything. Although the existence of Celts after the Conquests is admitted, neither Celtic nor Roman elements appear as exercising any influence in the course of history. Everything takes place as if Germanic communities had been living and growing on soil that had never before been appropriated. Curiously enough the weakest point of Kemble's doctrine seems to lie in its very centre—in his theory of social groups. One is often reminded of Grimm by his account of the Mark, and it was an achievement to call attention to such a community as distinct from the tribal group, but the political, legal, and economical description of the Mark is very vague. As to the reasoning about gilds, tithings, and hundreds, it is based on a constant confusion of widely different subjects.

Generally speaking, it is not for a lawyer's acuteness and precision that one has to look in Kemble's book: important distinctions very often get blurred in his exposition, and though constantly protesting against abstract theories and suppositions not based on fact, he indulges in them a great deal himself. Still Kemble's work was very remarkable: his extensive, if not very critical study of the charters opened his eyes to the first-rate importance of the law of real property in the course of medieval history: this was a great step in advance of Palgrave, who had recognised law as the background of history, but whose attention had been directed almost exclusively to the formal side—to judicial institutions. And Kemble actually succeeded in bringing forward some of the questions which were to remain for a long time the main points of debate among historians.

K. Maurer.

The development of the school was evidently to proceed in the direction of greater accuracy and improved methods. Great service has been done in this respect by Konrad Maurer21. He is perhaps sometimes inclined to magnify his own independence and dissent from Kemble's opinions, but he has undoubtedly contributed to strengthen and clear up some of Kemble's views, and has gone further than his predecessor on important subjects. He accepts in the main Kemble's doctrines as to the Mark, the allotment of land, the opposition of folkland and book-land, and expounds them with greater fulness and better insight into the evidence. On the other hand he goes his own way as to the Gesíðs (Gefolgschaft), and the part played by large estates in the political process. Maurer reduces the importance of the former and lays more stress on the latter than Kemble22. Altogether the German scholar's investigations have been of great moment, and this not only for methodical reasons, but also because they lead to a complete emancipation of the school from Eichhorn's influence.

Freeman.

As to the Conquests, Germanist views have been formulated with great authority by Freeman. A comparison of the course of development in Romance countries with the history of England, and a careful study of that evidence of the chronicles which Kemble disregarded, has led the historian of the Norman Conquest to the conclusion, that the Teutonic invaders actually rooted out most of the Romanised Celtic population of English Britain, and reduced it to utter insignificance in those western counties where they did not destroy it. It is the only inference that can be drawn from the temporary disappearance of Christianity, from the all but complete absence of Celtic and Latin words in the English tongue, from the immunity of English legal and social life from Roman influence. The Teutonic bias which was given to the history of the island by the Conquest of Angles and Saxons has not been altered by the Conquest of the Normans. The foreign colouring imparted to the language is no testimony of any radical change in the internal structure of the people: it remained on the surface, and the history of the island remained English, that is, Teutonic. Even feudalism, which appears in its full shape after William the Bastard's invasion, had been prepared in its component parts by the Saxon period. In working out particulars Freeman had to reckon largely with Kemble's work and to strike the balance between the conflicting and onesided theories of Thierry and Palgrave. Questions of legal and social research concern him only so far as they illustrate the problem of the struggle and fusion of national civilisations. His material is chiefly drawn from chronicles, and the history of external facts of war, government, and legislation comes naturally to the fore. But all the numberless details tend towards one end: they illustrate the Teutonic aspect of English culture, and assign it a definite place in the historical system of Europe.

Stubbs.

Stubbs' 'Constitutional History,' embracing as it does the whole of the Middle Ages, is not designed to trace out some one idea for the sake of its being new or to take up questions which had remained unheeded by earlier scholars. Solid learning, critical caution and accuracy are the great requirements of such an undertaking, and every one who has had anything to do with the Bishop of Oxford's publications knows to what extent his work is distinguished by these qualities. If one may speak of a main idea in such a book as the Constitutional History of a people, Stubbs' main idea seems to be, that the English Constitution is the result of administrative concentration in the age of the Normans of local self-govermment formed in the age of the Saxons. This conclusion is foreshadowed in Palgrave's work, but what appears there as a mere hypothesis and in confusion with all kinds of heterogeneous elements, comes out in the later work with the overwhelming force of careful and impartial induction. Stubbs' point of view is a Germanist one. The book begins with an estimate of Teutonic influence in the different countries of Europe, and England is taken in one sense as the most perfect manifestation of the Teutonic historical tendency. The influx of Frenchmen and French ideas under William the Conqueror and after him had important effects in rousing national energy, contributing to national unification, settling the forms of administration and justice, but at bottom there remained the Teutonic character of the nation. The 'Constitutional History' approaches the question of the village community, but its object is strictly limited to the bearing of the problem on general history and to the testimony of direct authority. It starts from the community in land as described by Cæsar and Tacitus, and notices that Saxon times present only a few scattered references to communal ownership. Most of the arable land was held separately, but the woods, meadow, and pasture still remained in the ownership of village groups. The township with its rights and duties as to police, justice, and husbandry was modified but not destroyed by feudalism. The change from personal relations to territorial, and from the freedom of the masses to their dependency, is already very noticeable in the Saxon period. The Norman epoch completed the process by substituting proprietary rights in the place of personal subordination and political subjection. Still even after conquest and legal theory had been over the ground, the compact self-government of the township is easily discernible under the crust of the manorial system, and the condition of medieval villains presents many traces of original freedom.

