The Ties That Bound

by Barbara A Hanawalt

  The completion of the first year of life marks the first stage in child development. Problems of feeding, warmth, and attention dominated the child's life. Although 32 percent of children described as one year old still died in cradle fires and while sleeping, 46 percent of the victims were described as playing with water, pots, fire, and with other children and 13 percent were described as walking when the accident occurred. As in modern accidental-death statistics for children of this age, the baby boys tended to be more active and aggressive at play (63 percent of boys' compared to 54 percent of girls' accidents). (See Appendix, Tables 6 and 7.) Thus during their first year children began to enter the second phase of child development, which is characterized by motor development and the reception to outside stimulation.

  The second stage of child development and the second readily definable accident grouping occur in the second and third years, when children develop their motor skills and take a lively interest in their environment.32 The prevalance of cradle fires as a cause of children's fatal accidents dropped to 3 percent, and the number of accidents involving play and other activities indicates that the toddlers were in the process of exploring, reaching out to the world around, and imitating adults. Various types of play accounted for 65 percent of their fatal accidents, and an additional 16 percent involved walking. As noted in the chapter on children's work, little girls tended to have more accidents in the home, such as when playing with pots in imitation of their mother, and little boys wandered farther afield observing their father's work around the close. The places where accidents occurred also indicate the toddlers' new experiences and interests. The majority of fatal accidents (49 percent) still occurred in the child's home, but 18 percent occurred in another person's home, 20 percent in public places, and 12 percent in bodies of water.

  Examples from the coroners' inquests present vivid pictures of these perambulations. Agnes, daughter of William Wryhte of Fordham, aged two, was tagging along with other children and playing in the king's highway. She tried to follow the others across a stream and drowned. Another toddler was sitting in front of his father's house playing with other children when a man came up on horseback to view a cloth for an amercement (fine). The man's horse trampled the boy. A girl of two and a half came out of her father's house with a piece of bread in her hand when a small pig came up and tried to take it from her, pushing her into a ditch. A little boy of two was watching men constructing a wall when a ladder fell on him. The pot on the hearth was a great fascination. Sometimes the toddlers tried to ladle out hot food to eat when the pot fell over on them. Other times the children were simply curious and looked into cauldrons of hot groat and fell in.33

  The play of some children indicates that they lacked sufficient motor skills to carry through games they started. One little boy was trying to get water in a pit, but the dish fell into it and he could not get it out. A three-year-old girl tried to pick watercress flowers in a neighbor's ditch, but overreached herself and fell in. A boy of one and a half was clever enough to throw his cap in the ditch but could not retrieve it successfully. And another child, tempted by a white feather floating on a brook, leaned over to get it.34

  Accidental-death figures need to be put into a comparative framework in order to assess the experiences of medieval toddlers. In modern American accidental-death figures, the period of infancy showed a high frequency of accidents, with a sharp decrease by the time children reached the age of two and three;35 but the medieval pattern shows 38 percent more fatal accidents happening to toddlers than to infants. The swaddling system may have kept down the number of accidents in the first year of life, but for unswaddled, active toddlers the medieval peasant home and close area was fraught with hazards. It was impossible to child-proof the peasant environment.

  Were medieval parents negligent of their children's safety by leaving them unattended or inadequately surpervised? Sometimes they certainly were careless about their children, but often they had to be away from home and could not find adequate child care. The seasonality of toddlers' accidents was similar to that for babies; the planting and harvest seasons were the most dangerous because parents were busy away from home. Furthermore, if a child did wander into a ditch or well, the parents might not be able to save it, because they too could not swim. And one should not underestimate the mischief that toddlers could get into even when normal care was provided. While a father was eating lunch, his son, aged one and a half, wandered out doors and drowned in the well. In another case William, son of William Faunceys, aged three and a half, fell into Robert Waeng's ditch when his mother went in to get a pot of ale to take home.36 It was, perhaps, the unpredictable nature of children's play and wanderings at this age that gave rise to the folkloric tradition of changelings being aged two or three. Elf children were exchanged for human children at this age.37

  The behavior of the boys and girls continued to exhibit the differences that appeared in the first year of life. Boys were more aggressive in their investigations of their environment and consequently had more accidents. More of their misadventures involved play and walking than those of girls. But the place of the accidents showed a similar pattern for both, with home still predominating. Fields played a relatively minor role in their lives, although the village streets and neighbors' closes were familiar to them in their perambulations.

