Sarum (85 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
Peter nodded. It was a splendid venture. He would run it, and then – then, to be sure he would marry Alicia. He smiled with anticipation at the thought. Le Portier could hardly refuse a young man with a mill.
The mill in which Godefroi and the Shockleys were investing had nothing to do with grinding corn. It was for making cloth, and it was a symbol of the era.
The process of clothmaking had altered very little from the most ancient times. First the sheep were sheared and the wool gathered; then the wool was combed, or carded with a thistle to straighten the fibres and open them out; then it was washed and dried to remove surplus grease. Next, the raw wool was spun – pulled and twisted into twine with a spindle – and this slow process was accomplished by hand, for the spinning wheel was not yet invented. Only then could the business of weaving begin.
The looms on which the cloth was woven had, for the previous two thousand years, been very simple: a high crossbar over which the long strands of yarn – the warp – were hung and weighted: then the shorter strands – the weft – were threaded through them and pushed tight with a crossbar. A thousand times this simple business, threading the weft in accordance with a carefully designed pattern, was repeated by hand and slowly, inch by inch, the rough cloth appeared on the loom. This continued until the end of the long warp was reached, which was the end of that piece of cloth.
This was the vertical loom. But more recently, a far better machine had come into use. In this, the warp was held in place horizontally on a frame and wound round a revolving beam, so that a roll of cloth of unlimited length could be woven. Moreover, the cloth could easily be made in broad strips by seating two men opposite each other on each side of the loom who could pass the weft between them. This was the double horizontal loom which revolutionised the medieval textile business, and it was these that Shockley possessed.
But the newly made cloth from the loom was, as yet, unusable. The fibres were still comparatively loose, the wool full of dirt and impurities; the next and important stage was the fulling: treading the raw cloth in vats of water to which a detergent, usually stale urine, had been added. As the fullers walked the cloth in the vats which gave off their pungent smell of ammonia, the cloth shrunk and tightened, and all the remaining dirt in the wool was loosened and fell out. Then, when the fulling was completed, the acrid smelling cloth was thoroughly rinsed. Afterwards, while it was still damp, the nap was raised with a teasle of thistle heads and then the nap was trimmed with shears. Lastly, it was spread on tenter frames to be dried.
The fulling process was laborious and long – it often lasted twenty hours at high temperatures – and it was heavy work: the heavier the cloth, the more thorough the fulling had to be; so that with a thick felt, for instance, the cloth was so shrunk and beaten that it became impossible even to see the original weave at all.
It was at this period of the island’s history that two more important changes were beginning to take place in the wool trade. The first was a gradual increase in clothmaking. As decade followed decade, though most cloth was still imported from Flanders and Italy, English-made cloth was beginning to make headway as well. The second development was mechanical: the introduction of the mechanical fulling mill.
And it was the potential of this huge new machine that had so excited Edward Shockley.
“You see,” he explained to Godefroi, “it operates just like a corn mill: the river turns the wheel, but instead of millstones, you have two huge wooden hammers on a ratchet that pound the cloth continuously. It can do the work of ten fullers: and the heavier the cloth, the more effective it is.”
The fulling mill was making its appearance in many places, especially in the west of the island. Though often resisted by the local fullers, who feared it might compete with their own traditional methods, it was a far more effective way of working on the heavier cloths. It looked exactly like a corn mill, the only difference as one drew closer being the rhythmic thump of the two heavy wooden hammers, and the pungent smell from the ammonia. Already, the Bishop of Winchester had set up such a mill on his nearby estate at Downton.
“There’s more cloth being made every year,” Shockley argued. “If we have a mill already operating, we can profit from this growth.”
All that he needed in order to do this was a parcel of land by the river at a spot where a mill race could easily be constructed, and a backer with sufficient capital resources to build the mill, or give security for the money that would be needed to do so. Naturally he had gone to Godefroi.
