ew inquiries of social interest better show the progress of the English people than glances at their condition at various periods of their history. Here we may trace the rise of the people from rude forms of civilization, through its various grades, to the blessings of industry and independence, which have so materially contributed to the character of our National Life. Commencing with the substratum of these social changes, we are reminded of the truth of Goldsmith's oft-quoted lines:
"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,A breath can make them, as a breath has made;But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,When once destroy'd, can never be supplied."
In early times freemen formed a mere section of the people, and the bulk of the English population were in a servile condition. Some of the bondmen were captives, or the children of captives; others had been reduced to servitude by distress, by debts, or crimes; but they were not all of them absolute slaves, for even amongst the convicts there weresome who were not slaves, but serfs. Now, in acquiring the use of land, a slave made the first step towards freedom. In this manner athrall-bredman becameboor-bred, and although still a bondman—he might hope, by good conduct or by the lord's bounty, to rise to the higher condition of a geneatman, or free farmer, and even to become a freeman, and a freeholder,—to become the absolute owner of his little croft.
In Anglo-Saxon times, the political station of a freeman was determined by hiswere—it was his worth or value; and thewergyldwas the fine paid in compensation of his life. The abolition or disuse of this fine was an encouragement of liberty, since it removed the strongest mark of distinction between freemen and non-freemen.
The free or unfree condition of a man descended to his posterity. At the close of the thirteenth century, many peasants in England were still affected by the crimes or the misfortunes of their remote ancestors. By that time there was an end of absolute slavery, and the bondsmen were all serfs, or the children of serfs.
Villenage and operative tenancy were almost extinct at the time of the Reformation. The few villeins, or operative tenants, then remaining, were in the occupation of small plots of land, or were, in fact, agricultural labourers, working for wages, rather than tenantspaying their rent in labour. They were scarcely to be found except upon Church-lands, or upon lands which had lately belonged to the Church.
An operative tenant of five acres usually worked once a week for thelord. We learn from Domesday that bordars were tenants of five acres, and that the bordars under the Castle of Ewias worked once a week: the Saxon cottar held at least five acres, and was accustomed to work for the lord every Monday. This custom prevailed in later times. If a tenant worked for the lord once a week, the working-day was commonly Monday. The Monday-men at East Brent, in Somerset, had the following customs in the year 1517:—Each of them, by ancient usage, should annually, in forty days selected by the lord's steward, do forty works of summer and winter husbandry, called Monday-works, working and labouring well each day for six whole hours; each of them receiving, while at work, a halfpenny, the sum of which is twenty pence per annum: and each of them who should do eight autumnal works, working well six hours a day as before said, should receive one penny a day. At the same time there were Monday-men at Limpesham in the same county; and they are noticed in earlier rentals at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, at Leighton in Huntingdonshire, in East Kent, and at Bocking and Hadleigh in the eastern counties.
At Bury St. Edmund's anciently, there were humble servitors called Lancetts, who were bound by their tenure to clean the chambers of the monastery. A tenant of the abbey at Cokefield, whose tenure is not called lancettage, was obliged to thatch, to wattle and daub, to do carpenter's work, to collect compost, to clean houses, &c.—but was not required to clean out the lord'slatrines.
Although villeins were said to hold their land at the will of the lord, their position was not really precarious; they did not hold at the lord's arbitrary will, but at the will of the lord subject to the custom of the manor. While they paid their dues and performed theirservices, the lord could not molest them; if the lord ejected a sick villein, the villein was emancipated. For trivial offences the villein was amerced, or was at the lord's mercy; that is, was obliged to pay a fine assessed by a jury who were sworn to spare no one for love or fear, and to punish no one too severely; for disobedience and disloyalty the lord could set his villein in the stocks; if others then came and broke the stocks to let the villein out, the lord could have an action of trespass: the stocks were chiefly designed for vagrants and unruly servants.
At one time the ties which bound a peasant to his landlord were like those which bound a soldier to his martial chief. Dependence on a lord was thought no degradation, and the state of society made independence impossible. The feudal system was exhausted as soon as the law became strong enough to protect an independent man.
We now proceed to the several services.Grass-erth, or the service of Tillage, was in return for the privilege of feeding cattle in the lord's open pastures. The Saxon boor ploughed two acres, and might be allowed to plough more if he required more pasture.
At Sturminster Newton in Dorsetshire, certain tenants came upon the lord's grass-land on the morrow of St. Martin's Day with as many teams of oxen as they could bring, and they ploughed four acres of the land with each team; they brought seed from the hall to sow the land, and afterwards harrowed it. This service entitled them to feed their oxen with the lord's oxen, from the time that the meadows were mown until thecattle were housed. The lord might, in the meantime, raise no hedge, and might make no several pasture in the fallow-field, to exclude the cattle of the tenantry.
