CHAPTER XIX
Castles

The passion for building castles in England had begun before the Norman Conquest; but during the Norman period a great many castles (about eleven hundred, it is said) were built in various parts of the country. They were not all of the same size, strength, or importance. Some were royal castles, belonging to the king, who placed each one in charge of a constable or warden. These were necessary for the defence of the country. We should expect to find important castles, for instance, at such places as Carlisle, Ludlow, Gloucester, Dover, and London. We can, too, trace lines of castles along the Scottish and Welsh borders; and there were no fewer than twenty-five in the county of Monmouth alone.

Many castles were placed on the sites of Saxon strongholds, and of strongholds dating from still earlier times. Others were built where the overlord thought they would be of service to him in protecting his interests and keeping his tenants in order. So it often came to pass that the castles were built close to, or in the very heart of, a town or city. Frequently the castle was at once the protection and the terror of the neighbourhood.

It is curious to note that some of the greatest castle-builders of the time were bishops. There was Bishop Gundulph of Rochester, who built the Keep of Rochester Castle and the White Tower in the Tower of London. There was Bishop Henry de Blois of Winchester, who built a number of castles on lands belonging to his bishopric. Strange as it may seem to us that bishops should be great rulers and leaders of armies, it did not strike the people of those days as at all extraordinary or improper. A bishop was as much a ruler as the king, and had territories to look after and keep in order. In those days he was quite as able to carry out these duties as the boldest baron of them all, and could give and take hard knocks with the best of them.

The great castle-builders had no love for the traders in towns and cities; indeed they looked down on that class. But they found them very useful. Towns attracted traders by land and by water; and every town, every bridge, and every ferry belonged to some lord or other. No goods could be brought into or taken from a town, or carried across bridge or ferry, without paying toll and custom to the overlord. But he had certain duties to perform in return, in protecting the town and its trade; and the better the protection the more traders came to pay toll, and the better it was for everybody concerned.

So we find, near many of our ancient towns and cities, a castle, or its ruins—or perhaps only the site is left—where the lord of the town kept a number of men to protect the town and district, even when he was not there himself.

If there was no love lost between the lord of the castle and the townsmen, there was still less between the latter and the soldiers. The soldiers were inclined to take liberties, and to be insolent and oppressive. As they had it in their power to "make trouble", if not kept in good-humour, the townsmen put up with much for the sake of peace and quietness.

CHAPTER XX
Castles and Towns

However useful a castle might be in protecting the overlord's tenants and property, the sense of security was always a great temptation to quarrel with other lords. With strong kings, like William I and Henry I, the danger of disorder was not so great, as these monarchs knew how to keep their great barons in check. But in the time of King Stephen, during the long years of civil war, the barons were divided into two parties, and each castle became a centre of strife.

The baron in his castle had his men to keep. These he did not pay in regular wages. He fed, clothed, and armed them after a fashion; and, to give them something to do, would rake up some old grievance with a neighbouring baron, make an attack upon his property, and let his men plunder, burn, and kill to their hearts' content. Then the other baron would retaliate.

It is easy to see that the conditions of life in England were most unsettled in the reign of King Stephen. There was no safety in town or village, and the dwellers on the manors must have suffered most severely. Their own lord would send and gather in all their store to victual his castle from time to time: his enemy would send his men to seize what they could. It made very little real difference to the villeins which side won; they suffered, as they were heavily oppressed by both parties. Their own lord expected his dues just the same, war or no war, famine or no famine, whether he or his enemy had carried off the best part of the corn and cattle or not; and he would take his pick of the men on his manors to fill the places of his men-at-arms who had been put out of action.

Many of the barons became little better than monsters of cruelty, and their castles "nests of devils and dens of thieves". One of the very worst of these was Geoffrey de Mandeville, who had large estates in Essex and Hertfordshire. His castle of Anstey, in Hertfordshire, was a den of fearful wickedness. He and his men neither feared God nor regarded man; nothing was sacred to them—they spared neither church nor monastery, town nor village.

Dreadful tales are still told of the cruel deeds done in the deep dungeons of nearly all these old castles by the "bold bad barons" of the time of King Stephen.

When Henry II became king he put a stop to these disorders, and large numbers of the castles were pulled down; but the evils they had caused lived long after, and were the source of much trouble.

