Part 4 (2/2)
We can picture to ourselves the ordinary village life which existed in Saxon times. The thane's house stood in the centre of the village, not a very lordly structure, and very unlike the stately Norman castles which were erected in later times. It was commonly built of wood, which the neighbouring forests supplied in plenty, and had stone or mud foundations. The house consisted of an irregular group of low buildings, almost all of one story. In the centre of the group was the hall, with doors opening into the court. On one side stood the kitchen; on the other the chapel when the thane became a Christian and required the services of the Church for himself and his household. Numerous other rooms with lean-to roofs were joined on to the hall, and a tower for purposes of defence in case of an attack. Stables and barns were scattered about outside the house, and with the cattle and horses lived the grooms and herdsmen, while villeins and _cottiers_ dwelt in the humble, low, shedlike buildings, which cl.u.s.tered round the Saxon thane's dwelling-place. An ill.u.s.tration of such a house appears in an ancient illumination preserved in the Harleian MSS., No. 603. The lord and lady of the house are represented as engaged in almsgiving; the lady is thus earning her true t.i.tle, that of ”loaf-giver,” from which her name ”lady”
is derived.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSE OF SAXON THANE]
The interior of the hall was the common living-room for both men and women, who slept on the reed-strewn floor, the ladies' sleeping-place being separated from the men's by the arras. The walls were hung with tapestry, woven by the skilled fingers of the ladies of the household. A peat or log fire burned in the centre of the hall, and the smoke hid the ceiling and finally found its way out through a hole in the roof. Arms and armour hung on the walls, and the seats consisted of benches called ”mead-settles,” arranged along the sides of the hall, where the Saxon chiefs sat drinking their favourite beverage, mead, or sweetened beer, out of the horns presented to them by the waiting damsels. When the hour for dinner approached, rude tables were laid on trestles, and forthwith groaned beneath the weight of joints of meat and fat capons which the Saxon loved dearly. The door of the hall was usually open, and thither came the bards and gleemen, who used to delight the company with their songs and stories of the gallant deeds of their ancestors, the weird legends of their G.o.ds Woden and Thor, their Viking lays and Norse sagas, and the acrobats and dancers astonished them with their strange postures.
Next to the thane ranked the _geburs_, who held land granted to them by the thane for their own use, sometimes as much as one hundred and twenty acres, and were required to work for the lord on the home farm two or three days a week, or pay rent for their holdings. This payment consisted of the produce of the land. They were also obliged to provide one or more oxen for the manorial plough team, which consisted of eight oxen.
There was also a strong independent body of men called _socmen_, who were none other than our English yeomen. They were free tenants, who have by their independence stamped with peculiar features both our const.i.tution and our national character. Their good name remains; English yeomen have done good service to their country, and let us hope that they will long continue to exist amongst us, in spite of the changed condition of English agriculture and the prolonged depression in farming affairs, which has tried them severely.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WHEEL PLOUGH From Bayeux Tapestry]
Besides the _geburs_ and _socmen_ there were the _cottiers_, who had small allotments of about five acres, kept no oxen, and were required to work for the thane some days in each week. Below them were the _theows_, serfs, or slaves, who could be bought and sold in the market, and were compelled to work on the lord's farm.
Listen to the sad lament of one of this cla.s.s, recorded in a dialogue of AElfric of the tenth century:--
”What sayest thou, ploughman? How dost thou do thy work?”
”Oh, my lord, hard do I work. I go out at daybreak, driving the oxen to field, and I yoke them to the plough. Nor is it ever so hard winter that I dare loiter at home, for fear of my lord, but the oxen yoked, and the ploughshare and the coulter fastened to the plough, every day must I plough a full acre, or more.”
”Hast thou any comrade?”
”I have a boy driving the oxen with an iron goad, who also is hoa.r.s.e with cold and shouting.”
”What more dost thou in the day?”
”Verily then I do more. I must fill the bin of the oxen with hay, and water them, and carry out the dung. Ha! Ha! hard work it is, hard work it is! because _I am not free._”
Evidently the ploughman's want of freedom was his great hards.h.i.+p; his work in ploughing, feeding, and watering his cattle, and in cleansing their stable, was not harder than that of an ordinary carter in the present day; but servitude galled his spirit, and made the work intolerable. Let us hope that his lord was a kind-hearted man, and gave him some cattle for his own, as well as some land to cultivate, and then he would not feel the work so hard, or the winter so cold.
