CHAPTER III.

THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES.

The Feudal System unfavourable to the development of the middle classes--Subjection of women under Feudalism--Tyranny of feudal lords--Power of the Church--Rise of commerce--Material progress--End of the Feudal System.

Until the development of England as a manufacturing country, the strength and importance of the middle classes were not felt. They came into power contemporaneously with the growth of trade and commerce. It was the thriving burgesses who made England feared by other nations, for it was they who equipped her fleets and replenished empty exchequers. It has often been remarked that in no other country in Europe is there a middle class corresponding to the middle class in England. In no other country is the middle class such a powerful factor in national life. Whether it will retain its power is doubtful. The blows aimed by socialism at the upper classes are felt by those below. For every large landowner who is attacked on the score of undue wealth, there are a hundred small property-holders who will bend under the strain put upon their resources. Ground rents are not all in the hands of the nobility, and employers of labour are not all battening on enormous profits. It is the middle classes whom the socialistic portion of the democracy wish to reduce to a condition of insecurity, and whose energies they are trying to paralyze.

The feudal system was unfavourable to the growth of the middle classes. It savoured too much of absolutism. Energy was cramped. Individual effort was possible only within certain limits. In the feudal ages people cared more for protection than for freedom. They bowed to the sovereignty of the feudal lord, and were dependent on his bounty. The services which they were obliged to render prevented them from straying into new paths, and the conditions under which they lived made independent action impossible. It was not until the feudal system was broken down that there was a free course for the development of the middle classes. In the first four centuries after the coming of the Normans, it is the aristocracy who are the history-makers. Roughly speaking, there are only two classes to be considered: the nobles and the serfs--for such the lower classes remained in all the important relations of life--and until the arts of civilization have made some progress, until the resources of the country have been brought into play and foreign commerce has grown into importance, the life of the populace is a somewhat monotonous tale.

It has been stated that feudalism raised woman to a higher place in domestic life; that, whereas before she was in a state of subjection, under the feudal system she exercised independent power. Undoubtedly, as a wife woman was a gainer. The mantle of authority with which her husband was invested, fell upon her whenever he was temporarily absent. The _ménage_ of a feudal household certainly gave the lady of the house a dignity, and imposed upon her responsibilities which secured her respect and gave her freedom of action. She was called upon to direct a little army of subordinates, and was her husband’s partner and equal. But this improvement in the status of women is not discernible, except in the governing classes. The women without title, rank, position, wealth, the women of every-day life, profited little. They shared in the subjection of their fathers, brothers, and husbands, and they enjoyed none of the privileges which the feudal system conferred on their more highly placed sisters. In a state of society where the mass of the people were in a dependent position, it was not likely that any special freedom would be granted to or even claimed by women. And in an age when the worship of force was dominant, their physical inferiority told heavily against them. Under feudalism there was no sort of independence possible to women who were born to wealth or rank.

Women were under a twofold sovereignty--that of the feudal lord and of their male relatives. No woman in any position of life could be said to be a free agent. If she were a great heiress, she was disposed of in marriage as best suited the king and his council without regard to her wishes. In the case of a vassal’s daughter, the consent of the feudal lord must be obtained to her marriage. Every tenant paid a sum of money to the lord on the marriage of his daughter, and this tax was even levied in the case of grand-daughters. The price was fixed by the manorial courts. A couple could not be betrothed without the permission of their feudal lord, and if they failed to obtain his consent they were subject to a fine.

In France, when feudalism was at its height, the birth of a daughter was regarded as a calamity, from the sovereign downwards. Louis XI., who refused even to admit into his presence his daughter, Jeanne de Valois, during the first four years of her life, and ferociously struck at her with his sword when she chanced one day to come into view, represents in an exaggerated form the sentiment of the peasant, who, if he had no sons, would say, “Je n’ai pas d’enfants, je n’ai que des filles.”

Feudal England did not express herself so strongly, but a dowerless daughter was felt to be a heavy burden, and a daughter with a portion was treated simply as a marketable commodity.