It is said that "Everything comes to those who know how to wait", and the townsmen, under the rule of a great lord, knew how to wait. Great as the lord of the town was, whether he was baron, bishop, or the king himself, he could not do without the town—and the town knew it. People were sometimes short of ready money in those days just at the very time when they needed it most urgently.

You will remember that the Crusades began in the reign of King William I. Now and again the crusading "fever" took hold of some of these Norman barons, and many wanted to go to fight the Turk—especially when there was not much fighting going on at home. But crusading was a costly business, and of course there was a good deal of rivalry between these crusading knights as to who could raise the best-furnished troop of men. The baron would be glad to get together as much money as he could. So the chance came to many a town to advance money to their lord. He, in return, would grant to the town the right to collect the tolls and customs payable to him for a term of years; or perhaps on condition that they allowed him so much every year out of the tolls collected.

Bishops, too, were often in urgent need of money, for there were many calls upon them. The monasteries were, at this period, beginning to do so much expensive building, that often they, too, were glad to get money by granting to the townsmen privileges for which they were willing to pay.

The towns were becoming strong, and they gained considerable rights during this Norman period. As far back as the time of King Cnut we find, in some districts, towns banding themselves together to protect their trade and interests. This was the case with Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford, and Lincoln.

CHAPTER XXI
In Norman Times: The Monasteries

The hundred years after the Norman Conquest was a great period of building. It was a time for establishing or founding new religious houses. Something like three hundred and ninety-eight such houses were opened during this period, so that they played a very important part in the history of the times. The Normans were not very much interested in the English religious houses which they found already established here. In fact, a good many of them, since the times of the Danish invasion, two hundred years before, had got into very bad order, and were in need of reform. Little by little, as Norman bishops and abbots were appointed over these Saxon religious houses, reforms did take place, but not always very easily or quietly.

At the time of the Conquest the religious houses in Normandy were in a far better state than those in England. Their members lived better lives, did better work, and set a much better example of godly living and working. There were several new orders or societies of monks, which had their head-quarters on the continent of Europe. These interested King William's companions more than the old English monasteries, because they and their fathers had helped to establish them.

So we find, as the Normans received lands here in England, and founded religious houses, most of them were connected with the monasteries across the sea, and were ruled by abbots who lived across the sea. Such branch houses were generally called priories, and the kings and barons who founded them gave them manors and parts of manors, sometimes taking them from the older Saxon monasteries and cathedrals.[9]

Then, too, there were the old Saxon houses, St. Alban's Abbey, Westminster Abbey, and Glastonbury Abbey: they were reformed and improved, and to them, too, lands were given in various parts of the country, often far away from the mother house. Thus St. Alban's Monastery had important lands in the neighbourhood of the River Tyne, and a daughter house was opened there called Tynemouth Priory. So, you see, there were two kinds of priories in England: one class attached to English religious houses, and the other to Norman or foreign religious houses. In time the foreign priories received the name of alien priories.

In time a good deal of ill-feeling arose towards these alien priories, as the people in England did not like so much money going out of the country, especially in war times. King John was the first king to seize these priories when he fell out with France. Later, King Edward I, in 1295, seized the property of about one hundred of the alien priories in various parts of England to help to pay his war expenses. There were several of these alien houses in the Isle of Wight, and, thinking that the monks might be aiding his enemies across the English Channel, the king sent the monks to other houses on the mainland, a long way away from the coast, to keep them out of mischief. When the war was over, the property was restored to these priories, and the monks returned to them. This kind of thing happened over and over again.

All these religious houses had some interest in the land, and all of them, to a greater or lesser degree, were landlords. In some cases the lands given to them were manors which had been managed and tilled in the same way for hundreds of years. The only change was that the lord of the manor might be a society or religious house instead of a baron. Each of the manors had its steward, its villeins, and so forth, like any other in the land. But a good deal of the land given to these new religious houses had never been occupied before.

Though some of the monasteries, like St. Alban's and St. Edmund's Bury, were in towns, there were others, especially those founded in these Norman times, far away from towns, in pathless woods or deep dales, like Rievaulx, in Yorkshire. Others, like Ramsey and Thorney, were in lonely fens and marshes. Here the monks themselves set to work, as in the earlier days, and tilled the ground, keeping up their regular services in their little churches most carefully—praying and working. Gradually their lands improved; other lands came to them; more labour was needed; and so, little by little, tenants took holdings on their lands, and farmed them for the "house", on much the same conditions as in the older manors.

