by Jack Lindsay
Usually a guild had a meeting place with benches. We find a Guildhall at Abbotsbury. There was an entrance subscription, perhaps a probationary period, and rules, with an oath and fines for infringements. Banquets and drinkings were usual. Benefits were worked out to meet mishaps such as fire, damage to one’s house, and above all death. The guild might deal with the carriage of the dead man to his burial place, generally the church to which it was attached, for a special service — six masses or psalters (Exeter), five (Bedwyn), a penny apiece at the body for the soul (Abbotsbury) and a burial feast (Cambridge, Bedwyn). Some guilds had regular provisions for services (Exeter, a ha’penny for their souls at each meeting), or made payments to priest or church: at Bedwyn a young sheep or 2d on Rogation days to the priest; at Abbotsbury 1d or wax to St Peter’s minister. At each death 2d a head went for almsgiving or food. Some guilds distributed alms; at Exeter they raised 5d a head when a member went on a pilgrimage to Rome.
We do not know of other village guilds, but may surmise that there were many. There were women beneficiaries in one Woodbury guild, perhaps the wives of members. We have short regulations for two of the Woodbury guilds, then a list of twelve other guilds, apparently with the same rules. Twelve guilds are from villages and hamlets southeast of Exeter, three from Woodbury (one called Alwin’s guild), one from the near hamlet of Nutwell, two from Colyton, one each from Sidmouth, Whitestone, the near hamlet of Halsford, Exmouth, Clyst St George (Cliftwike) and Broadclyst (Cliftune); also a guild in the north-west of the diocese at Bideford, another at Lege (Leigh, perhaps East Budleigh): two priests were members of it. The stated aim was to enter into confraternity with the canons of the cathedral church of Exeter: hence the lists of names. Members were to pay the canons 1d a year from each hearth (Easter, Woodbury I, Martinmas, Woodbury II), and id at the death of each guild-brother as soul scot. In return the canons were ‘to perform such services for them as they ought to perform’.[307]
The system is one of the many signs of the hold that the old minsters or mother churches had on the people. Encouraged by the clerics, the guilds represent villagers or townsfolk coming together for mutual help of various kinds and then diverging into more specialized groups, whether for the convenience of lords or of trade groups. In the later developments of craft and trade guilds the old basis is transformed, partly by internal forces of growth, but also by the impact of the Byzantine guilds, whether directly through traders or indirectly through the guild forms growing up in the industrial areas of north France and Flanders. Still, basically what we see are forms of association built up to fill the void left by the decline of the kindreds.
We can indeed prove this thesis by looking, say, at what happened in Holstein where the tenacious kindreds were not broken down till the sixteenth century. They then transformed themselves into guilds or mutual aid societies with kluftbücher setting out the duties that the members must perform. These guilds were still essentially based on kinship even if strangers were admitted. long years ago our ancestors founded and established a Vetterschaft and Brotherhood among themselves, by virtue of which one Klufts Vetter must help and succour the other, like a brother, in all difficulties.’ How well the guilds functioned is shown by the fact that till about 1760, it is claimed, no workhouses were needed, nor fire insurance societies.[308]
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Looking back over the whole field, we see that England was continuing its own peculiar development right up to 1066, steadily expanding from the early tribal basis and building up an effective state system, with a corresponding culture, out of the unifying kingship. Nowhere else in the west was there anything at all comparable: a living vernacular literature and popular courts linked with the king’s peace, the legal system of a centralized government. Germany alone had certain similar elements, but these could not cohere as in England because of the lack of clear geographical boundaries, the conflicting pulls in the eastward colonizing movement, and the imperial ambitions to dominate Italy.
Certain insular elements inevitably persisted in English culture, leaving the country to some extent out of the mainstream of European development; but there were many positive aspects in this situation. We see many forms of expression which could have come together to create an art and architecture belonging to the mainstream and yet highly original in style and content: Celtic, Norse, and Germanic ingredients, plus the traditional Latin culture of the church and its links with continental developments. We have only to consider the stone crosses of the north, the illuminated manuscripts with their many vital native aspects, the Norse decorative patterns and the architectural variations that were being made of the Romanesque style, to see how rich and complex were the possibilities in Anglo-Saxon art.
At the same time there were many backward aspects of the situation, especially the wide persistence of slavery. In many ways the royal organization covered too extensive and varied an area; to draw it together more tightly and effectively without disintegrating the local bases on which it reposed was no doubt too great a problem at this stage. Potentialities were not enough. The diverse artistic elements did not come together in a single stream where they could enrich one another; the output of vernacular literature slackened, despite the fine start given by Alfred and carried on to some extent in homiletic forms. Despite the existence of such a work as the noble fragment of the Battle of Maldon, poetry does not seem to have been developing enough to reflect the national life in anything like its fullness.
William of Malmesbury gives us a lively account of how the Anglo-Saxons appeared to the Normans.
