Historia Inglaterra: Chapter 6 - Government and society

The growth of government
William the Conqueror had governed England and Normandy by travelling from
one place to another to make sure that his authority was accepted. The king's "household" was the government, and it was always on the move. There was no real capital of the kingdom as there is today. Kings were crowned in Westminster, but their treasury stayed in the old Wessex capital, Winchester.
This form of government could only work well for a small kingdom. By the time the English kings were ruling half of France as well they could no longer travel everywhere themselves. Instead, they sent nobles and knights from the royal household to act as sheriffs. But even this system needed people who could administer taxation, justice, and carry out the king's instructions. At first this "administration" was based in Winchester, but by the time of Edward I, in 1290, it had moved to Westminster.
Most important of all, the officials in Westminster had to watch the economy of the country carefully. Was the king getting the money he needed in the most effective way? Such questions led to important changes in taxation between 1066 and 1300. In 1130 well over half of Henry I's money came from his own land, one-third from his feudal vassals in rights and fines, and only one-seventh from taxes. One hundred and fifty years later, over half of Edward I's money came from taxes, but only one-third
came from his land and only one-tenth from his feudal vassals.
It is not surprising, either, that the administration began to grow very quickly. When William I invaded Britain he needed only a few clerks to manage his paperwork. Most business, including feudal homage, was done by the spoken, not written, word.
But the need for paperwork grew rapidly. From 1199 the administration in
Westminster kept copies of all the letters and documents that were sent out.

Law and justice
The king, of course, was responsible for law and justice. But kings usually had to leave the administration of this important matter to someone who lived close to the
place where a crime was committed. In Saxon times every district had had its own laws and customs, and justice had often been a family matter.
It was the kings duty to try people and punish them. It was Henry I who
appointed a number of judges who travelled from place to place administering justice. (These travelling, or "circuit" judges still exist today.) They dealt both with crimes and disagreements over property. In this way the king slowly took over the administration from the nobles.
At first the king's judges had no special knowledge or training. They were simply trusted to use common sense. Many of them were nobles or bishops who followed directly the orders of the king. It is not surprising that the quality of judges
depended on the choice of the king. Henry II, the most powerful English king of the twelfth century, was known in Europe for the high standards of his law courts. By the end of the twelfth century the judges were men with real knowledge and experience of the law.
The law administered by these travelling judges became known as "common law", because it was used everywhere.
Traditional local laws were replaced by common laws all over land. This mixture of experience and custom is the basis of law in England even today. Modern judges
still base their decisions on the way in which similar cases have been decided.
The new class of judges was also interested in how the law was carried out, and what kinds of punishment were used. From Anglo-Saxon times there had been two ways of deciding difficult cases when it was not clear if a man was innocent or guilty.
The accused man could be tested in battle against a skilled fighter, or tested by "ordeal". A typical "ordeal" was to put a hot iron on the man's tongue. If the burn mark was still there three days later he was thought to be guilty. It was argued that God
would leave the burn mark on a guilty man's tongue. Such a system worked only as long as people believed in it. By the end of the twelfth century there were serious doubts and in 1215 the pope forbade the Church to have anything to do with trial by
ordeal.
Henry II had already introduced the use of juries for some cases in the second half of the twelfth century. But it was not the kind of jury we know today. In 1179 he
allowed an accused man in certain cases to claim "trial by jury". The man could choose twelve neighbours, "twelve good men and true", who would help him prove that he was not guilty. Slowly, during the later Middle Ages, the work of these juries gradually
changed from giving evidence to judging the evidence of others. Juries had no training in the law, they were ordinary people using ordinary common sense.

