The Ties That Bound

by Barbara A Hanawalt

  Gild membership could provide both financial and psychological comfort in this time of dire need. One of the primary functions of the social-religious gilds was to give members a fine funeral procession and the correct masses. Further, the brothers and sisters would routinely pray for dead members on the anniversary of their death. Since the membership fee and the annual dues guaranteed this service, the member could spread the cost for these ceremonial expenses throughout his lifetime, and not dilute the bequest to his family. Furthermore, if he doubted that his ungrateful children would forget about his soul, he could be assured that his gild brothers and sisters would not forget. Gild membership was the best insurance against purgatory that money could buy.

  The evidence from a broad range of fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury English sources indicates a considerable tension between the young and the old. The young were desirous of gaining control of the family resources while the old wished to secure care and comfort. In the absence of a binding cultural norm of devoting family resources to caring for the aged, such as is found in China, English peasants resorted to contracts and wills when they doubted that their families would provide adequate care. How one fared in such contract negotiations depended then, as now, on the personal resources one had amassed in a lifetime. Peasants with land and goods could negotiate for their care either with kin or with other parties. Those with nothing depended on private charity. Retirement arrangements were flexible. The aged persons showed a marked preference for staying in their own homes even if it meant that they would have to share it with nonkin. But sharing a home was a choice imposed by economics and not by preference. In addition to anxieties about material comfort in old age, peasants worried about their funeral and prayers for their soul. Again, rather than trusting to family completely for these offices, they formed voluntary associations-surrogate family-that would ensure safe passage through the hereafter.

  In the preceding sections and chapters we looked at the close-knit unit that the nuclear family formed in its residential patterns, in its household economy, and in the emotional reliance of its members on one another. A few loose threads remain, however, in the fabric of the argument for the cohesive nuclear family. One is the argument of Aries, Shorter, and Stone that in the rural hinterland of medieval Europe community meant more to peasants than family did. As Stone has put it, the family was "porous" and friends and neighbors could easily enter it or draw out family members into close relationships. A second thread left dangling is the hypothesis stated in the introduction that while family tended to meet adversity by regrouping into new nuclear units without experiencing permanent structural change, the relationship of individuals and family to the community did change. And, finally, the reader must be wondering what happened to kinless men, women, and children. Was their plight as bad as that described in the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Wanderer"? These are the themes that we must bring together in this final section to make our argument of whole cloth.

  The individuals that immediately come to mind as needing surrogate families are children left orphaned or otherwise neglected. Who was to shelter the child bereft of parents or suckle an infant whose mother died in childbirth, and who would attend to their spiritual welfare? Not being a callous, indifferent people, medieval peasants had ways of coping with these very pressing problems. Laslett has suggested that in preindustrial England the number of children left orphaned was as great as it is in the modern United States, even when one includes in the recent figure children from broken homes. i Provision had to be made for such children.

  Children who came into this world alive had godparents. We have noted the urgency with which children were rushed to the baptismal font to ensure that their souls would be saved. But once these godparents were acquired, what role did they play in children's lives? The Church, of course, had special instructions for the godparents and set them out in manuals for priests. Godparents were not simply to name the child, but were to undertake the spiritual upbringing of their charge. They arranged for confirmation and taught the child its "Pater Noster," "Ave Maria," and "Credo." Because one could not be sure that the godparents knew these prayers, the instructions urged parents not to accept as godparents anyone who did not. The obligations of godparents included a shared responsibility for the physical well-being of the child until it was seven years old. They were admonished to keep the children from such accidents as being run over by horses and, like the biological parents, they were not to sleep with the child, for fear of overlaying, until it was able to manage by itself.2

  The Church was also concerned about the possiblity of the relationship becoming too intimate. Robert Mannyng, in the Handlyng Synne, discussed at length the evils of sexual abuse of godchildren. He related a story from Pope Gregory I about the godfather who invited his goddaughter to spend the Easter holidays with him and then seduced her. His just punishment from on high was to die a week later and have his body burn up in his grave. The taboo on such sexual relations was particularly strict in the Middle Ages, and a marriage between godparent and godchild was considered incestuous. Godparents were linked with parents in the commandment to honor one's father and mother.3

  The initial relationship between the child and the godparents was, symbolically at least, a close one. The mother was still in bed during the baptism, and, even if well, she would have been prohibited from going to church. The whole naming and spiritual cleansing ceremony was in the hands of the baby's godparents. A further tie, this time a material one, was a gift to the child from the godparents.

