The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

by Ian Mortimer

  The foregoing does not account for all manorial lords. Many lordships are in the hands of clergymen or institutions, such as monasteries or university colleges. Many old manors have been divided between co-heiresses, and so a “lord of the manor” might be the holder of just a quarter of a knight’s fee, perhaps less than a thousand acres, yielding as little as £5 per year. There are about ten thousand men who fall into this category of local gentry, with incomes of £5 to £40 per year.11To what extent they should be considered among “those who fight” is open to debate. Nevertheless, their legal status and family connections give them influence among their peers and power over their tenants and bondmen, so do not be fooled by their lack of wealth into thinking they are of little consequence.

  The Social Hierarchy

  Laity (landed and rural men) Laity (urban) Clergy

  Dukes Archbishops

  Earls Bishops

  Abbots summoned to Parliament,12the prior of the Hospitallers, and the Master of the Templars (to 1308)

  Barons Abbots of lesser abbeys

  Priors of the larger priories, and priors of the mendicant orders (friars)

  Knights Mayors of cities and incorporated towns Canons of cathedrals, archdeacons, and priors of lesser priories

  Esquires and gentlemen with £200 or more income from land The richest merchants, with more than £1,000 capital, and aldermen of cities and incorporated towns Other higher clergy and wealthy rectors (normally of multiple parishes)

  Esquires and gentlemen with £100 income from land Middling merchants with £500 capital or more Rectors of single parishes

  Franklins/yeomen Merchants with less than £500 capital; some professionals (e.g. physicians, lawyers, and a few master masons/ master carpenters) Vicars of parishes

  Husbandmen (freemen) Shopkeepers, local traders, skilled workers, and freemen of towns Chaplains, friars, and minor clergy

  Villeins (unfree) Laborers Hermits

  Domestic servants Domestic servants

  Beggars

  Those Who Pray

  The hierarchy of the English clergy is similar to that of the secular lords. There are spiritual noblemen—archbishops, bishops, and the abbots of the major religious houses—and subordinate levels: archdeacons, deans, canons, and the lesser clergy.

  Top of the pile in England are the archbishops of Canterbury and York. Of these two, the archbishop of Canterbury takes precedence. His province extends over fourteen of the seventeen English dioceses and all four of the Welsh ones.13 Each diocese is presided over by a bishop, who is directly subordinate to the archbishop. The archbishop of York is not subordinate to the archbishop of Canterbury but is obliged to yield precedence to his southern counterpart. His province covers the three other English dioceses (Carlisle, Durham, and York). There are a few other men dressed in ecclesiastical robes who are designated bishops. These are suffragan archbishops and bishops appointed by the pope and given exotic titles such as ‘Archbishop of Damascus,” “Bishop of Chrysopolis,” or ‘Archbishop of Nazareth,” but their authority comes from the pope; they are not part of the English church hierarchy.

  With regard to the pope, you need to bear two things in mind. The first is that for most of the century the pope is not based in Rome but in Avignon, in the south of France. The second is that, from 1378, there are actually two popes. These divergences from the norm all arise from a bitter argument between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip of France around 1300. After Boniface’s death in 1303 the dispute is temporarily patched up by his successor, Benedict XI, but even in death Boniface continues to irritate the French king. The next pope after Benedict, Clement V is a Francophile and does his best to placate Philip by creating many more French cardinals. In addition, he establishes himself and the papal court at Avignon. The extra French cardinals consistently elect French popes, who appoint more French cardinals, who in turn elect more French popes until 1378. In that year the Great Schism occurs in the Church. The Scots, French, and Spanish support the election of yet another French pope, Clement VII, who remains at Avignon. The English, Italians, and most of the German countries which make up the Holy Roman Empire regard Clement as an antipope and instead support the election of Pope Urban VI, who returns to Italy and nominally bases his court at Rome. So, in a nutshell: until 1305 there is just one pope, based in Rome. From 1305 to 1378 there is just one pope and he is at Avignon. From 1378 to the end of the century there are two popes, one at Avignon and the other in Rome, and the English recognize only the latter.

  The reason why this is important is that the pope appoints every archbishop, bishop, and archdeacon in Christendom, including the British Isles. This gives him huge influence. When an English bishop dies, the king can write to the pope asking for his nominated candidate to be appointed, but the choice remains the pope’s. Needless to say, the French popes (who have authority in England before the schism of 1378) are not always swayed by the requests of English kings. There are other problems too. The Avignon popes are far happier appointing hangers-on at Avignon to positions of ecclesiastical authority than distant Englishmen whom they might never have met. Thus many archdeacons and canons in the English church are foreigners, and many of these never visit England but simply pocket the money accruing from their English appointments. Finally, England is at war with France. Resentment against the French popes is understandably high.

