Mediaeval Socialism

So long as a man is in perfect health, the movements of his life-organs are hardly perceptible to him. He becomes conscious of their existence only when something has happened to obstruct their free play. So, again, is it with the body politic, for just so long as things move easily and without friction, hardly are anyone's thoughts stimulated in the direction of social reform. But directly distress or disturbance begin to be felt, public attention is awakened, and directed to the consideration of actual conditions. Schemes are suggested, new ideas broached. Hence, that there were at all in the Middle Ages men with remedies to be applied to "the open sores of the world," makes us realise that there must have been in mediaeval life much matter for discontent. Perhaps not altogether unfortunately, the seeds of unrest never need much care in sowing, for the human heart would else advance but little towards "the perfect day." The rebels of history have been as necessary as the theorists and the statesmen; indeed, but for the rebels, the statesmen would probably have remained mere politicians.

Upon the ruins of the late Empire the Germanic races built up their State. Out of the fragments of the older villa they erected the manor. No doubt this new social unit contained the strata of many civilisations; but it will suffice here to recognise that, while it is perhaps impossible to apportion out to each its own particular contribution to the whole result, the manor must have been affected quite considerably by Roman, Celt, and Teuton. The chief difference which we notice between this older system and the conditions of modern agricultural life--for the manor was pre-eminently a rural organism--lies in the enormous part then played in the organisation of society by the idea of Tenure. For, through all Western civilisation, from the seventh century to the fourteenth, the personal equation was largely merged in the territorial. One and all, master and man, lord and tenant, were "tied to the soil." Within the manor there was first the land held in demesne, the "in-land"--this was the perquisite of the lord himself; it was farmed by him directly. Only when modern methods began to push out the old feudal concepts do we find this portion of the estate regularly let out to tenants, though there are evidences of its occasionally having been done even in the twelfth century. But besides what belonged thus exclusively to the lord of the manor, there was a great deal more that was legally described as held in villeinage. That is to say, it was in the hands of others, who had conditional use of it. In England these tenants were chiefly of three kinds--the villeins, the cottiers, the serfs. The first held a house and yard in the village street, and had in the great arable fields that surrounded them strips of land amounting sometimes to thirty acres. To their lord they owed work for three days each week; they also provided oxen for the plough. But more than half of their time could be devoted to the farming of their property. Then next in order came the cottiers, whose holding probably ran to not more than five acres. They had no plough-work, and did more of the manual labour of the farm, such as hedging, nut-collecting, &c. A much greater portion of their time than was the case with the villeins was at the disposal of their master, nor indeed, owing to the lesser extent of their property, did they need so much opportunity for working their own land. Lowest in the scale of all (according to the Domesday Book of William I, the first great land-value survey of all England, they numbered not more than sixteen per cent. of the whole population) came the slaves or serfs. These had almost exclusively the live stock to look after, being engaged as foresters, shepherds, swineherds, and servants of the household. They either lived under the lord's own roof, or might even have their cottage in the village with its strip of land about it, sufficient, with the provisions and cloth provided them, to eke out a scanty livelihood. Distinct from these three classes and their officials (bailiffs, seneschals, reeves, &c.) were the free tenants, who did no regular work for the manor, but could not leave or part with their land. Their services were requisitioned at certain periods like harvest-time, when there came a demand for more than the ordinary number of hands. This sort of labour was known as boon-work.

It is clear at once that, theoretically at least, there was no room in such a community for the modern landless labourer. Where all the workers were paid by their tenancy of land, where, in other words, fixity and stability of possession were the very basis of social life, the fluidity of labour was impossible. Men could not wander from place to place offering to employers the hire of their toil. Yet we feel sure that, in actual fact, wherever the population increased, there must have grown up in the process of time a number of persons who could find neither work nor maintenance on their father's property. Younger sons, or more remote descendants, must gradually have found that there was no scope for them, unless, like an artisan class, they worked for wages. Exactly at what date began the rise of this agricultural and industrial class of fee labourers we cannot very clearly tell. But in England--and probably the same holds good elsewhere--between 1200 and 1350 there are traces of its great development. There is evidence, which each year becomes more ample and more definite, that during that period there was an increasingly large number of people pressing on the means of subsistence. Though the land itself might be capable of supporting a far greater number of inhabitants, the part under cultivation could only just have been enough to keep the actually existing population from the margin of destitution. The statutes in English law which protest against a wholesale occupation of the common-land by individuals were not directed merely against the practices of a landlord class, for the makers of the law were themselves landlords. It is far more likely that this invasion of village rights was due to the action of these "landless men," who could not otherwise be accommodated. The superfluous population was endeavouring to find for itself local maintenance.