  Parents of these active two- and three-year-olds were obviously able to instil some sense of caution into their wandering children, for the number of accidents dropped dramatically for both boys and girls after they reached the age of four. Of the 945 children whose ages are given in the coroners' rolls, 25 percent died in the first year of their life, 48 percent when they were two to three, and only 11 percent when they were four to six. Even by age three accidents began to diminish, testifying to a greater degree of motor control and training for coping with the environment. By four children discover infantile sexuality, but the coroners' rolls, of course, contain no evidence that children suddenly took their fingers out of pots and put them on their genitals instead. Such behavior, however, did not escape the careful scrutiny of the clergy, and in the Handlyng Synne Robert Mannyng warned that parents should not allow children to lie together as they grew older, for often the worst sins are committed by children and such lechery may continue with them into adulthood.38

  At the ages of four to six and beyond, parents could discipline children and train them for their adult lives. Books on morality and advice had a great deal to say about the parents' responsibility in disciplining a child, mostly along the lines of "spare the rod and spoil the child." The "Proverbs of Alfred" was typical:

  Discipline was proper, but cursing a child was a terrible mistake. In the poem "How the Good Wife Taught her Daughter," the mother is of the opinion that a rebellious child should not be cursed but rather beaten smartly until it cries for mercy and understands what it has done wrong. Robert Mannyng tells a moral tale that underlines the risks of curses. A mother asked her daughter to have her clothes ready when she finished her bath. The daughter did not bring them immediately and the mother wished her to the devil. The devil took the daughter very willingly.40

  Recorded cases indicate that corporal punishment was normal in dealing with children who misbehaved, but that extreme reprimands came to community attention, although not necessarily their condemnation. The wife of William Puncie hit Agnes, daughter of Matilda Foletby, with a stick when she found her in her garden doing damage. Anges died five weeks later of an illness unrelated to the beating, but the neighbors brought it to the attention of the coroner nonetheless. When a boy stole a parcel of wool by taking it under his hat, the wife of the shop owner chastised him by striking him under the left ear with her hand. The blow was fatal, but the jurors felt that the punishment was just and the death accidental, and no indictment for homicide was brought.41 Although manorial courts sometimes interfered with husbands who beat their wives severely, no one has reported a case in which the jurors intervened in the case of children. Yet
in the coroners' inquests a child was occasionally described as being beaten to death. A mother whipped her ten-year-old son so severely in a fit of anger that he died from the 42 wounds.

  Discipline alone, however, did not bring about a reduction in children's accident rate between the ages of four to six. Ironically, in peasant society children seemed to have had more adult supervision during this period than they did from infancy through three years old. Contrary to Aries's assumption that chidren were only valued when they began to contribute to the home economy, the greater supervision came because children's mobility made it possible for them to be with adults more. Their accident pattern indicates that, rather than suddenly becoming more productive, they were still spending most of their time playing. As we have seen, the work that they did perform was rather minimal. So, the activites of childhood predominate in coroners' inquests. A litte girl of four was holding a duck in her hands and wanted to put it into the river, but she fell in and drowned. William Annotson, four and a half years old, went to a well and saw his face reflected in its water. When he tried to reach down and touch the face, he fell in.43

  The most striking change in a child's life in its progress to adulthood seems to have come at ages eight through twelve. During this period children began to show independence from adults and were given useful tasks of their own to perform for the family. They still lived at home for the most part, contrary to the assumption of Aries and others, that all children older than seven were sent to live in another person's home. Their chores show that they were moving into adult life and were being trained for the work they would eventually perform as adults. Their accident pattern in both work and play became closer to that of adults. Boys no longer chased feathers or played with ducks; instead they were learning to have mock fights with staffs and to shoot at targets with bows and arrows. And girls began to take up female occupations.

  The coroners' rolls show that the children growing up in the medieval household went through distinct biological stages of development recognizable to us today. In addition, the inquests tell us something about the emotional climate in the home. One would assume that the inquests would reflect only negative feelings within the family, since they record homicides and violent death, but intrafamilial homicide was rare in the medieval family, as already observed, and within that category homicide involving parents and children was very rare indeed. Husbands and wives and siblings were more likely to be involved in the homicidal drama.45 Cases of child abuse ending in homicide were rare. One woman put the hand of her eight-week-old daughter in boiling water and the child eventually died of the burn. Another mother beat and dismembered her daughter. The record of this case is graphic, explaining that the woman had become insane and with her own hands "dispoiled and dismembered her daughter Agnes." Another mother tied her four-year-old daughter to a doorway and struck her with sharp sticks. The child died from wounds at sunrise and the jurors said that the mother was insane at the time she did the deed. Pleas of insanity required the jurors to present a history of mental illness so we may believe that these cases were ones of genuine insanity.46

  But to argue that medieval parents had a sentimental attitude toward their children we must find more than a forbearance in killing or mutilating them. We would expect emotional outpourings from parents upon finding a dead child. The rolls, unfortunately, stop short of the parent's lament. But to the extent that the relationship of the first finder to the victim demonstrates love and concern, this information from the coroner's inquests is instructive. About a third of children's bodies were found by members of their family. In the case of little boys, 43 percent were found by their fathers and 45 percent by their mothers. An additional 5 percent were found by siblings and 7 percent by other kin. The age of the little boy did not make a difference in whether the mother or father found the body. For little girls, however, only 33 percent were discovered dead by their fathers compared to 59 percent by their mothers. When the age of the female victim was three and younger, mothers far outweighed fathers as first finders of their bodies. Even though male toddlers were more active than their sisters and followed their fathers around, most of the fatal accidents still occurred in the home. The fathers apparently took a keener interest in the welfare of their male children, particularly during their early years of life, than they did in the female children. An occasional case shows a father's concern. For instance, Reynold, son of Thomas Tempsford, came home from St. Neots market and immediately asked where his son Richard was and searched for him.47 The data could suggest that mothers and fathers had an equal concern for sons but the mothers had a heightened concern for their daughters.

