View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 29

And two kings of Castile, Alonzo XI. and Peter the Cruel, incurred much odium by employing Jewish ministers in their treasury. But, in other parts of Europe, their condition had, before that time, begun to change for the worse--partly from the fanatical spirit of the crusades, which prompted the populace to ma.s.sacre, and partly from the jealousy which their opulence excited. Kings, in order to gain money and popularity at once, abolished the debts due to the children of Israel, except a part which they retained as the price of their bounty. One is at a loss to conceive the process of reasoning in an ordinance of St. Louis, where, "for the salvation of his own soul and those of his ancestors, he releases to all Christians a third part of what was owing by them to Jews."[635] Not content with such edicts, the kings of France sometimes banished the whole nation from their dominions, seizing their effects at the same time; and a season of alternative severity and toleration continued till, under Charles VI., they were finally expelled from the kingdom, where they never afterwards possessed any legal settlement.[636] They were expelled from England under Edward I., and never obtained any legal permission to reside till the time of Cromwell.

This decline of the Jews was owing to the transference of their trade in money to other hands. In the early part of the thirteenth century the merchants of Lombardy and of the south of France[637] took up the business of remitting money by bills of exchange,[638] and of making profit upon loans. The utility of this was found so great, especially by the Italian clergy, who thus in an easy manner drew the income of their transalpine benefices, that in spite of much obloquy, the Lombard usurers established themselves in every country, and the general progress of commerce wore off the bigotry that had obstructed their reception. A distinction was made between moderate and exorbitant interest; and though the casuists did not acquiesce in this legal regulation, yet it satisfied, even in superst.i.tious times, the consciences of provident traders.[639] The Italian bankers were frequently allowed to farm the customs in England, as a security perhaps for loans which, were not very punctually repaid.[640] In 1345 the Bardi at Florence, the greatest company in Italy, became bankrupt, Edward III. owing them, in princ.i.p.al and interest, 900,000 gold florins.

Another, the Peruzzi, failed at the same time, being creditors to Edward for 600,000 florins. The king of Sicily owed 100,000 florins to each of these bankers. Their failure involved, of course, a mult.i.tude of Florentine citizens, and was a heavy misfortune to the state.[641]

[Sidenote: Banks of Genoa and others.]

The earliest bank of deposit, inst.i.tuted for the accommodation of private merchants, is said to have been that of Barcelona, in 1401.[642]

The banks of Venice and Genoa were of a different description. Although the former of these two has the advantage of greater antiquity, having been formed, as we are told, in the twelfth century, yet its early history is not so clear as that of Genoa, nor its political importance so remarkable, however similar might be its origin.[643] During the wars of Genoa in the fourteenth century, she had borrowed large sums of private citizens, to whom the revenues were pledged for repayment. The republic of Florence had set a recent, though not a very encouraging example of a public loan, to defray the expense of her war against Mastino della Scala, in 1336. The chief mercantile firms, as well as individual citizens, furnished money on an a.s.signment of the taxes, receiving fifteen per cent. interest, which appears to have been above the rate of private usury.[644] The state was not unreasonably considered a worse debtor than some of her citizens, for in a few years these loans were consolidated into a general fund, or _monte_, with some deduction from the capital and a great diminution of interest; so that an original debt of one hundred florins sold only for twenty-five.[645]

But I have not found that these creditors formed at Florence a corporate body, or took any part, as such, in the affairs of the republic. The case was different at Genoa. As a security, at least, for their interest, the subscribers to public loans were permitted to receive the produce of the taxes by their own collectors, paying the excess into the treasury. The number and distinct cla.s.ses of these subscribers becoming at length inconvenient, they were formed, about the year 1407, into a single corporation, called the bank of St. George, which was from that time the sole national creditor and mortgagee. The government of this was intrusted to eight protectors. It soon became almost independent of the state. Every senator, on his admission, swore to maintain the privileges of the bank, which were confirmed by the pope, and even by the emperor. The bank interposed its advice in every measure of government, and generally, as is admitted, to the public advantage. It equipped armaments at its own expense, one of which subdued the island of Corsica; and this acquisition, like those of our great Indian corporation, was long subject to a company of merchants, without any interference of the mother country.[646]

[Sidenote: Increase of domestic expenditure.]

The increasing wealth of Europe, whether derived from internal improvement or foreign commerce, displayed itself in more expensive consumption, and greater refinements of domestic life. But these effects were for a long time very gradual, each generation making a few steps in the progress, which are hardly discernible except by an attentive inquirer. It is not till the latter half of the thirteenth century that an accelerated impulse appears to be given to society. The just government and suppression of disorder under St. Louis, and the peaceful temper of his brother Alfonso, count of Toulouse and Poitou, gave France leisure to avail herself of her admirable fertility.

