few labourers whose land was insufficient for their entire maintenance. In case, however, the small landowner (as was generally the fact) held sufficient land for the sustenance of his family, he had also his wooden barn and byre, in which he stored his produce and kept his stock; the amount of the latter being defined partly by the extent of his little homestead and land, partly by the rights which he possessed and exercised in summer time over the common pasture of the manor-rights which were sometimes unlimited (or, as they were technically styled, held without stint), sometimes defined by a certain amount of cattle and sheep.

'The estate of the manor was generally compact, and no doubt included the best ground in the parish, with, in case such existed, great part of the natural water meadow, at that time in the absence of artificial grasses so precious. The lands of the small proprietors were, however, generally very scattered, their estates frequently consisting of small patches in a large common field, or a certain number of furrows, between which, as a land-mark, a boundary of grass, serving partly for hay, partly for autumn-feed, was suffered to grow. At the verge of the whole parish stood the belt of wood, which supplied the inhabitants with the necessary fuel, and in which they generally had common rights.'*

'A very considerable portion of the land of the large proprietors was farmed by themselves, through bailiffs. Another portion was in the hands of socage, or free, tenants. The socage tenant,' as the Professor describes him, 'owed suit and service; he paid a quit rent, not, as now, trivial, but hardly less than the annual value of the land. He was, in fact, a farmer at a perpetual lease, but secure of recovering all outlay which he might make on the soil, and of all additions which his labour and capital could annex to its permanent

A remarkable analogy to this description of the rural economy of the fourteenth century is to be found in an account lately given in Notes and Queries,' of a state of society and of the arrange'ments of property,' in the words of the writer, which are rapidly 'becoming of the things that were.'

Many parishes in Dorsetshire were formerly divided after the following fashion :

1. A farm of say 800 acres attached to the manor-house, and called the Lord's Farm, or Manor Farm, consisting of meadow, arable land, down, and coppice.

2. A certain number, say twenty-two "livings." Each of these had originally a small farmhouse, a few acres of coppice, and twentyfour acres of arable, scattered in small slips of one to four acres, over three large fields, called "tenantry fields." Besides this, each living had four "cow leases," or the right to turn that number of cattle upon the common; also a right to turn forty sheep upon the common down. Also, each holder of a living had the right to let his cattle and pigs run at "shack" over the whole of the tenantry fields after harvest. It is a curious question whether these holders of "livings" were the bordarii or villani of Domesday Book.'

value.' In a rank below these free tenants were the nativi or villeins and the coterelli or cotarii, holding their tenancies at agricultural services. The lot of these persons may have been degraded; but in the period before me, at least, it is not so grievous as the expressions used about their condition suggest, or inquirers into the social state of our forefathers have concluded. . . . Anything like the extreme theory of villenage was, I am convinced, extinct before the close of the thirteenth century. In the many thousand accounts which I have investigated, general, nay well-nigh universal, as is the entry of customary payments, contingent fines for licences granted to villeins, penalties levied for feudal transgressions, and compensation made for customary services, all of which occur abundantly, I have never found a trace of any transfer of villeins, or even of their services, to third parties. . . . The services and incidents of the villein's tenure were determined, and in no case precarious.'

The following is a rough sketch of the external features, so to speak, of the society thus constituted :

It has been stated above that the elements of mediæval society were very few, and its economy simple and rude. Below the nobles and great ecclesiastics were a body of gentlemen and yeomanry, the latter differing from the former rather in the comparative largeness of their estates; the inhabitants of towns, and a mass of peasant proprietors, who were also labourers either by tenure or for hire. The cost of maintenance as measured in money was small, land was cheap though very much subdivided, and the habitations of the people were small and inexpensive. The only products of architectural skill were churches, and perhaps castles; the latter in the time of Edward I. being built on a larger scale, and with more attention to the comfort of the inhabitants. Such castles, however, were occupied by the king and the great lords, the inmates of monastic or collegiate houses being closely packed and very indifferently lodged. The furniture, too, was rough and scanty, inventories of domestic conveniences and utensils being very concise. The most valuable part of the personal property possessed by our forefathers consisted in clothing and metal vessels. The resources of the community were very limited. It is hardly necessary to say that there were no books, or very few, and that the great cost of artificial light was unfriendly to other than very early hours. The course of social life in country places must have been very uniform. In the absence of the lord, who visited his manor-house rarely, and then only in order to consume its products, and whose periodical audit formed almost the only break in the uneventful year of the medieval peasant, the small farmers and peasantry were brought into contact with no one of rank superior to themselves, except perhaps the parish priest when he happened to be resident, and was not, as was very frequently the case, a pluralist who resided at the Court, or even abroad, and whose duties were performed by some ordained monk from a neighbouring monastery. We can indeed only guess at the condition of the upland folk, and understand

the power they had of procuring the conveniences of life, from the price at which such objects were accessible to the mass of the people.' (Vol. i. p. 113.)

Clothing was certainly dear. Probably leather constituted the sole vêtement nécessaire' of many a sturdy labourer and huntsman.

'Cloth was coarse, but its price is high. So with linen, which appears to have been costly. Shirts were, in fact, such valuable articles, that they are often the subjects of charitable or ostentatious doles, and we find them not unfrequently at this time, as well as for centuries afterwards, devised by will.' (Vol. i. p. 67.)

Yet this simple England possessed already a considerable command over the produce of foreign countries. Her upper 'ten thousand' were dressed in the fine linen and cloth of the Low Countries; silks from Italy, and, perhaps,' says the writer, from the northern coast of Africa' (?) Jewellery, and goldsmith's work, were certainly abundantly employed for ostentatious purposes. The most costly articles of foreign produce 'were those which are known from the remotest times under 'the name of spices;' articles used (relatively speaking) far more abundantly than now, owing to the peculiar tastes of medieval gourmands, and owing also to the demand of the Church for

incense.

