METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON First Issued in this Cheap Form in 1919 This Book was First Published (Crown 8vo) February 16th, 1911...

The aim of the present volume is to deal with Old English Customs, not so much in their picturesque aspect—though that element is not wholly wanting—as in their fundamental relations to the organized life of the Middle Ages. Partly for that reason and partly because the work is comparatively small, it embraces only such usages as are of national (and, in some cases, international) significance. The writer is much too modest to put it forth as a scientific exposition of the basic principles of me

A work purporting to deal with old English customs on the broad representative lines of the present volume naturally sets out with a choice of those pertaining to the most ancient and venerable institution of the land—the Church; and, almost as naturally it culls its first flower from a life with which our ancestors were in intimate touch, and which was known to them, in a special and excellent sense, as religious. The custom to which has been assigned the post of honour is of remarkable and var

Not wholly aloof from the subject treated in the previous chapter is the custom that prevailed in the Middle Ages for widows to assume vows of chastity. The present topic might possibly have been reserved for the pages devoted to domestic customs, but the recognition accorded by the Church to a state which was neither conventual nor lay, but partook of both conditions in equal measure, decides its position in the economy of the work. We must deal with it here. Before discussing the custom in its

It was pointed out as one of the distinctions between vowesses and members of the third orders of the Dominican and Franciscan brotherhoods that the latter were pledged to the observance of fasts from which the former were exempt. Tyndale complains of the "open idolatry" of abstinences undertaken in honour of St. Patrick, St. Brandan, and other holy men of old; and he lays special stress on "Our Lady Fast," which, he explains, was kept "either seven years the same day that her day falleth in Mar

The fact may not have escaped notice that Domina Alicia Seynt Johan de Baggenet "took the vow of widowhood in the chapel of the Lord of Amberley." Possession of a private chapel was, as it still is, a mark of social distinction. "It was once the constitution of the English," runs a law of King Athelstan, "that the people and their legal condition went according to their merits; and then were the councillors of the nation honoured each one according to his quality, the earl and the ceorl, the tha

Mention has been made of Hugh Rhodes and his "Book of Nurture." It is pretty evident that this master of music was attached to the older form of faith, since he published in Queen Mary's reign a poem bearing the extravagant title: "The Song of the Chyld-Bysshop, as it was songe before the Queen's Maiestie in her priuie chamber at her mannour of Saint James in the feeldes on Saynt Nicholas' Day and Innocents' Day this yeare now present by the chylde bisshop of Poules church with his company. Lond

There is a palpable resemblance between the subject just quitted and that most characteristic product of the Middle Ages—the miracle play. It may be observed at the outset that instruction in those days, when reading was the privilege of the few, was apt to take the form of an appeal to the imagination rather than the reasoning faculty, and of all the aids of imagination none has ever been so effective as the drama. The Boy-Bishop celebration was not only the occasion of plays which sometimes ne

We wound up our first part with a draft on parochial records; and we enter on our second part with a further taxation of the same fruitful and unimpeachable source. Those familiar with the life of our ancient universities only in its more modern and luxurious aspects may prepare for revelations of the most startling character, for Oxford and Cambridge were nurtured not only in poverty, but in authorized mendicancy and—a learned phrase may be excused—regulated hypothecation. That clerks in those

While money and books were the twin bases on which the fabric of the University reposed, it is plain that a great institution of the sort would involve the employment of numerous agencies not strictly concerned with the work of instruction, but engaged upon the not less necessary functions of maintaining order and ministering to the needs of the body. All persons so occupied were accounted as "of the privilege of the University," and were subject to the jurisdiction of the Chancellor. From an in

We have expounded with some particularity the conditions of University life; we have now to deal with University life in its more intimate relations. And first we must say something of the title, the Latinity of which is not above suspicion, though its convenience and expressiveness are beyond question. The term studium generale was applied, in mediæval times, to an academy in which instruction was imparted on all subjects, and which was thus differentiated from grammar schools and schools of di

Between the Universities and the Judiciary of England in ancient times there existed a close link, which is to be found in the serviens ad legem or Serjeant-at-Law. He was at once a graduate and a public official concerned with the administration of justice either as a recognized pleader or as a judge, for, whether in the higher or lower grade, he owed his credentials to the Crown. We will consider the Serjeant-at-Law in the first place in his academic character, in which he might rank as a B.C.

