Part 4 (1/2)
The seasons form an accustomed group, ”Winter” being represented, as at Brading, by a female figure, closely wrapped, holding a lifeless bough and a dead bird. Satyrs and fauns, flowers, Graces and wood-nymphs, horns of plenty, gladiators fighting, one with a trident, the other with a net--all these and countless other fanciful representations look at us from these old Roman pavements. The Roman villa at Brading is an excellent type of such a dwelling, with its magnificent suites of rooms, colonnades, halls, and splendid mosaic pavements. As at Silchester, we see there fine examples of hypocausts. The floor of the room, called a _suspensura_, is supported by fifty-four small pillars made of tiles.
Another good example of a similar floor exists at Cirencester, and many more at Silchester.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TESSELATED PAVEMENT]
Here is a description of a Roman gentleman's house, as drawn by the writer of _The History of Oxfords.h.i.+re_:--
”His villa lay sheltered from wild winds partly by the rising brow of the hill, and partly by belts of trees; it was turned towards the south, and caught the full sun. In the spring the breath of his violet beds would be as soft and sweet as in Oxfords.h.i.+re woods to-day; in the summer his quadrangle would be gay with calthae, and his colonnade festooned with roses and helichryse. If we are to believe in the _triclinium aestivum_ of Hakewill, it says much for the warmth of those far-away summers that he was driven to build a summer dining-room with a north aspect, and without heating flues. And when the long nights fell, and winter cold set in, the slaves heaped higher the charcoal fires in the _praefurnium_; the master sat in rooms far better warmed than Oxford country houses now, or sunned himself at midday in the sheltered quadrangle, taking his exercise in the warm side of the colonnade among his gay stuccoes and fluted columns. Could we for a moment raise the veil, we should probably find that the country life of 400 A.D. in Oxfords.h.i.+re was not so very dissimilar to that of to-day, ... and that the well-to-do Roman of rustic Middle England was ... a useful, peaceful, and a happy person.”
CHAPTER VII
ANGLO-SAXON VILLAGES
Departure of Romans--Coming of Saxons--Bede--Saxon names of places-- Saxon village--Common-field system--_Eorl_ and _ceorl_--Thanes, _geburs_, and _cottiers_--Description of village life--Thane's house--_Socmen_--Ploughman's lament--Village tradesmen--Parish council--Hundreds--s.h.i.+res.
The scene changes. The Roman legions have left our sh.o.r.es, and are trying to prop the tottering state of the falling empire. The groans of the Britons have fallen on listless or distracted ears, and no one has come to their succour. The rule of the all-swaying Roman power has pa.s.sed away, and the Saxon hordes have poured over the hills and vales of rural Britain, and made it the Angles' land--our England.
The coming of the Saxons was a very gradual movement. They did not attack our sh.o.r.es in large armies on one or two occasions; they came in clans or families. The head of the clan built a s.h.i.+p, and taking with him his family and relations, founded a settlement in wild Britain, or wherever the winds happened to carry them. They were very fierce and relentless in war, and committed terrible ravages on the helpless Britons, sparing neither men, women, nor children, burning buildings, destroying and conquering wherever they went.
Bede tells the story of doings of the ruthless Saxons:--
”The barbarous conquerors ... plundered all the neighbouring cities and country, spread the conflagration from the eastern to the western sea without any opposition, and covered almost every part of the devoted island. Public as well as private structures were overturned; the priests were everywhere slain before the altars; the prelates and the people, without any respect of persons, were destroyed with fire and sword; nor was there any to bury those who had been thus cruelly slaughtered. Some of the miserable remainder, being taken in the mountains, were butchered in heaps. Others, spent with hunger, came forth and submitted themselves to the enemy for food, being destined to undergo perpetual servitude, if they were not killed even upon the spot. Some, with sorrowful hearts, fled beyond the seas; others, continuing in their own country, led a miserable life among the woods, rocks, and mountains, with scarcely enough food to support life, and expecting every moment to be their last.”
Many antiquaries believe that the extirpation of the Britons was not so complete as Bede a.s.serts, and that a large number of them remained in England in a condition of servitude. At any rate, the almost entire extinction of the language, except as regards the names of a few rivers and mountains, and of a few household words, seems to point to a fairly complete expulsion of the Britons rather than to a mingling of them with the conquering race.
What remains have we in our English villages of our Saxon forefathers, the makers of England? In the first place we notice that many of the names of our villages retain the memory of their founders. When the family, or group of families, formed their settlements, they avoided the buildings and walled towns, relics of Roman civilisation, made clearings for themselves in the primeval forests, and established themselves in village communities. In the names of places the suffix _ing_, meaning _sons of_, denotes that the village was first occupied by the clan of some chief, whose name is compounded with this syllable _ing_. Thus the Uffingas, the children of Offa, formed a settlement at Uffinggaston, or Uffington; the Redingas, or sons of Rede, settled at Reading; the Billings at Billinge and Billingham; the Wokings or Hocings, sons of Hoc, at Woking and Wokingham. The Billings and Wokings first settled at Billinge and Woking; and then like bees they swarmed, and started another hive of industry at Billingham and Wokingham.
