The Customs of Old England Part 14

THE MERCHANT AND HIS MARK

In the course of the preceding chapter reference was made to the illiteracy of our ancestors in its bearing upon trade usages. In the present chapter we propose to supplement this allusion by drawing attention to a feature of commercial life which was certainly influenced by, if not actually due to, the prevailing lack of education. The combination "Merchants' Marks" is so familiar as to suggest that such marks were used by merchants alone. This was by no means the case.

Farmers also had their marks. "When a yeoman," says Mr. Williams, "affixed a mark to a deed, he drew a signum by which his land, cattle, etc., were identified"; and in Suss.e.x, we are informed, the post-mortem inquisitions from the time of Henry VII. to that of Charles II. exhibit a large number of yeomen's marks--"other than crosses"--which were employed as signatures. Masons' and printers' marks are further varieties of the same mode of identification.

All these are distinctively trade uses, but the astonishing thing is that, in Germany at any rate, marks were affixed, in conjunction with regular signatures, by ecclesiastical dignitaries and secular n.o.bles, probably as an additional guarantee. They were also used on shields, and in England were frequently impaled with the owners' arms.

Marks, then, were in no sense the exclusive characteristic of the merchant cla.s.s; and yet, owing to the fact that these devices were necessarily more used by traders, they may be considered on the whole as belonging to their domain. As we have seen, every baker in the City was obliged to stamp his loaves with his own proper mark; and in other branches of commerce men would value their mark as a means of advertis.e.m.e.nt. As persons engaged in commerce were commonly debarred from the privilege of armorial bearings, marks were freely employed not only in relation to special callings, but also for ornamentation or commemoration in any and every sphere in which merchants desired to leave the impress of their personality and interest. They were to be found on the fronts of houses, over the fireplace in halls, on seals, on sepulchral slabs and monumental bra.s.ses, and on painted windows. In his description of a Dominican convent--printed in full in Prof. Skeat's "Specimens of English Literature" (a.d. 1394-1579)--the author of "Peres the Ploughman's Crede" speaks as follows:

Than I munt me forth the minster to knowen And awayted a wone wonderly well y-built, With arches on every hall & belliche [beautifully] y-carven With crochets on corners, with knots of gold, Wide windows y-wrought, y-written full thick, Shyning with shapen shields to shewen about, With _marks of merchants_ y-meddled between, Mo than twenty and two, twice y-numbered; There is none herald that hath half such a roll, Right as a ragman hath reckoned them new.

Another circ.u.mstance has to be noted--namely, that merchants' marks were entirely distinct from shop signs, such as that of the Golden Fleece, which, though serving the same purpose of aiding or enlightening the unlearned, were more pictorial in character. Dr. Barrington, in his "Lectures on Heraldry," defines merchants' marks as "various fanciful forms, distorted representations of _initials of names_," which, he says, were "placed upon articles of merchandise, because armorial ensigns could not have been so placed without debas.e.m.e.nt."

To those merchants who had no arms--and they were doubtless the vast majority--the mark served as a subst.i.tute, and was regarded with the same feelings of pride and attachment as the ensigns of the n.o.bility and gentry. But unquestionably its chief value was strictly commercial, as is proved by an instance of litigation in the twenty-second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, which is thus narrated by Mr. Justice Doddridge: "An action was brought upon the case in common pleas by a clothier, that, whereas he had gained reputation by the making of his cloth, by reason whereof he had great utterance to his great benefit and profit, and that he used to set his mark to his cloth, another clothier, perceiving it, used the same mark to his ill-made cloth on purpose to deceive him, and it was resolved that an action did lie."

Merchants' marks appear to have been especially common in towns depending on the manufacture of wool. It so happens that one of those towns was that in the immediate neighbourhood of which these chapters were written; and, agreeably to what has been stated, the Church of St.