England, that to a soil not greatly inferior to that of France united the inestimable advantage of an insular position, and was invigorated, above all, by her free const.i.tution and the steady industriousness of her people, rose with a pretty uniform motion from the time of Edward I.

Italy, though the better days of freedom had pa.s.sed away in most of her republics, made a rapid transition from simplicity to refinement. "In those times," says a writer about the year 1300, speaking of the age of Frederic II., "the manners of the Italians were rude. A man and his wife ate off the same plate. There was no wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather unlined: scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress.

The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in summer. A small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women were small; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was to be well provided with arms and horses; that of the n.o.bility to have lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But now frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; every thing exquisite is sought after in dress; gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs. Foreign wines and rich meats are required. Hence usury, rapine, fraud, tyranny," &c.[647]

This pa.s.sage is supported by other testimonies nearly of the same time.

The conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou in 1266 seems to have been the epoch of increasing luxury throughout Italy. His Provencal knights with their plumed helmets and golden collars, the chariot of his queen covered with blue velvet and sprinkled with lilies of gold, astonished the citizens of Naples.[648] Provence had enjoyed a long tranquillity, the natural source of luxurious magnificence; and Italy, now liberated from the yoke of the empire, soon reaped the same fruit of a condition more easy and peaceful than had been her lot for several ages. Dante speaks of the change of manners at Florence from simplicity and virtue to refinement and dissoluteness, in terms very nearly similar to those quoted above.[649]

Throughout the fourteenth century there continued to be a rapid but steady progression in England of what we may denominate elegance, improvement, or luxury; and if this was for a time suspended in France, it must be ascribed to the unusual calamities which befell that country under Philip of Valois and his son. Just before the breaking out of the English wars an excessive fondness for dress is said to have distinguished not only the higher ranks, but the burghers, whose foolish emulation at least indicates their easy circ.u.mstances.[650] Modes of dress hardly perhaps deserve our notice on their own account; yet so far as their universal prevalence was a symptom of diffused wealth, we should not overlook either the invectives bestowed by the clergy on the fantastic extravagances of fas.h.i.+on, or the sumptuary laws by which it was endeavoured to restrain them.

[Sidenote: Sumptuary laws.]

The principle of sumptuary laws was partly derived from the small republics of antiquity, which might perhaps require that security for public spirit and equal rights--partly from the austere and injudicious theory of religion disseminated by the clergy. These prejudices united to render all increase of general comforts odious under the name of luxury; and a third motive more powerful than either, the jealousy with which the great regard anything like imitation in those beneath them, co-operated to produce a sort of restrictive code in the laws of Europe.

Some of these regulations are more ancient; but the chief part were enacted, both in France and England, during the fourteenth century, extending to expenses of the table as well as apparel. The first statute of this description in our own country was, however, repealed the next year;[651] and subsequent provisions were entirely disregarded by a nation which valued liberty and commerce too much to obey laws conceived in a spirit hostile to both. Laws indeed designed by those governments to restrain the extravagance of their subjects may well justify the severe indignation which Adam Smith has poured upon all such interference with private expenditure. The kings of France and England were undoubtedly more egregious spendthrifts than any others in their dominions; and contributed far more by their love of pageantry to excite a taste for dissipation in their people than by their ordinances to repress it.

[Sidenote: Domestic manners of Italy.]

Mussus, an historian of Placentia, has left a pretty copious account of the prevailing manners among his countrymen about 1388, and expressly contrasts their more luxurious living with the style of their ancestors seventy years before, when, as we have seen, they had already made considerable steps towards refinement. This pa.s.sage is highly interesting, because it shows the regular tenor of domestic economy in an Italian city rather than a mere display of individual magnificence, as in most of the facts collected by our own and the French antiquaries.

But it is much too long for insertion in this place.[652] No other country, perhaps, could exhibit so fair a picture of middle life: in France the burghers, and even the inferior gentry, were for the most part in a state of poverty at this period, which they concealed by an affectation of ornament; while our English yeomanry and tradesmen were more anxious to invigorate their bodies by a generous diet than to dwell in well furnished houses, or to find comfort in cleanliness and elegance.[653] The German cities, however, had acquired with liberty the spirit of improvement and industry. From the time that Henry V. admitted their artisans to the privileges of free burghers they became more and more prosperous;[654] while the steadiness and frugality of the German character compensated for some disadvantages arising out of their inland situation. Spire, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, and Augsburg were not indeed like the rich markets of London and Bruges, nor could their burghers rival the princely merchants of Italy; but they enjoyed the blessings of competence diffused over a large cla.s.s of industrious freemen, and in the fifteenth century one of the politest Italians could extol their splendid and well furnished dwellings, their rich apparel, their easy and affluent mode of living, the security of their rights and just equality of their laws.[655]

[Sidenote: Civil architecture.]