In process of time the desire for letters and religion had decayed for several years before the arrival of the Normans. The clergy, content with a very slight degree of learning, could hardly stammer out the words of the sacraments; and a person who understood grammar was an object of wonder and astonishment. The monks mocked the rule of their order by fine vestments and the use of every kind of food. The nobles, given up to luxury and wantonness, did not go to church in the morning after the way of Christians, but merely heard matins and masses in a careless way from a hurried priest in their chambers, amid the blandishments of their wives. The commonalty, left unprotected, became a prey to the most powerful, who amassed fortunes by seizing on their property or by selling their persons into foreign countries, though it’s an innate quality of this people to be more inclined to revelling than to the accumulation of wealth. There was one custom, repugnant to nature, which they adopted: the sale of their female servants after they’d made them pregnant and satisfied their lust upon them, in public prostitution or foreign slavery.
Drinking in particular was a universal habit, in which occupation they passed whole nights as well as days. They consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses, unlike the Normans and French who in noble and splendid mansions lived with frugality. The vices attendant on drunkenness, which enervate the human mind, followed. Hence it arose that, engaging William with more rashness and precipitate fury than military skill, they doomed themselves and their country to enslavement by one and that an easy victory...
In short, the English at that time wore short garments reaching to mid-knee, they had their hair cropped, the beards shaven, their arms laden with golden bracelets, their skin decorated with punctured designs. They were accustomed to eat till they grew surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. These latter qualities they imparted to their conquerors. As to the rest they adopted their manners.
He then retracts his contemptuous picture to some extent by adding that there were also many fine clerics and laymen ‘of all ranks and conditions’. His account may well contain many true points, even if it is partisan and exaggerated as a total picture. The Norse attacks in the late tenth century, leading to Cnut’s conquest, must have done much to check a coherent and well rooted development. Cnut no doubt did his best, and not without effect, to continue the work of unification; and to this task the church made its contribution. But the rapid changes of dynasty tended to disrupt
the military organization and the link between the king and the local lords. There were new men in power at the court, and also in the regions; the house-carles, the king’s retainers, were very important. The thegnage was held back from getting deeper roots and taking over more specific services, including military ones. The earls, great as was their power, were set over somewhat makeshift systems. We see a premature attempt to build up an overall kingly organization which was not in fact possible for hundreds of years, not indeed till the sixteenth century. That is why England was both archaic and highly advanced: it rested still on bases with many strong tribal elements and yet attempted a unification that the many fissiparous elements made unstable. Here, and not in the slackness and self-indulgence which William of Malmesbury blames, lay the reasons for the failure to build up any effective resistance to the Normans after a single battle, Hastings.
We now turn to that battle and its results, to the immediate and the long term effects of the union of the two systems, English and Norman, which in their different ways were the most remarkable of those developed in western Europe since the breakdown of the Roman empire there.
Part Two – The Norman Conquest
Chapter Eight – The Conquest
In the earlier 1060s William had had little to fear from his neighbours. The threat of a Breton attack had been removed from his southern borders; Anjou was torn by war between Count Geoffrey’s two nephews; France had a boy king with Baldwin of Flanders as regent. Further off, the Germanic Emperor Henry III was also a minor and the papacy had become wholly pro-Norman. Harold in England was facing a very different situation. In October 1065 the Northumbrians had revolted against their earl, his brother Tostig; and King Edward, out of affection for Tostig, seems to have wanted to fight. But Harold had no wish for civil war; and he was perhaps pleased at a chance to get rid of his firebrand brother. He may even have instigated the revolt or at least connived at it.[309] He probably saw that Edward would not last much longer and may well have decided already that his best policy was to work with Edwin of Mercia, who, with his brother Morcar, had joined the rebels. He accepted Morcar as the new earl of Northumbria. The Life of Aedward attributed the disasters of 1066 to the break between the two brothers Harold and Tostig: ‘the kingdom’s sacred oaks, two Hercules’, who excelled all Englishmen when linked in peace. Both were serious, careful men who persevered with what they had begun, but Tostig vigorously, Harold prudently; ‘the one in action aimed at success, the other also at happiness’. The English were to rue the ‘vicious discord sprung from the strife of brothers’.[310] Certainly Tostig was to complicate Harold’s problems and his actions may indeed have caused the latter’s downfall and the end of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
The Encomium Emmae says that Edward lost his speech on 3 January, then at last regained it. The queen warmed his feet in her bosom. He prophesied woe to the land, frightening everyone but Stigand, who whispered to Harold that the old man had lost his wits. Dying on the 5th, he was buried next day, when, says Florence of Worcester, Harold the subregulus was elected king by the magnates and crowned with much ceremony by Ealdred, archbishop of York. William of Poitiers says that Stigand did the crowning. But the Normans wanted to suggest that the ceremony was irregular because it was the work of an archbishop with pallium from a dubious pope, while from what we know of Harold he was likely to have taken the more cautious way and turned to Ealdred. Now he quickly married Ealdgyrh, sister of Edwin and Morcar, and broke off the union, contracted more Dannico, with Edith Swannhelas, by whom he had had four or even six children. The administrative system went on working as well as ever, but Harold knew he must soon face severe threats.