Peter, Tiverton, which owed much to the munificence of the old merchants, carries a number of such marks. East Anglia is particularly rich in such marks, as is shown by Mr. W. C. Ewing's papers in the "Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society" (vol.

iii.). Mr. Dawson Turner, in his Historical Introduction to Colman's "Engravings of Sepulchral Bra.s.ses in Norfolk and Suffolk," after stating that merchants or burgesses were probably the only cla.s.ses except the military that were represented on monuments, goes on to observe that "these are chiefly to be found in borough towns or the parochial churches of large commercial counties where the woollen manufacture flourished." And, as we have pointed out, the merchant's mark very often accompanied him to his grave.

We have now reached the borderland, where from urban customs we pa.s.s to those of the country; and it will form a natural transition if we conclude the chapter and the section with some remarks on the rural use of marks, which is still common in regard to stock. In this Connexion they are generally styled yeomen's marks; and, from the circ.u.mstances of the case, it seems certain that the adoption of such symbols took place on the farm long before they were employed on the mart. The point has been raised whether so-called "pictorial marks" are, and have always been, nothing more than rude drawings of familiar objects. Mr. J. H.

Scott has dealt with this problem in an examination of Homeyer's theory that marks were originally runic forms, and he expresses the opinion that, a.s.suming this to be true of certain types of marks, "they lost their character at an early period and were regarded merely as signs or symbols not as letters of an alphabet." As regards "pictorial marks," he holds that the similarity to various objects is accidental. If so, this is rather in favour of Homeyer's derivation of marks from runes, the forms in some cases being identical. Moreover, as Homeyer notes, "signa"

for identifying cattle, horses, trees, clothes, and as boundary marks, are referred to in the Lex Salica, the Edictum Rotharis, and the Anglo-Saxon laws, so that we have here something like a pedigree of the custom.

RURAL

CHAPTER XVII

RUS IN URBE

Urban customs appear of more interest and importance than rural usages by reason of the greater complexity of relations implied by the interdependence of members of a populous community. In the country the organization of society is more simple, and the life of the fields, if more tranquil, must always be less vivid, and, if the term may be allowed, less conscious than that of the town. Nothing, however, is more certain than that the formation of towns came after and was in most instances the progeny of rural conditions. It is an amazing circ.u.mstance that not until the middle of the last century did the great city of Manchester emanc.i.p.ate itself from the last traces of feudal subjection by the purchase of manorial and market rights. Just as the word _pecunia_ is derived from _pecus_, just as the merchant's mark is in all likelihood descended from that of the yeoman, even so in many munic.i.p.al appointments there is strong evidence of the once all-prevalent agricultural element.

If we turn to London, we shall discover that its administration was conducted, to a large extent, on country and manorial lines. The necessary result was chaos. As Mr. J. H. Round observes, "The genius of the Anglo-Saxon system was ill adapted, or rather wholly unsuitable, to urban life ... while of unconquerable persistence and strength in small manageable rural communities, it was bound to, and did, break down when applied to large and growing towns, whose life lay not in agriculture, but in trade. In a parish, in a hundred, the Englishman was at home, but in a town, and still more in such a town as London, he found himself at his wits' end." But the practical spirit, the common sense of our race, successfully a.s.serted itself--e.g., in the case of the Sheriffs, who in London are elected by the citizens. In general, sheriffs are appointed by the Crown, and, as the name implies, they are strictly county officers. In the case of the special franchise of the Fitzwalters we have seen how eagerly the Corporation embraced the opportunity afforded by the sale of Baynard Castle to secure greater freedom and h.o.m.ogeneity in the government of the City.

Subordinate to the sheriff in the administration of a county are various cla.s.ses of bailiffs; and the bailiff bore to the lord of a fee much the same relation as the sheriff did to the King. For one or other of these reasons the mayors of provincial towns were, in the early days of local autonomy, termed bailiffs. By a charter granted in 1200 King John permitted the citizens of Lincoln to elect two of their number "well and faithfully to maintain the provostship (_praeposituram_) of the city."