Gneist.

Gneist's work is somewhat different in colouring and closely connected with a definite political theory. Tocqueville in France has done most to draw attention to the vital importance of local self-government in the development of liberal institutions; and Stubbs' history goes far to demonstrate Tocqueville's general view by a masterly statement as to the origins of English institutions. In Gneist's hands the doctrine of decentralisation assumes a particular shape by the fact that it is constructed on a social foundation; the German thinker has been trying all along to show that the English influence is not one of self-government only, but of aristocratical self-government. The part played by the gentry in local and central affairs is the great point of historical interest in Gneist's eyes. Even in the Saxon period he lays stress chiefly on the early rise of great property, and the great importance of 'Hlafords' in social organisation. He pays no attention to the village community, and chiefly cares for the landlord. But still even Gneist admits the original personal freedom of the great mass of the people, and his analysis of the English condition is based on the assumption, that it represents one variation of Teutonic development: this gives Gneist a place among the Germanists, although his views on particular subjects differ from those of other scholars of the same school.23

The Mark system.

Its chief representatives have acquired such a celebrity that it is hardly necessary to insist again, that excellent work has been done by them for the study of the past. But the direction of their work has been rather one-sided; it was undertaken either from the standpoint of political institutions or from that of general culture and external growth; the facts of agriculture, of the evolution of classes, of legal organisation were touched upon only as subsidiary to the main objects of general history. And yet, even from the middle of the century, the attention of Europe begins to turn towards those very facts. The 'masses' come up with their claims behind the 'classes,' the social question emerges in theory and in practice, in reform and revolution; Liberals and Conservatives have to reckon with the fact that the great majority of the people are more excited, and more likely to be moved by the problems of work and wages than by problems of political influence. The everlasting, ever-human struggle for power gets to be considered chiefly in the light of the distribution of wealth; the distribution of society into classes and conditions appears as the connecting link between the economical process and the political process. This great change in the aspect of modern life could not but react powerfully on the aspect of historical literature. G.F. von Maurer and Hanssen stand out as the main initiators of the new movement in our studies. The many volumes devoted by G.F. Maurer24 to the village and the town of Germany are planned on a basis entirely different from that of his predecessors. Instead of proceeding from the whole to the parts, and of using social facts merely as a background to political history, he concentrates everything round the analysis of the Mark, as the elementary organisation for purposes of husbandry and ownership. The Mark is thus taken up not in the vague sense and manner in which it was treated by Kemble and his followers; it is described and explained on the strength of copious, though not very well sifted, evidence. On the other hand, Hanssen's masterly essays25 on agrarian questions, and especially on the field-systems, gave an example of the way in which work was to be done as to facts of husbandry proper.

Nasse.

Nasse's pamphlet on the village community26 may be considered as the first application of the new methods and new results to English history. The importance of his little volume cannot easily be overrated: all subsequent work has had to start from its conclusions.

Nasse's picture of the ancient English agricultural system, though drawn from scanty sources, is a very definite one. Most of the land is enclosed only during the latter part of the year, and during the rest of the year remains in the hands of the community. Temporary enclosures rise upon the ploughed field while the crop is growing; their object, however, is not to divide the land between neighbours but to protect the crop against pasturing animals; the strips of the several members of the township lie intermixed, and their cultivation is not left to the views and interests of the owners, but settled by the community according to a general plan. The meadows are also divided into strips, but these change hands in a certain rotation determined by lot or otherwise. The pasture ground remains in the possession of the whole community. The notion of private property, therefore, can be applied in this system only to the houses and closes immediately adjoining them.

