Читать книгу Medieval London (Vol. 1&2) - Walter Besant - Страница 6

Table of Contents

[In considering the reigning Kings in order, I have found it necessary to reserve for the chapters on the Mediæval Government of the City the Charters successively granted to the Citizens, and their meaning.]

HENRY II. (1133-1189)

From his effigy at Fontevrault.

The accession of the young King, then only three-and-twenty years of age, brought to the City as well as to the Country, a welcome period of rest and peace and prosperity. These precious gifts were secured by the ceaseless watchfulness of the King, whose itinerary shows that he was a most unwearied traveller, with a determined purpose and a bulldog tenacity. From the outset he gave the whole nation, barons and burgesses, to understand that he meant to be King. To begin with, he ordered all aliens to depart. The land and the City were full of them; they were known by their gait as well as their speech; the good people of London looked about the streets, the day after the proclamation of exile, for these unwelcome guests, whose violence they had endured so long. They were gone “as though they had been phantoms,” Holinshed writes. During his long reign, 1154-1189, Henry, who seldom stayed in one place more than a few days, was in London or Westminster on twenty-seven occasions, but in many of them for a day or two only. These occasions were in March 1155; in April 1157; in March, July, and October 1163; in April and September 1164; in September and October 1165; in April and June 1170; in July 1174; in May, August, and October 1175; in March and May 1176; in March and April 1177; in July 1178; in August, November, and December 1186; in March 1185; in June 1186, and in June 1188. And all these visits together amounted to less than three months in thirty-five years. We may note that Henry held his first Christmas at Bermondsey, not at Westminster. One asks in vain what reason there was for holding the Court at a monastic house in the middle of a marsh, much more difficult of access than that of Westminster. It was here that it was decided that the Flemings, who had flocked over during the last reign, should leave the country. Among them was William of Ypres whom Stephen had made Earl of Kent. We hear very little of the King’s personal relations with the citizens, by whom he was respected as befits one of whom it is written that he was “pitiful to the poor, liberal to all men, that he took of his subjects but seldom times any great tributes, and, further, that he was careful above all things to have the laws duly executed and justice uprightly administered on all hands.”

In the year 1170 Henry II. had his eldest son Henry crowned King; but the “Young King,” as he was called, never lived to occupy his father’s place; after a career of rebellion he died of a fever in 1183.

Henry’s Charter gave the citizens privileges and liberties as large as those granted by Henry I.—with one or two important exceptions. The opening clause in the former Charter was as follows:—

“Know ye that I have granted to my citizens of London to hold Middlesex to farm for three hundred pounds upon accompt to them and their heirs: so that the said citizens shall place as sheriff whomsoever they will of themselves: and as Justiciar whomsoever they will of themselves, for keeping of the pleas of the crown, and of the pleadings of the same, and none other shall be justice over the same men of London.”

Except for a few years in the twelfth century the sheriffs were always elected by the Crown. In the reign of Stephen the citizens are said to have bought the right of electing their sheriffs. The omission of so important a clause indicates the policy of the King. It was his intention to bring the City under the direct supervision of the Crown. He therefore retained the appointment of the sheriff in his own hands; he calls him “my sheriff,” meus Vicecomes; and it was so kept by himself and his successor Richard the First. When John restored to the City the election of the sheriff, the post had lost much of its importance because the communal system of municipal government had been introduced under a mayor. Thanks mainly to the strong hand of the King, who enforced peace and order throughout the country, the prosperity of London greatly increased during his reign. As yet the City was governed by its aristocracy, the aldermen of the wards, which were at first manors or private estates. They endeavoured to rule the City as a baron ruled his people each in his own ward: there was, however, the Folk Mote to be reckoned with. The people understood what was meant by meeting and by open discussion: the right of combination was but a corollary.

It is at this time that we first hear of the licences of guilds. We may take it as a sign of prosperity when men of the same craft begin to unite themselves into corporate bodies, and to form rules for the common interest.

In the year 1180 it is recorded that a number of Guilds formed without licence were fined:—

“The Gild whereof Gosceline was Alderman or President, thirty marks; Gilda Aurifabrorum, or Goldsmiths, Radulphus Flael, Alderman, forty-five marks; Gilda de Holiwell, Henry son of Godr. Alderman, twenty shillings; Gilda Bocheiorum, William la Feite, Alderman, one mark; Gilda de Ponte Thomas Cocus, Alderman, one mark; Gilda Piperariorum, Edward——, Alderman, sixteen marks; Gilda de Ponte, Alwin Fink, Alderman, fifteen marks; Gilda Panariorum, John Maurus, Alderman, one mark; Robert Rochefolet, his Gild, one mark; Richard Thedr. Feltrarius, Alderman, two marks; Gilda de Sancto Lazaro, Radulph de Barre, Alderman, twenty-five marks; Gilda de Ponte, Robert de Bosio, Alderman, ten marks; Gilda Peregrinorum, Warner le Turner, Alderman, forty shillings; Odo Vigil, Alderman, his Gild, one mark; Hugo Leo, Alderman, his Gild, one mark; and Gilda de Ponte, Peter, son of Alan, Alderman, fifteen marks.” (Maitland, vol. i. p. 53.)