The Saxon boor, in addition to grass-erth, ploughed three acres of gafolyrthe: that is, ploughing alone in satisfaction of his gayfol, or rent; as well as three acres of benyrthe, or optional tillage, done as aboonto the lord,—done out of grace and kindness, not in the way of duty.
A large part of the lord's arable land was entirely cultivated by the tenantry. The customary tenants at Cokefield, near Bury, ploughed 200 acres; or rather, they ploughed each acre more than once, and their labour was equal to the single tillage of 200 acres.
In large manors, it was the duty of the reeve to ascertain whether a tenant intended to do the service, or chose rather to pay for a substitute. The reeve had to deal with persons of both sexes, and of all conditions. Some of the contributors of labour were knights, and gentlemen, and ladies of quality; others were independent yeomen, surly farmers, and poor widows. This arrangement was called anarable precation. Thegathering of the ploughsmust have been a remarkable sight. Soon after dawn, on the appointed day the tenants met the lord's officers in the field. Tenants who came without oxen, were employed in delving and in making fences; tenants who came with single oxen or with less than an entire team, were associated with others; and thus all the oxen and cart-horses present were sorted in teams of about eight animals. The teams were marshalled by a beadle, who carried his wand of office, not quite a bare symbol of authority, for, we dare say, it was used upon inert husbandmen as well as upon inert oxen. The reeve took care that each team did its full work: that the ploughmen worked as wellfor the lord as they would work for themselves; and that the teams were not unyoked until the work had been fairly done. The day's work was supposed to be completed at the ninth hour,—three in the afternoon, according to our reckoning. This hour was called high noon, and the meal then taken was called a noonshun or nuncheon. Some of the ploughmen had a meal from the lord, but there was no regular feast; a tenant employed in the lord's service was not usually entitled to a meal, unless the service kept him occupied an entire day. A boon-harrowing, with horses, succeeded; each horse that harrowed was allowed two or three handfuls of oats. In due time there followed a bedweding, or weeding boon.
There were small services, such as threshing, thatching, delving, building, and enclosing. A tenant made two perches, or eleven yards, of dyke. A tenant at Darent, near Rochester, in the thirteenth century, did two perches of enclosure around the court, and seven perches of Racheie around the lord's corn. Then there was the service of enclosing the hall-garth or courtyard. The tenants are still obliged to keep up a stone wall round the site of the manor-house at Brotherton, in Norfolk; the mansion itself disappeared long ago. The fencing of a park was in some places distributed among a number of townships, each undertaking to maintain so many rods of paling; this was the custom at Pilton, in Somerset, where there was a deer-park belonging to the Abbot of Glastonbury. The churchyard at Bradley, in Staffordshire, is said to be still enclosed by the parishioners associated in this manner,—that is, each person is bound to finish a certain portion of paling. The tenants also made or maintained the lord's sheepfold. Each hyde at Thorpe inEssex had to make a certain number of rods for the fold out of the lord's wood.
At times, the tenants had to spread composts in the lord's field. They also collected stubble out of the corn-fields, and reeds out of the marsh; reeds and straw were strewn in apartments, and used for thatching or fuel. In many places they were required to gather nuts in the woods for the lord; the nuts were for making oil, and a quarter of nuts answered to a gallon of oil. Nutting was rather a pastime, or holiday task, than a service. The nutting expeditions at Wickham, in Essex, were to be made on three feast days, which are not named, but Holyrood Day, the 14th of September, may have been one of them:
"This day, they say, is called Holy-Rood Day,And all the youth are now a nutting gone."Grim, the Collier of Croydon.
To make malt for the lord was usually the chief service of the poorer tenants in the immediate neighbourhood of a monastery, as at Darent and other places near Rochester, and at Battle; tenants at a distance, instead of making malt, in some places paid a tax calledmalt-silver. The cottagers carried their lord's malt to the flour mill to be crushed, for they were not allowed to keep hand-mills or mortars, which might be used in grinding corn. The malt might be dried at home, for kilns were common in old houses; but in some manors the lord had a public kiln, which the tenants were bound to make use of.
Abedrip,reaping boon, orautumnal precation, was a more pompous festival than anarable precation. In old times, as in our own, the Harvest was made a season of merriment, if not of thanksgiving:
"In tyme of harvest mery it is ynough;The hayward bloweth mery his horn,In eueryche felde ripe is corn."Romance of King Alexander.
In the illustrations of an old Saxon Calendar, in the Cotton Library, the hayward is shown standing on a hillock, cheering the reapers with his horn. Slumbering reapers were roused by the sound of a horn in Tusser's time; and the custom of blowing horns at harvest-time endured until the end of the last century, for it is noticed by John Scott, of Amwell. In the thirteenth century, when the rentals were mostly compiled, the lord was aided in harvest, as in seed-time, by tenants of all ranks. A superior tenant rarely sent more than two men to the bedrip, or two men and anoverman, that is a foreman.
