Villainage in England Part 1

Villainage in England.

by Paul Vinogradoff.

PREFACE

A foreigner's attempt to treat of difficult and much disputed points of English history requires some justification. Why should a Russian scholar turn to the arduous study of English mediaeval doc.u.ments? Can he say anything of sufficient general interest to warrant his exploration of so distant a field?

The first question is easier to answer than the second.

There are many reasons why we in Russia are especially keen to study what may be called social history--the economic development of nations, their cla.s.s divisions and forms of co-operation. We are still living in surroundings created by the social revolution of the peasant emanc.i.p.ation; many of our elder contemporaries remember both the period of serfdom and the pa.s.sage from it to modern life; some have taken part in the working out and putting into practice of the emanc.i.p.ating acts.

Questions entirely surrendered to antiquarian research in the West of Europe are still topics of contemporary interest with us.

It is not only the civil progress of the peasantry that we have to notice, but the transformation and partial decay of the landed gentry, the indirect influence of the economic convulsions on politics, ideas, and morality, and, in a more special way, the influence of free compet.i.tion on soil and people that had been fettered for ages, the pa.s.sage from 'natural husbandry' to the money system, the subst.i.tution of rents for labour, above all, the working of communal inst.i.tutions under the sway of the lord and in their modern free shape. Government and society have to deal even now with problems that must be solved in the light of history, if in any light at all, and not by instinct groping in the dark. All such practical problems verge towards one main question: how far legislation can and should act upon the social development of the agrarian world. Are economic agencies to settle for themselves who has to till land and who shall own it? Or can we learn from Western history what is to be particularly avoided and what is to be aimed at? I do not think that anybody is likely to maintain at the present day, that, for instance, a study of the formation and dissolution of the village community in the West would be meaningless for politicians and thinkers who have to concern themselves with the actual life of the village community in the East.

Another powerful incitement comes from the scientific direction lately a.s.sumed by historical studies. They have been for a long time very closely connected with fine literature: their aim was a lifelike reproduction of the past; they required artistic power, and stirred up feelings as well as reflective thought. Such literary history has a natural bent towards national tradition, for the same reason that literature is attracted by national life: the artist gains by being personally in touch with his subject; it is more easy for him to cast his material into the right mould. Ancient history hardly const.i.tutes an exception, because the elements of cla.s.sical civilisation have been appropriated by European nations so as to form part of their own past.

What I call literary history has by no means done all its work. There is too much in the actions of men that demands artistic perception and even divination on the part of the historian, to allow this mode of treatment to fall into decay. But n.o.body will deny that historical study is extending more and more in the direction of what is now called anthropology and social science. Historians are in quest of laws of development and of generalisations that shall unravel the complexity of human culture, as physical and biological generalisations have put into order our knowledge of the phenomena of nature.

There is no subject more promising from this point of view than the history of social arrangements. It borders on political economy, which has already attained a scientific standing; part of its material has been fas.h.i.+oned by juridical doctrine and practical law, and thereby moulded into a clear, well-defined shape; it deals with facts recurring again and again with much uniformity, and presenting great facilities for comparison; the objects of its observation are less complex than the phenomena of human thought, morality, or even political organisation.

And from the point of view of the scientific investigator there can be no other reason for taking up a particular epoch or nation, but the hope of getting a good specimen for a.n.a.lysis, and of making use of such a.n.a.lysis for purposes of generalisation.

Now I think that there can be no better opportunity for studying early stages of agrarian development than that afforded by English mediaeval history. The sources of information are comparatively abundant in consequence of the powerful action of central authority; from far back in the feudal time we get legal and fiscal doc.u.ments to enlighten us, not only about general arrangements but even about details in the history of landed property and of the poorer cla.s.ses. And the task of studying the English line of development is rendered especially interesting because it stands evidently in close connexion with the variations of the same process on the continent. Scandinavian, German, French, Italian, and Spanish history constantly present points of comparison, and such differences as there are may be traced to their origins just because so many facts are in common to start with. I think that all these considerations open a glorious vista for the enquirer, and the interest excited by such publications as those of Fustel de Coulanges proves that the public is fully alive to the importance of those studies in spite of their dry details.