On the labouring classes the tyranny of the feudal system pressed grievously. A licence had to be bought to go outside the bounds of the lord of the manor to obtain work. For instance, an orphan girl, in the reign of Edward III., paid sixpence for the privilege of serving and marrying “wheresoever and whensoever she pleases.”[4] A woman living on the estate of a feudal lord was regarded as, in a manner, his property. If she married a stranger and left the manor, the lord was entitled to compensation, as being deprived of part of his “live stock.”

All through the Middle Ages it was the aim of the government to keep the people on the land, to prevent the agricultural population from quitting the rural districts. No father who could not show an income of £20 a year in land or rent might apprentice his son or daughter to any trade. This effectually cut off the chances of the majority of the working class from migrating to the towns. The system, unworkable as it appears, did not die out until the sixteenth century.

Powerful as was the Church in the Middle Ages, it was not able to protect women outside the shade of the cloister. And it will be readily understood how great was the influence of the priest in an age when the mass of the people were so little able to think and judge for themselves; in an age when belief in the supernatural encompassed daily life with terrors, when the common laws of nature were dim mysteries, when disease and misfortune were ascribed to the malevolence of witches and evil spirits. The Church was the supreme arbiter, and to question her decrees was to incur the risk of eternal misery. The powers of evil could only be exorcised by holy water and priestly aid, and lapses into sin were atoned for by substantial offerings. It was easy to persuade women, always more susceptible than men to the emotional and imaginative side of religion, that their dreams and fancies were divine warnings. In that quaint collection of fourteenth-century maxims known as the “Book of the Knight of Latour Landry,” the story is related of a young wife who was induced to desert her husband for a lover, and fell sick. She had a vision of a fiery pit, which a priest interpreted to signify the abode of lost spirits, into which she would have been plunged but for her piety in supporting one hundred priests to say masses for the souls of her parents, and in dispensing charity among the poor.

But if the Church tyrannized over the people and took advantage of their ignorance, it was a great uplifting and civilizing power in their lives. But for the Church the Middle Ages would been one dark night of un-illumined barbarism. The Church summed up in herself all that existed of knowledge and culture. It was the symbol of order, progress, and learning. In time of war it was a haven of peace. It was the Church that enabled women to live secure, sheltered lives in the midst of turmoils and danger. It was the guardian of the people’s consciences, and possessed over them a power of life and death.

Looked at from a lighter side, the Church was a potent factor in every-day life. Her festivals were one of the chief recreations of the people. To women especially, whose diversions were fewer than those of men, the feast-days, with their processions and ceremonials, were welcome excitements. In the services of the Church women found an outlet for the gratification of the æsthetic sense which nothing else afforded. If the main features of social life in the Middle Ages be remembered--the sordidness of the dwellings, the absence of everything beyond the barest necessaries in the majority of homes, the lack of indoor recreations, and of all the resources of modern times afforded by the means of locomotion--it will not appear strange that the Church as a social force should have wielded such power.

The rise of the middle classes was the rise of a power antagonistic to the Church. It was the beginning of the revolt against constituted authority. It foreshadowed the strife between reason and dogma. All the movements that have arisen against the power of the Church have come from the middle classes. The spirit of inquiry which led men to question the claims of an infallible priesthood, and culminated in the breakdown of the power of the Roman Catholic Church in England, had its birth among the middle classes. The modern scientific movement, to which the Anglican Church has been so bitterly opposed, started from the same source. The battle for freedom of worship, whether fought by Anglicans against Romanists, or by Dissenters against Anglicans, has been mainly carried on by members of the middle classes.

After the fall of feudalism, in the period immediately preceding the Reformation, the extension of commerce was raising the middle classes into power. New paths were opening out, and as riches were more diffused and intercourse between different parts of the country and with other nations became easier, the influence of the Church was weakened. It became less dominant as new interests arose.