Some of the abbeys in the west of England, like Bath Abbey, had a good deal to do with opening up the wool trade, which in the Middle Ages became the staple trade of the south and west of England. Flaxley Abbey, in Gloucestershire, developed iron-smelting. The iron mines in Furness were developed there by the monks, and also in the neighbouring Walney Isle, off the Lancashire coast. At Rievaulx, in Yorkshire, there were ironworks near the abbey, and at Malvern Priory there was ornamental tile-making carried on, specimens of the work done there remaining in a good many Worcestershire churches still. Monks gave great attention to their gardens, and were very clever in fish culture; and in many simple, homely ways they showed men how to develop the natural resources of the land.

In the monasteries men could quietly think and work, and use the talents they had, without being called away to fight or do the unskilled work of the world. In these early times there were no other places where men could lead quiet, thoughtful lives, and "think things out", and then put them into practice. The men in the monasteries were not all equally good or religious or clever, but the work done in and through these old institutions was most important and most valuable to the country.

CHAPTER XXII
Early Houses

When we go from a big modern manufacturing town into an old town or village, we cannot help noticing the old buildings, the ancient churches, the old town hall, the alms-houses, and the old houses with their plastered fronts, tiled roofs, and huge chimney-stacks.

As years go by, the number of these old houses gets less and less. In the course of time, many of the smaller ones especially, which have been neglected and allowed to fall into bad repair, become dangerous to live in. The sanitary inspector and the medical officer of health condemn them as unfit for human habitation, and the houses are shut up. Then, perhaps, they stand empty for some years; mischievous boys throw stones and break the glass left in the queer little windows; bill-posters paste notices of all kinds on the doors, walls, and window-shutters; holes are knocked in the plaster, bits of the woodwork are torn away, chalk-marks are scrawled on the walls, and the buildings very shortly look disgracefully untidy. Then some day the "house-breaker" appears on the scene, and the houses, which have stood for centuries, are cleared away, and modern buildings take their places.

Thoughtful people who know something of the history of the town or village are always sorry to see old buildings disappear; because there is much to be learned from them, and they help us to recall many things of great value and importance which we very easily lose sight of.

But, old as the houses in our streets and villages are, there are very few of them which date back more than three hundred or three hundred and fifty years. Most of them only date back to the time of Queen Elizabeth—the latter part of the sixteenth century.

There are, however, a number of fine old houses which have work in them of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and some people can point out to you traces of work in some old houses of an earlier date than that. There is at Lincoln, for instance, a fine old stone house called "the Jew's House", which was built late in the twelfth century. Of course, since it was built, it has, from time to time, been altered to suit the needs and the fancies of the various folk who have lived in it. But stone houses for ordinary people, both in towns and villages, were very rare then—wood was the common material. Of course in parts of the country where stone was plentiful, and wood scarce, stone would be very largely used. For instance, amongst the Cotswolds stone has always been the handiest material for building walls, and for covering roofs. In the course of centuries much of this stone has been used over and over again, and has been "weathered" into a very beautiful tone, such as only time can give. Such old buildings are much loved and appreciated by folk who have an eye to see the beauty of colouring.

Nowadays, both in town and country, houses are commonly "bunches of bricks". The Romans knew how to make bricks or tiles, and in places near old Roman cities Roman tile is still to be seen, which has been used up over and over again in the walls of old buildings. The big tower of St. Alban's Cathedral is built of Roman tiles which had been used centuries before in the walls of Roman houses in Verulamium.[10] That tower has been standing as it is now for over eight hundred years.

But in Saxon times the art of brick-making was lost, and Saxons and Normans, it appears, were quite ignorant of it. There is an old brick house—Little Wenham Hall, in Suffolk—which is believed to have been built in the latter part of the thirteenth century. That is the oldest brick house in England. In the fifteenth century the art of brick-making had been rediscovered, and it seems to have been imported from Flanders. We find specimens of such brickwork in places near the east coast, and this old brickwork is more pleasing to the eye than our modern brick. Here, again, time has done its work in beautifying. The old palace at Hatfield is one of the brick buildings of this period; but brick did not come much into use until quite a century later. In the county of Middlesex, where there is found clay which is very suitable for brick-making, the art was not used to any great extent till the time of King James I. After the Great Fire of London, in the year 1666, there was a great demand for bricks, and the use of that material has quite changed the character of the houses in our towns and villages.