Twenty-two years afterwards the persons holding this office were called upon to represent the city in a dispute with the burgesses of Beverley--"Ballivi civitatis Lincolnie summoniti fuerunt ad respondendum burgensibus de Beverlaco." The record continues: "Et Major Lincolnie et Robertus filius Eudonis ballivi Lincolnie veniunt et defendunt," etc.

Maitland, in his edition of Bracton's "Note-Book," in which these particulars occur, suggests that the name of one of the bailiffs has been omitted, but Mr. Round is doubtless right in holding that the senior bailiff was the "Mayor of Lincoln." Stevenson's "Report on the Gloucester Corporation Records" (9th Appendix to the 12th Report on Hist. MSS.) renders it certain that the t.i.tles were interchangeable. "A noteworthy circ.u.mstance," he says, "is that although the office of Mayor of Gloucester was not created until 1483, one Richard the Burgess is frequently described in the witness clauses as 'tunc Majore de Glouc.' The dates of these deeds range between _circa_ 1220 and _circa_ 1240. Sometimes this appears to be the t.i.tle of the senior Bailiff, as Richard Burgess and Thomas Ouenat are described as Bailiffs in a deed _circa_ 1230, but in another deed of the same date Burgess is called 'Major' and Ouenat 'Bailiff.'"

In some boroughs the old royal officer, the Portreeve--the t.i.tle is a hybrid compounded of the Anglo-Saxon _gerefa_ and the Latin _porta_ (not _portus_), alluding to the gate, where the markets were held--bore sway.

At Tiverton, which was incorporated in 1614, the offices of Mayor and Portreeve existed side by side, and down to the year 1790 the latter exercised the power of summoning certain people to attend the septennial perambulation of the Town Lake--a stream of water the property of the inhabitants. On such occasions the Portreeve completely effaced the Mayor, who is not mentioned by name in connexion with the proceedings.

The following extracts from a record in the Court Leet books of the proceedings on September 1, 1774, will demonstrate that the celebration, which took place entirely within the confines of the borough, was a survival of a state of things anterior to the grant of a charter.

"A procession and survey of the ancient rivulet, watercourse, or town lake, running from a spring rising near an ash pollard in and at the head of a certain common called Norwood Common, within the said Hundred, Manor, and Borough to Coggan's Well near the Market Cross in the town of Tiverton aforesaid, belonging to the inhabitants of, and others his Majesty's liege subjects, living, sojourning, and residing in the town of Tiverton aforesaid, for their sole use and benefit, was made and taken by Mr. Martin Dunsford (Portreeve), Henry Atkins, Esq. (Steward), Thomas Warren and Philip Davey (water bailiffs) and the Rev. Mr.

William Wood ... and divers other persons, free suitors, tenants and inhabitants of the said town, parish, and hundred of Tiverton, by the order of the honourable Sir Thomas Carew, baronet, Dame Elizabeth Carew and Edward Colman, Esq., Lords of the Hundred, Manor and Borough aforesaid, the first day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-four.

"The Portreeve and Free Suitors, having adjourned the Court Baron, which was this day held, proceeded from the Court or Church House in the following order:--The Bailiff of the Hundred with his staff and a basket of cakes; the children of the Charity School and other boys two and two; the two water bailiffs with white staves; music; Freeholders and Free Suitors two and two; the Steward; the Portreeve with his staff; other gentlemen of the town, &c., who attended the Portreeve on this occasion; the Common Cryer of the Hundred, Manor, and Borough aforesaid, as a.s.sistant to the Bailiff of the Hundred with his staff.

"In this manner they proceeded at first to the Market Cross, and there at Coggan's Well, the Cryer with his staff in the well made the following proclamation in the usual and ancient form--'Oyez! Oyez!!

Oyez!!! I do hereby proclaim and give notice that by order of the Lords of this Hundred, Manor, and Borough of Tiverton, and on behalf of the inhabitants of this town and parish, the Portreeve and inhabitants now here a.s.sembled, publicly proclaim this stream of water, for the sole use and benefit of the inhabitants of the town of Tiverton and other his Majesty's liege subjects there being and sojourning, from the Market Cross in Tiverton to Norwood Common." They then proceeded in the same order through the Back Lane, in every part as it ran and through the ancient path of the water bailiffs time out of mind and made the like proclamation at the following places.... The Portreeve and free suitors and others that attended them in their way noted every diversion and nuisance that seemed to affect the Lake, and afterwards returned to Tiverton and dined at the Vine Tavern, where they gave the following charity children and other poor boys that attended them twopence a-piece....

