1154-1199 cario" the methods of his financial administration, and also produced "The Deeds of King Henry and King Richard." William of Newburgh, indeed, the best historian of these reigns, wrote in a small Yorkshire monastery, but Roger of Hoveden and Ralph de Diceto pursued their historical work under the influence of the court. Still more striking is the universality of the intellectual inquisitiveness of Walter Map. Giraldus Cambrensis again, or Gerald of Wales, wrote on all sorts of subjects with shrewd humor and extensive knowledge. There was already in England a place where learning was cherished for its own sake. For some time there had been growing up on the Continent gatherings for the increase of learning, which ultimately were known as universities, or corporations of teachers and scholars. One at Bologna had devoted itself to the study of the civil or Roman law. Another at Paris gave itself to the spread of all the knowledge of the time. In these early universities there were no colleges. Lads, very poor for the most part, flocked to the teachers and lodged themselves as best they could. Such a university, though the name was not used till later, had been gradually forming at Oxford. Its origin and early history is obscure, but in 1186 Giraldus, wishing to find a cultivated audience for his new book on the topography of Ireland, read it aloud at Oxford, where, as he tells us, "the clergy in England chiefly flourished and excelled in clerkly lore." It appears that there were already separate faculties or branches of study, and persons recognized as doctors or teachers in all of them. Intellectual progress was accompanied by material progress. In the country the old system of cultivation by the labor service of villein-tenants still prevailed, but in many parts the service had been commuted, either for a money payment or for payments in kind, such as payments of a fixed number of eggs or fowls, or of a fixed quantity of honey or straw. Greater progress was made in the towns. At the time of the Conquest there were about eighty towns in England, most of them no larger than villages. The largest towns after London were Winchester, Bristol, Norwich, York, and Lincoln, but even these had not a population much above 7,000 apiece. In the smaller towns trade was sufficiently provided for by the establishment of a market to which country people brought their grain or their cattle, and where they provided themselves in turn with such rude household necessaries as 1154-1199 they required. Even before the Conquest port towns had grown up on the coast, but foreign trade was slight, imports being almost entirely confined to luxuries for the rich. The order introduced by the Normans and the connection between England and the king's continental possessions was followed by an increase of trade, and there arose in each of the larger towns a corporation which was known as the Merchant Gild, and which was, in some instances at least, only a development of an older association existing in the times before the Conquest. No one except the brothers of the Merchant Gild was allowed to trade in any article except food, but anyone living in the town might become a brother on payment of a settled fee. The first Merchant Gild known was constituted in 1093. A little later, Henry I. granted charters to some of the towns, conferring on them the right of managing their own affairs; and his example was followed, in far greater profusion, by Henry II. and Richard I. Though the organization of the Merchant Gild was originally distinct from the organization of the town, and the two were in theory kept apart, the Merchant Gild, to which most of the townsmen belonged, usually encroached upon the authorities of the town, regulated trade to its own advantage, and practically controlled the choice of officers, the principal officer being usually styled an Alderman, with power to keep order and generally to provide for the well-being of the place. In this way the tradesmen and merchants of the towns prepared themselves unconsciously for the time when they would be called on to take part in managing the affairs of the country. Even in these early times, however, the artisans in some of the trades attempted to combine together. Of all the towns London had been growing most rapidly in wealth and population, and during the troubles in which John had been pitted against William of Longchamps it had secured the right of being governed by a Mayor and Aldermen of its own, instead of being placed under the jurisdiction of the King's sheriff. The Mayor and Aldermen, however, did not represent all the townsmen. In London, though there is no evidence of the existence of a Merchant Gild, there was a corporation composed of the wealthier traders, by which the city was governed. The Mayor and Aldermen were chosen out of this corporation, as were the juries elected to assess the taxes. Artisans soon came to believe that these juries dealt unfairly with the poor. One of the Aldermen, William Longbeard, made himself the mouthpiece of their 1154-1199 complaints and stirred them up against the rest. Hubert Walter sent a messenger to seize him, but William Longbeard slew the messenger and fled into the church of Mary-at-Bow. Here, according to the ideas of his age, he should have been safe, as every church was considered to be a sanctuary in which no criminal could be arrested. Hubert Walter, however, came in person to seize him, set the church on fire, and had him dragged out. William Longbeard was first stabbed, and then tried and hanged, and for the time the rich tradesmen had their way against the poorer artisans. Even in the most flourishing towns the houses were still mostly of wood or rubble covered with thatch, and only here and there was to be found a house of stone. So slight, indeed, were the ordinary buildings, that it was provided by the Assize of Clarendon that the houses of certain offenders should be carried outside the town and burned. Here and there, however, as in the case of the so-called Jews' house at Lincoln, stone houses were erected. In the larger houses the arrangements were much as they had been before the Conquest, the large hall being still the most conspicuous part, though another apartment, known as the solar, to which an ascent was made by steps from the outside, and which served as a sitting-room for the master of the house, had usually been added. The castles reared by the king or the barons were built for defense alone, and it was in the great cathedrals and churches that the skill of the architect was shown. An enormous number of parish churches of stone were raised by Norman builders to supersede earlier buildings of wood. For some time the round-arched Norman architecture which had been introduced by Eadward the Confessor was alone followed. Gradually the pointed arch of Gothic architecture took its place, and after a period of transition the graceful style now known as Early English was first used on a large scale in 1192 in the choir of the cathedral of Lincoln. |