Under their agreement, Godefroi was borrowing the money for the mill from Aaron and would build it on the new estate he held as a tenant-in-chief and where he was free to do as he pleased without needing the permission of any superior landlord. Shockley, as the entrepreneur, in turn agreed to pay him half the receipts of the mill from all those who brought cloth to it from outside Godefroi’s estates, and all the receipts from Godefroi’s tenants and villeins – who would be compelled by the knight, as their feudal overlord, to use his mill. So Godefroi, using his ample lands as security for the loan, would add a valuable asset to his estate; and his feudal tenants would be compelled, indirectly, to increase his income. It was a combination of capitalism and feudalism that was typical of the times.
The building was not complicated, but solid stonework and carpentry would be required.
“Who will do the masonry?” Aaron enquired of Godefroi as they rode along.
“We’ve got a young fellow from my estate,” the knight replied, “who’s working in the town at the moment. He seems to be competent. His name’s Osmund.”
Aaron smiled.
“Cheaper than hiring a master mason you can’t trust,” he remarked.
“Exactly,” Godefroi agreed.
When, half an hour later, William atte Brigge saw the little cavalcade of Godefroi, Aaron of Wilton and the hated Shockleys coming down the street, he knew instinctively that he did not like it; and when the party paused, while Godefroi turned aside to speak with a merchant, he loped across the street and sidled up to Aaron. Neither man liked the other, but as they were neighbours at Wilton, both observed a guarded politeness.
“What’s up?” William asked. “Godefroi and Shockleys after money?” Aaron said nothing. “They in trouble?” he suggested hopefully.
“Not at all. A very good investment I think.” Briefly he outlined the plan for the fulling mill. “I’ve already helped finance two others in the west,” he added calmly.
But William’s face clouded. His mind was making connections rapidly. His wife’s loom, his sheep, the source of his miserable cloth, lay on Godefroi’s estate. That could mean only one thing. His suspicions were confirmed a moment later when he became aware of the knight’s horse with its enamel decorations looming over him and Godefroi staring down at him with undisguised contempt.
“Doesn’t your wife’s family weave cloth on my land?” he demanded curtly.
William nodded.
“Good. They’ll be fulling it at my mill shortly.” He nudged his horse forward and the cart bearing the Shockleys rumbled after him. William heard someone laugh; he did not know who. Nor did he look up to see.
So the cloth which he had fulled cheaply before in Wilton, the cloth from his own sheep, would now have to go to a mill run by the cursed Shockleys. He would have to pay them and Godefroi to ruin him. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing in the world that he could do about it.
Furiously he grabbed his cart and began to haul it away; but as he did so the accumulated insults of the day swelled in his mind until he could bear it no longer. Suddenly he stopped.
“Damn the bishop and his bridge! Damn that aulnager! Damn that Jew and the Shockleys!” he screamed. Taking the bales of defective cloth he hurled them onto the dusty road, and turned to make his way under the sweltering sun, back towards Wilton.
Since Aaron had halted briefly in the market place, it was Godefroi and the two Shockleys who first confronted Canon Portehors. And since he knew nothing of what had taken place between Portehors and Osmund that morning, it was without any sense of danger that the knight reined his horse and beckoned to the boy to approach him.
But before Osmund could get up from the ditch where he was kneeling, he found himself pushed peremptorily back by the priest who now strode angrily towards the knight.
“What do you want with this young man?”
Godefroi eyed the priest calmly from his horse.
“I wish to speak to him. He is my villein.”
“He is busy.”
Godefroi inclined his head courteously. “I shall only detain him a moment, Canon Portehors.”
But Portehors did not shift his ground.
“If it is your intention to entice him from his work here, I forbid it.”
Godefroi stiffened. The priest had no jurisdiction over the young fellow whereas he, as the boy’s feudal lord, had.
“I’ll thank you not to interfere,” he said sharply.
Portehors did not move. The knight therefore ignored him and spoke to Osmund.