These duties are now performed by the Mayor and Corporation, but the custom was observed in the traditional manner at least as late as 1830.

We have ascertained that not only did the Portreeve take the lead on these occasions, but, like the Mayor and other members of the Corporation, he was ex officio guardian of the poor of the town and parish--a privilege which he shared with them alone. We have here, therefore, an instance of dual authority lasting well into the nineteenth century, or nearly six hundred years after London had purged itself of the feudal element in its administration. To appreciate its full significance we have to remember that there existed, side by side with corporate towns, others which were not actually corporate, but were known, nevertheless, as free boroughs or liberties, the reason being that the owners of tenements in them held of the lord by burgage tenure in the same way as the freemen of Liverpool held of the King, and that there were manorial courts, which exempted the burgesses from the jurisdiction of the Sheriff's Hundred Court, the Sheriff's County Court, and even the higher courts of the Crown.

The executive officers, the Portreeve and the Bailiffs exercised functions probably as old as the borough itself, and therefore, in almost every instance, to be traced to the freer times preceding the Norman Conquest. Stoford, in Somerset, a good type of such a town, retained its const.i.tution until the middle of the eighteenth century. In the reign of Edward I. it included no fewer than seventy-four burgages; and the burgesses set such store by their privileges that they would not permit an inquisition to be taken by the jury of the county save in conjunction with a jury of their own. The borough had a guildhall, the "Zuldhous," for which a rent of 2_s._ was paid to the lord of the fee by certain Representatives of the "Commonalty." Commenting on this circ.u.mstance, the late Mr. John Batten, F.S.A., remarks: "It proves that the burgesses had not acquired the true element of a corporation, by which the Guildhall would have pa.s.sed by law to the members for the time being; but that it was necessary to convey it to certain persons as feoffees or trustees." Stoford, however, had its official seal, bearing the ungrammatical, but intelligible, legend,

"S. COMMVNE BVRGENTES STOFORD."

This may seem rather an example of _urbs in rure_ than of _rus in urbe_, for it was on such half-emanc.i.p.ated towns that corporate boroughs like Hereford looked down (see above, p. 177), and precisely because of their subjection to a lord. Stoford, and similar places, were deemed, and were, wholly, or almost wholly, rural, and the real question is how far the term urbs is applicable to them. As used in this connexion, it is intended to denote precisely what the term "borough" did in its widest signification--namely, a self-governing community; and the "free" but non-corporate boroughs were clearly more allied to ordinary manors than to towns and cities priding themselves on their independence.

The terms "portreeve" and "bailiff" are extremely familiar, and the offices they denote are by no means extinct; but, in addition to these functionaries, there has been perpetuated a whole family of minor ministers even more closely a.s.sociated with the agricultural aspects of town life. Mr. G. L. Gomme, F.S.A., so well known for his labours in various fields of antiquarian interest, has devoted particular attention to this matter, and for what follows we are indebted entirely to his industrious research. He points out that "the old village community was organized and self-acting," and "possessed a body of officers and servants which made it independent of outside help." These officers and servants were, in fairly numerous instances, retained long after the village had outgrown its primitive limits. In quite a variety of places we meet with pound-keepers, pound-drivers, and pinders; and the hayward also has been found in as many as fifteen different towns. In the same list are included the brookwarden of Arundel, the field-grieve of Berwick-on-Tweed, the gra.s.s-men of Newcastle-on-Tyne, the warreners of Scarborough, the keeper of the greenyard in London, the hedge-lookers of Lancaster and c.l.i.theroe, the molecatcher of Arundel, Leicestershire, and Richmond, the field-driver of Bedford, the herd, the nolts-herds, the town swine-herds of Alnwick, Newcastle, Shrewsbury, and Doncaster, the pasture-masters of Beverley and York, the moss-grieves of Alnwick, the moormen and mossmen of Lancaster, the moor-wardens of Axbridge, the fen-reeves of Beccles and Southwold, and the woodwards of Havering and Nottingham.