CORONATION OF THE “YOUNG KING”

From Vie de St. Thomas (a French MS., 1230-1260).

If there were unlicensed guilds, there must have been licensed guilds. Unfortunately it is not known how many, or of what kind, these were. Among them, however, was the important and powerful Guild of Weavers, who were at that time to London what the “drapiers” were to Ypres in Flanders. (See p. 201.)

It is sufficient to note the claim of the King to license every guild. As for the fining of the unlicensed guild, since the business of a guild is the regulation of trade, one would like to know how trade was regulated when there was no guild. But enough of this matter for the present.

In this reign occurs an early instance of heresy obstinate unto death. The heretics came over from Germany. There were thirty of them, men and women. They called themselves Publicans; one of them, their leader, Gerard, had some learning: the rest were ignorant. They derided matrimony, the Sacraments of Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and other articles. Being brought before the King, they were pressed with Scripture, “but stuck manfully to their faith and refused to be convinced.” It was therefore ordered that they should be burned with a hot iron on the forehead, and the leader on the chin as well, that they should be whipped, that they should be thrust out into the fields and that none should give them food, or fire, or lodging; which was done, the sufferers singing all the time, “Blessed are ye when men do hate you”—and so they went out into the open country, where they all died of cold and starvation. A pitiful story!

Here is a strange story told by Stow. It is a good deal amplified from that given by Roger of Hoveden, but perhaps Stow obtained more material from other authorities also:—

“A brother of the Earle Ferrers was in the night privily slayne at London, which when the King understoode, he sware that he would bee avenged on the Citizens: for it was then a common practice in the Citie, and an hundred or more in a company of young and old, would make nightly invasions upon the houses of the wealthie, to the intent to robbe them, and if they found any man stirring in the Citie within the night, they would presently murther him, in so much, that when night was come, no man durst adventure to walke in the Streetes. When this had continued long, it fortuned that a crewe of young and wealthy Cittizens assembling together in the night, assaulted a stone house of a certaine rich manne, and breaking through the wall, the good man of that house having prepared himselfe with other in a corner, when he perceived one of the Theeves named Andrew Bucquinte to leade the way, with a burning brand in the one hand and a pot of coales in the other, whiche he assayed to kindle with the brande, hee flew upon him, and smote off his right hande, and then with a lowde voyce cryed Theeves, at the hearing whereof the Theeves tooke their flight, all saving hee that had lost his hande, whom the good man in the next morning delivered to Richarde de Lucy the King’s Justice. This Theefe uppon warrant of his life, appeached his confederates, of whome many were taken, and many were fled, but among the rest that were apprehended, a certaine Citizen of great countenance, credite, and wealth, surnamed Iohn the olde,1 when he could not acquite himselfe by the Watardome, offered the King for his life five hundred Marks, but the King commanded that he shoulde be hanged, which was done, and the Citie became more quiet.” (Howe’s edition of Stow’s Chronicles, p. 153.)

Here, then, is a case in which the ordeal by water was thought to prove a man’s guilt. In another place will be found described the method of the ordeal by water. What happened was, of course, that the unfortunate man’s arm was scalded. However, the City became quiet, which was some gain.

In the year 1164 London Bridge was “new made of timber” by Peter of Colechurch, who afterwards built it of stone.

In the year 1176 the stone bridge over the river was commenced. It was not completed until 1209, after the death of the architect.

Henry I. had punished the moneyers for their base coin. Henry II. also had to punish them for the same offence, but he chose a method perhaps more effective. He fined them.

BECKET DISPUTING WITH THE KING

From MS. in British Museum—Claudius D2 (Cotton).

The relations of Thomas à Becket with the King: their friendship and their quarrels and the tragic end of the Archbishop, belong to the history of the country. It does concern this book, however, that Thomas was by birth a Londoner. His father, Gilbert, whose family came from Caen, was a citizen of good position, chief magistrate, or portreeve, in the reign of Stephen. Gilbert Becket was remembered in the City not only by the history of his illustrious son, but by the fact that it was he who built the chapel in the Pardon Churchyard, on the north side of St. Paul’s, a place where many persons of honour were buried. It was ever the mediæval custom to make one place more sacred than another, so that if it was a blessed thing to be buried in a certain church, it was more blessed to lie in front of the altar. The old story about Gilbert’s wife being a Syrian is repeated by the historians, and is very possibly true. Holinshed says she was a “Saracen by religion,” which is certainly not true. Thomas Becket was born in wedlock; his father was certainly not married to a Mohammedan, and the birthplace of the future martyr was in a house on the site of the present Mercers’ Chapel, which itself stands on the site of the chapel of St. Thomas of Acon.

Gilbert Becket died leaving behind him a considerable property in houses and lands. Whether the archbishop took possession of this property as his father’s son, or whether he gave it to his sister, I do not know. Certain it is that after his death his sister Agnes, then married to Thomas Fitz Theobald de Heiley, gave the whole of the family estates to endow a Hospital dedicated to her brother Saint and Martyr. Nothing should be kept back: all—all must be given: one sees the intensity of affection, sorrow, pride, with which the new Saint was regarded by his family. There could be no worshipper at the altar of St. Thomas à Becket more devout than his own sister. (See also p. 278.)

GREAT SEAL OF HENRY II.