  Like their secular counterparts, most archbishops and bishops are tenants-in-chief, holding manors directly from the king. Each English bishop receives a similar amount to an earl: a sum between £3,500 per year (Canterbury) and £400 per year (Rochester). The bishop of Ely enjoys an income of about £2,500 in 1300; the bishop of Worcester has about £1,200.14 In a few cases, the comparison between bishops and earls runs even closer. Some of the men who occupy these episcopal thrones are the sons of noblemen and hanker after a life of action. Bishop Hatfield of Durham is given command of the rearmost division in the march across Normandy during the Crécy campaign (1346). Archbishop Zouche of York similarly demonstrates his valor, jointly leading an English army to victory at the battle of Neville’s Cross (also 1346). Most remarkable of all, in 1383 Bishop Henry Despenser of Norwich invades Flanders. He claims to be fighting a “crusade” against the French supporters of Pope Clement but instead he attacks the Flemish supporters of Pope Urban (whom the English also recognize). If it is too much to expect an aristocratic bishop to turn the other cheek, you would have thought at least he might obey the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”

  The clergy as a whole are split into two sorts. The archbishops and bishops preside over the secular clergy—that is to say those priests and men in lesser orders who live in the world and administer to its needs. The regular clergy are, for most purposes, outside their jurisdiction, answering instead to the head of their house and ultimately to the head of their Order. Monks and canons withdraw from the world to live lives of quiet contemplation and prayer behind the closed doors of abbeys and priories. Their female equivalents—nuns and canonesses—do likewise. Friars go out into the world to preach, but their female counterparts (the Franciscan nuns, called “Poor Clares,” and Dominican nuns) live in priories.

  One question you are bound to ask, as you travel around medieval England, is this: if monks have withdrawn from the world to live lives of contemplation and prayer, how come you meet so many of them outside their cloisters, journeying around the country? The answer is monastic business. Abbots and priors need to attend meetings of

  Types of Regular Clergy

  Type

  Orders

  Notes

  Monastic Orders

  • Benedictines (also known as Black Monks, from the color of their habit)

  • Cluniacs

  • Cistercians (White Monks)

  • Carthusians

  Monks follow the Rule of St. Benedict. They withdraw from the secular world, to contemplate and pray, and have no possessions of their own. The Benedictines are the oldest Order, and the most lax
in their observance of the Rule. The Cistercians are much stricter, and the Carthusians stricter still, living in cloistered monastic cells.

  Regular Canons

  • Augustinian Canons (Austin Canons or Black Canons)

  • Premonstratensians (White Canons)

  • Gilbertines

  • Grandmontines

  Like monks except that they follow the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo. The Order of St. Gilbert of Sempringham is the only monastic order to be founded in England; it permits monks and nuns to live in double monasteries and worship in the same church.

  Military Orders

  • The Order of the Temple

  • The Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (Hospitallers)

  Orders of knights originally established to protect the pilgrim routes to the Holy Land. After the abolition of the Templars in 1308, only the Hospitallers have a significant presence in England.

  Mendicant Orders (friars)

  • Dominicans Unlike monks, friars go out Dominicans (Blackfriars or Friars Preacher)

  • Franciscans (Greyfriars or Friars Minor)

  • Carmelites (White Friars)

  • Austin Friars

  • Friars of the Holy Cross (Crutched Friars)

  Unlike monks, friars go out into the world, preaching the word of God to rich and poor alike. They have given up all their property and taken vows of chastity and abstinence, but otherwise they are free to roam where they will.

  their Order, and many abbots and a couple of priors are summoned to attend Parliament. Some traveling is undertaken by other monks to acquire things—including manuscripts to copy for the monastic-library—or to exchange news. But the vast bulk of monastic business is to oversee the abbey’s estates. The monk in Chaucer’s “Sea Captain’s Tale” is allowed by his abbot to roam where he wants on the pretext of inspecting the monastic granges. Some monasteries have a great number of these, with vast estates all over the south of England. The great Benedictine houses of Glastonbury Abbey and Westminster Abbey have incomes well in excess of £2,000, and more than £3,000 in a good year. Most abbeys have an income of between £30 and £300.15

  There is huge variety and range to the clergy in England. In addition to those mentioned above, there are hundreds of chaplains and priests in the seven hundred hospitals and chantries up and down the country. Add all these groups together and you begin to realize that “those who pray” are as rich and numerous as “those who fight.” In total there are about 650 monasteries in 1348 (350 houses of monks, three hundred of regular canons). There are about two hundred friaries and 150 nunneries, making a total of one thousand religious houses. In 1348 these contain at least twenty thousand men and two thousand women. Add the hospitals—each with a complement of chaplains and other religious staff—and about ten thousand parish incumbents, plus an unknown number of religious hermits, private chaplains, chantry priests singing Masses for the souls of the dead, university theologians, as well as priests serving nuns, and you will see that there are at least thirty thousand full-time religious people in England. As you have to be eighteen to enter a monastery or to become a priest, this means that more than 2 percent of adult males in England are clergymen.