No chapter in the history of national manners would ill.u.s.trate so well, if duly executed, the progress of social life as that dedicated to domestic architecture. The fas.h.i.+ons of dress and of amus.e.m.e.nts are generally capricious and irreducible to rule; but every change in the dwellings of mankind, from the rudest wooden cabin to the stately mansion, has been dictated by some principle of convenience, neatness, comfort, or magnificence. Yet this most interesting field of research has been less beaten by our antiquaries than others comparatively barren. I do not pretend to a complete knowledge of what has been written by these learned inquirers; but I can only name one book in which the civil architecture of our ancestors has been sketched, loosely indeed, but with a superior hand, and another in which it is partially noticed. I mean by the first a chapter in the Appendix to Dr. Whitaker's History of Whalley; and by the second Mr. King's Essays on Ancient Castles in the Archaeologia.[656] Of these I shall make free use in the following paragraphs.

The most ancient buildings which we can trace in this island, after the departure of the Romans, were circular towers of no great size, whereof many remain in Scotland, erected either on a natural eminence or on an artificial mound of earth. Such are Conisborough Castle in Yorks.h.i.+re and Castleton in Derbys.h.i.+re, built perhaps, according to Mr. King, before the Conquest.[657] To the lower chambers of those gloomy keeps there was no admission of light or air except through long narrow loop-holes and an aperture in the roof. Regular windows were made in the upper apartments. Were it not for the vast thickness of the walls, and some marks of attention both to convenience and decoration in these structures, we might be induced to consider them as rather intended for security during the transient inroad of an enemy than for a chieftain's usual residence. They bear a close resemblance, except by their circular form and more insulated situation, to the peels, or square towers of three or four stories, which are still found contiguous to ancient mansion-houses, themselves far more ancient, in the northern counties,[658] and seem to have been designed for places of refuge.

In course of time, the barons who owned these castles began to covet a more comfortable dwelling. The keep was either much enlarged, or altogether relinquished as a place of residence except in time of siege; while more convenient apartments were sometimes erected in the tower of entrance, over the great gateway, which led to the inner ballium or court-yard. Thus at Tunbridge Castle, this part of which is referred by Mr. King to the beginning of the thirteenth century, there was a room, twenty-eight feet by sixteen, on each side of the gateway; another above of the same dimensions, with an intermediate room over the entrance; and one large apartment on the second floor occupying the whole s.p.a.ce, and intended for state. The windows in this cla.s.s of castles were still little better than loop-holes on the bas.e.m.e.nt story, but in the upper rooms often large and beautifully ornamented, though always looking inwards to the court. Edward I. introduced a more splendid and convenient style of castles, containing many habitable towers, with communicating apartments. Conway and Carnarvon will be familiar examples. The next innovation was the castle-palace--of which Windsor, if not quite the earliest, is the most magnificent instance. Alnwick, Naworth, Harewood, Spofforth, Kenilworth, and Warwick, were all built upon this scheme during the fourteenth century, but subsequent enlargements have rendered caution necessary to distinguish their original remains. "The odd mixture," says Mr. King, "of convenience and magnificence with cautious designs for protection and defence, and with the inconveniences of the former confined plan of a close fortress, is very striking." The provisions for defence became now, however, little more than nugatory; large arched windows, like those of cathedrals, were introduced into halls, and this change in architecture manifestly bears witness to the cessation of baronial wars and the increasing love of splendour in the reign of Edward III.

To these succeeded the castellated houses of the fifteenth century, such as Herstmonceux in Suss.e.x, Haddon Hall in Derbys.h.i.+re, and the older part of Knowle in Kent.[659] They resembled fortified castles in their strong gateways, their turrets and battlements, to erect which a royal licence was necessary; but their defensive strength could only have availed against a sudden affray or attempt at forcible dispossession. They were always built round one or two court-yards, the circ.u.mference of the first, when they were two, being occupied by the offices and servants'