CHAPTER XXIII
Early Houses (Cont.)

For many centuries the houses of the villeins and cottiers did not alter very much in their general plan. You will remember that in those old pit-dwellings the hearth and its fire were the centre of the home. The room, or space round the fire, gradually became larger, especially in the houses of the thanes and eorls, till we get the hall, with the hearth in the middle and the hole in the roof to let out the smoke.

All through the later Saxon and Danish times, and in the Norman period, the hall was the most important part of the house. As the years went on, and the style of building altered, the walls, the windows, and the roof became more beautiful and ornamental, becoming most magnificent in the fourteenth century, or Decorated Period. Gradually other buildings were added to the hall for comfort and convenience.

So far as we know, the house or hut of the villein was a very simple affair before the time of the Norman Conquest. Two pairs of poles were set up, sloped, and joined at the top, and connected by a ridge pole as shown in the illustration. The space between was then filled in by other poles and wattle-work. This was plastered with clay, and covered with turf or rough thatch. There seems to have been a pretty regular length for this building, which was long enough to take four stalls for oxen. That required about sixteen feet and was called a "bay". The villein and his oxen were all housed under one roof at first. When another bay was added, the size of the house was doubled, and so on. In the course of time the houses were improved; side walls were raised of wood framing, and the sides were filled in with wattle and covered with clay.

As the years went on, these houses or huts grew out of date, and were replaced by others in much the same style, but gradually improving in comfort and workmanship. In the villages there was not much alteration down to the fourteenth century. When a house in a manor or village was pulled down, and was to be rebuilt, the manor court kept a sharp eye upon the building operations to see that the new walls did not encroach upon the highway, or upon the lord's land. No addition could be made to the house without the consent of the overlord. Customs in the villages changed very, very slowly, and so it is that, though the houses in out-of-the-way villages have been rebuilt over and over again, there are many lath-and-plaster houses standing now round village greens, built between two and three hundred years ago, on old foundations which date back to Saxon times.

We gave as an instance on p. 26 the case of Exton, in Rutland. There the houses even to-day, in spite of the fact that they have often been rebuilt and somewhat modified in the course of centuries, occupy the same sites as they did in Saxon times. No one would dream of laying out a village on those lines to-day, and in the great changes which we know are greatly needed in housing all over the country, and which are bound to affect every village in the land more or less and to change the whole aspect of these old-world villages, it will be well if some specimens, at least, can be preserved to us, so that those yet to come may be able to see how our ancestors for many generations were housed. But the health of the people will have to be safeguarded most carefully, and much of that which is old will have to give place to that which is new.

CHAPTER XXIV
Early Town Houses

Houses in towns have been more frequently rebuilt and altered in various ways than those in the villages. The chief material used in building was wood, as it was in the villages, and one of the great dangers in the Middle Ages was that of fire. In the towns this danger was greater than in the villages, and fires happened more frequently.

The leading men in a town had more money to spend, and the increase of business, or a desire for change, led them to improve their houses. It was easier for a wealthy townsman to get leave from the "corporation", or guild which ruled the town, to rebuild his house than it was for the villein in the village to get the leave of the manor court.

The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries all saw a great growth in architecture; they were the Early English, the Decorated, and the Perpendicular Periods of architecture. In most of the old churches, and in many of the old mansions, we have specimens of all these periods; but not very many of the town houses founded in the Middle Ages, and still standing, are much earlier than the fifteenth century. In that age there was a great development of woodwork, and there is hardly one old town which has not some woodwork of that time in some of its old houses.

The rich and prosperous townsman rebuilt his house according to the fashion of his time; but through all the three centuries the general arrangements of the dwelling-house did not alter very much.

In some parts of London, and in many country towns, you can see that some of the very old-fashioned shops in the main street are reached from the pavement by a little flight of steps. Below the shop there is a big light cellar, and the small boy or girl who wants to look in at the shop window has to "tiptoe" very much in order to do so. Now, that arrangement is just a little relic of the old town house of the Middle Ages.