  Parents were willing to give their lives to save their children and often expressed anger at the loss of a child through murder or negligence. Medieval parents did not take the casual attitude toward the loss of children that historians of the modern family have ascribed to them:

  On Friday last [Aug. 9, 1298] John Trivaler and Alice his wife were in a shop where they abode in the parish of St. Mary late at night, ready to go to bed, and the said Alice fixed a lighted candle on the wall by the straw which lay in the said shop, so that the flame of the candle reached the straw before it was discovered and immediately the fire spread throughout the shop, so that the said John and Alice scarce escaped without, forgetting that they were leaving the child behind them. And immediately when the said Alice remembered her son was in the fire within, she leapt back into the shop to seek him, and immediately when she entered she was overcome by the greatness of the fire and choked.''

  A ten-year-old boy who was shooting at a dunghill with his bow and arrow missed his target and hit a five-year-old girl instead. The jurors said that it was an accident, but that the boy had fled because he was afraid of the father's anger.49

  The records give few glimpses of how parents viewed their roles and responsibilities vis-a-vis their children, be they young or adult. Fathers usually appeared in manorial court rolls furthering the material interests of their children, but occasionally disputes surfaced. One angry father, John Manning, described himself as "enfebled" and "decrepite" with age, but he was alert enough to detail his reasons for disinheriting his son. In folk literature and works such as that of Robert Mannyng the father's role was limited to providing an inheritance for his children and disciplining them, but it did not extend to nurturing them.so

  The mother's role, on the other hand, received considerable emphasis in song and advice manuals. Analogies to Mary as the ideal mother were constantly drawn in story and statuary. A poignant glimpse of mothers with their children comes from a lament of Mary that other mothers can enjoy their children but hers, alas, is dead:

  After grooming, the mother fastens a caplet on the child and "with great solace" takes the child by the hand, saying, "Sweet son, give me a stroke."51 Such a sentimental picture of motherhood could not have been completely removed from reality, even for the hard-working peasant woman. Although there was much misogynistic literature in the Middle Ages, the role of women as mothers received respect.52

  In return for the patrimony of their father and the nurturing of their mother children were instructed to obey their parents and keep them when they were old. Wills often provide insight into the continued process of parents trying to force their children to obey. A genuine feeling of partnership in childrearing emerges in these final injunctions. Fathers will provide inheritances for a son provided "he be good to his mother," or "yff he please hys modr well," or if he "wyzely behave hymselfe ... with owte any vexyng or troblyng" his mother. Daughters would be given dowries only if "they will be counselled by their mother" or "ruled and be advysyd by their mother in ther marying.„s3

  Coroners' inquests and literary remains show parents tending to the needs of their children, providing for their future, and exhibiting love and concern for them, but they do not indicate the sentimental attachment to the state of childhood that according to Aries, distinguishes the modern family from the medieval one. Some clue
s to a sentimentalization of childhood do, however, appear. Medievalists have pointed out that, contrary to Aries's claims, medieval artists quite frequently depicted real babies rather than little adults and have observed that by the end of the twelfth century there were stories about the special innocence and delights of childhood.54 In a fifteenth-century work, The Miracles of Henry VI, half the miracles attributed to Henry consist of curing children and raising them from the dead. This hagiographic work is of particular interest because the cases read like coroners' inquests.ss

  Perhaps the most striking testimony to a medieval sentimentalization of childhood comes from the stories of martyred children. St. William of Norwich was supposedly crucified by the Jews in 1144. He was about eleven or twelve years old at the time. A cult immediately grew up around him and made Norwich a great center of pilgrimage. There followed a rash of martryed young boys in many of the major cathedral towns. Toward the end of the trend, about a century after William, Lincoln got its martyr in St. Hugh, who became the most famous of all thanks to the "Prioress's Tale." The martyred child was a natural subject for sainthood because he presented strong parallels to lyric poetry about young Jesus and the biblical story of the Slaughter of the. Innocents. People in the Middle Ages did sentimentalize and venerate childhood, but in the way that they knew best-they made saints out of them.56

  Medieval sentimentalization of childhood, however, did not reach the proportions that it does in modern Western culture. Childhood was, however, a recognized, separate period in life. Because so much of the maturation process is biological rather than cultural, medieval peasants could not bypass this stage. In going through it, the behavior of medieval children very much resembled that of modern children as they go through the stages of child development. Medieval parents, perhaps, had less time to devote to childrearing, but they did manage to attend to their needs, teach them to talk and work, and discipline them. As,the children grew up the parents continued to provide for them to the best of their abilities, arranging marriages, purchasing pieces of land, and trying to establish them in their own households and families.