The kindly services rendered to the lord in seed-time and harvest were otherwise called precations, gifel-works, and love-boons. The days on which they were rendered used to be called boon-days, and occasionally love-days: a love-day more commonly meant a law-day, a day set apart for a leet or manorial court, a day of final concord and reconciliation; as we read in theCoventry Mysteries:
"Now is the love-day mad of us foure fyniallyNow may we leve in pes as we were wonte."
Love-boons are described by the Law authorities as "the voluntary labourof the inhabitants of the neighbouring townships."
The memorable truce between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, in 1458, was called a love-day.
A customary tenant, in some places, was bound to appear on the grandest day with his whole family, except the housewife, who stayed at home and spun; sometimes excepting the nurse as well the mistress. In the neighbourhood of Oxford, in the year 1279, all the men who held yard-lands, and all who held half-yard-lands, came to two autumnal precations, each of them with one man; and to the third precation each of them with his whole family, excepting his wife and shepherd, and was regaled by the lord on this third day,—not on the two former days; and all the customary tenants were obliged to ride beyond the lord's crops, to see that they were reaped safe and well. They rode in saddles, with bridles and spurs; if they failed in any part of this equipment, they were fined. These mounted overseers were called reap-reeves. In the time of Edward the Third, the tenant of an estate called Fawkner Field was bound to ride among the reapers in the lord's demesnes, at Isleworth, on the bederepe day, in autumn, with a sparrow-hawk upon his wrist. The officers of the court were entitled to a share of the crop. In some places, the sicklemen received a worksheaf each; each man was expected to reap half an acre, called a deywine (day-win), or day's labour. In the accounts of the tenures at Booking, in Essex, there is a curious estimate of the cost of these autumnal precations. The expense of the food provided for the reapers is weighed against the value of their work, and the balance is found to be fivepence and three-farthings.
A yard-lander at Chalgrave, in Oxfordshire, reaped at the two precations in autumn with all his household but his wife and shepherd; if he brought three labourers, he walked with his rod, or rode, in front of the reapers; if he brought no labourers, he worked in person; for two repasts, at nones, a wheaten loaf, pottage, meat, and salt; at supper, bread and cheese and beer, and enough of it, with a candle while the guests were inclined to sit. The last day was always the grand day, when, at Piddington, the tenants and their wives came with napkins, dishes, platters, cups, and other necessary things.
In the reign of Henry III., the ploughmen and other officers, at East Monkton, near Warminster and Shaftesbury, were allowed a ram for a feast on the Eve of St. John the Baptist, when they used tocarry fire round the lord's corn. This form of the Beltane superstition was observed in the north of England, and in Scotland, about fifty years ago. The Beltane flourishes at the uttermost ends of Europe, in the Scilly Islands, and in Russia; and even the main of Madagascar, who holds his head to other stars, is accustomed to kindle bonfires on the day which we have dedicated to St. John. We learn from thePopular Antiquitiesthat in our time, in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, on the eve of Twelfth Day, fires used to be lit at the ends of the lands, in fields just sown with wheat.
Tenants in old times were required to cut and clear the lord's hay-field. A tenant at Bradbury, for one day's mowing, received a meal of bread and cheese twice in the course of the day; and for carrying the same meadow, a bundle of hay, for his pains. The mowers also received among them twelvepence or a sheep, which they were to choose out of thelord's fold by sight, not by touch. In other places the mower was allowed as much grass as he could raise up on his scythe, without breaking its handle; and a haymaker received as much hay as he could grasp with both arms. At Sturminster, a tenant, after mowing and carrying, received a knitch of hay,—that is, as much hay as the hayward could raise with one finger to the height of his knees.
In the year 1308, it was the rule at Borley that the mowers and haymakers should have two bushels of wheat for bread, a wether worth eighteenpence, a gallon of butter, the second-best cheese out of the lord's dairy, salt and oatmeal for their pottage, and the morning's milk of all the cows; and a mower as much grass as he could lift upon the point of his scythe. In 1222 they had in common a cheese and a good ram. A sheep was commonly the reward of work in the hay-field. Old English husbandmen were very fond of mutton, and the hay-harvest fell about St. John's Day, when mutton was considered in season.