The house was usually quite narrow, and had a gable facing the street. It was built over a cellar of stone, often arched and vaulted very much like a church. There were steps from the street down to the cellar, and these steps had to be protected, or accidents were certain to happen to careless foot-passengers. Then, too, there were steps up to the room over the cellar, which formed the shop and workroom in one. The front of the shop would be open, like a stall, and there would probably be a passage through to the back of the house.

Above the shop would be another room or rooms, over which, in the open space under the roof, was the great attic running through the house. This attic was often kept as a store-room, and goods were hoisted from the street by a crane; but in later times it would be formed most likely into little sleeping-rooms, very small, very, dark, and very unhealthy. Very often they led one into the other, and had no windows or means of proper ventilation.

Most of the work would be done in the shop, where the master, his workmen, and apprentices all did their share. The apprentices would sleep in the shop at night, and very probably the workmen as well. It was quite a usual thing for all the establishment to work and live and sleep on the premises. The rooms occupied by the master and his family at first were few in number; separate bedrooms only came into use very gradually indeed.

The walls of the house above the cellar were usually of wood, and the front towards the street was often skilfully and beautifully carved. In some English counties still there are very fine specimens of these old town houses; those at Chester, Shrewsbury, and Ludlow, for instance, are famed all over the world.

Merchants and wealthy tradesmen took great pride in their houses, and the woodwork and furniture in them were splendid. Kings and nobles were no better housed than these wealthy townsmen, nor did they have more of the comforts of life.

But the poor! There were always the poor and the outcast in every town; but they did not exist in the enormous numbers of later years, or of the present day. Their wretched little hovels were huddled together in close alleys, and life in them must have been very cheerless and unwholesome. It was, however, somebody's business to look after them. The religious houses, the churches, the colleges, all did their part in distributing food at their gates daily. Many wealthy people, both nobles and citizens, did likewise, and to give alms to the poor was a work of charity which no self-respecting citizen thought of shirking. Then, too, the guild or corporation kept a sharp look-out upon the poor; strangers were turned out of the town, and the people punished who had taken them into their houses without having the consent of the town authorities. In old town records we often come across instances of people being punished for "harbouring inmates".

CHAPTER XXV
Life in the Towns of the Middle Ages

Disease was one of the great dangers always lurking in a town. Plague of some kind or other was never very far away, and it frequently made its presence felt. People had not realized the sinfulness of dirt.

The best-drained buildings were the monasteries and colleges. Near the ruins of every big monastery, from time to time, underground passages have been discovered, many of them big enough for a man to walk along upright, and leading nobody knows where. When these were found, people shook their heads and said: "Ah, those old monks; you don't know what they were up to! They made these secret passages, going for miles and miles underground, so that they might get in and out of the monastery, and be up to all sorts of mischief, without anyone being the wiser."

Many wonderful tales have been told about these underground passages; but, as a matter of fact, most, if not all of them, have turned out to be sewers, which the monks made from their monasteries to a watercourse some distance away, so that the sewage might be safely got rid of. The monks were usually in advance of the townsmen of those days in sanitary matters. No doubt a sanitary engineer of the present day would be able to point out how much better the drainage-works could have been carried out; but the monks set an example in this matter which, bit by bit, the rest of the nation began to follow.

The chief streets of the town and the market-place were paved with huge lumps of stone, sloping towards the middle of the street from the houses on each side of the way, a gutter or "denter" running down the middle. All sorts of filth were flung into the gutter, for there were no drains from the houses in early days. When a heavy shower of rain fell, the water flushed the gutter more or less. If the street happened to be pretty level, the gutter, or denter, was just an open sewer all the year round; and it did its deadly work in poisoning the worthy citizens, though they did not realize it. Those towns were the best drained which were perched on a steep slope, so that the contents of the gutter found their way speedily to the nearest watercourse. By that means they got rid of some of the filth, but they did not improve the watercourse.