What could I personally undertake to further the great objects of such investigation? The ground has been surveyed by powerful minds, and many controversies show that it is not an easy one to explore. Two main courses seemed open in the present state of the study. A promising method would have been to restrict oneself to a definite provincial territory, to get intimately acquainted with all details of its geography, local history, peculiarities of custom, and to trace the social evolution of this tract of land as far back as possible, without losing sight of general connexions and a.n.a.logies. How instructive such work may become may be gathered from Lamprecht's monumental monograph on the Moselland, which has been rightly called by its author 'Deutsches Wirthschaftsleben im Mittelalter.' Or else, one might try to gather the general features of the English mediaeval system as embodied in the numerous, one might almost say innumerable, records of the feudal period, and to work back from them into the imperfectly described pre-feudal age. Such enquiry would necessarily leave out local peculiarities, or treat them only as variations of general types. From the methodical point of view it has the same right to existence as any other study of 'universalities' which are always exemplified by individual beings, although the latter are not made up by them, but appear complicated in every single case by additional elements.

Being a foreigner, I was driven to take the second course. I could not trust myself to become sufficiently familiar with local life, even if I had the time and opportunity to study it closely. I hope such investigations may be taken up by scholars in every part of England and may prosper in their hands; the gain to general history would be simply invaluable. And I was not sorry of the necessity of going by the second track, because I could hope to achieve something useful even if I went wrong on many points. Every year brings publications of Cartularies, Surveys, Court-rolls; the importance of these legal and economic records has been duly realised, and historians take them more and more into account by the side of annals and statutes. But surely some attempt ought to be made to concentrate the results of scattered investigation in this field. The Cartularies of Ramsey, Battle, Bury St. Edmunds, St.

Paul's, the Hundred Rolls, the Manorial Records of Broughton and King's Ripton, give us material of one and the same kind, which, for all its wealth and variety, presents great facilities for cla.s.sification and comparison[1]. I have seen a good many of these doc.u.ments, both published and in ma.n.u.script, and I hope that my book may be of some service in the way of concentrating this particular study of manorial records. I am conscious how deficient my work is in many respects; but if by the help of corrections, alterations, additions, it may be made to serve to some extent for the purpose, I shall be glad to have written it. I may say also that it is intended to open the way, by a careful study of the feudal age, for another work on the origins of English peasant life in the Norman and pre-Norman periods.

One pleasant result the toil expended on mediaeval doc.u.ments has brought me already. I have come into contact with English scholars, and I can say that I have received encouragement, advice, and support in every case when I had to apply for them, and in so large and liberal a measure as I could hardly hope for or expect. Of two men, now dead, I have to repeat what many have said before me. Henry Bradshaw was the first to lay an English MS. cartulary before me in the Cambridge University Library; and in all my travels through European libraries and archives I never again met such a guide, so ready to help from his inexhaustible store of palaeographical, linguistic and historical learning. Walford Selby was an invaluable friend to me at the Record Office--always willing and able to find exactly what was wanted for my researches.

It would be impossible to mention all those from whom I have received help in one way or another, but I should like to speak at least of a few. I have the pleasant duty of thanking the Marquis of Bath for the loan of the Longleat MS. of Bracton, which was sent for my use to the Bodleian Library. Lord Leigh was kind enough to allow of my coming to Stoneleigh Abbey to work at a beautiful cartulary in his possession, and the Hon. Miss Cordelia Leigh took the pains of making for me some additional extracts from that doc.u.ment. Sir Frederick Pollock and Mr.

York Powell have gone through the work of reading my proofs, and I owe to them many suggestions for alterations and improvements. I have disputed some of Mr. Seebohm's opinions on mediaeval history; but I admit freely that n.o.body has exercised a stronger influence on the formation of my own views, and I feel proud that personal friends.h.i.+p has given me many opportunities of admiring the originality and width of conception of one who has done great things for the advancement of social history. As for F.W. Maitland, I can only say that my book would hardly have appeared at all if he had not taken infinite trouble to further its publication. He has not only done everything in his power to make it presentable to English readers in style and wording, but as to the subject-matter, many a friendly suggestion, many a criticism I have had from him, and if I have not always profited by them, the blame is to be cast entirely on my own obstinacy.