  Those Who Work

  You would have thought that the last of the three estates would be the most straightforward. “Those who work” equals “peasants.” Not much call for hierarchy there, you might suppose. But you would be wrong. There are as many grades of wealth and status among the peasantry as there are among the aristocracy and the clergy combined. The status of a franklin or a yeoman who has a whole yardland (thirty acres) and his own plow team of eight oxen is far higher than that of a villein who is bound to serve his lord and has just one or two acres to his own use. If that franklin’s daughter marries a younger son of a gentleman, his status is even higher. If his family provide the officers for the manor—the reeve (manorial overseer), for instance—his status is further enhanced. The idea of all the peasants pulling together as one, equal in rank and wealth, is a modern myth.

  It is a moot point whether there actually is a group of people called “peasants.” To a manorial lord there is such a group: it is not of great significance to him if one peasant is richer than another; they are all his tenants. However, the word “peasant” is not used at this period. Ask a “peasant” if he is one and he will probably just scratch his head and wonder what on earth you are talking about. A clerk will refer to him and his companions as rustid (countrymen), nativi (those born to servitude), or villani (villeins), but these peasants do not refer to one another as rustid and not all peasants are villeins. It is not what they have in common which gives them their identity but what sets them apart from one another. Uppermost in their minds are questions such as, Where are you from? How much land have you got? Do you have any practical crafts or skills? Can you play a musical instrument? Were you born out of wedlock? And most of all—more important than every other question of status—Are you a free man?

  Freedom is the biggest single division in the peasantry (let us continue to use the word as a catchall for the sake of convenience). Those who are not free are villeins or bondmen. Villeins work the lord’s land for him according to a set of customary expectations, normally three days’ work per week. In addition they have to perform set tasks, such as plowing and harrowing a certain acreage of the lord’s land, or collecting firewood or nuts for the lord from the manorial woods. In return for their service, they have the use of some land, for which they pay rent. At the beginning of the century, about 70 percent of all villeins have the use of between a quarter and a whole yardland; very few have the use of more.16 On days when they are not working on the lord’s land, or after they have finished work (about midafternoon), they can work on their own acres or tend to their gardens. But whatever they produce actually belongs—in law—to their lords, and he can take whatever he wants.

  Usually lords demand nothing of their peasants’ goods except a “heriot.” This is the customary fine of a villein’s best beast, or most valuable chattel, which his heirs must give up to the lord on the villein’s death. But as one old abbot better versed in law than in diplomacy will tell you, legally his villeins “own nothing but their own bellies.”17 In fact, that abbot could rub even more salt into the wound of his tenants’ servitude by reminding them that they have no right to leave his manor for more than a day. If he sells his land, he sells them and their families with it. Nor do they have recourse to any legal judgment but his. They have no right of trial before the royal justices, only in his manorial court. In some manors, the lord has the power of life and death over those found guilty.

  There is worse. A lord has power over whom his villeins might marry. If a villein allows his daughter—who is, by implication, also unfree—to marry a man from another manor, then he must pay the lord a fine to compensate him for the loss of further generations of villeins. If a widow has not remarried within a few months of her first husband’s death, and the lord’s land is in danger of being neglected as a consequence, she will be ordered to choose a capable husband before the next court—normally within three weeks. If she does not, the bailiff or the reeve will select a suitable man for her. If the parties refuse to marry, they will be fined and, if they continue to refuse, imprisoned until they do consent. An arranged marriage, in which the parents choose the bride or bridegroom, is a blessing by comparison. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are aspects of a villein’s life which you will find repugnant.

  Villeins may escape from their servitude in one of two ways. One is to be made free by the lord. The other is to run away. If a man runs away to a town, and lives there for a year and a day, he is legally free. Of course he will forgo all his possessions in his original manor, and his nearest male relative will be fined.18 If he is married then his wife and children will be turned out of the house and the family possessions confiscated—so married men do not often escape. If they try, their wives are likely to follow them and drag them h
ome again. Also, it is worth remembering that a free man is not necessarily better off than his unfree cousins. Even if he has a craft or skill, he will not have the tools or money to start up in a trade. Most escapees have nothing to sell but their labor, and that is very cheap. In this way a town is regularly kept populated, mainly by younger sons seeking their fortune. As the poor men in the slums die off from malnutrition, injury, and disease, there is a regular stream of incoming young men ready to take their place, living in the cheap subdivided tenements while eking out a living by laboring in dangerous and unsavory occupations.

  Just as there is a great difference between the villeins on the manor—between those who have more than thirty acres and those who have just one or two—there is a considerable range of wealth and status among the franklins and yeomen (freemen). At the high end are those who have acquired enough freehold land to sustain their families comfortably and to employ others to help them farm their acres. They also have several servants. But even within this group there is a degree of variation. At the very top there are some who have undertaken to rent the entire manor from the lord, farming the whole estate, court and all, as if they themselves were the lords. This is not that uncommon after the Great Plague, when lords are increasingly eager to offload the financial risk of managing their estates by renting them out lock, stock, and barrel for fixed rents.19 The franklins who take on such an estate further blur the distinction between the gentry and the peasantry by marrying the daughters of esquires. A man who appoints his own bailiff, is attended by servants, has cousins among the gentry, and lords it over his fellow villagers in the manorial court hardly fits the usual image of a peasant.