The second Tuesday after Easter, was another very important day in bygone times. At Chingford, the ward-staff was presented in court on Hock-day. John Ross, of Warwick, records that, on the death of Hardicanute, England was delivered from Danish servitude; and to commemorate this deliverance, on the day commonly called Hock Tuesday, the people of the villages are accustomed to pull in parties at each end of a rope, and to indulge in other jokes. The Hock-tide sports were kept up at Hexton, in Hertfordshire, in the time of Elizabeth, and aredescribed in Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire. Hock-day was usually set apart for a love-day, law-day, or court-leet. This court could be held but twice in the year, and was generally held at Hock-tide and Michaelmas, or Martinmas, since a court on these days would not interfere much with agricultural operations. Leets, like most other gatherings, ended with good cheer. In the thirteenth century, when the officers of East Monkton attended the Hundred courts at Deverell—which were held at Hock-tide and Martinmas—they were allowed a loaf and a piece of meat each. A feast following a court-leet or law-day, was called a leet-ale, or scot-ale, as ale is said to mean no more than a feast. There were leet-ales and scot-ales, church-ales, clerk-ales, bid-ales, and bride-ales. Scot-ales were often abused, and made means of extortion. The bishops, the judges, and all the king's men in vain tried to suppress them. All persons present at a scot-ale paidscot,—that is, a fine, or fee; the money raised nominally furnished a feast, but was really for the benefit of the chief officer of the court—the portreeve, head borough, or third borough. In some places, leet-ale was not entirely supported by subscription. In Tollard, on the edge of Cranborne Chase, the steward was allowed on the law-day to have a course at a deer out of Tollard Park. At Bovey Tracy, the profits of the Portreeve's Park defrayed the expenses of the annual revel. The Glastonbury Rental describes the mode of keeping the scot-ales in Wiltshire, in the thirteenth century. The customs are very like those of ancient Guilds. By the rules of the Guild of the Holy Ghost at Abingdon, members who sat down at dinner paid one rate, and members who stood for want of room paid another.
This was another service imposed upon the tenantry. Though hard and heavy work to wash and shear sheep, in the thirteenth century it was done by women, who are called "shepsters" in theVisionof Piers Plowman. The sheep were washed in the mill-pond. Shearers were usually entitled to the wambelocks, or loose locks of wool under the belly of the sheep; or at Weston, in Oxfordshire, a penny instead of the locks. The finest part of the fleece is the wool about the sheep's throat, called in Scotland the haslock, or hawselocks:
"A tartan plaid, spun of good hawslock woo',Scarlet and green he sets, the borders blew."The Gentle Shepherd.
Up in the North they call a sheep-shearing the clipping-time; and to come in clipping-time is to come as opportunely as at sheep-shearing, when there are always mirth and good cheer. In the middle of the seventeenth century, clippers always expected a joint of roasted mutton. In theWinter's Tale, the clown ponders:
"Let me see, what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pounds of sugar, five pounds of currants, rice—what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on.... I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates, none! That's out of my note. Nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger—but that I may beg; four pounds of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun."
"Let me see, what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pounds of sugar, five pounds of currants, rice—what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on.... I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates, none! That's out of my note. Nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger—but that I may beg; four pounds of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun."
The old customs of clipping-time were observed by Sir Moyle Finch, at Walton, near Wetherby, in the time of Charles I., and are thus described by Henry Best:
"Hee hath usually fower severall keepinges shorne altogether in the Hall-garth.... He hath had 49 clippers all at once, and their wage is, to each man 12d. a day, and when they have done, beereand bread and cheese; the traylers have 6d. a day. His tenants the graingers are tyed to come themselves, and winde the well; they have a fatte wether and a fatte lambe killed, and a dinner provided for their paines; there will be usually three score or fower score poore folkes gatheringe up the lockes; to oversee whom standeth the steward and two or three of his friends or servants, with each of them a rodde in his hande; there are two to carry away the well, and weigh the roll so soone as it is wounde up, and another that setteth it downe ever as it is weighed; there is 6d. allowed to a piper for playing to the clippers all the day; the shepheards have each of them his bell-weather's fleece,"—the "bellys" allowed to the shepherd by the old Saxon laws.
"Hee hath usually fower severall keepinges shorne altogether in the Hall-garth.... He hath had 49 clippers all at once, and their wage is, to each man 12d. a day, and when they have done, beereand bread and cheese; the traylers have 6d. a day. His tenants the graingers are tyed to come themselves, and winde the well; they have a fatte wether and a fatte lambe killed, and a dinner provided for their paines; there will be usually three score or fower score poore folkes gatheringe up the lockes; to oversee whom standeth the steward and two or three of his friends or servants, with each of them a rodde in his hande; there are two to carry away the well, and weigh the roll so soone as it is wounde up, and another that setteth it downe ever as it is weighed; there is 6d. allowed to a piper for playing to the clippers all the day; the shepheards have each of them his bell-weather's fleece,"—the "bellys" allowed to the shepherd by the old Saxon laws.