  The role of godparents in children's lives after the baptism ceremony is difficult to determine. In three centuries of inquisitions postmortem in Yorkshire, only 12 percent of the witnesses on proof of age were godparents, and the number acting as guardians was minuscule.4 This source represents only the upper class, of course, but may also indicate a laxity of feeling about the role in general. If one turns to the more ordinary people who left wills in late fifteenth- and early-sixteenthcentury Bedfordshire, only 15 percent remembered godchildren in their wills. Usually the bequest was 4d., a sheep or lamb, or a bushel of barley, the standard type of token bequest that we have seen before for grandchildren. Only one favored godson received land. William Tychmers left one bushel of barley to each godchild, but specified that William Goldisborowe was to get two sheep. Young William had apparently endeared himself to his godparents because when widow Tychmers died the next year she also left him land.5

  The pattern of bequests in wills indicates that godchildren became more important as the person aged. Young men provided only for their immediate families when they died, but older men and women left money to friends, servants, and grandchildren in addition to immediate family. The broader range of bequests indicates less concern about the future of their families, who have already been established, and more sentimentality about the companionship godchildren, grandchildren, and friends provided in their last years. Another curious aspect of bequests to godchildren is that they were seldom referred to by name. Since the executor was often the wife, and the parish priest often wrote the will, the testator could presume that they knew who the godchildren were.

  A clue to the functions of godparents may be found in looking at the people chosen. For a female child two women and a man acted as godparents, and for males, two men and a woman. Care was taken not to select close kin or anyone who would be a potential marriage partner. Thus the selection of godparents enlarged the kinship circle rather than drawing upon those already in it.6

  A unique source yields some information on godparents. In latefifteenth-century York hostility to the Scots had reached such a pitch that people who were suspected of being Scots were forbidden to practice their trade. Tradesmen authenticated their English parentage by producing certificates citing their place of birth, parents, and godparents. For instance, Bartram Dawson was a draper in York. His certificate showed that he was born in Warmeden and that his godfathers were Richard Craucester, gentleman, and Bartram Fenkyll of New
ham, yeoman. His godmother was Margaret Hudde of Shoston. Bartram's father had selected godparents either within or above his social rank. Of the seventeen such certificates extant, only one had a godfather and godmother with the same surname as the godson. In the eight cases where the social class of the godparents was listed, these York craftsmen all had at least one godparent who was a gentleman and, therefore, of a higher social class than they were. One father had selected his employer as spiritual guide for his son.7 The selection of a higher-status individual to be at least one of the godparents suggests that the parents hoped the sponsor would help the young man when he was looking for places and preferment. The other godparents might be closer friends of the parents and might be expected to take a greater role in rearing the child than the local gentleman.

  Pulling together the scanty information available, it is difficult to argue that godparents were a major substitute for family. They often gave their names to the children, gave them gifts at birth, and may have remembered them in a rather perfunctory way in their wills, but a more active role beyond those cannot be established. We do not even know if they taught the youths their prayers. When a godparent appears in folk literature, the role is usually that of a dens ex machina, intervening in a bad situation rather than acting as surrogate parent.

  In the period of extraordinary mortality that we have been studying, the likelihood of one or even both parents dying before a child reached maturity was fairly great. Families had to be prepared to meet such eventualities, and a number of children would have been reared by a stepparent, single parent, or even a court-appointed guardian. The experiences of one family in Halesowen illustrates both the frequency of disruption and the ways in which the family coped with it. Thomas Richard was in his late teens when his father, a yardlander, died in 1348. Philip Tompkyns, a wealthy villager from the same township, took him and his holding into his custody and married him to his young daughter Juliana. But Thomas also died of plague, leaving his wife with a newborn son. The Tompkyns family were the next to fall victim, with Philip and his elder son dying in quick succession. This left the Tompkyns family with a minor son, an elder married daughter, and the widow of Thomas Richard and her son. The elder daughter and her husband got the family land and took in the surviving remnants of the 8 family.

  Fathers dying when they had minor children left the rearing of them to their widows. The arrangement was so common, as we have seen, that the one testator who had doubts about his wife's mental health felt it necesary to explain why he was departing from the usual procedure. The sentiments of these young fathers are expressed well in Ralph Sneuth's will: "that my wife have a tender and a faithful love and favour in bringing up of her children and mine, as she will answer to God and me." He left to her discretion the way they would be reared and the final settlement of property on them.9

  Other fathers made more elaborate arrangements for the care of the children. Thomas Wales died, leaving five minor children. His wife was to have the tenement for sixteen years provided that she raised their children "tyll thei can helpe themselves." Then the property was to go to the eldest sons, who were to give their brother 10 marks and their sisters 40s. when they married. Another man gave the land in trust to his wife until the children were twenty-four years old. By that time he expected her to remarry and their sons to enter the land. Fathers had to balance the right of each child to have a share of the family goods and also keep the family land intact. To accomplish this dual purpose some fathers chose to sequence the holding. Thus a Bedfordshire man left his tenement to his wife for seven years. By that time his eldest daughter would be an adult and allowed to hold it five years. After her term her sister was to hold it five years until, finally, the young brother would be of age to take over the tenement.10