rooms, that of the second by the state-apartments. Regular quadrangular houses, not castellated, were sometimes built during the same age, and under Henry VII. became universal in the superior style of domestic architecture.[660] The quadrangular form, as well from security and convenience as from imitation of conventual houses, which were always constructed upon that model, was generally preferred--even where the dwelling-house, as indeed was usual, only took up one side of the enclosure, and the remaining three contained the offices, stables, and farm-buildings, with walls of communication. Several very old parsonages appear to have been built in this manner.[661] It is, however, not very easy to discover any large fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III., or even to trace them by engravings in the older topographical works, not only from the dilapidations of time, but because very few considerable mansions had been erected by that cla.s.s. A great part of England affords no stone fit for building, and the vast though unfortunately not inexhaustible resources of her oak forests were easily applied to less durable and magnificent structures. A frame of ma.s.sive timber, independent of walls and resembling the inverted hull of a large s.h.i.+p, formed the skeleton, as it were, of an ancient hall--the princ.i.p.al beams springing from the ground naturally curved, and forming a Gothic arch overhead. The intervals of these were filled up with horizontal planks; but in the earlier buildings, at least in some districts, no part of the walls was of stone.[662] Stone houses are, however, mentioned as belonging to citizens of London, even in the reign of Henry II.;[663] and, though not often perhaps regularly hewn stones, yet those scattered over the soil or dug from flint quarries, bound together with a very strong and durable cement, were employed in the construction of manerial houses, especially in the western counties and other parts where that material is easily procured.[664] Gradually even in timber buildings the intervals of the main beams, which now became perpendicular, not throwing off their curved springers till they reached a considerable height, were occupied by stone walls, or where stone was expensive, by mortar or plaster, intersected by horizontal or diagonal beams, grooved into the princ.i.p.al piers.[665] This mode of building continued for a long time, and is still familiar to our eyes in the older streets of the metropolis and other towns, and in many parts of the country.[666] Early in the fourteenth century the art of building with brick, which had been lost since the Roman dominion, was introduced probably from Flanders.

Though several edifices of that age are constructed with this material, it did not come into general use till the reign of Henry VI.[667] Many considerable houses as well as public buildings were erected with bricks during his reign and that of Edward IV., chiefly in the eastern counties, where the deficiency of stone was most experienced. Few, if any, brick mansion-houses of the fifteenth century exist, except in a dilapidated state; but Queen's College and Clare Hall at Cambridge, and part of Eton College, are subsisting witnesses to the durability of the material as it was then employed.

[Sidenote: Meanness of ordinary mansion-houses.]

It is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in stately or even in well-sized houses. Generally speaking, their dwellings were almost as inferior to those of their descendants in capacity as they were in convenience. The usual arrangement consisted of an entrance-pa.s.sage running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above, and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices.[668] Such was the ordinary manor-house of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as appears not only from the doc.u.ments and engravings, but as to the latter period, from the buildings themselves, sometimes, though not very frequently, occupied by families of consideration, more often converted into farm-houses or distinct tenements. Larger structures were erected by men of great estates during the reigns of Henry IV. and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced higher; and such has been the effect of time, still more through the advance or decline of families and the progress of architectural improvement, than the natural decay of these buildings, that I should conceive it difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman and not belonging to the order of castles, the princ.i.p.al apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. The instances at least must be extremely few.[669]

France by no means appears to have made a greater progress than our own country in domestic architecture. Except fortified castles, I do not find in the work of a very miscellaneous but apparently diligent writer,[670] any considerable dwellings mentioned before the reign of Charles VII., and very few of so early a date.[671] Jacques Coeur, a famous merchant unjustly persecuted by that prince, had a handsome house at Paris, as well as another at Bourges.[672] It is obvious that the long calamities which France endured before the expulsion of the English must have r.e.t.a.r.ded this eminent branch of national improvement.

Even in Italy, where from the size of her cities and social refinements of her inhabitants, greater elegance and splendour in building were justly to be expected, the domestic architecture of the middle ages did not attain any perfection. In several towns the houses were covered with thatch, and suffered consequently from destructive fires. Costanzo, a Neapolitan historian near the end of the sixteenth century, remarks the change of manners that had occurred since the reign of Joanna II. one hundred and fifty years before. The great families under the queen expended all their wealth on their retainers, and placed their chief pride in bringing them into the field. They were ill lodged, not sumptuously clothed, nor luxurious in their tables. The house of Caracciolo, high steward of that princess, one of the most powerful subjects that ever existed, having fallen into the hands of persons incomparably below his station, had been enlarged by them, as insufficient for their accommodation.[673] If such were the case in the city of Naples so late as the beginning of the fifteenth century, we may guess how mean were the habitations in less polished parts of Europe.

[Sidenote: Invention of chimneys and gla.s.s windows.]