Sheep-shearing was thus celebrated in ancient times with feasting and rustic pastimes; at present, excepting a supper at the conclusion of the sheep-shearing, we have few remains of the older custom. Nevertheless, it is interesting to revert to these pictures of pastoral life and rusticity, more especially as we find them embellished by the charms of poetry, and enlivened by a simplicity of manners which, to whatever period it may belong, is always entertaining, if not productive of better fruit. The season of the shearing is thus laid down by Dyer:
"If verdant Elder spreadsHer silver flowers, if humble Daisies yieldTo yellow rowfoot and luxuriant grass,Gay Shearing Time approaches."
The most irksome tasks were the transport services, called in Scotland the duties ofarriageandcarriage. The load of a sumpter-horse was usually eight bushels—the weight of a sack of wool, or a quarter of corn. A wain-load was apparently nine seams. The goods carried were chiefly provisions—grain, pulse, malt, honey, bacon, suet, salt, and wood. A castle or monastery wasfarmed—that is, supplied withfood—by the nearest manors belonging to the lord. The farming was done according to a regular cycle, each manor sending supplies in its turn for so many days or weeks. We have a list of thirty-five villages which took turns to farm Ely Minster—some for three or four days, some for a week, some for a fortnight.
Everything contributed in this manner did not travel in waggons, or packs and panniers; oxen and swine were driven to the head of the barony to be slaughtered, especially at Martinmas; if the drovers came from any distance, they received drove-meat. Arriage and carriage were not very burdensome when fulfilled by the removal of so much wool, or cheese, or corn, or bacon, to a neighbouring town; but they became serious when a tenant had to ride or drive from the heart of England to the coast and home again. Some tenants were calledpouchers, because they were required to carry goods in a poke, pouch, or bag. In the Channel Islands, on the first spring-tide after the 24th of June, the poor who possess neither cart nor horse have the exclusive right to cutvraic(wrack, sea-weed), on consideration that it is conveyed on their backs to the beach. Thus cut and conveyed it is calledvraic à la poche, and distinguished fromvraic à cheval.
When fish was wanted at Rochester, the tenants of the four hydes of Hedenham and Cuddington, near Aylesbury, were called out; two of the hydes brought the fish from Gloucester into Buckinghamshire, and the other two hydes carried it on to Rochester: it is likely that they were sent to fetch the dainty lamprey, still sought for at Gloucester. Thelangerodes, or long journeys, were very troublesome to the tenants, but could not be dispensed with while there were no regular mails, andno public conveyances. A person undertaking alangerodeeither received some remuneration or worked out his rent by serving as a carrier; in general he was not inclined to leave his home and farm, and found it more convenient to pay the price of the service, which enabled the lord to find another carrier. No services were more frequently commuted than the duties of arriage and carriage, and a body of professional carriers was gradually formed by the habit of constant commutation.
The wardmen of ancient times were a kind of rural police, whose duty of ward-keeping was connected with their tenure. They were, probably, maintained on the north side of London until the institution of a general system of police in the time of Edward the First. By the statute of Winton, it was ordered that a watch should be kept by six men at each gate of a city, by twelve men in every borough, and by six men or four men in each rural township, every night, from the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord to the Feast of St. Nicholas. The watchmen could detain any one unknown to them; any one who would not stand and declare himself, was pursued with hue and cry—with horn and voice—
"Swarming at his back the country cried."
We suppose that St. Nicholas became the patron of highwaymen, because the watch was intermitted on the day dedicated to St. Nicholas. The wardmen were occasionally noticed in the Domesday of St. Paul's. The survey of 1279 states, that at Sutton, in Middlesex, each tenant who had cattle on the lord's lands to the value of thirty pence, paid a penny atMartinmas, calledward-penny; but this tax was not due from the watchmen of the ward, who waited at night in the King's highway, and received the ward-staff:—
"They wared and they waked,And the Ward so kept,That the king was harmless,And the country scatheless."
In Essex, the ward-keeper had a rope with a bell, or more than one bell, attached to it: the rope may have been used to stop the way. The ward-staff was a type of authority, cut and carried with peculiar ceremony, and treated with great reverence.
The duties of the beadle (Saxon,bydelorbædel), in ancient times, lay more on the farm than in the law-court, the state procession, or in the parochial duties of punishing petty offenders, as in the present day.[58]In many places, the bedelry and the haywardship were held together by one person. The beadle was the verger of the manorial court; he likewise overlooked the reapers and carried his rod into theharvest-field. At Darent, near Rochester, the beadle held five acres as beadle, shepherd, and hayward; he had eighteen sheep and two cows in the lord's pasture; against Christmas he had acrone—an old sheep—a lamb with a fleece, and some other allowances. At Ickham, in the same county, the beadle's office was hereditary: the beadle had five acres with a cottage for his service, and made all the citations of the court, and, if he went on horseback into the Weald of Kent, he was allowed provender for his horse; he had pasture for five hogs, five head of cattle, and a horse; he attended in the fields to regulate the labours of the harvest. And such had been the tenure of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.