Ordinary people in country and town
There were probably between 1.5 and 2 million people living in England in
1066. The Domesday Book tells us that nine-tenths of them lived in the countryside.
Life in the countryside was hard. Most of the population still lived in villages in southern and eastern parts of England. In the north and west there were fewer people,
and they often lived apart from each other, on separate farms. Most people lived in the simplest houses. The walls were made of wooden beams and sticks, filled with mud.
The roofs were made of thatch, with reeds or corn stalks laid thickly and skillfully so that the rain ran off easily. People ate cereals and vegetables most of the time, with pork meat for special occasions. They worked from dawn to dusk every day of the
year, every year, until they were unable to work any longer. Until a man had land of his own he would usually not marry. However, men and women often slept together before marriage, and once a woman was expecting a child, the couple had no choice but to marry.
The landlord expected the villagers to work a fixed number of days on his own land, the "home farm". The rest of the time they worked on their small strips of land, part of the village's "common land" on which they grew food for themselves and their
family. The Domes day Book tells us that over three-quarters of the country people were serfs. They were not free to leave their lord's service or his land without permission. Even if they wanted to run away, there was nowhere to run to.

In the early days of the Conquest Saxons and Normans feared and hated each other. For example, if a dead body was found, the Saxons had to prove that it was not the body of a murdered Norman. If they could not prove it, the Normans would burn the nearest village.
The Norman ruling class only really began to mix with and marry the Saxons, and consider themselves "English" rather than French, after King John lost Normandy in 1204. Even then, dislike remained between the rulers and the ruled.
Every schoolchild knows the story of Robin Hood, which grew out of Saxon hatred for Norman rule. According to the legend Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest near Nottingham as a criminal or "outlaw", outside feudal society and the protection of the
law. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor, and he stood up for the weak against the powerful. His weapon was not the sword of nobles and knights, but the longbow, the weapon of the common man.
In fact, most of the story is legend. The only thing we know is that a man called Robert or "Robin" Hood was a wanted criminal in Yorkshire in 1230. The legend was, however, very popular with the common people all through the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, although the ruling class greatly disliked it. Later the story was changed. Robin Hood was described as a man of noble birth, whose lands had been taken by King John. Almost certainly this was an effort by the authorities to make Robin Hood "respectable".
Most landlords obtained their income directly from the home farm, and also from letting out some of their land in return for rent in crops or money. By 1300 the population was probably just over four million (up to the nineteenth century figures can only be guessed at), about three times what it had been in 1066. This increase, of course, had an effect on life in the country. It made it harder to grow enough food for everyone. The situation was made worse by the Normans' love of hunting. They drove
the English peasants out of the forests, and punished them severely if they killed any forest animals.
The peasants tried to farm more land. They drained marshland, and tried to grow
food on high ground and on other poor land. But the effort to farm more land could not match the increase in population, and this led to a decline in individual family land holdings. In the years of bad harvest people starved to death. Among richer people, the pressure on land led to an increase in its value, and to an increase in buying and selling. Many villagers tried to increase their income by other activities and became blacksmiths, carpenters, tilers or shepherds, and it is from the thirteenth century that many villagers became known by their trade name.
Feudalism was slowly dying out, but the changes often made landlords richer and peasants poorer. Larger landlords had to pay fewer feudal taxes, while new taxes were demanded from everyone in possession of goods and incomes. As a result many could not afford to pay rent and so they lost their land. Some of these landless people went to the towns, which offered a better hope for the future.