The two most essential improvements in architecture during this period, one of which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome, were chimneys and gla.s.s windows. Nothing apparently can be more simple than the former; yet the wisdom of ancient times had been content to let the smoke escape by an aperture in the centre of the roof; and a discovery, of which Vitruvius had not a glimpse, was made, perhaps in this country, by some forgotten semi-barbarian. About the middle of the fourteenth century the use of chimneys is distinctly mentioned in England and in Italy; but they are found in several of our castles which bear a much older date.[674] This country seems to have lost very early the art of making gla.s.s, which was preserved in France, whence artificers were brought into England to furnish the windows in some new churches in the seventh century.[675] It is said that in the reign of Henry III. a few ecclesiastical buildings had glazed windows.[676] Suger, however, a century before, had adorned his great work, the abbey of St. Denis, with windows, not only glazed but painted;[677] and I presume that other churches of the same cla.s.s, both in France and England, especially after the lancet-shaped window had yielded to one of ampler dimensions, were generally decorated in a similar manner. Yet gla.s.s is said not to have been employed in the domestic architecture of France before the fourteenth century;[678] and its introduction into England was probably by no means earlier. Nor indeed did it come into general use during the period of the middle ages. Glazed windows were considered as moveable furniture, and probably bore a high price. When the earls of Northumberland, as late as the reign of Elizabeth, left Alnwick Castle, the windows were taken out of their frames, and carefully laid by.[679]

[Sidenote: Furniture of houses.]

But if the domestic buildings of the fifteenth century would not seem very s.p.a.cious or convenient at present, far less would this luxurious generation be content with their internal accommodations. A gentleman's house containing three or four beds was extraordinarily well provided; few probably had more than two. The walls were commonly bare, without wainscot or even plaster; except that some great houses were furnished with hangings, and that perhaps hardly so soon as the reign of Edward IV. It is unnecessary to add, that neither libraries of books nor pictures could have found a place among furniture. Silver plate was very rare, and hardly used for the table. A few inventories of furniture that still remain exhibit a miserable deficiency.[680] And this was incomparably greater in private gentlemen's houses than among citizens, and especially foreign merchants. We have an inventory of the goods belonging to Contarini, a rich Venetian trader, at his house in St.

Botolph's Lane, A.D. 1481. There appear to have been no less than ten beds, and gla.s.s windows are especially noticed as moveable furniture. No mention however is made of chairs or looking-gla.s.ses.[681] If we compare this account, however trifling in our estimation, with a similar inventory of furniture in Skipton Castle, the great honour of the earls of c.u.mberland, and among the most splendid mansions of the north, not at the same period, for I have not found any inventory of a n.o.bleman's furniture so ancient, but in 1572, after almost a century of continual improvement, we shall be astonished at the inferior provision of the baronial residence. There were not more than seven or eight beds in this great castle; nor had any of the chambers either chairs, gla.s.ses, or carpets.[682] It is in this sense, probably, that we must understand aeneas Sylvius, if he meant any thing more than to express a traveller's discontent, when he declares that the kings of Scotland would rejoice to be as well lodged as the second cla.s.s of citizens at Nuremberg.[683] Few burghers of that town had mansions, I presume, equal to the palaces of Dumferlin or Stirling, but it is not unlikely that they were better furnished.

[Sidenote: Farm-houses and cottages.]

In the construction of farm-houses and cottages, especially the latter, there have probably been fewer changes; and those it would be more difficult to follow. No building of this cla.s.s can be supposed to exist of the antiquity to which the present work is confined; and I do not know that we have any doc.u.ment as to the inferior architecture of England, so valuable as one which M. de Paulmy has quoted for that of France, though perhaps more strictly applicable to Italy, an illuminated ma.n.u.script of the fourteenth century, being a translation of Crescentio's work on agriculture, ill.u.s.trating the customs, and, among other things, the habitations of the agricultural cla.s.s. According to Paulmy, there is no other difference between an ancient and a modern farm-house than arises from the introduction of tiled roofs.[684] In the original work of Crescentio, a native of Bologna, who composed this treatise on rural affairs about the year 1300, an Italian farm-house, when built at least according to his plan, appears to have been commodious both in size and arrangement.[685] Cottages in England seem to have generally consisted of a single room without division of stories. Chimneys were unknown in such dwellings till the early part of Elizabeth's reign, when a very rapid and sensible improvement took place in the comforts of our yeomanry and cottagers.[686]

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical architecture.]