PAUL VINOGRADOFF.

INTRODUCTION.

When the time comes for writing a history of the nineteenth century, one of the most important and attractive chapters will certainly be devoted to the development of historical literature. The last years of a great age are fast running out: great has been the strife and the work in the realm of thought as well as in the material arrangement of life. The generations of the nineteenth century have witnessed a mighty revival of religious feeling; they have attempted to set up philosophical systems as broad and as profound as any of the speculations of former times; they have raised the structure of theoretical and applied science to a height which could hardly have been foreshadowed some two hundred years ago. And still it is to historical study that we have to look as the most characteristic feature of the period. Medieval asceticism in its desperate struggle against the flesh, and Puritanism with its sense of individual reconciliation with G.o.d, were both more vigorous forms of religious life than the modern restorations of faith and Church, so curiously mixed up with helplessness, surrender of acquired truth, hereditary instincts, and utilitarian reflection. In philosophy, Hegel's metaphysical dialectic, Schopenhauer's transformation of Kant's teaching, and the attempts of English and French positivism at encyclopaedical science may be compared theoretically with Plato's poetical idealism or with the rationalistic schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But it would be difficult to deny, that in point of influence on men's minds, those older systems held a more commanding position than these: Hegel seems too arbitrary and phantastical, Schopenhauer too pessimistic, positivism too incomplete and barren as to ultimate problems to suit the practical requirements of philosophy; and people are already complaining of the decay of philosophical study. In science, again, the age of Darwin is certainly second to none, but it has to share its glory with the age of Newton, and it may be reasonably doubted whether the astronomer, following in the footsteps of Galileo and Kepler, was not actuated by even greater thirst and pride of knowledge than the modern biologist or geologist. It is otherwise with regard to history.

[Progress of historical methods.]

Students of science are wont to inveigh against the inexact character of historical research, its incoherence and supposed inability to formulate laws. It would be out of place here to discuss the comparative value of methods and the one-sided preference given by such accusers to quant.i.tative a.n.a.lysis; but I think that if these accusers were better acquainted with the subject of their attacks, or even more attentive to the expressions of men's life and thought around them, they would hardly dare to maintain that a study which in the short s.p.a.ce of a century has led to a complete revolution in the treatment of all questions concerning man and society, has been operating only by vague a.s.sumptions and guesses at random. An investigation into methods cannot be undertaken in these introductory pages, but a general survey of results may be attempted. If we merely take a single volume, Tocqueville's Ancien Regime, and ask ourselves whether anything at all like it could have been produced even in the eighteenth century, we shall have a sense of what has been going on in the line of historical study during the nineteenth. Ever since Niebuhr's great stroke, historical criticism has been patiently engaged in testing, sifting, and cla.s.sifying the original materials, and it has now rendered impossible that medley of discordant authorities in which eighteenth-century learning found its confused notions of Romans in French costume, or sought for modern const.i.tutional ideas as manifest in the policy of the Franks. Whole subjects and aspects of social life which, if treated at all, used to be sketchily treated in some appendix by the historian, or guessed at like a puzzle by the antiquarian, have come to the fore and are recognised as the really important parts of history. In a word, the study of the past vacillates no longer between the two extremes of minute research leading to no general results and general statements not based on any real investigation into facts. The laws of development may still appear only as dim outlines which must be more definitely traced by future generations of workers, but there is certainly a constant progress of generalisation on firmly established premises towards them.

[Growing influence of history on kindred subjects.]

What is more striking, the great change in the ways and results of history has made itself felt on all the subjects which surround it.

Political economy and law are a.s.suming an entirely new shape under the influence of historical conceptions: the tendency towards building up dogmatic doctrine on the foundation of abstract principle and by deductive methods is giving way to an exact study of facts in their historical surroundings, and to inquiries into the s.h.i.+fting conditions under which the problems of social economy and law are solved by different epochs. As a brilliant representative of legal learning has ironically put it, it would be better for one nowadays to be convicted of petty larceny than to be found deficient of 'historical-mindedness.'

The influence of historical speculation on politics is yet more definite and direct: even the most devoted disciples of particular creeds, the most ardent advocates of reform or reaction dare not simply take up the high standing ground of abstract theory from which all political questions were discussed less than a hundred years ago: the socialist as well as the partisan of aristocracy is called on to make good his contention by historical arguments.