The growth of towns as centres of wealth
England was to a very large degree an agricultural society. Even in towns and cities, many of those involved in trade or industry also farmed small holdings of land
on the edge of town. In this sense England was self-sufficient. However, throughout the Middle Ages England needed things from abroad, such as salt and spices. Inside England there was a good deal of trade between different regions. Wool-growing areas, for example, imported food from food-producing areas..
England had always been famous for its wool, and in Anglo-Saxon times much of it had been exported to the Low Countries. In order to improve the manufacture of woollen cloth, William the Conqueror encouraged Flemish weavers and other skilled
workers from Normandy to settle in England. As the European demand for wool stayed high, and since no other country could match the high quality of English wool, English exporters could charge a price high above the production cost, and about twice as much
as the price in the home market. The king taxed the export of raw wool heavily as a means of increasing his own income. It was easily England's most profitable business. When Richard I was freed from his captivity, over half the price was paid in wool. As a symbol of England's source of wealth, a wool sack has remained in the House of Lords ever since this time. Much of the wool industry was built up by the monasteries, which kept large flocks of sheep on their great estates.
Such trade activities could not possibly have taken place under the restrictions of feudalism. But towns were valuable centres to nobles who wanted to sell their produce and to kings who wished to benefit from the increase in national wealth. As a result, the townspeople quickly managed to free themselves from feudal ties and interference.
At the end of the Anglo-Saxon period there were only a few towns, but by 1250 most of England's towns were already established.
Many towns stood on land belonging to feudal lords. The kings gave "charters of
freedom" to many towns, freeing the inhabitants from feudal duties to the local lord. These charters, however, had to be paid for, and kings sold them for a high price. But it was worth the money. Towns could now raise their own local taxes on goods coming in. They could also have their own courts, controlled by the town merchants, on condition that they paid an annual tax to the king. Inside the town walls, people were able to develop social and economic organisations free from feudal rule. It was the beginnings of a middle class and a capitalist economy.
Within the towns and cities, society and the economy were mainly controlled by "guilds". These were brotherhoods of different kinds of merchants, or of skilled workers. The word "guild" came from the Saxon word "gildan", to pay, because
members paid towards the cost of the brotherhood. The merchant guilds grew in the thirteenth century and included all the traders in any particular town. Under these guilds trade was more tightly controlled than at any later period. At least one hundred
guilds existed in the thirteenth century, similar in some ways to our modern trade unions.

The right to form a guild was sometimes included in a town's charter of freedom. It was from among the members of the guild that the town's leaders were probably chosen. In the course of time entry into these guilds became increasingly difficult as guilds tried to control a particular trade. In some cases entry was only open to the sons of guild members. In other cases entry could be obtained by paying a fee to cover the cost of the training, or apprenticeship, necessary to maintain the high standard of the trade.
During the fourteenth century, as larger towns continued to grow, "craft" guilds came into being. All members of each of these guilds belonged to the same trade or
craft. The earliest craft guilds were those of the weavers in London and Oxford. Each guild tried to protect its own trade interests. Members of these guilds had the right to produce, buy or sell their particular trade without having to pay special town taxes. But
members also had to make sure that goods were of a certain quality, and had to keep to agreed prices so as not to undercut other guild members.

Language, literature and culture
The growth of literacy in England was closely connected with the twelfth- century Renaissance, a cultural movement which had first started in Italy. Its influence
moved northwards along the trade routes, reaching England at the end of the century. This revolution in ideas and learning brought a new desire to test religious faith against reason. Schools of learning were established in many towns and cities. Some were
"grammar" schools independent of the Church, while others were attached to a cathedral. All of these schools taught Latin, because most books were written in this language. Although it may seem strange for education to be based on a dead language, Latin was important because it was the educated language of almost all Europe, and
was therefore useful in the spread of ideas and learning. In spite of the dangers, the
Church took a lead in the new intellectual movement.
In England two schools of higher learning were established, the first at Oxford and the second at Cambridge, at the end of the twelfth century. By the 1220s these two
universities were the intellectual leaders of the country.
Few could go to the universities. Most English people spoke neither Latin, the language of the Church and of education, nor French, the language of law and of the
Norman rulers. It was a long time before English became the language of the ruling class. Some French words became part of the English language, and often kept a more
polite meaning than the old Anglo-Saxon words. For example, the word "chair", which came from the French, describes a better piece of furniture than the Anglo-Saxon word "stool". In the same way, the Anglo-Saxon word "belly" was replaced in polite society by the word "stomach". Other Anglo-Saxon words ceased to be used altogether.