It must be remembered that I have introduced this disadvantageous representation of civil architecture, as a proof of general poverty and backwardness in the refinements of life. Considered in its higher departments, that art is the princ.i.p.al boast of the middle ages. The common buildings, especially those of a public kind, were constructed with skill and attention to durability. The castellated style displays these qualities in great perfection; the means are well adapted to their objects, and its imposing grandeur, though chiefly resulting no doubt from ma.s.siveness and historical a.s.sociation, sometimes indicates a degree of architectural genius in the conception. But the most remarkable works of this art are the religious edifices erected in the twelfth and three following centuries. These structures, uniting sublimity in general composition with the beauties of variety and form, intricacy of parts, skilful or at least fortunate effects of shadow and light, and in some instances with extraordinary mechanical science, are naturally apt to lead those antiquaries who are most conversant with them into too partial estimates of the times wherein they were founded.

They certainly are accustomed to behold the fairest side of the picture.

It was the favourite and most honourable employment of ecclesiastical wealth, to erect, to enlarge, to repair, to decorate cathedral and conventual churches. An immense capital must have been expended upon these buildings in England between the Conquest and the Reformation. And it is pleasing to observe how the seeds of genius, hidden as it were under the frost of that dreary winter, began to bud in the first suns.h.i.+ne of encouragement. In the darkest period of the middle ages, especially after the Scandinavian incursions into France and England, ecclesiastical architecture, though always far more advanced than any other art, bespoke the rudeness and poverty of the times. It began towards the latter part of the eleventh century, when tranquillity, at least as to former enemies, was restored, and some degree of learning reappeared, to a.s.sume a more n.o.ble appearance. The Anglo-Norman cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished above other works of man in their own age, as the more splendid edifices of a later period. The science manifested in them is not, however, very great; and their style, though by no means dest.i.tute of lesser beauties, is upon the whole an awkward imitation of Roman architecture, or perhaps more immediately of the Saracenic buildings in Spain and those of the lower Greek empire.[687] But about the middle of the twelfth century, this manner began to give place to what is improperly denominated the Gothic architecture;[688] of which the pointed arch, formed by the segments of two intersecting semicircles of equal radius and described about a common diameter, has generally been deemed the essential characteristic.

We are not concerned at present to inquire whether this style originated in France or Germany, Italy or England, since it was certainly almost simultaneous in all these countries;[689] nor from what source it was derived--a question of no small difficulty. I would only venture to remark, that whatever may be thought of the origin of the pointed arch, for which there is more than one mode of accounting, we must perceive a very oriental character in the vast profusion of ornament, especially on the exterior surface, which is as distinguis.h.i.+ng a mark of Gothic buildings as their arches, and contributes in an eminent degree both to their beauties and to their defects. This indeed is rather applicable to the later than the earlier stage of architecture, and rather to continental than English churches. Amiens is in a far more florid style than Salisbury, though a contemporary structure. The Gothic species of architecture is thought by most to have reached its perfection, considered as an object of taste, by the middle or perhaps the close of the fourteenth century, or at least to have lost something of its excellence by the corresponding part of the next age; an effect of its early and rapid cultivation, since arts appear to have, like individuals, their natural progress and decay. The mechanical execution, however, continued to improve, and is so far beyond the apparent intellectual powers of those times, that some have ascribed the princ.i.p.al ecclesiastical structures to the fraternity of freemasons, depositaries of a concealed and traditionary science. There is probably some ground for this opinion; and the earlier archives of that mysterious a.s.sociation, if they existed, might ill.u.s.trate the progress of Gothic architecture, and perhaps reveal its origin. The remarkable change into this new style, that was almost contemporaneous in every part of Europe, cannot be explained by any local circ.u.mstances, or the capricious taste of a single nation.[690]

[Sidenote: Agriculture in some degree progressive.]

It would be a pleasing task to trace with satisfactory exactness the slow, and almost perhaps insensible progress of agriculture and internal improvement during the latter period of the middle ages. But no diligence could recover the unrecorded history of a single village; though considerable attention has of late been paid to this interesting subject by those antiquaries, who, though sometimes affecting to despise the lights of modern philosophy, are unconsciously guided by their effulgence. I have already adverted to the wretched condition of agriculture during the prevalence of feudal tenures, as well as before their general establishment.[691] Yet even in the least civilized ages, there were not wanting partial encouragements to cultivation, and the ameliorating principle of human industry struggled against destructive revolutions and barbarous disorder. The devastation of war from the fifth to the eleventh century rendered land the least costly of all gifts, though it must ever be the most truly valuable and permanent.

