The Conquering Family (7 page)

Money hoarding was a general tendency in these unsettled years. At the time of the Conquest, when it seemed to the poor Saxons that all security had been lost, and subsequently when civil wars threatened, men would hide their negotiable wealth against the dire needs they anticipated later. Often they died without a chance to divulge the location of the buried money. From time to time these deposits come to light. In London in the year 1872 one supply of more than six thousand pennies was found, all of them newly minted coins of William I. The largest find has been the Eccles Hoard, which was dug up in Lancaster in 1864 and consisted of more than eleven thousand pennies. Nothing could be more indicative than this of the state of mind of the unhappy Saxons in the early days of Norman rule.

All through his reign, when not concerned with war and conquest, Henry continued to improve the laws with
dome
and
ban
, by either of which terms royal proclamations were called. He stopped the hideous Norman custom of deciding criminal charges by having the contestants fight it out in full armor, in the belief that God would grant the decision to the one whose cause was right, and of testing the guilt of prisoners by making them lift white-hot irons or walk barefooted over heated plowshares. In the place of these cruel absurdities from the Dark Ages, he went back to trial by jury. It had been tried by the Saxons, sometimes with panels made up of witnesses in the case, sometimes with jurors who had not participated in any way, sometimes a combination. Henry now gave more definite substance to the institution by having jury lists maintained
in all counties. This was an important milestone in the growth to present-day conceptions of law enforcement.

That it was difficult to escape entirely from the cruel Norman customs, which had prevailed for two generations, was felt in many ways. One incident may be told in this connection. Eight men were charged with breaking at night into a house in London and killing the owner. The jury decided that their guilt had been established sufficiently
to warrant their taking the water test!
The water test, ordinarily, consisted of throwing the prisoner into a pool with arms tied. If he floated, he was considered guilty and was taken out and hanged. If he sank, he was judged guiltless but, unfortunately for him, he drowned in the demonstration of his innocence. In the case of the eight prisoners, however, a different form of the test was used. They were required to dip their arms into a vat of boiling water and lift out a bar of iron from the bottom, and moreover they had to show no signs of burn or scald two days later.

Two of the eight had the extreme fortitude, or the lack of nervous sensibility, to lift out the bar. As both failed to show later any serious injuries, they were declared innocent and set free. The other six, none of whom was more guilty than the pair who escaped, if guilty at all, could not stand the excruciating pain of the boiling water and so failed to pass the test. They were taken to the place of execution and hanged in a row.

Much later in the reign, as late as 1176, Henry divided the country into six districts, each with three itinerant judges, a further development of his grandfather’s plan. These judges were responsible for the holding of courts and were expected as well to collect the taxes.

Almost as important was his decision to establish again the militia of the country. This pared the claws of the barons still closer to the quick, because the Crown was no longer dependent on them for levies of troops in time of war and so was not under the necessity of giving great grants of land. When Henry needed troops he issued a general call, and the townsman and the freeman on the land were supposed to respond as well as the baron. It was, therefore, not an unmixed blessing. At that juncture, however, the only important thing was to find ways and means of reducing the barons from lords of their small creations to mere holders of land and privilege, and anything which contributed to that end was acceptable.

From the standpoint of legislative advance the reign of Henry II was quite monumental. If the sturdy, sub-rufus, energetic King had been able to curb his ambition for power and keep out of wars in France and not clutter up his life with shoddy love affairs, the thirty-five years he ruled might well have become the most notable period in all English history.

It was amazing how quickly the country recovered from the carnage of the last reign under a ruler like this to plot the course of revival and keep a steady hand on the tiller. None of the hundreds of thousands of sad, starved people who had died under the oppressions of the baronage could be brought back to life. But the country responded with alacrity as soon as evidences of stable government were felt.

Most particularly was this true of London. That city, always of a cosmopolitan aspect, had recovered from the great fire of 1132 and was built up again to a swarming tightness from end to end. The houses were still of frame for the most part (for reasons of economy, not because there was no realization of the danger) and most often also of one story. Where a second story was added—and this was an evidence of the prominence of the owner and perhaps of ostentation—it was called the solar and extended out over the street. The solar had to be a certain height from the ground, prescribed by law, and officials were always going around and measuring and raising great difficulties when a man had transgressed by inches. The idea of numbering the houses had not yet been thought of, and so each residence had a sign of its own suspended over the front door. Gilbert Becket, a citizen of some prominence, had a snipe painted on a board which swung in the wind and creaked in winter; and because of this his young son had been called by playmates Thomas of the Snipe. These signs lent a picturesque note to the old Roman town. Painters must have been kept busy designing them for well-to-do burghers. There was great variety, of course, running from plain household articles like baskets and spades, through such rather costly types as horses’ heads and cows and swine, and ladders and merrytotters, to the very expensive kinds which showed dragons and griffins and ships under full head of sail.

It was on these signs that the King’s officers would mark two lines with chalk when it had been decided to use the house for the billeting of troops or the servants of prominent visitors; and a very effective method it was, for the signs were easy to remember and so rubbing the marks off did no good.

The city was so closely packed inside its two-mile bow of wall that some of the parishes covered no more than three or four acres of land. Each parish, however, had its own church and generally it was built of stone, with an imposing gateway and great crossbeams painted red and gold, and with figures of angels suspended from the roofs. There were more than one hundred parishes in all, and the spires of the churches showing above the top of the stout walls gave the city a magical atmosphere.