Then the feudal epoch divides the country into manors, a form which originated at the end of the Saxon period and spread everywhere in Norman times. The soil of the manor consists of demesne lands and tributary lands. These two classes of lands do not quite correspond to the distinction between land cultivated by the lord himself and soil held of him by dependants; there may be leaseholders on the demesne, but there the lord is always free to change the mode of cultivation and occupation, while he has no right to alter the arrangements on the tributary portion. This last is divided between free socmen holding on certain conditions, villains and cottagers. The villains occupy equal holdings; their legal condition is a very low one, although they are clearly distinguished from slaves, and belong more to the soil than to the lord. The cottagers have homesteads and crofts, but no holdings in the common fields; the whole group presents the material from which, in process of time, the agricultural labourers have been developed.

The common system of husbandry manifests itself in many ways: the small holders club together for ploughing; four virgates or yardlands have to co-operate in order to start an eight-oxen plough. The services are often laid upon the whole village and not on separate householders; on the other hand the village, as a whole, enters into agreement with the lord about leases or commutation of services for money.

Each holding is formed of strips which lie intermixed with the component parts of other holdings in different fields, and this fact is intimately connected with the principle of joint ownership. The whole system begins to break up in the thirteenth century, much earlier than in France or Germany. As soon as services get commuted for money rents, it becomes impossible to retain the labouring people in serfdom. Hired labourers and farmers take the place of villains, and the villain's holding is turned into a copyhold and protected by law. Although the passage to modern forms begins thus early, traces of the original communalism may be found everywhere, even in the eighteenth century.

Maine.

Nasse's pamphlet is based on a careful study of authorities, and despite its shortness must be treated as a work of scientific research. But if all subsequent workers have to reckon with it in settling particular questions, general conceptions have been more widely influenced by Sir Henry Maine's lectures, which did not aim at research, and had in view the broad aspects of the subject. Their peculiar method is well known to be that of comparing facts from very different environments—from the Teutonic, the Celtic, the Hindu world; Maine tries to sketch a general process where other people only see particular connexions and special reasons. The chapters which fall within the line of our inquiry are based chiefly on a comparison between Western Europe and India. The agrarian organisation of many parts of India presents at this very day, in full work and in all stages of growth and decay, the village community of which some traces are still scattered in the records of Europe. There and here the process is in the main the same, the passage from collective ownership to individualism is influenced by the same great forces, notwithstanding all the differences of time and place. The original form of agrarian arrangement is due to the settlement of a group of free men, which surrenders to its individual members the use of arable land, meadows, pasture and wood, but retains the ownership and the power to control and modify the rights of using the common land. There can be no doubt that the legal theory, which sees in the modern rights of commoners mere encroachments upon the lord, carries feudal notions back into too early a period.

The real question as conceived by Maine is this—By what means was the free village community turned into the manor of the lord? The petty struggles between townships must have led to the subjugation of some groups by others; in each particular village the headman had the means to use his authority in order to improve his material position; and when a family contrived to retain an office in the hands of its members this at once gave matters an aristocratical turn. In Western Europe external causes had to account for a great deal in the gradual rise of territorial lordship. When the barbarian invaders came into contact with Roman civilisation and took possession of the provincial soil, they found private ownership and great property in full development, and naturally fell under the influence of these accomplished facts; their village community was broken up and transformed gradually into the manorial system27.

Maine traces economic history from an originally free community; Nasse takes the existence of such a community for granted. The statements of one are too general, however, and sometimes too hypothetical, the other has in view husbandry proper rather than the legal development of social classes. Maurer's tenets, to which both go back, present a very coherent system in which all parts hold well together; but each part taken separately is not very well grounded on fact. The one-sided preference given to one element does not allow other important elements to appear; the wish to find in the authorities suitable arguments for a favourite thesis leads to a confusion of materials derived from different epochs. These defects naturally called for protest and rectification; but the reaction against Maurer's teaching has gone so far and comes from such different quarters, that one has to look for its explanation beyond the range of historical research.

Reactionary movement.