William was watching closely and preparing to act. Accusing Harold of perjury, he appealed to Pope Alexander II, who he knew would support his cause. An extra point in his favour was that Harold was burdened by having Stigand as archbishop of Canterbury, even if he had avoided being crowned by him. No doubt his envoy, archdeacon of Lisieux, had many bargaining points; but the main question was decided by the pope’s dependence on the Normans in Italy and his hope of getting England as well as Sicily as a papal fief by sending William a banner with his blessing. How far he exacted promises, and how far William accepted the role of a papal vassal, we do not know. Doubtless the pope was ready to take general assurances without demanding a definite oath; but we can be sure that the envoy did not contradict his assumption that England would become his fief. There is a certain sardonic humour in the fact that at the moment when William was staking his future on the denunciation of Harold as a perjured vassal, he was himself deceiving the pope in much the same way. Now, with papal backing, he ordered all the Norman monasteries to pray on his behalf and when he landed in England he wore round his neck the relics on which Harold had sworn. The oath of fealty, we may note, was normally taken on relics; there was nothing unusual about Harold’s oath. This is the form of such an oath:
By the Lord, before whom these Relics are Holy, I will be loyal and true to..., and love all that he loves, and hate all that he hates, in accordance with God’s rights and secular obligations; and never, willingly and intentionally, in word or deed, do anything that is hateful to him; on condition that he keep me as I shall deserve, and carry out all that was our agreement, when I subjected myself to him and chose his favour.[311]
The advisers of the young German emperor announced support for William; Baldwin of Flanders seems to have taken the same position, though he was ready enough to support Tostig as well. Lords, knights, and mercenaries, who saw a good chance of land and loot in England, flocked to William from all over the west, especially from north France and Brittany. He did his best to draw in ecclesiastical support: thus he told the abbey of Fécamp that when victorious he would restore to it the manor of Steyning, Sussex, a gift from Edward which Harold had seized. With Matilda he attended the dedication of the Trinité, Caen, in June, and about this time gave the queen charge of their eldest son, Robert (some fourteen years old), whom he declared his heir. The barons swore loyalty to the lad; and he decided to leave behind some of them, on whom he could rely, to control the situation: Roger of Montgomery and Hugh of Avranches, later earls of Shrewsbury and Chester. Each baron, it seems, contributed a member of his family as squadron commander. Thus, of eleven nobles that William of Poitiers mentions at Hastings, at least four represented their fathers. Robert of Beaumont, cited for gallantry on the right wing, was fighting his first battle and must have been quite young.
William’s main problem was to gather an adequate fleet. No one in this period could maintain a regular fleet for long. A naval quota seems to have been imposed on groups of nobles, with Matilda setting an example by her gift of the flagship, the Mora. At all Norman ports ship building went on. The Tapestry shows men chopping down trees, shaping planks and constructing ships, which are then dragged down to the water. A cart follows, piled with armour and a wine cask; more men bring up hauberks, which are heavy enough to need two men to carry them. William had decided against diversionary strikes; he meant to risk everything on a single compact thrust. The transportation of large numbers of horses was a new problem; the Vikings had relied on rounding up horses after a surprise landing. But the Byzantine navy was familiar with such matters; and the Normans had learned from them when attacking Sicily in 1060-1. William would have known all about their methods and may well have had advisers come from the south.
William of Poitiers makes it clear that his army could be divided roughly into barons, middling knights, and common knights. The term for the latter is gregarii, which is often met on the continent to distinguish the ordinary knight from the superior.[312]
William gave instructions to each section in turn. Because of the low status of so many knights or vavasours, we must not draw a sharp line between vavasour and mercenary. In early days the terms must often have been interchangeable. Later we find soldiers who had been mercenaries enfeoffed at Abingdon and Peterborough. As such men became linked with the land or unfi
tted for service, others of the same kind were used in the army. Indeed we often find mercenaries more loyal to a lord than those feudally linked with him. Thus, later at the siege of Bridgenorth they were the fighters most zealous in the cause of their rebel lord; they were disgusted when the other defenders submitted; they went off muttering that such behaviour left a stain on their character. William in all his main campaigns made extensive use of mercenaries; and his action as he lay outside London shows that he did not differentiate between them and the feudally summoned men. He asked the whole of his army if he should be crowned at once or wait for his wife. Haimo of Thouars, the army’s spokesman, was upset and astounded; he must have had both the common knight and the hired soldier in mind when he answered that rarely or never was the army consulted on such questions (which would normally be discussed by a ruler’s council).[313]