It may be urged that the new turn thus taken is not altogether beneficial for practical life. Men of fanatical conviction were more likely to act and die for the eternal truth revealed to them, than people reflecting on the relative character of human arrangements. But can one get blissfully onesided by merely wis.h.i.+ng to be so? And is it not n.o.bler to seek knowledge in the hope that it will right itself in the end, than to reject it for the sake of being comfortable? However this may be, the facts can hardly be denied: the aspiration of our age is intensely historical; we are doing more for the relative, than for the absolute, more for the study of evolution than for the elucidation of principles which do not vary.

[Sketch of the literary development of social history as a necessary introduction to its treatment.]

It will not be my object to give a sketch of the gradual rise of historical study in the present century: such an undertaking must be left to later students, who will command a broader view of the subject and look at it with less pa.s.sion and prejudice than we do now. But Lord Acton's excellent article[2] has shown that the task is not quite hopeless even now, and I must try, before starting on my arduous inquiry into the social history of the middle ages in England, to point out what I make of the work achieved in this direction, and what object I have in view myself. Quite apart from any questions of detail which may come under consideration as the treatment of the subject requires it, I have to say in what perspective the chief schools of historians present themselves to my view, in what relation they stand to each other, to show how far they have pushed the inquiry, and what problems still remain unsolved. Such a preliminary sketch must not be carried out with a view to criticism and polemics, but rather as the general estimate of a literary movement in its various phases.

[Late recognition of the value of social history.]

It is a remarkable fact, that the vast importance of the social side of history has been recognised later than any other aspect of that study.

Stating things very broadly, one may say that it was pushed to the fore about the middle of our century by the interests and forces at play in actual life: before 1848 the political tendency predominates; after 1848 the tide turns in favour of the social tendency. I mean that in the first half of the century men were chiefly engaged in reorganising the State, in trying to strike a balance between the influence of government and the liberties of the people. The second half of the century is engrossed by the conflict between cla.s.ses, by questions of economical organisation, by reforms of civil order. Historical literature, growing as it was in the atmosphere of actual life, had to start from its interests, to put and solve its problems in accordance with them. But it is no wonder that the preceding period had already touched upon a number of questions that were fated to attract most attention in later research. The rise of the Const.i.tution, for instance, could not be treated without some regard being paid to the relative position of cla.s.ses; it would have been out of the question to speak of political feudalism without taking into account the social bearing of the system.

And so a sketch of the literary treatment of social questions must begin with books which did not aim directly at a description of social history.

[Characteristics of the work done in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.]

I shall not detain the reader over the work achieved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The learning of a Selden or of a Madox is astounding, and a student of the present day has to consult them constantly on particular questions; but they never had in mind to embrace the history of their country as a whole. Facts are brought into a system by c.o.ke, but the system is strictly a legal one; undigested historical knowledge is made to yield the necessary store of leading cases, and, quite apart from the naive perversion of most particulars, the entire view of the subject is thoroughly opposed to historical requirements, for it makes the past an ill.u.s.tration of the present, and regards it as planned on the same lines. There is no lack of books setting forth historical proof for some favourite general thesis or arranging facts according to some general idea, but such attempts were distinguished by unbounded imagination and by endless sacrifices of fact to the object of the writer's devotion. The curious literary byplay to the struggle of political party which Aug. Thierry[3] has artistically ill.u.s.trated in France from the writings of Boulainvilliers and Dubos, Mably and Lezardiere, could certainly be matched in England by a tale of the historical argumentation of Brady[4], or Petyt[5], or Granville Sharp. Nothing can be more eloquent in a sense than the t.i.tle given by this last author to his book on the system of frankpledge:--"An account of the Const.i.tutional English Polity of Congregational Courts, and more particularly of the great annual court of the people, called the View of Frankpledge, wherein the whole body of the Nation was arranged into the regular divisions of Tythings, Hundreds, etc.:--the happy effect of that excellent inst.i.tution, in preventing robberies, riots, etc., whereby, in law, it was justly deemed 'Summa et maxima securitas:'--that it would be equally beneficial to all other nations and countries, as well under monarchical as republican establishments; and that, to the English Nation in particular, it would afford an effectual means of reforming the corruption of Parliament by rendering the representation of the people perfectly equal, in exact numerical proportion to the total number of householders throughout the whole realm[6]."