Many of the grants to monasteries, which strike us as enormous, were of districts absolutely wasted, which would probably have been reclaimed by no other means. We owe the agricultural restoration of a great part of Europe to the monks. They chose, for the sake of retirement, secluded regions which they cultivated with the labour of their hands.[692]

Several charters are extant, granted to convents, and sometimes to laymen, of lands which they had recovered from a desert condition, after the ravages of the Saracens.[693] Some districts were allotted to a body of Spanish colonists, who emigrated, in the reign of Louis the Debonair, to live under a Christian sovereign.[694] Nor is this the only instance of agricultural colonies. Charlemagne transplanted part of his conquered Saxons into Flanders, a country at that time almost unpeopled; and at a much later period, there was a remarkable reflux from the same country, or rather from Holland to the coasts of the Baltic Sea. In the twelfth century, great numbers of Dutch colonists settled along the whole line between the Ems and the Vistula. They obtained grants of uncultivated land on condition of fixed rents, and were governed by their own laws under magistrates of their own election.[695]

There cannot be a more striking proof of the low condition of English agriculture in the eleventh century, than is exhibited by Domesday Book.

Though almost all England had been partially cultivated, and we find nearly the same manors, except in the north, which exist at present, yet the value and extent of cultivated ground are inconceivably small. With every allowance for the inaccuracies and partialities of those by whom that famous survey was completed,[696] we are lost in amazement at the constant recurrence of two or three carucates in demesne, with other lands occupied by ten or a dozen villeins, valued altogether at forty s.h.i.+llings, as the return of a manor, which now would yield a competent income to a gentleman. If Domesday Book can he considered as even approaching to accuracy in respect of these estimates, agriculture must certainly have made a very material progress in the four succeeding centuries. This however is rendered probable by other doc.u.ments.

Ingulfus, abbot of Croyland under the Conqueror, supplies an early and interesting evidence of improvement.[697] Richard de Rules, lord of Deeping, he tells us, being fond of agriculture, obtained permission from the abbey to inclose a large portion of marsh for the purpose of separate pasture, excluding the Welland by a strong dike, upon which he erected a town, and rendering those stagnant fens a garden of Eden.[698]

In imitation of this spirited cultivator, the inhabitants of Spalding and some neighbouring villages by a common resolution divided their marshes amongst them; when some converting them to tillage, some reserving them for meadow, others leaving them in pasture, they found a rich soil for every purpose. The abbey of Croyland and villages in that neighbourhood followed this example.[699] This early instance of parochial inclosure is not to be overlooked in the history of social progress. By the statute of Merton, in the 20th of Henry III., the lord is permitted to approve, that is, to inclose the waste lands of his manor, provided he leave sufficient common of pasture for the freeholders. Higden, a writer who lived about the time of Richard II., says, in reference to the number of hydes and vills of England at the Conquest, that by clearing of woods, and ploughing up wastes, there were many more of each in his age than formerly.[700] And it might be easily presumed, independently of proof, that woods were cleared, marshes drained, and wastes brought into tillage, during the long period that the house of Plantagenet sat on the throne. From manerial surveys indeed and similar instruments, it appears that in some places there was nearly as much ground cultivated in the reign of Edward III. as at the present day. The condition of different counties however was very far from being alike, and in general the northern and western parts of England were the most backward.[701]

The culture of arable land was very imperfect. Fleta remarks, in the reign of Edward I. or II., that unless an acre yielded more than six bushels of corn, the farmer would be a loser, and the land yield no rent.[702] And Sir John Cullum, from very minute accounts, has calculated that nine or ten bushels were a full average crop on an acre of wheat. An amazing excess of tillage accompanied, and partly, I suppose, produced this imperfect cultivation. In Hawsted, for example, under Edward I., there were thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of arable, and only forty-five of meadow ground. A similar disproportion occurs almost invariably in every account we possess.[703] This seems inconsistent with the low price of cattle. But we must recollect, that the common pasture, often the most extensive part of a manor, is not included, at least by any specific measurement, in these surveys. The rent of land differed of course materially; sixpence an acre seems to have been about the average for arable land in the thirteenth century,[704] though meadow was at double or treble that sum. But the landlords were naturally solicitous to augment a revenue that became more and more inadequate to their luxuries. They grew attentive to agricultural concerns, and perceived that a high rate of produce, against which their less enlightened ancestors had been used to clamour, would bring much more into their coffers than it took away. The exportation of corn had been absolutely prohibited. But the statute of the 15th Henry VI. c. 2, reciting that "on this account, farmers and others who use husbandry, cannot sell their corn but at a low price, to the great damage of the realm," permits it to be sent any where but to the king's enemies, so long as the quarter of wheat shall not exceed 6_s._ 8_d._ in value, or that of barley 3_s._

The price of wool was fixed in the thirty-second year of the same reign at a minimum, below which no person was suffered to buy it, though he might give more;[705] a provision neither wise nor equitable, but obviously suggested by the same motive. Whether the rents of land were augmented in any degree through these measures, I have not perceived; their great rise took place in the reign of Henry VIII., or rather afterwards.[706] The usual price of land under Edward IV. seems to have been ten years' purchase.[707]

[Sidenote: Its condition in France and Italy.]