Old English gentlemen were anciently very much afraid of theft and peculation; they believed that "Treste lokes maketh trewe hewen,"—or, to change their maxim into current English, they believed that "firm locks made faithful servants." The barns were to be well closed after August, and no servant was to open them until threshing-time, without the special direction of the landlord or the steward. The strictest accounts were kept. Every person, in any situation of the slightest trust or responsibility, was required to render an account of every penny and every article passing through his hands, to the receiver, or bailiff, whose accounts were revised once a year by auditors, who went round from manor to manor.
he means by which property has been identified, and denoted by some distinctive mark, at various periods, present us with some curious customs.
In England, individual marks were in use from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries, probably much earlier; and when a yeoman affixed his mark to a deed, he drew asignum, well known to his neighbours, by which his land, his cattle, and sheep, his agricultural implements, and even his ducks, were identified. In the 25th year of Queen Elizabeth, a jury at Seaford, in Sussex, convicted John Comber "for markyng of three ducks of EdwdWarwickes and two ducks of Symon Brighte with his own marke, and cutting owt theire markes." Cows and oxen were marked on the near horn. When cattle in bodies of many hundreds ranged over extensive commons, as was formerly the case, the use of marks for identification was more indispensable than at present. Our swans retain their marks to the present day. In Ditmarsh and Denmark the owner's mark was cut in stone over the principal door of the house; it designated not only his land and cattle, but his stall in the church, and his grave when he was no more. At Witney, Oxon, a woolstapler's mark may be seen so incised on a house, with the date 1564; and numerous merchants' marks are at Norwich and Yarmouth. At Holstein, within the memory of man, the beams of the cottages of the bond-servants wereincised with the marks of their masters. A pastor, writing from Angeln, says, "The hides had their marks, which served instead of the names of their owners." In the island of Föhr, a little to the north of Ditmarsh, the mark, cut on a wooden ticket, is always sold with the house; and it is cut in stone over the door; and the same custom is still in use in Schleswig and Holstein. In the Tyrolese Alps, at the present day, the cattle that are driven out to pasturage are marked on the horn with the mark of their owner's land. Marks for cattle are also used in Switzerland, in the Bavarian Alps, and in some parts of Austria.
These house-marks are connected with merchants' and tradesmen's marks, and also with stonemasons' marks, all of which formed a lower kind of heraldry for those not entitled to the bearings of the noble; for, on old houses at Erfurt, double shields, with the marks of the families of husband and wife, are found.
Many of the marks found on old pictures are true house-marks, and not alphabetical monograms. A painting by Wouvermans or Lingelback, in the writer's possession, bears the mark known as the crane's foot. Michelsen considers armorial bearings to have been originally little more than decorated marks, and to have been engrafted, as it were, upon the system: indeed, he asserts that the arms of Pope Hadrian VI., a Netherlander, were framed from house-marks. Some knightly families in Schleswig still retain their house-marks on their coat-of-arms: for instance, the Von Gogerns bear the kettle-hanger, or pot-hook; the Von Sesserns, in 1548, bore the same, which occurred on their family tomb,anno1309. The earliest marks were supposed to represent the most indispensable agricultural implements, as a spade, a plough, a scythe, asickle, a dung-hook, the tyres of a barrow; also, anchors, stars, &c. There was, also, often a supposed connexion between the figurative name of a house and its owner's mark, which was a representation of the object, more or less exact. Michelsen considers that the names and signs of inns are but remnants of the once universal and necessary custom of giving figurative names to houses, which the modern numbers have superseded.
Prof. Michelsen shows that thecultellum, which was given by the Franks, Goths, and Germans, in the ninth and tenth centuries, on the transfer of land, with thesignumcut on a piece of wood, was originally intended for notching the mark on the wood, in the same manner as the inkstand and pen were lifted up with the chart, as symbols of a transfer of land. Among the archives of Nôtre Dame, at Paris, is preserved a pointed pocket-knife of the eleventh century, on the ivory handle of which is engraved the record of a gift of land; and at the same place is preserved a piece of wood, of the ninth century, six inches long and one inch square, attached to a diploma, as was then the custom. A similar knife, with an ivory handle, is still preserved, attached to a charter of Trinity College, Cambridge.