These family settlements, revealed to us by the patronymic _ing_, are very numerous. At Ardington, in Berks.h.i.+re, the Ardings, the royal race of the Vandals, settled; the Frankish Walsings at Wolsingham; the Halsings at Helsington; the Brentings at Brentingley; the Danish Scyldings at Skelding; the Thurings at Thorington; and many other examples might be quoted.
Many Saxon names of places end in _field_, which denotes a forest clearing, or _feld_, made by the axes of the settlers in the primeval woods, where the trees were _felled_. These villages were rudely fortified, or inclosed by a hedge, wall, or palisade, denoted by the suffix _ton_, derived from the Anglo-Saxon _tynan_, to hedge; and all names ending with this syllable point to the existence of a Saxon settlement hedged in and protected from all intruders. Thus we have Barton, Preston, Bolton, and many others. The terminations _yard_, _stoke_, or stockaded place, as in Basingstoke, _worth_ (Anglo-Saxon _weorthig_), as in Kenilworth, Tamworth, Walworth, have much the same meaning.
Perhaps the most common of all the terminations of names denoting the presence of Anglo-Saxon settlers is the suffix _ham_. When the _a_ is p.r.o.nounced short the syllable denotes an inclosure, like _stoke_ or _ton_; but when the _a_ is long, it means home, and expresses the reverence with which the Anglo-Saxon regarded his own dwelling. England is the land of homes, and the natural affection with which we Englishmen regard our homes is to a great extent peculiar to our race. The Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Italian, do not have the same respect for home. Our Saxon forefathers were a very home-loving people, and it is from them doubtless that we inherit our love for our homes.
We find, then, the Saxon holding the lands. The clan formed settlements; sections of each clan formed branch settlements; and several members of each section cut their way through the thick forests, felled the trees, built homesteads, where they tilled the land and reared their cattle.
In early Saxon times the settlement consisted of a number of families holding a district, and the land was regularly divided into three portions. There was the village itself, in which the people lived in houses built of wood or rude stonework. Around the village were a few small inclosures, or gra.s.s yards, for rearing calves and baiting farm stock; this was the common farmstead. Around this was the arable land, where the villagers grew their corn and other vegetables; and around this lay the common meadows, or pasture land, held by the whole community, so that each family could turn their cattle into it, subject to the regulations of an officer elected by the people, whose duty it was to see that no one trespa.s.sed on the rights of his neighbour, or turned too many cattle into the common pasture.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BEATING ACORNS FOR SWINE Cotton MS., _Nero_, c. 4]
Around the whole colony lay the woods and uncultivated land, which was left in its natural wild state, where the people cut their timber and fuel, and pastured their pigs in the glades of the forest. The cultivated land was divided into three large fields, in which the rotation of crops was strictly enforced, each field lying fallow once in three years. To each freeman was a.s.signed his own family lot, which was cultivated by the members of his household. But he was obliged to sow the same crop as his neighbour, and compelled by law to allow his lot to lie fallow with the rest every third year. The remains of this common-field system are still evident in many parts of the country, the fields being termed ”lot meadows,” or ”Lammas lands.” Our commons, too, many of which remain in spite of numerous inclosures, are evidences of the communal life of our village forefathers.
How long the Saxon villages remained free democratic inst.i.tutions, we do not know. Gradually a change came over them, and we find the manorial system in vogue. Manors existed in England long before the Normans came, although ”manor” is a Norman word; and in the time of Canute the system was in full force. The existence of a manor implies a lord of the manor, who exercised authority over all the villagers, owned the home farm, and had certain rights over the rest of the land. How all this came about, we scarcely know. Owing to the Danish invasions, when the rude barbarous warriors carried fire and sword into many a peaceful town and village, the villagers found themselves at the mercy of these savage hordes.
Probably they sought the protection of some thane, or _eorl_, with his band of warriors, who could save their lands from pillage. In return for their services they acknowledged him as the lord of their village, and gave him rent, which was paid either in the produce of these fields or by the work of their hands. Thus the lords of the manor became the masters of the villagers, although they too were governed by law, and were obliged to respect the rights of their tenants and servants.
Saxon society was divided into two main divisions, the _eorl_ and the _ceorl_, the men of n.o.ble birth, and those of ign.o.ble origin. The chief man in the village was the manorial lord, a _thane_, who had his demesne land, and his _gafol_ land, or _geneat_ land, which was land held in villeinage, and cultivated by _geneats_, or persons holding by service.
These villein tenants were in two cla.s.ses, the _geburs_, or villeins proper, who held the yardlands, and the _cottiers_, who had smaller holdings. Beneath these two cla.s.ses there were the _theows_, or slaves, made up partly of the conquered Britons, partly of captives taken in war, and partly of freemen who had been condemned to this penalty for their crimes, or had incurred it by poverty.
There were degrees of rank among Saxon gentlemen, as among those of to-day. The thanes were divided into three cla.s.ses: (i.) those of royal rank (_thani regis_), who served the king in Court or in the management of State affairs; (ii.) _thani mediocres_, who held the t.i.tle by inheritance, and corresponded to the lords of the manor in the later times; (iii.) _thani minores_, or inferior thanes, to which rank _ceorls_ or merchants could attain by the acquisition of sufficient landed property.