“We shall need you tomorrow to begin work on the mill,” he said pleasantly. “Report to the reeve at day-break.”
Godefroi was about to turn away.
He had no wish to confront Portehors and it seemed to him that the incident was closed.
But to the canon it was not.
“He is engaged in the Church’s work,” he declared.
It had not occurred, of course, to either the canon or the knight to refer any part of this matter to the boy himself, although in theory Osmund was free to engage himself as he wished on those days when he did not owe his feudal lord labour services. To Portehors, at least, the matter was too important even to consider Osmund’s wishes any longer, for now there was a point of principle at stake.
At the canon’s last statement however, Godefroi frowned in surprise.
“But he is building ditches in your street.” He pointed to the half finished watercourse.
Portehors hesitated for only a second.
“Tomorrow he begins work on the cathedral.” In order to suit his argument, Osmund’s destiny had just been altered.
Godefroi paused. Although he had a perfect right to the lad’s services, he would not normally have chosen to remove a worker from the cathedral itself. But he sensed that Portehors was altering the facts, and it irked him to be put upon.
“He will work for me,” he stated flatly.
But Portehors, having aroused himself, was now stubborn. His eyebrows contracted; he bristled.
“Do not insult the Church of God,” he cried, “or I shall speak to the bishop; and he may speak to the king.”
“That is absurd,” the knight very reasonably replied. But his eyes were suddenly cautious. Portehors saw it and stood his ground.
And despite the absurdity of the argument, Godefroi was wise to be careful: for Canon Portehors and his Church could be dangerous.
There were several reasons: one was King Henry III. Ever since he had come to the throne as a boy twenty years before, the pious Henry had consciously modelled himself on the last king of the old Saxon house, the saintly Edward the Confessor. With his passion for ceremonial and for church building, he made frequent trips from his hunting lodge in the nearby forest of Clarendon to see the progress of the new cathedral and was liable to fly into a rage at anyone who got in the way of his project.
But there was more to it than the king’s religiosity. The political struggle for supremacy between Church and State had already been a long one. It had begun when William Rufus had quarrelled with the saintly Archbishop Anselm, and it had reached a crisis in the quarrel between Henry II and the impossible Thomas à Becket that had ended in the murder of the archbishop in Canterbury Cathedral. It had broken out once more, in some ways more seriously, a generation later when King John had refused to accept the pope’s choice of archbishop, Stephen Langton, and Pope Innocent III had then laid the whole kingdom under an Interdict. For six long years all church services, even Christian burial, were forbidden, a situation that God-fearing men like Godefroi had found intolerable.
John had retaliated by confiscating Church property and retaining the income for himself; Innocent in reply excommunicated him and thereby released all his feudal vassals from their vows of loyalty to him. He had even threatened to depose the king. For Innocent was not a man to be trifled with. Finally, when he was threatened by an invasion by the French king with the pope’s blessing, John capitulated, resigned his kingdom to the pope and received it back from him as a vassal. The Church had triumphed: the new archbishop was installed; and the Church’s superior power, even over kings, had seemed to be established. It was a tremendous power, not to be lightly challenged, and Godefroi had good reason to be afraid of it.
The political victory was theoretical. Much more important to every man in England was the fact that Church and State could not live without one another: the king needed the Church’s moral authority; the Church with its huge holdings of land, needed the king’s and the laity’s protection. In England after the Interdict, a new spirit of cooperation developed, which brought great blessings to the State. When the disasters of John’s reign finally led to the rebellion of many of his barons and the contract of Magna Carta, it was Stephen Langton, the archbishop he had opposed, who counselled the barons to moderation and who finally drew up a charter with such wise and statesmanlike provisions, even protecting humble folk, that both kings and magnates referred to it for guidance for generations afterwards. Now it was the Church which supported England’s kings and people alike against feudal power-seekers and whose high moral authority helped to prevent any return to the chaos of Stephen’s reign.
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