The surrender of copyholds by the rod or glove, and occasionally by a straw, or rush (whence the word "stipulation," fromstipula, straw), is well known in England; and in the manor of Paris Garden, Surrey, an ebony rod is preserved with a silver head, on which are engraved the royal arms, with E. R. and a crown, and an inscription purporting that it is kept for the surrender of copyholds of the manor. The inscribed sticks, mentioned in Ezekiel xxxv. 16, appear to relate to this ancient mode of conveyancing.
ay customs are nothing more than a gratulation of the spring, to testify universal joy at the revival of vegetation. Hence the universality of the practice; and its festivities being inspired by the gay face of Nature, they are as old as any we have on record. There is at Oxford a May-day ceremony which has a special claim upon our respect and veneration, for nearly four centuries.
Upon the majestic Perpendicular tower of Magdalen College we have many time and oft looked with reverential feeling: seen from every point, it delights the eye with its stately form, fine proportions, and admirable simplicity; and with its history is associated a May-day custom of surpassing interest. For more than three centuries and a half the choristers of the College have assembled upon the top of its tower on a May-day morning, and there performed a most harmonious service, the origin of which has been thus traced by the learned Dr. Rimbault.
In the year 1501, the "most Christian" King Henry VII. gave to Magdalen College the advowsons of the churches of Slymbridge, in Gloucestershire, and Fyndon, in Sussex, together with one acre of land in each parish. In gratitude for this benefaction, the College was accustomed, during thelifetime of the royal benefactor, to celebrate a service in honour of the Holy Trinity, with the collect still used on Trinity Sunday; and the prayer, "Almighty and everlasting God, we are taught by Thy word that the heart of kings," &c.; and, after the death of the King, to commemorate him in the usual manner.
The Commemoration Service ordered in the time of Queen Elizabeth, is still performed on the 1st of May; when is sung on the College-tower a Latin hymn, which has evidently reference to the original service. The produce of the two acres before-mentioned used to be distributed on the same day, between the President and Fellows: it has, however, for many years been given up, to supply the choristers with a festal entertainment in the College-hall.
The arrangement of the ceremony is as follows. At about half-past four o'clock in the morning, the singing boys and men, accompanied by members of Magdalen and different colleges, ascend to the platform of the tower; and the choristers, having put on their surplices, range themselves on the slightly-gabled roof, standing with their faces towards the east. Magdalen bell having tolled five, the choristers sing from their books the Latin hymn, of which the following is a translation:—
"Father and God, we worship Thee,And praise and bless on bended knee:With food Thou'rt to our bodies kind,With heavenly grace dost cheer the mind."O, Jesus, only Son of God!Thee we adore, and praise, and laud:Thy love did not disdain the gloomOf a pure Virgin's holy womb."Nail'd to the cross, a victim made,On Thee the wrath of God was laid:Our only Saviour, now by TheeImmortal life we hope to see."To Thee, Eternal Spirit, riseUnceasing praise, from earth and skies:Thy breath awoke the heavenly Child,And gave Him to His mother mild."To Thee, the Triune God, be paid—To Thee, who our redemption made—All honour, thanks, and praise divine,For this great mystery of Thine!"
SINGING THE MAY-DAY CAROL ON MAGDALEN COLLEGE TOWER.
At the close of the hymn, all heads are covered, and the singers hasten to the belfry, whence the bells ring out a joyful peal. The spectators in the road beneath disperse, the boys blowing tin horns, according to ancient custom, to welcome in sweet May; while others ramble into the fields to gather cowslips and field flowers, which they bring into the town. Occasionally the singing on the tower has been heard, with a favourable wind, at two miles' distance. This being a "gaudy day" for the choristers, they have a dinner of roast lamb and plum-pudding in the College-hall at two o'clock. There is a good representation of the ceremony on the tower, carefully engraved by Joseph Lionel Williams, in theIllustrated London News, whence the accompanying representation has been reduced.
Dr. Rimbault, whilst making some researches in the library of Christchurch, Oxford, discovered what appeared to him to be the first draft of the above hymn. It has the following note:—"This hymn is sung every day in Magdalen College Hall, Oxon, dinner and supper throughout the year, for the after grace, by the chaplains, clerks, and choristersthere. Composed by Benjamin Rogers, Doctor of Musicke of the University of Oxon, 1685." The author of the hymn is unknown.
At Oxford, formerly, boys used to blow cows'-horns and hollow canes all night, to welcome in May-day; and girls carried about garlands of flowers, which afterwards they hung upon the churches.
Before we leave the sacred ground whereon this holy May-day ceremony is, year by year, performed, we present the reader with a very ably-drawn picture of the locality itself, and its many attractions.