It was in this period that a remarkable step was taken among women of the middle class--a step which shows that their interest in public affairs was very keen. A number of city dames drew up a petition to Parliament and presented it in person. It was not the stimulus of private interest or the sharp spur of national calamity that sent them to the doors of the legislature. It is a significant fact that it was an affront offered to a woman which stirred the citizens’ wives to action in the year 1429, when that unfortunate kinglet, the puppet of his party, Henry VI., was nominally reigning. The Duke of Gloucester’s matrimonial concerns were creating a good deal of agitation. He had put away his wife, the Countess Jacqueline of Hainault, daughter of William IV., Count of Holland, and widow of the Dauphin John, and set in her place Eleanor Cobham. The good citizenesses were full of righteous wrath. They resolved to present a remonstrance to the House of Lords.

“One Mistress Stokes, with divers other stout women of London, of good account and well apparelled, came openly to the Upper House of Parliament and delivered letters to the Duke of Gloucester, to the Archbishop, and other lords there present, containing matters of rebuke and sharp reprehension to the said Duke of Gloucester because he would not deliver his wife Jacqueline out of her grievous imprisonment, being then detained prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy, and suffering her to remain unkindly whilst he kept another adulteress contrary to the law of God and the honourable estate of matrimony.”

These city dames, who probably were not very facile with their pen, who had no newspapers to read, no clubs or societies at which to discuss public matters, who were, doubtless, much occupied with the affairs of their household, were so moved by the iniquity being perpetrated upon one of their own sex, that they could not forbear taking action. There must have been much indignant gossip between good Mistress Stokes and her neighbours. The outrage on the wifely dignity of Countess Jacqueline appealed to their inmost feelings. They were all women of the thriving, comfortable middle class, as the description implies, “stout women,” and “well apparelled,” whose husbands would be citizens of good standing. Or perhaps some of them were women trading on their own account, wool-staplers and merchants, as was not uncommon in those times. They felt, as all good citizenesses should, that they had part and lot in the affairs of the kingdom, and did not think it “going out of their sphere” to express their opinion on a matter of the gravest import. But it was a bold thing to interfere in the affairs of a peer of the realm, one of royal blood, and to go up in person to the House of Lords, especially for petitioners who by their rank and connections could not command special attention, who had neither husbands, brothers, nor friends in the august assembly to which they appealed. The personal element, which was so manifest in the political women of the eighteenth century, was absent.

With the growth of the commercial movement and the increase of material prosperity, society was gradually reconstituted. As feudalism declined, so did chivalry. The artificial view of life which it engendered faded away. The commercial instinct, so strong in the English people, began to override other impulses.

As England emerged from its commercial insignificance, an improvement naturally took place in the material conditions of domestic life. Luxuries that had hitherto belonged exclusively to the aristocracy, were introduced into the homes of the middle classes. Houses were better furnished, dress became more sumptuous, the table was better provided. Indeed, the quality of the food was in advance of the other conditions of life. With the growth of towns was created a more marked difference between the rural and urban population. The burgher’s wife who had glass windows to her house and went to church in a silken hood, felt herself on a different plane from the farmer’s wife with her shuttered lattices and linen coif. The trading class naturally lived an in-door life, and became sensitive to hardships endured without question by the agricultural class. Women who dwelt in cities fell into a different groove of occupations and amusements from their rural sisters, whom they began to regard with some disdain. Field and farm work were looked upon with a little scorn by women who had been brought up in the more sheltered atmosphere of town life. The dance on the village green and the harvest revels were superseded for town dwellers by feasts and shows.

There were hardly any books in the houses even of prosperous traders, whose literature was confined to their account-books. As for the women, they were busy enough with their household affairs, and sought their recreation in a gossip with their neighbours. Few of them ever wrote a letter or found any use for a pen. Even to this day there are good housewives in country districts who would be puzzled to make out a receipt or cast up a column of figures.

In the fourteenth century there were few persons outside the ranks of the clergy who could write. There was a considerable improvement in the following century, which affords a convenient starting-point from which to commence the study of town life.[5] Letter-writing was becoming usual among the well-to-do of the middle classes, those who would now be called the gentry. Education was spreading. The gulf between the aristocracy and the democracy was being bridged over by a thriving, intelligent middle class. As we approach the sixteenth century, the old manner of life is fast seen to be disappearing. The castle is no longer the power that it was once. The sovereignty of the nobles is weakened, in many cases completely shattered, and the system of tyrannical protection on the one side and slavish dependence on the other passes away.