It will occur to most people that, if these offices were maintained, the reason must have been something more than the mere force of conservatism, great as that has been in the steady evolution of English life; and such was undoubtedly the case in most of, if not all, the cases cited. In other words, the townsmen, individually, as a body, or in the persons of a limited number of elect, continued to enjoy certain rights, and to hold a financial stake, in the soil surrounding that on which their town was planted. The officers were often paid not in cash, but in kind, either a quant.i.ty of grain being allotted to them or a piece of land. The latter form of remuneration, which was the more common, is exemplified at Doncaster, where there is a field called the Pinder's Balk, which the pinder cultivated for his own profit. At Malmesbury, it appears, he occupied the position of honour held in other towns by the Mayor, and his salary is represented by a piece of land called the Alderman's Kitchen.

Let us now turn to the communities themselves. At Nottingham resident burgesses have a right, falling to them in order of seniority, to the "burgess part"--i.e., a piece of land, either field or meadow, for which each pays a small ground rent to the Corporation.[14] These "parts"

number 254, and they are of varying value, so that, as Mr. Gomme puts it, they const.i.tute "a sort of lottery." At Manchester there are 280 allotments, each about an acre in extent, in which all the commoners have an interest. To forty-eight landholders is a.s.signed an acre each, and twenty-four a.s.sistant (?) burgesses have each of them an additional acre. At Berwick-on-Tweed there are two portions of land, of which one is demised, under the name of "treasurer's farms," by the mayor, bailiff, and burgesses to tenants. The other part includes sundry parcels called meadows ranging from 1 1/4 to 2 1/2 acres; and every year at a meeting of the burgesses--the "meadowguild," as it is termed--the lands vacated by the death or departure of those last in occupation go to the oldest burgesses or burgesses' widows eligible by residence, the right of choice depending on seniority.

The land belonging to the Corporation of Langharne is similarly allocated. When an occupier dies, the profits accruing from his share are kept by his representatives, and at the ensuing Michaelmas Court the burgess next in age to the deceased is presented by the jury, and obtains the share previously held by him. Mr. Gomme points out that the reverence for age discoverable in so many of these customs is characteristic of the Teutonic races and of primitive communities in general. An interesting feature of this case is that corn is sown in 330 acres for three years in succession and during the next three years they are gra.s.sed out.

The heading of the chapter is "Rus in Urbe," and, still following Mr.

Gomme's guidance, we have now to trace a transition that occurred in the use of these public lands as the urban element became more and more preponderant. It seems that while there are boroughs with common pasture only, there has been found no instance of a borough having arable and meadow allotments, and no common pasture. The inference is that, as the community grew more addicted to mercantile pursuits, they were less able to devote themselves to the cares of husbandry, and, accordingly, the lands ceased to be cultivated. But they were still of considerable value for grazing purposes. The merchants' cattle and horses might be placed in them--the latter, perhaps, being subsequently entered in the service of trade. Existing arrangements in boroughs which have abandoned agriculture afford clear indications that at one time allotments were carried out and rules enforced with regard to cultivation and the annual crops.

The history of many towns shows that they formerly enjoyed rights of common which they no longer enjoy, and the manner in which these became lost is in numerous instances a mystery. When, from being lands of which the tenants were virtually seised for life, they pa.s.sed through some evolution into being the property of the corporation let to freemen or others as the case might be, they might not improbably be sold for the good of the community at large. In earlier days the right may have been surrendered by timid or ignorant townspeople under the pressure of a local lord of the manor strong enough to set the law at defiance, or a compromise may have been effected between him and those in temporary enjoyment of the benefit. These, as we have observed, sometimes consisted of no more than a fraction of the inhabitants, and, as the population increased, this would be a diminishing fraction, with the result that outsiders would be apathetic regarding the fate of the common. Where there was a special qualification, it was not necessarily seniority. At Huntingdon, for example, it was the freemen dwelling in "commonable" houses who were privileged to use the common.