"Probably," says a writer in theSaturday Review, "there is no city in the United Kingdom, with the exception of the metropolis, which possesses such a concentration of interest as Oxford. Its historical associations are spread over a long succession of ages. Not to speak of more apocryphal reminiscences, it was a favourite residence of one of our monarchs, and the birthplace of another. It was the scene of important transactions in the troubled reign of Stephen, and witnessed an episode in the equally troubled reign of the third Henry. It beheld the seeds of the Reformation sown by Wycliff, and saw the martyrdom of Cranmer and his fellow-sufferers. It became a confessor for the Church of England as against Puritanism under the second Stuart, and as against Popery under the fourth. It has been, at least since the Reformation, a sort of head-quarters of that Church; and has witnessed, in our own day, the most remarkable theological convulsions which it has experienced since the Reformation. Its outward appearance is in keeping with its history. It bears traces of the architecture of eight centuries—from the rude belfry-tower of St. Michael's, which has been assigned on good authority to the age of the Confessor, to Mr. Scott's exquisiteimitation of the Sainte Chapelle, in its immediate neighbourhood. It is true that it contains no building of the first rank; but it exhibits an almost infinite variety, under the influence of accidental yet harmonious grouping, which has a charm more akin to that of nature than that of art. In its æsthetical as well as in its moral aspect, it betrays a strong spirit of Conservatism, and, occasionally, one of studied Revivalism. We see in Oxford the shadow of the Middle Ages projected far into the region of modern life. A College is a strange compound, half club, half convent, and its daily usages are curiously intermingled with the past. For two centuries after the Reformation, Protestant founders cast their institutions in the mould of Wykeham and Waynflete: the scholastic system appears to have been a living thing at the beginning of the last century, and its ghost still haunts the academic shades. These facts have their parallel in the architecture of Oxford. The revival of mediæval art, which we have ourselves witnessed, had its precursors here in the early part of the seventeenth century. Nowhere in England—we may almost say, nowhere in Europe—shall we find such good and pure Gothic, built at a time when the style was defunct elsewhere, as is presented by the Chapels of Wadham, Lincoln, and Jesus Colleges, and in the staircase of Christchurch Hall; and as was to be seen in the chapel of Exeter College, before its destruction.
"With such attractions, added to that of personal interest, arising out of the past or in direct connexion with the place, it is no wonder that Oxford, at the most pleasant season of the year, draws to itself crowds of visitors from all parts of the country. The only wonder is, that it is not even more popular than it is, when we consider the throngs ofEnglish men and women who are to be met with in the dingy and unsavoury Colleges of continental cities from June till October."
At Saffron Wolden, and in the village of Debden, an old May-day song is still sung by the little girls, who go about in parties carrying garlands from door to door. The first stanza is to be repeated after each of the others by way of chorus:—
"I, I been a rambling all this night,And some part of this day,And, now returning back again,I brought you a garland gay."A garland gay I brought you here,And at your door I stand;'Tis nothing but a sprout, but 'tis well budded out,The works of our Lord's hand."Why don't you do as I have doneThe very first day of May?And from my parents I have come,And could no longer stay."So dear, so dear as Christ loved us,And for our sins was slain,Christ bids us turn from wickedness,And turn to the Lord again."
The garlands which the girls carry are sometimes large and handsome, and a doll is usually placed in the middle, dressed in white, according to certain traditional regulations: this doll represents the Virgin Mary, and is a relic of the ages of Romanism.
The May-pole still lingers in the village of St. Briavel's, in the picturesque forest of Dean. In the village of Burley in the New Forest,a May-pole is erected, a fête given to the school children, and a May-queen is chosen by lots; a floral crown surmounts the pole, and garlands of flowers hang about the shaft. Among other late instances are recorded a May-pole, eighty feet high, on the village-green of West Dean, Wilts, in 1836; and in 1844, there was "dancing round the May-pole" in St. James's district, Enfield. William Howitt describes May-poles in the village of Lisby, near Newstead; and in Farnsfield, near Southwell, Derbyshire, May-poles are to be seen. Dr. Parr was a great patron of May-day festivities: opposite his parsonage-house at Hatton, near Warwick, stood the parish May-pole, which was annually dressed with garlands, and the doctor danced with his parishioners around the shaft. He kept its large crown in a closet of his house, from whence it was produced every May-day, and decorated with fresh flowers and streamers, preparatory to its elevation to the top of the pole.
On May-day and December 26th, is distributed the fund bequeathed in 1717 and 1736, by Mr. Raine, a wealthy brewer at St. George's-in-the-East, who founded schools and a hospital for girls, and added marriage portions of 100l., to be drawn by lots: the winner is married to a young man, of St. John's, Wapping, or St. Paul's, Shadwell; the couple dine with their friends, and in the evening an ode is sung, and the marriage portion of one hundred new sovereigns is presented to the bride.
Miss Baker, in herNorthamptonshire Glossary, tells us that there are very few villages in that county where the May-day Festival is not noticed in some way or other.