Historical research, in the true sense of the word, was indeed making its first appearance in the eighteenth century, and it was more fruitful in England than in any other country, because England was so far ahead of the Continent in its political condition: the influence of an intelligent society in political affairs had for its counterpart a greater insight into the conditions of political development. But the great English historians of the eighteenth century were looking to problems in other fields than that of social history. Robertson was prompted by an interest in the origins of that peculiar community called Western Europe, so distinctly dismembered in its component States and so closely united by ideal and material ties; Gibbon could see the shadows of the old world in which the new world was living; both had been attracted to research by an admirable sense of influences deeper and stronger than nationality, or State, or cla.s.s, and both remained indifferent to the humbler range of English social history. Hume took his stand on England, but he had to begin with a general outline and the explanation of the more apparent changes in State and Church.

[Blackstone's Commentaries.]

In this way current notions on our questions remained towards the close of the eighteenth century still undisturbed by writers of a high order.

We may take as a fair sample of such current notions Sir William Blackstone's historical digressions, especially those in the second volume of his Commentaries[7]. There is no originality about them, and the lack of this quality is rather an advantage in this case: it enables us through one book to glance at an entire literature. I may be allowed to recall its most striking points to the mind of my readers.

The key to the whole medieval system and to the const.i.tution emerging from it is to be found in feudalism. 'The const.i.tution of feuds had its original from the military policy of the northern or Celtic nations, the Goths, the Huns, the Franks, the Vandals, and the Lombards, who poured themselves into all the regions of Europe, at the declension of the Roman Empire. It was brought by them from their own countries, and continued in their respective colonies as the most likely means to secure their new acquisitions, and to that end large districts or parcels of land were allotted by the conquering general to the superior officers of the army, and by them dealt out again in smaller parcels or allotments to the inferior officers and most deserving soldiers.'

'Scarce had these northern conquerors established themselves in their new dominions, when the wisdom of their const.i.tutions, as well as their personal valour, alarmed all the princes of Europe. Wherefore most, if not all, of them thought it necessary to enter into the same or a similar plan of policy. And thus, in the compa.s.s of a very few years, the feudal const.i.tution, or the doctrine of tenure, extended itself over all the western world.'

'But this feudal polity, which was thus by degrees established over all the Continent of Europe, seems not to have been received in this part of our island, at least not universally and as a part of our national const.i.tution, till the reign of William the Norman. This introduction, however, of the feudal tenures into England by King William does not seem to have been effected immediately after the Conquest, nor by the mere arbitrary will and power of the Conqueror, but to have been gradually established by the Norman barons, and afterwards universally consented to by the great Council of the nation.' 'The new polity therefore seems not to have been _imposed_ by the Conqueror, but nationally and freely adopted by the general a.s.sembly of the whole realm.' 'By thus consenting to the introduction of feudal tenures, our English ancestors probably meant no more than to put the kingdom in a state of defence by establis.h.i.+ng a military system. But whatever their meaning was, the Norman interpreters ... gave a very different construction to this proceeding, and thereupon took a handle to introduce, not only the rigorous doctrine which prevailed in the duchy of Normandy, but also such fruits and dependencies, such hards.h.i.+ps and services, as were never known to other nations.' 'And from hence arises the inference, that the liberties of Englishmen are not (as some arbitrary writers would represent them) mere infringements of the king's prerogative, but a restoration of the ancient const.i.tution, of which our ancestors had been defrauded by the art and finesse of the Norman lawyers, rather than deprived by the force of the Norman arms.'

The structure of the component parts is (for Blackstone) as ancient as the const.i.tution of the whole. The English manor is of Saxon origin in all its essential characteristics, but the treatment of the people within the manor underwent a very notable change in consequence of the Norman invasion. In Saxon times the common people settled on folkland were immersed in complete slavery. Their condition was improved by the Conquest, because the Normans admitted them to the oath of fealty. And the improvement did not stop there: although the peasantry held their plots only by base tenure and at the lord's will, the lord allowed in most cases a hereditary possession. In this way out of the lord's will custom arose, and as custom is the soul or vital principle of common law, the Courts undertook in the end to protect the base tenure of the peasantry against the very lord whose will had created it. Such was the rise of the copyhold estate of modern times.

