Life in a Mediaeval City Part 6

Cla.s.s divisions were well marked. They appeared in manners, in dress, and in occupation.

Fashions varied considerably as the century progressed. There were close-fitting dresses and loose ones, small head-dresses like the caul (a jewelled net to bind in the hair) and high and broad erections that went to the other extreme. Men now wore their hair long; later they had it close-cropped. Perhaps the most wonderful fashion was that which men followed in wearing hose of different colours. With all the vagaries of fashion the most striking feature of dress was the use of rich and a manifold variety of colours. Excepting the case of the dress of the religious, which was generally of a sombre hue, colour characterised men's clothes as much as it did the dresses of women.

The doublet was the coat of the time. Sleeves were generally big. Long and pointed shoes were characteristic, but it was the cloak that proved so effective a piece of dress, the cloak that has such scenic possibilities, that can so nicely express character. There were only few kinds of personal ornament. The most usual were brooches, belts, chains, and pendants, and especially finger-rings, of which the signet ring was a popular form.

The n.o.bles, great landowners, in many cases of Norman origin, were lords over a considerable number of people. York, being a royal city, escaped many of the troubles consequent on rule by an immediate overlord. Besides himself, his family, and personal servants, a lord provided for a retinue of armed retainers, who formed a kind of body-guard and a force to serve the king as occasion demanded; in addition, important household officials, such as secretaries and treasurers. Among n.o.blemen's followers there were many dependents, some, no doubt, parasites, but a number, especially if literary men, in need of patronage to help them to live as well as to pursue their vocation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ABBOT.]

The different kinds of religious men have already been mentioned from archbishops and abbots to the scurrilous impostors who used a religious exterior to rob poor people, at whose expense they lived well a wandering, loose, hypocritical life. In York, there were monks and friars, cathedral, parochial, and chantry priests, and clerks. The monastic life was a recognised profession. In the monasteries there were, besides regular monks, novices or those who aspired to take the full monastic vows, and, especially in the fifteenth century, by which time the importance of lowly, arduous service for the brethren and personal labour had lapsed, a very large number of semi-religious and lay brethren, who were really servants to the regular monks. In the fifteenth century the religious houses were extremely wealthy. Some of the monks were of n.o.ble birth. n.o.bles, when travelling, usually lodged at the monastic houses, which were dotted all over England. The kings resided often at abbeys when visiting the provinces. Richard III., when Duke of Gloucester, resided at the Austin Friary in York.

The one monastic house for women was St. Clement's Nunnery. There were, moreover, sisterhoods in the hospitals of, for example, St.

Leonard and St. Nicholas.

St. Leonard's Hospital, among its many functions, was a home of royal pensioners.

The townspeople were chiefly merchants and tradesmen and those they employed, and the wives and families of all of them. Men of this type, both rich and poor, rose to important positions in trade and city life, and in the King's service. Some entered the service of n.o.bles.

Great dignity was attached to the higher positions of authority in city and guild life. Trade led to wealth and increased comfort and a higher social state. Men in the King's service received preferment more often than direct monetary reward.

Women had only the monastic life to enter as a profession. They could become full members of a number of the York trade-guilds. The social position of women in the retrograde fifteenth century fully agrees with the absence of women from among those who achieved notability in the city during the century.

The most interesting type of citizens was that composed of the freemen, who formed the vast majority of the inhabitants. As the name implies, they were historically the descendants of the men who in earlier times were freed from serfdom. It was the freemen who, through the Mayor and Corporation, paid rent to the King for the city, its rights and possessions. There are still, it may be noted, freemen of the city, distinct from those distinguished men who have received its honorary freedom. The main privileges of the mediaeval freemen included the right of trading in the city, and of voting. They also had rights over the common lands attached to the city, and they were eligible to fill the offices of local civic government if thought wealthy enough to be elected into such a "close self-elected corporation."

Soldiers of the royal army were stationed in York at the Castle. The Wars of the Roses, wars of kings and n.o.bles, lasted from 1455 to 1485 and, although York itself hardly experienced the warfare, it saw contingents of the forces of both sides, as well as the leaders and royal heads of both parties.

There lived in the city a number of men in the royal service. Some worked at the administrative offices of the royal forest of Galtres, Davy Hall, where the chief officer himself dwelt. There were also the men who worked at the royal Fish Pond near which was Fishergate in which street most of these men lived.