Precisely at this time, too, in England--where the steps in the evolution from mediaeval to modern conditions have been more clearly worked out than elsewhere--increase of trade helped to further the same development. Money, species, in greater abundance was coming into circulation. The traders were beginning to take their place in the national life. The Guilds were springing into power, and endeavouring to capture the machinery of municipal government. As a result of all this commercial activity money payments became more frequent. The villein was able to pay his lord instead of working for him, and by the sale of the produce from his own yard-land was put in a position to hire helpers for himself, and to develop his own agricultural resources. Nor was it the tenant alone who stood to gain by this arrangement. The lord, too, was glad of being possessed of money. He, too, needed it as a substitute for his duty of military service to the king, for scutage (the payment of a tax graduated according to the number of knights, which each baron had to lead personally in time of war as a condition of holding land at all) had taken the place of the old feudal levy. Moreover, he was probably glad to obtain hired labour in exchange for the forced labour which the system of tenure made general; just as later the abolition of slavery was due largely to the fact that, in the long run, it did not pay to have the plantations worked by men whose every advantage it was to shirk as much toil as possible.

But in most cases, as far as can be judged now, the lord was methodical in releasing services due to him. The week-work was first and freely commuted, for regular hired labour was easy to obtain; but the boon-work--the work, that is, which was required for unusual circumstances of a purely temporary character (such as harvesting, &c.)--was, owing to the obvious difficulty of its being otherwise supplied, only arranged for in the last resort. Thus, by one of the many paradoxes of history, the freest of all tenants were the last to achieve freedom. When the serfs had been set at liberty by manumission, the socage-tenants or free-tenants, as they were called, were still bound by their fixed agreements of tenure. It is evident, however, that such emancipation as did take place was conditioned by the supply of free labour, primarily, that is, by the rising surplus of population. Not until he was certain of being able to hire other labourers would a landholder let his own tenants slip off the burdens of their service.

But this process, by which labour was rendered less stationary, was immeasurably hastened by the advent of a terrible catastrophe. In 1347 the Black Death arrived from the East. Across Europe it moved, striking fear by the inevitableness of its coming. It travelled at a steady rate, so that its arrival could be easily foretold. Then, too, the unmistakable nature of its symptoms and the suddenness of the death it caused also added to the horror of its approach.

On August 15, 1349, it got to Bristol, and by Michaelmas had reached London. For a year or more it ravaged the countryside, so that whole villages were left without inhabitants. Seeing England so stunned by the blow, the Scots prepared to attack, thinking the moment propitious for paying off old scores; but their army, too, was smitten by the pestilence, and their forces broke up. Into every glen of Wales it worked its havoc; in Ireland only the English were affected--the "wild Irish" were immune. But in 1357 even these began to suffer. Curiously enough, Geoffrey Baker in his Chronicle (which, written in his own hand, after six hundred years yet remains in the Bodleian at Oxford) tells us that none fell till they were afraid of it. Still more curiously, Chaucer, Langland, and Wycliff, who all witnessed it, hardly mention it at all. There could not be any more eloquent tribute to the nameless horror that it caused than this hushed silence on the part of three of England's greatest writers.

Henry Knighton of Leicester Abbey, canon and chronicler, tells us some of the consequences following on the plague, and shows us very clearly the social upheaval it effected. The population had now so much diminished that prices of live stock went down, an ox costing 4_s._, a cow 12_d._, and a sheep 3_d._ But for the same reason wages went up, for labour had suddenly grown scarce. For want of hands to bring in the harvest, whole crops rotted in the fields. Many a manor had lost a third of its inhabitants, and it was difficult, under the fixed services of land tenure, to see what remedy could be applied. In despair the feudal system was set aside, and lord competed with lord to obtain landless labourers, or to entice within their jurisdiction those whose own masters ill-treated them in any way. The villeins themselves sought to procure enfranchisement, and the right to hire themselves out to their lords, or to any master they might choose. Commutation was not particularly in evidence as the legal method of redress; though it too was no doubt here and there arranged for. But for the most part the villein took the law into his own hands, left his manor, and openly sold his labour to the highest bidder.