It may easily be presumed that an English writer can furnish very little information as to the state of agriculture in foreign countries. In such works relating to France as have fallen within my reach, I have found nothing satisfactory, and cannot pretend to determine, whether the natural tendency of mankind to ameliorate their condition had a greater influence in promoting agriculture, or the vices inherent in the actual order of society, and those public misfortunes to which that kingdom was exposed, in r.e.t.a.r.ding it.[708] The state of Italy was far different; the rich Lombard plains, still more fertilized by irrigation, became a garden, and agriculture seems to have reached the excellence which it still retains. The constant warfare indeed of neighbouring cities is not very favourable to industry; and upon this account we might incline to place the greatest territorial improvement of Lombardy at an era rather posterior to that of her republican government; but from this it primarily sprung; and without the subjugation of the feudal aristocracy, and that perpetual demand upon the fertility of the earth which an increasing population of citizens produced, the valley of the Po would not have yielded more to human labour than it had done for several preceding centuries.[709] Though Lombardy was extremely populous in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, she exported large quant.i.ties of corn.[710] The very curious treatise of Crescentius exhibits the full details of Italian husbandry about 1300, and might afford an interesting comparison to those who are acquainted with its present state. That state indeed in many parts of Italy displays no symptoms of decline. But whatever mysterious influence of soil or climate has scattered the seeds of death on the western regions of Tuscany, had not manifested itself in the middle ages. Among uninhabitable plains, the traveller is struck by the ruins of innumerable castles and villages, monuments of a time when pestilence was either unfelt, or had at least not forbad the residence of mankind. Volterra, whose deserted walls look down upon that tainted solitude, was once a small but free republic; Siena, round whom, though less depopulated, the malignant influence hovers, was once almost the rival of Florence. So melancholy and apparently irresistible a decline of culture and population through physical causes, as seems to have gradually overspread that portion of Italy, has not perhaps been experienced in any other part of Europe, unless we except Iceland.

[Sidenote: Gardening.]

The Italians of the fourteenth century seem to have paid some attention to an art, of which, both as related to cultivation and to architecture, our own forefathers were almost entirely ignorant. Crescentius dilates upon horticulture, and gives a pretty long list of herbs both esculent and medicinal.[711] His notions about the ornamental department are rather beyond what we should expect, and I do not know that his scheme of a flower-garden could be much amended. His general arrangements, which are minutely detailed with evident fondness for the subject, would of course appear too formal at present; yet less so than those of subsequent times; and though acquainted with what is called the topiary art, that of training or cutting trees into regular figures, he does not seem to run into its extravagance. Regular gardens, according to Paulmy, were not made in France till the sixteenth or even seventeenth century;[712] yet one is said to have existed at the Louvre, of much older construction.[713] England, I believe, had nothing of the ornamental kind, unless it were some trees regularly disposed in the orchard of a monastery. Even the common horticultural art for culinary purposes, though not entirely neglected, since the produce of gardens is sometimes mentioned in ancient deeds, had not been cultivated with much attention.[714] The esculent vegetables now most in use were introduced in the reign of Elizabeth, and some sorts a great deal later.

[Sidenote: Changes in value of money.]

I should leave this slight survey of economical history still more imperfect, were I to make no observation on the relative values of money. Without something like precision in our notions upon this subject, every statistical inquiry becomes a source of confusion and error. But considerable difficulties attend the discussion. These arise princ.i.p.ally from two causes; the inaccuracy or partial representations of historical writers, on whom we are accustomed too implicitly to rely, and the change of manners, which renders a certain command over articles of purchase less adequate to our wants than it was in former ages.

The first of these difficulties is capable of being removed by a circ.u.mspect use of authorities. When this part of statistical history began to excite attention, which was hardly perhaps before the publication of Bishop Fleetwood's Chronicon Preciosum, so few authentic doc.u.ments had been published with respect to prices, that inquirers were glad to have recourse to historians, even when not contemporary, for such facts as they had thought fit to record. But these historians were sometimes too distant from the times concerning which they wrote, and too careless in their general character, to merit much regard; and even when contemporary, were often credulous, remote from the concerns of the world, and, at the best, more apt to register some extraordinary phenomenon of scarcity or cheapness, than the average rate of pecuniary dealings. The one ought, in my opinion, to be absolutely rejected as testimonies, the other to be sparingly and diffidently admitted.[715]

For it is no longer necessary to lean upon such uncertain witnesses.