Frequently men were thus released from slavery; sometimes also freemen sold themselves into slavery under the pressure of extreme want. A man so reduced was required to lay aside his sword and lance, the symbols of the free, and to take up the bill and the goad, the implements of slavery, to fall on his knees and place his head, in token of submission, under the hands of his master.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SMITHY From the Cotton MS., B 4]
Each trade was represented in the village community. There were the _faber_, or smith, and the carpenter, who repaired the ironwork and woodwork of the ploughs and other agricultural implements, and in return for their work had small holdings among the tenants free from ordinary services. There was the _punder_, or pound-man, who looked after the repair of the fences and impounded stray cattle; the _cementarius_, or stonemason; the _custos apium_, or bee-keeper, an important person, as much honey was needed to make the sweetened ale, or mead, which the villagers and their chiefs loved to imbibe; and the steward, or _prepositus_, who acted on behalf of the lord, looked after the interests of the tenants, and took care that they rendered their legal services. The surnames Smith, Baker, Butcher, Carter, and many others, preserve the remembrance of the various trades which were carried on in every village, and of the complete self-dependence of the community.
We have inherited many customs and inst.i.tutions from our Saxon forefathers, which connect our own age with theirs. In recent years we have established parish councils in our villages. Formerly the pet theory of politicians was centralisation; everything had to be done at one centre, at one central office, and London became the head and centre of all government. But recently politicians thought that they had discovered a new plan for carrying on the internal affairs of the country, and the idea was to leave each district to manage its own affairs. This is only a return to the original Saxon plan. In every village there was a moot-hill, or sacred tree, where the freemen met to make their own laws and arrange their agricultural affairs. Here disputes were settled, plough lands and meadow lands shared in due lot among the villagers, and everything arranged according to the custom of the village.
Our county maps show that the s.h.i.+res are divided into hundreds. This we have inherited from our Saxon forefathers. In order to protect themselves from their neighbours, the Saxon colonists arranged themselves in hundreds of warriors. This little army was composed of picked champions, the representatives of a hundred families; men who were ready in case of war to uphold the honour of their house, and to fight for their hearths and homes. These hundred families recognised a bond of union with each other and a common inheritance, and ranged themselves under one name for general purposes, whether for defence, administration of justice, or other objects.
On a fixed day, three times a year, in some place where they were accustomed to a.s.semble--under a particular tree,[1] or near some river-bank--these hundred champions used to meet their chieftain, and gather around him when he dismounted from his horse. He then placed his spear in the ground, and each warrior touched it with his own spear in token of their compact, and pledged himself to mutual support. At this a.s.sembly criminals were tried, disputes settled, bargains of sale concluded; and in later times many of these transactions were inserted in the chartularies of abbeys or the registers of bishops, which thus became a kind of register too sacred to be falsified. A large number of the hundreds bear the name of some chieftain who once used to call together his band of bearded, light-haired warriors and administer rude justice beneath a broad oak's shade.[2] Others are named after some particular spot, some tree, or ford, or stone, or tumulus, where the hundred court met.
Our counties or s.h.i.+res were not formed, as is popularly supposed, by King Alfred or other royal person by the dividing up of the country into portions, but were the areas occupied by the original Saxon tribes or kingdoms. Most of our counties retain to this day the boundaries which were originally formed by the early Saxon settlers. Some of our counties were old Saxon kingdoms--such as Suss.e.x, Ess.e.x, Middles.e.x--the kingdoms of the South, East, and Middle Saxons. Surrey is the Sothe-reye, or south realm; Kent is the land of the Cantii, a Belgic tribe; Devon is the land of the d.a.m.nonii, a Celtic tribe; Cornwall, or Corn-wales, is the land of the Welsh of the Horn; Worcesters.h.i.+re is the s.h.i.+re of the Huiccii; c.u.mberland is the land of the Cymry; Northumberland is the land north of the Humber, and therefore, as its name implies, used to extend over all the North of England. Evidently the southern tribes and kingdoms by conquest reduced the size of this large county and confined it to its present smaller dimensions. In several cases the name of the county is derived from that of its chief town, _e.g._ Oxfords.h.i.+re, Warwicks.h.i.+re; these were districts which were conquered by some powerful earl or chieftain, who held his court in the town, and called his newly acquired property after its name.
We have seen the picture of an ordinary English village in early Saxon times, the villeins and slaves working in the fields and driving their oxen, and the thane dressed in his linen tunic and short cloak, his hose bandaged to the knee with strips of cloth, superintending the farming operations. We have seen the freemen and thanes taking an active part in public life, attending the courts of the hundred and s.h.i.+re, as well as the folk moot or parish council of those times, and the slave mourning over his lack of freedom. But many other relics of Saxon times remain, and these will require another chapter for their examination.
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