Ancient judicial theory and practice comprehended not merely trials before a regular tribunal, in which the merits of a case were duly ascertained by the joint efforts of judge, counsel, and assize, but also an alternative method of arriving at the same result—namely, a solemn appeal to the bar of Almighty God. This reference was most common in criminal cases, but by no means restricted to them; resort was had to it in pleas respecting freehold, in writs of right, in warranty of land or of goods

Many of our ancient ballads and lyrics, such as the cycle of Robin Hood and that exquisite love-poem "The Nut-Brown Maid," are based on the custom of outlawry. One of the most charming of these early English productions is "The Tale of Gamelyn," in which we meet with the following passage alluding to the ban: "Tho were his bonde-men sory and nothing glad, When Gamelyn her lord wolues heed was cried and maad; And sente out of his men, wher they might him fynde, For to seke Gamelyn vnder woode-lyn

Just as the Universities and the Judiciary were found to have a common link in the Order of the Coif, so we find that the Judiciary and the City were bound each to each by the existence of by-laws, or, as they were termed in a technical sense, "customs." Although, to avoid misapprehension, these "customs" may be styled by-laws, and many of them strictly answer to the description, on the whole they bore a very different relation to the laws of the land from the by-laws of modern corporations, the

Blount's "Ancient Tenures," a meritorious seventeenth-century work which has been edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, contains a description of the military and civil functions performed, and the privileges enjoyed, by the house of Fitzwalter, in connexion with the City of London. The latter stand in close relation to the subject with which we have just dealt, but it will be convenient to discuss first the obligations and then the "liberties" annexed to their observance. By way of preface we may recapi

Were we obliged to sum up the difference between town and country in one word, that word would be "trade." In mediæval, far more than in modern, times country places had their fairs, but London, with its markets open Sundays and week-days, enjoyed all the benefits of a perpetual fair; from which strangers and foreigners, though under some disadvantages compared with freemen, were by no means excluded. One of the great principles regulating commercial transactions in the Middle Ages and enforced

In the course of the preceding chapter reference was made to the illiteracy of our ancestors in its bearing upon trade usages. In the present chapter we propose to supplement this allusion by drawing attention to a feature of commercial life which was certainly influenced by, if not actually due to, the prevailing lack of education. The combination "Merchants' Marks" is so familiar as to suggest that such marks were used by merchants alone. This was by no means the case. Farmers also had their m

Urban customs appear of more interest and importance than rural usages by reason of the greater complexity of relations implied by the interdependence of members of a populous community. In the country the organization of society is more simple, and the life of the fields, if more tranquil, must always be less vivid, and, if the term may be allowed, less conscious than that of the town. Nothing, however, is more certain than that the formation of towns came after and was in most instances the pr

The state of things exhibited in the previous chapter is essentially transitional. What we have there seen is the town emerging out of the country, or, to put it another way, the country merging, through the principle of attraction, into the focus of the town. This method of viewing the subject is necessarily partial and incomplete. The existence of a common in association with a town or village or group of villages is not a self-evident proposition, to be taken for granted. It is clearly part o

At the conclusion of the previous section allusion was made to retinues as constituting a danger to the industrious members of the body politic. In this, our final section, we turn, or rather return, from the life of the fields to that of the hall. Some notice of the interior order of great houses has appeared in earlier chapters—e.g., that on "Children of the Chapel"—but such special reference, involving no more than the religious side of domestic arrangements, leaves a sense of incompleteness,