Those afflicted with leprosy, a disease which in England disappeared toward the end of the fifteenth century, dwelt apart for fear of infecting the healthy. The four hospitals outside the four main entrances to the city served to keep the disease isolated.

York received from time to time a large number and a great diversity of visitors. Distinguished visitors usually received gifts from the Corporation. Kings, queens, and full court and retinue came, and sometimes the entire houses of Parliament. At such times great crowds of n.o.bles, spiritual lords, commoners, officers, military and civil, thronged the city and taxed its accommodation. On such an occasion as Richard III.'s attendance at the Minster for ma.s.s, or the visit of Henry V., the narrow streets were packed to suffocation with people a.s.sembled to watch the processions of gorgeously arrayed sovereigns, princes, peers, ecclesiastics, soldiers, and distinguished commoners.

The Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., was very popular in the North, especially in York, where he was received (as in 1483) with magnificence and festivity. The north was loyal to him and gave him much support in his political schemes.

The visits of the royal judges of a.s.size, of sailors and pilgrims, have already been mentioned. Pedlars, who were active nomad tradesmen, were always to be found in town and country dealing in their small wares.

Last, and some of the unhappiest, among the types of people to be found in a mediaeval city were serfs who had absconded from the lands or the service to which they were bound. They sometimes fled to a city for the security it afforded. Serfdom, however, was rapidly disappearing.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] G. Benson: "Parish of Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York."

[2] _De heretico comburendo_, 1401. In 1539 Valentine Freez, a freeman, and his wife, were burnt at the stake on Knavesmire for heresy. Frederick Freez, Valentine's father, was a book-printer and a freeman (1497).

[3] Cf. French _journee_.

[4] Sauce was much used. The people of the Middle Ages had an especial liking for spices and highly-seasoned foods.

[5] As translated from the Latin by the late Mr. R.B. Cook and found among his valuable contributions to the publications of The Yorkshire Architectural Society.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

Life in York in the fifteenth century was active. Trade, home and continental, was flourishing. Building operations were in hand; work was always proceeding at the Minster or at one or other of the religious houses and churches. There were so many social elements established in and visiting York that something of interest was always taking place. Entertainments were plentiful and pageants were as well produced in York as anywhere in the kingdom. The city enjoyed a particularly large measure of local government. Its reputation was great. According to contemporary standards it was a fine prosperous city, one that contained resplendent ecclesiastical buildings that were second to none. In short, it was a "full n.o.bill cite."

Although the present city looks, in parts, more typically mediaeval than modern, York to-day forms a very great contrast with the fifteenth-century city. We are separated from the fifteenth century by the Renaissance, the Reformation, and Tudor England, by the Civil War and the Restoration, by the "age of prose and reason," the keen-minded and rough-mannered eighteenth century, by the Industrial Revolution, and by that second Renaissance, the Victorian Age, during which the amenities of daily life were revolutionised. Radical changes are to be seen, for example, in the style of architecture, the mode of transmission of news, the methods of transport, the form of munic.i.p.al government, the maintenance of the public peace, and in social relationships, more particularly with regard to industry and commerce and the parts played by employer and employed. The number of inhabitants to-day is about six times that of the mediaeval city. The contrast, which is so great in most ways as to be quite obvious, is an interesting and profitable study, but it might have been founded on more precise data, for, great as is the amount of valuable material that York can supply concerning its history, investigation shows how much greater that amount would have been had the city and its rulers during the last century or two realised the value of the acc.u.mulated original historical riches that it contained.

Whereas the moderns obliterated practically all they came against, fortunately the earlier people were content to make no change beyond what was immediately necessary. Hence the survival of material most valuable to the historian and archaeologist. York, as it is to-day, is a city marvellously rich in survivals of past ages. It is also, as a result especially of the nineteenth century, a city of destruction.

While we may regret but not repine at the disappearance of much of interest and value as the result of progress, yet wanton, ruthless destruction, such as has taken place within the last century, deserves the sternest denunciation. In spite of its being, in consequence, a "city of destruction," York is a store-house of original material for the history of England. Its records are in earth, stone, brick, wood, plaster, bone, and coin-metal; on parchment, paper, and gla.s.s; above the ground and below it--everywhere and in every form. This wealth of historical material, connected with practically every period of our national history, is a priceless possession and one that is not yet exhausted.