There were other restrictions than those already named. In the locality just mentioned "commonable" burgesses, if we may imitate their manner of speech, might depasture two cows and one horse from Old May-day till Martinmas, and four sheep from Martinmas till Candlemas. At Coventry, in what are called Lammas Lands, the allowance is two horses and one cow.

How very wise and necessary these limitations were may be gleaned from the following extract from a decree in Chancery in 42 Elizabeth. The bill--we have modernized the spelling--recites that,

"Divers years past sundry G.o.dly and well-disposed persons having commiseration of the poor estate of the said town and parish, did in sundry times in divers kings' reigns a.s.sure certain lands, tenements, rents, common of pasture, of profits of markets and fairs and other annual commodities under divers and sundry persons for the ease and relief of the same poor inhabitants of the said town and parish, and namely one William, sometimes Lord of the Town and Borough of Torrington Magna aforesaid, by his deed did a.s.sure unto the free burgesses of the said town, and some others of his free tenants of his said manor dwelling in the parish of Torrington aforesaid, common of pasture for their beasts and cattle in and throughout his waste grounds within his manor of Great Torrington, lying within the aforesaid parish and known by divers names there, by the name of the Wester Common and one other by the name of Hatchmoor Common with, others, which waste grounds in the whole do contain about five hundred acres of land and are lying very near adjoining to the said town on each side thereof, the which hath been and so might continue and be very profitable and commodious for all the poor inhabitants of the said town and other free tenants of the said manor that by the same grant ought to have common of pasture therein, if the same were used in any reasonable rate or with any indifferency according to the good and charitable mind and intent of the said granter thereof, but in what form or what the words of the deeds are the said complainants could not express.

"They, or some of them [the defendants], do continually oppress and surcharge with their beasts, sheep, and cattle the common grounds, so as the poor inhabitants cannot well keep a cow or horse thereupon for their use and commodity in any good estate, whereas if the same were used with any indifferency according to the true intent of the donor thereof, every inhabitant within the said town that hath any ancient burgage to which the said common of pasture was granted might well keep two kine or a cow and a gelding or a horse beast with little or no charge. All which was devoured and eaten up by six or eight of the richest greedy persons of the same town and the inhabitants thereof."

But the benefit of common was sometimes not merely attenuated by the action of a powerful and covetous few, but, as was before observed, wholly or partially lost. The following pa.s.sage from the same bill throws some light on the point:

"And also the said Roger Ley under colour of a lease, which he himself with the residue of his consorts made of certain tenements, parcel of the said lands and tenements, unto certain of the children of the said Ley wherein he had cunningly inserted parcel of the same common ground contrary to the knowledge and weeting of the residue of his cofeoffees or some of them had entered upon parcel of the said common ground called Hatchmoor or lying in Hatchmoor, wherein the said complainants, having burgages within the said town, and all other that dwell in the ancient burgages or dwelling-houses within the said town, ought and had used time out of mind to have common of pasture, without any colour of lawful right had enclosed and tilled two parcels thereof containing about fourteen or sixteen acres and made divers leases thereof to persons unknown, and had shut up an ancient lane or way, commonly called Dark Lane, leading from the said town to the said common of Hatchmoor, through which the inhabitants of the said town had always time out of mind, until the said enclosure, used go and drive to the said common, to the great hindrance, hurt, and damage of the said complainants, and to the disinherison of the said town for ever."

That towns, and even great towns, abode by the traditions of country life, is now abundantly manifest, but the indications above given shed only partial light on rural conditions in their earliest and fullest form. These will furnish the theme of the following chapter, which, it is hoped, will furnish the clue to much that is mysterious in the data thus far supplied.

RURAL

CHAPTER XVIII

COUNTRY PROPER