6

The consumption of wine-almost throughout the centurywas, also relatively speaking, enormous. It was almost exclusively drawn from Gascony, and so cheap as to give some warrant to the half-historic, half-prophetic, raptures in which some of our statesmen indulged at the period of the late French treaty. French wine, in the last half of the thirteenth century and first half of the fourteenth, was little more than four times 'the price of cider, and not much more than thrice the price of 'beer,' which latter, it must be remembered, before the invention of hops, could not be made so as to keep. It must have been procurable almost everywhere by the traveller; certainly in localities where the thirsty wanderer might be puzzled to find it even now. We find the warden and fellows of Merton purchasing wine (as duly specified in their accounts) during their Northern journey (to visit their lands) in the year 1331,' at several of the stages, as at Alreton, Esyngwold, York, Durham, Cane, Ponteland, and Grantham. It is most likely that the travellers ordered not less than a quart, perhaps 'sometimes half a gallon, and that they found it readily at all 'their stages, either in the town inn or at some wine-seller's 'shop.' It must, in short, have been the common tipple of the age. It was

Rough, and probably new; but it must have possessed body and spirit sufficient to bear the carriage. We are sorry to be compelled to add that at New College, all the wine entered in the annual rolls (for some time) is set down among the charges of the chapel! However numerous were the masses said in New College Chapel during the earlier days of its foundation, it could hardly have been the case that more than a gallon a week was required for these offices.' (Vol. i. p. 620.)

But the most curious instance of medieval bibacity which the Professor has put on record is to be found in the account of the journey of Robert Oldman, bailiff of Cuxham under Merton College, to London, to buy a pair of millstones, in 1331 (i. 506). According to the worthy bailiff's accountswho audited them does not appear he charged the College with the price of five gallons of Gascony, used in discussing the terms of his bargain with the London merchant!'

Habit and prejudice (says the Professor) and a patient acquiescence in the enormous charges levied by the intermediaries of the wine trade, have accustomed English people to look on that as a luxury which their forefathers five hundred years ago were enabled to use freely and cheaply, and procure at low rates at the common inns on the road, at a time when communication and travel were certainly neither so easy nor so frequent as at present, and land and water carriage were far dearer. Hereafter, perhaps, we may recover the customs of our ancestors, and see the produce of foreign vineyards within the easy reach of the mass of the people.'

For the purpose of obtaining these and other foreign luxuries, the people of England had, with very slight exceptions, two commodities only to offer in exchange-wool, and the produce of their mines. On the statistics of these great staples of our export, from the earliest days down to those within the recollection of our great-grandfathers--for the command of the foreign market now enjoyed by the British manufacturer scarcely dates further back,-these volumes contain some information, but less complete than that respecting domestic articles of consumption.

More interesting is the account of the commercial routes used by our forefathers; a chapter in the history of civilisation which has been by no means worked out. Of course the progress which the world has made since their time, in national as well as local intercommunication, is greater than in almost any other particular. But it is not the less true, that in the general opening of the highways of modern commerce, some of the byeways known to them have become either wholly impeded or far less practicable.

'It is singular that in this time there seems to have been freer access to Mid Asia than is accorded now. The Christian merchant visited, with, it should seem, no extraordinary risk, and with of course the means for successful traffic, regions which cannot be entered now except in the most cautious manner. No European has for many years penetrated to Bokhara, or indeed beyond the confines of Persia, unless in utter poverty, and, generally, unless in the guise of a dervish, and with the ostensible profession of Islamism. Either the aggressions of European policy or the fanaticism of Mohammedanism have rendered the route so difficult, that any entry into what were once the great highways of Eastern commerce and the channels of communication with the Western world is impossible except by force or fraud.' (Vol. i. p. 141.)

6

This subject is naturally connected with a very curious one, on which, also, mistaken notions as to the inferiority of our forefathers are commonly entertained. The habit of travel was, from many causes, far more frequent in the fourteenth 'than in later centuries; and journeys were constantly under'taken for the purposes of religion and business.' The share which the usage of pilgrimages had in bringing about this result -the relic, perhaps, of the still older and more general locomotion of the crusading era-is well known. Less attention has been bestowed to a cause almost equally operative-the wonderful success which the Papal Court had achieved in persuading all Westera mankind that its affairs, temporal as well as spiritual, could only be transacted in the last resort at the "threshold of the Apostles.' Professor Rogers gives some curious accounts of the cost of journeys to Avignon, where the Popes were in the fourteenth century established. We take one as a specimen. In 1363, Henry Whitfield, Provost of Queen's, goes to Avignon 'to secure the appropriation of the rectory of Sparsholt.' He is accompanied by a servant.

6

6

He

begins his journey by exchanging his viaticum,' 237., at the London cambium,' into florins. He sells his horse (at the end of his journey) and spends 57. from his own resources. His journey to the curia' occupied seven weeks; lengthened by intemperies et pericula in viâ.' It cost sixty shillings. He takes a courier with him, ut me salvum conduceret,' and pays him twenty shillings for his labour. When he comes to Avignon, he takes up his abode at an English college or 'hostel, frequented by his countrymen,' if this be the meaning of domus nostra;' the inmates of which he calls 'socii;' and gives them a feast on entrance. He is delayed for rather more than sixteen weeks. The three lawyers whom he consults, Appleby, Albriche, and Humberford (and the expenses of legal advice at the Court are enormous) are all, to