Blackstone's work is a compilation, and it would be out of the question to reduce its statements to anything like consistency. The rationalistic mode of thought which has left such a peculiar stamp on the eighteenth century, appears in all its glory in the laying out of the wise military polity of feudalism. But scarcely has our author had time to show the rapid progress of this plan all round Europe, when he starts on an entirely new tack, suggested by his wish to introduce a historical justification of Const.i.tutional Monarchy. Feudal polity is of late introduction in England, and appears as a compact between sovereign and subjects; original freedom was not destroyed by this compact, and later infringements of contractual rights by kings ultimately led to a restoration and development of ancient liberties. In the parts of the treatise which concern Private Law the keynote is given throughout by that very Norman jurisprudence on which such severe condemnation is pa.s.sed with regard to Public Law. The Conquest is thus made to appear alternately as a source of danger, struggle, and hards.h.i.+p from one point of view, and as the origin of steady improvement in social condition from another. In any case the aristocratic cast of English life is deduced from its most ancient origins, and all the rights of the lower orders are taken as the results of good-humoured concession on the part of the lords of the soil and of quiet encroachment against them.

[Revolution in Historical literature. The Romantic school.]

Statements and arguments in Blackstone's style could hold water only before that great crisis in history and historical literature by which the nineteenth century was ushered into the world. The French Revolution, and the reaction against it, laid open and put to the test the working of all the chief forces engaged in historical life.

Government and social order, nationality and religion, economic conditions and modes of thought, were thrown into the furnace to be consumed or remoulded. Ideas and inst.i.tutions which had towered over centuries went down together, and their fall not only brought home the transitory character of human arrangements, but also laid bare the groundwork of society, which however held good in spite of the convulsions on its surface. The generation that witnessed these storms was taught to frame its politics and to understand history in a new fas.h.i.+on[8]. The disorderly scepticism of the eighteenth century was transformed by Niebuhr into a scientific method that paved the way by criticism to positive results. On the other hand, the Utopian doctrines of political rationalism were shattered by Savigny's teaching on the fundamental importance of tradition and the unconscious organic growth of nations. In his polemic with Thibaut, the founder of the historical school of law enters a mighty protest against wanton reform on the ground of a continuity of inst.i.tutions not less real than the continuity of language, and his 'History of Roman Law during the Middle Ages'

demonstrated that even such a convulsion as the Barbarian Invasion was not sufficient to sweep away the foundations of law and social order slowly formed in the past. Eichhorn's 'History of German Public and Private Law' gave detailed expression to an idea which occurs also in some of Savigny's minor works--to the idea, namely, that the German nations have had to run through their history with an engrained tendency in their character towards political dismemberment and social inequality. This rather crude attempt at generalising out some particular modern features and sanctioning them by the past is of historical interest, because it corresponds to the general problem propounded to history by the Romantic school: viz. to discover in the various manifestations of the life of a nation its permanent character and the leading ideas it is called to embody in history.

The comparative soundness of the English system had arrayed it from the very beginning on the side of Conservatism against Revolution, and Burke was the first to sound the blast of a crusade against subversive theories. No wonder the historical discoveries on the Continent found a responsive echo in English scholars.h.i.+p. Allen[9] took up the demonstration that the Royal power in England had developed from the conceptions of the Roman Empire. Palgrave[10] gave an entirely new construction of Anglo-Saxon history, which could not but exercise a powerful influence on the study of subsequent periods. His book is certainly the first attempt to treat the problems of medieval social history on a large scale and by new methods. It deserves special attention[11].

[Sir Francis Palgrave.]

The author sat down to his work before the Revolution of 1830, although his two volumes were published in 1832. He shares the convictions of very moderate Liberalism, declares in favour of the gradual introduction of reforms, and against any reform not framed as a compromise between actual claims. Custom and tradition did not exclude change and development in England, and for this reason the movement towards progress did not tear that people from the inheritance of their ancestors, did not disregard the mighty agency of historical education.