The badge of budge (lambskin) on which the clothworkers had their
insignia of the ram and teasel might very well have carried the arms of London, for the great city on the Thames was founded on wool. The ships which came into the estuary from all the ports of Europe and reached their moorings to the sound of
Praise to the Good Christ and Kind Virgin
sung by the whole crew (a hymn heard in every language and in every port on the Continent at the end of each safe journey) brought all manner of goods to England—fine fabrics, spices, wines, armor—and what they took back in exchange was wool. There was always more than enough wool for export to balance all the fancier imports which came to England.

It must not be assumed because so much wool was sold abroad that the English had failed to become makers of cloth themselves. The Drapers’ Company in London was the oldest of the guilds and one of the strongest and richest. A draper in those days was a maker of cloth and not a dealer in the finished article. The London drapers not only used much of the best English wool, but they also imported a special variety from Spain. The rich purple cloths for supertunics, the wine-colored varieties, the deep blues, and the tawny yellows so much favored in those days were made right in London. The company had a fine hall in St. Swithin’s Lane, and their annual feasts were of such note that men of high title were glad to be invited as guests.

Henry I granted them a charter for which they paid an annual fee of sixteen pounds. Henry II renewed this and established a yearly cloth fair to be held in the churchyard of the priory of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield.

There was much activity, therefore, in the houses where the drapers lived and carried on their trade. The front of the house was always used as a shop for the display and sale of the cloth. Behind this, and sometimes in full view, the apprentices worked at heddle and shuttle, and reed and treadle, weaving the enduring cloth into handsome patterns.

The drapers had another great distinction. It was from their ranks that the first Lord Mayor of London came. His name was Henry FitzAlwyn, and he was of very considerable wealth. He had a large house near London Stone and he was a sagacious and resolute man, and a popular one, with his ruddy face and waxed beard, his hearty laugh, strutting in clothes as rich as any great nobleman. He was a perfect choice for the new post which was created about the middle of Henry’s reign. That he continued to hold it for twenty-four years was proof that the first of the lord mayors was also one of the best.

FitzAlwyn’s selection was an indication that the fusing of the two races was becoming an accomplished fact in London. The trade of the city had continued largely in Anglo-Saxon hands. All the moneyers of the city seem to have been Saxon, and the heads of the guilds were known by such names as Leofwine and Athelstan and Bricstab. FitzAlwyn, clearly,
was of Norman extraction, and it was highly indicative that he had the undivided support of the stout burghers of London Town.

London, of course, was dedicated to trade, and most highly and intricately organized it was. Each trade had its guild, and each guild had its own part of the town, its patron saint, its livery, its insignia. Wherever men gathered would be seen the crescent moon of the mercers, the camel of the grocers, the dolphin of the fishmongers. Most of the proud wearers carried their tallysticks along with them to be used in keeping track of sales and purchases, none being able to read or write. They were not
burel
men and humble; they were prosperous and a little arrogant. Never before nor perhaps since had the trades been so minutely specialized. If a man was a wimpler, he made wimples, a scarf for women’s heads, and he made nothing else. If he had chosen to be a gorgoaricer, he made gorgets and was not allowed to try his hand at any other part of a knight’s armor. Each section of London, the London of St. Nicholas Shambles, Blowbladder Street, Labor-in-Vain Street, Candlewick, Cordwainer, had special trade associations. The moneylenders lived in Old Jewry, but not all of them, for the William Cade who loaned money to baron and bishop and the King himself, under the very modern-sounding business name of Cade, Cade and Co., was on West Chepe; and the very king of moneylenders he was, charging as high, when he dared, as two-pence on the pound
per day!

There was a growing foreign note in the busy, brawling, bellicose Citadel of Wool. Tradesmen had been pouring in since the Conquest, largely from Flanders and the north of France. This was a good thing, for it introduced new ideas and methods and it provided competition. The old Londoners, of course, did not like it. Henry’s marriage to Eleanor had wedded at the same time the island kingdom to the rich lands of western France. Already trade was booming with the merchants of Bordeaux and Bayonne and La Rochelle. Ships from Aquitaine were bringing in goods from the Orient and their own abundant crops of figs. Mostly, however, they brought in the wines of Bordeaux, and some of the shrewd vintners from Gascony were settling down in London. St. Martin being the patron saint of all rubicund fellows who dealt in pipe and tun and cask the world over, the newcomers built St. Martin’s Vintry as their place of worship. They introduced a new wine to English palates, an early form of claret. But it was not their best. It was, in fact, a thin and sourish variety. The best they kept for their own consumption.

Queen Eleanor had been given Stephen’s former home, Tower-Royal, as well as a palace at Bermondsey across the river. She liked the busy life of London, and the presence of the court did much to keep trade in a bouncing condition. Construction was going on all the time, particularly at the Tower of London, where now the walls bristled with the turrets and peaks of smaller towers, the Beauchamp, the Bloody, the Lantern, the
Belfry, the Broad Arrow, the Develin. The Cathedral of St. Paul loomed high over the city with its mighty roofs and great bays and its impressive Gothic arches. There was talk of replacing London Bridge with one of stone.

A great city was London by day, a grim and forbidding city by night. The curfew bell rang at eight o’clock from two churches, St. Martin’s le Grand and All Hallows Barking. Trade ceased, the cries of the last regatess with her beer and ale died down, and all citizens of good sense locked their doors and bolted their shutters for the night. After that the only sounds heard were the droning chants of the watch; the occasional jingle of a galilee bell on the porch of a church, which meant someone seeking lodging for the night or sanctuary; the strident “Through!” of wool barges, with lanterns in the rigging, rowing down to unload their great bales at dawn; the more occasional and less assured “ ’Cross! ’Cross!” of river boatmen defying the law by taking some belated noble or churchman over the river. If men had to traverse London at night, they traveled in groups and kept in the wake of the watch, when possible.