  Single parents on their deathbeds sought other solutions to the care of young children remaining at the hearth. Fathers often pressed the older children into the role of caring for their younger brothers and sisters by making bequests contingent on their meeting their obligations to the young ones. One father gave his eldest son the home tenement provided he make payments to his younger brother; but the father wanted to go beyond this monetary arrangement, "desyryng also the same Thomas to be frendly to his said brother." In another case the older sons were to administer land left to the younger brother and with the proceeds they were to send young George to school or to learn some useful craft. If there were no older siblings, grandparents, uncles, and aunts were left with the rearing of minor children. 1

  Alice Alyne of Kempston, a widow, turned to the local vicar and her brother to oversee her children. She charged Hugh Burton to keep her son at school until he came of age and to disperse her goods other than land to her two daughters when they married. Having taken care of the final distribution of the property, she left it up to the vicar and her brother to find someone to rear the two girls. They were to "hand [the goods] to whoever shall be caring for the girls during this time."12

  A father whose wife died in childbirth faced the problem of finding a wet-nurse for his infant. While there are no records dealing specifically with wet-nursing, the wet-nurse appears in scattered cases in the coroners' inquests. There were two ways of retaining a wet-nurse. John de Burgoyne placed his infant in the care of Beatrice Paysele, who took care of the child in her own home. John Bronn also left his son John at the home of the wet-nurse, but Robert Asplon had Isabel, wife of Nicholas le Swon, come to his house to nurse his son. One cannot generalize on the basis of one case, but it is possible that family harmony was better maintained if the child were kept with the wet-nurse. Nicholas le Swon was so jealous of his wife spending "too much time" at Robert Asplon's house that he killed her with a sword as she was bending over to make up their bed.13

  An obvious solution for the single parent was to remarry, and many medieval children were raised by stepparents. The wicked stepmothers of fairy tales and folklore are not simply the stuff of myth. Stepparents could easily disinherit a child by the first marriage either by alienating the family land or producing children who could challenge the inheritance rights of the first family. It was not uncommon to find a stepchild suing a stepparent for rights to land and chattels.14

  Occasionally the hatred spilled over into homicide. Emma Mabyll belonged to a prominent family in the Midland village of Wigston. She first married John Baker and had a son by him named Richard. When she married Adam de Sutton, she had inherited a piece of freehold property. Adam must have persuaded her to sell the freehold rather than pass it on to Richard. On the night of November 13, 1390, probably in front of his mother's house, Richard lay in wait for Adam and killed him with a staff before his mother's eyes.15 Sometimes the first family ganged up on the new wife. One night in October 1273 Robert le Tailur and his children, Eve and Raymond, killed Emma, wife of Robert and stepmother to the children. They cut her throat and shins and buried her in a dung heap outside their house.16

  A coroner's inquest recounts an unsavory family scene involving a short-tempered stepfather. George Stokeley, six months old, was suffering from a severe fever and was in his mother's arms. His father, William, was about to correct his stepdaughter, Mary Borowe, "by beating her with a `wymble."' George and Mary's mother interposed herself between her husband and her daughter and by accident the head of the "wymble" flew off and hit the baby.17

  Not all relationships between stepparents and stepchildren were disagreeable or violent. Wills often indicate evenhanded treatment of stepchildren, and even affection. For instance, John Luffe gave his three children a bullock each and gave the same bequest to his wife's three children from her first marriage. John Lyght left substantial gifts of livestock to his four stepchildren, and when his wife died she left all the children equal gifts, including items of gold and silver.18

  When a child was orphaned and the parents had made no plans for its care, the village community, through the manorial court, would make arrangements. The land of the tenant was given to someone who would house a
nd feed the children until they reached the age of majority. Thus a man who took the guardianship of three girls had the use of their land for six years, at which time the eldest girl was to marry a specific young man and they would take over the tenement. Occasionally the wardship of the land would go to one person while the custody of the heir went to another. The terms of the wardship were often agreed on, just like retirement contracts, and specified the amount of food and type of housing that the child could expect. One man asked permission to build an addition on his house to accommodate his ward.19

  Guardianships, whether established by the community or through a will, did not always work out well and, as in retirement contracts, communities had to be the watchdogs. Other times it was the children themselves, when they were old enough to appear in manorial court, who brought charges against a guardian who cheated them out of their proper bequests.20

  Children with inheritances were sure to find people in the community willing to raise them in exchange for the use of their land and chattels or a marriage contract with one of their children. But what of the landless orphans, illegitimate children, and foundlings? An illegitimate child was raised in its mother's house, if he or she had one. Felicia, daugher of the tailor John Gotter, and her mother, whose name was unknown, lived in the home of John Best when Felicia died of a cradle fire while her mother was getting water; and Alice Saddler and her son Ham, six months old, lived with Christine Rumbold, where Alice carried on her work of making harness. The immediate compassion of neighbors for orphans came to the fore in a case that must have been a fairly normal one for a community to face. A mother and her two-year-old were in their house when it caught fire. The mother burned, but the neighbors took in the orphan, who subsequently died of burns.21