Late years have witnessed everywhere in Europe a movement of thought which would have been called reactionary some twenty years ago28. Some people are becoming very sceptical as to principles which were held sacred by preceding generations; at the same time elements likely to be slighted formerly are coming to the front in great strength nowadays. There have been liberals and conservatives at all times, but the direction of the European mind, saving the reaction against the French Revolution and Napoleon, has been steadily favourable to the liberal tendency. For two centuries the greatest thinkers and the course of general opinion have been striving for liberty in different ways, for the emancipation of individuals, and the self-government of communities, and the rights of masses. This liberal creed has been, on the whole, an eminently idealist one, assuming the easy perfectibility of human nature, the sound common sense of the many, the regulating influence of consciousness on instinct, the immense value of high political aspirations for the regeneration of mankind. In every single attempt at realising its high-flying hopes the brutal side of human nature has made itself felt very effectually, and has become all the more conspicuous just by reason of the ironical contrast between aims and means. But the movement as a whole was certainly an idealist one, not only in the eighteenth but even in the nineteenth century, and the necessary repressive tendency appeared in close alliance with officialism, with unthinking tradition, and with the egotism of classes and individuals. Many events have contributed of late years to raise a current of independent thought which has gone far in criticising and stemming back liberal doctrines, if not in suppressing them. The brilliant achievements of historical monarchy in Germany, the ridiculous misery to which France has been reduced by conceited and impotent politicians, the excesses of terrorist nihilism in Russia, the growing sense of a coming struggle on questions of radical reform—all these facts have worked together to generate a feeling which is far from being propitious to liberal doctrines. Socialism itself has been contributing to it directly by laying an emphatic stress on the conditions of material existence, and treating political life merely as subordinate to economic aims. In England the repressive tendency has been felt less than on the Continent, but even here some of the foremost men in the country are beginning, in consequence of social well-known events, to ask themselves: Whither are we drifting? The book which best illustrates the new direction of thought is probably Taine's 'Origines de la France Contemporaine.' It is highly characteristic, both in its literary connexion with the profound and melancholy liberalism of Tocqueville, and in its almost savage onslaught on revolutionary legend and doctrine.

In the field of historical research the fermentation of political thought of which I have been speaking has been powerfully seconded by a growing distrust among scholars for preconceived theories, and by the wish to reconsider solutions which had been too easily taken for granted. The combined action of these forces has been curiously experienced in the particular subject of our study. The Germanist school had held very high the principle of individual liberty, had tried to connect it with the Teutonic element in history, had explained its working in the society described by Tacitus, and had regretfully followed its decay in later times. For the representatives of the New School this 'original Teutonic freedom' has entirely lost its significance, and they regard the process of social development as starting with the domination of the few and the serfdom of the many. The votaries of the free village community have been studying with interest epochs and ethnographical variations unacquainted with the economic individualism of modern Europe, they have been attentive in tracing out even the secondary details of the agrarian associations which have directed the husbandry of so many centuries, but the New School subordinates communal practice to private property and connects it with serfdom. We may already notice the new tendency in Inama-Sternegg's Wirthschaftsgeschichte29: he enters the lists against Maurer, denies that the Mark ever had anything to do with political work, reduces its influence on husbandry, and enhances that of great property. The most remarkable of French medievalists—Fustel de Coulanges—has been fighting all along against the Teutonic village community, and for an early development of private property in connexion with Roman influence. English scholarship has to reckon with similar views in Seebohm's well-known work.

Seebohm.

Let us recall to mind the chief points of his theory. The village community of medieval England is founded on the equality of the holdings in the open fields of the village. The normal holding of a peasant family is not only equal in each separate village, but it is substantially the same all over England. Variations there are, but in most cases by far it consists of the virgate of thirty acres, which makes the fourth part of the hide of a hundred and twenty acres, because the peasant holder owns only the fourth part of the ploughteam of eight oxen corresponding to the hide. The holders of virgates or yardlands are not the only people in the village; their neighbours may have more or less land, but there are not many classes as a rule, all the people in the same class are equalised, and the virgate remains the chief manifestation of the system. It is plain that such equality could be maintained only on the principle that each plot was a unit which was neither to be divided nor thrown together with other plots. Why did such a system spread all over Europe? It could not develop out of a free village community, as has been commonly supposed, because the Germanic law regulating free land does not prevent its being divided; indeed, where this law applies, holdings get broken up into irregular plots. If the system does not form itself out of Germanic elements, it must come from Roman influence; one has only the choice between the two as to facts which prevail everywhere in Western Europe. Indeed, the Roman villa presents all the chief features of the medieval manor. The lord's demesne acted as a centre, round which coloni clustered—cultivators who did not divide their tenancies because they did not own them. The Roman system was the more readily taken up by the Germans, as their own husbandry, described by Tacitus, had kindred elements to show—the condition of their slaves, for instance, was very like that of Roman coloni. It must be added, that we may trace in Roman authorities not only the organisation of the holdings, but such features as the three-field partition of the arable and the intermixed position of the strips belonging to a single holding.