There were no great manufacturing towns in those days. Most of the ordinary articles used by the townsfolk were manufactured in the town itself, and much of the work went on in the open air. The butcher killed his animals in the street, before his shop, and that added to the horrors and stenches of the gutter. But then all the butchers in a town were located in one part of it. Even now most old towns have got a Shambles, or Butchers' Row, or Butchery Street, or place of similar name, near the market-place. Other trades had their own parts of the town, where they made and sold their goods. Cordwinder Street or Shoemakers' Row are still common street names. The smith and the armourer did much of their work out in the open street; the joiner put together there any big piece of woodwork which he had in hand; the wheel-wright "shut" his tyres; the chandler melted fat and made candles. The streets of the town must have been very noisy and very "smelly".

There were no footways for passengers. Wagons, drays, and wheel-barrows there were, but carriages had hardly been invented, and coaches and light-wheeled vehicles had not been dreamt of. Travellers mostly went on horses or mules.

No doubt the tradesmen were expected to clear up the mess they made in front of their houses, and the apprentices had to sweep up. But that usually meant only drawing the rubbish together to the great refuse-heap close to the house, which the fowls and the pigs, to say nothing of the children, speedily managed to scatter. Now and then the town authorities would wake up and make a fuss, and these heaps would be carted away to a spot outside the town; but usually the street was looked upon as the handiest place into which to fling any refuse from the houses. However clean the citizens' houses might be inside, and however richly ornamented the woodwork and the furniture, plague and pestilence were always very near.

Still, though many persons died, and were buried close by in the little churchyard, where for hundreds of years the dead had been buried, people lived, and throve, and did good work. For one thing, they lived a great deal in the open air, and they were not so much afraid of draughts in their houses as we are.

The water-supply of a town was a very important matter. Here, again, the monasteries and colleges frequently led the way, and showed how water might be brought by pipes from a distant spring. It was not an uncommon thing for water to be brought in this way to a "conduit" in the market-place, whence the people fetched it as they needed. Many a good wealthy citizen has performed the pious work of providing his town with a supply of water. Parts of old water-pipes, some of wood and some of lead, laid for such a purpose, have often been discovered in recent years.

Usually, however, a town had to depend upon wells for its water-supply, and water drawn from the nearest stream; and with open gutters running through the town it is very easy to see that many of these wells supplied water which, at times, could not have been pure, however bright and clear it may have looked, and it could never be relied upon as really fit for drinking purposes.

In the villages the dangers arising from want of proper drainage and from impure water were not quite so great as in the towns. Yet even now, in this twentieth century, how to drain our villages properly, and provide them with a good water-supply, is an urgent problem in many places. For many years people have realized that the evil exists, but we have been slow to apply the right remedy because of the expense. And the nation has greatly suffered in health in consequence. We have seen that the houses in the villages were usually close together, and men had not realized that dirt is one of the greatest enemies of mankind. There are a good many people, even in our time, who see no great harm in having pigsties, refuse-heaps, and manure-heaps close to their houses.

One of the most loathsome of the diseases common in Norman times and later was leprosy. The lepers were kept out of the towns, but at first very little was done for them. The refuse of the markets, and the food that was so bad that it had to be carted outside the town, was thought to be good enough for them. Gradually, however, we find hospitals for lepers established. They were not what we understand by hospitals, places where sick folk could be doctored and nursed and cured; they were religious houses which poor lepers might enter, and in which they might have safe shelter, care, and attention for the rest of their sad lives. They were always built outside the walls of the towns.

Other hospitals for poor and suffering people were also established. They were not large buildings, with wards holding scores of people. They were little religious houses, each with its chapel and priests to carry on its services, providing homes for small numbers—perhaps half a dozen or a dozen. Almost every town had a number of these hospitals.

Kings, bishops, earls, and citizens all took part in this good work. Every founder expected that every day "for ever" he and his family should be prayed for by the inmates. Some hospitals were "founded" or established as thank-offerings for escape from some great danger; some to "make up" for some wrong that had been done and could never be put right, and to show that the founder was "really sorry"; some were built for good reasons, others for selfish reasons. Nowadays we arrange fêtes and demonstration, whist drives, entertainments, bazaars, sales of work, jumble sales, dances, for our hospital funds, Red Cross funds, and orphan funds, and we are asked to buy tickets because "it's a good cause". We get some enjoyment for ourselves and help the hospital; thus, as it were, doing good and receiving good at the same time. We need not look down upon our ancestors as being merely selfish creatures.

CHAPTER XXVI
The Growing Power of the Towns

Back in early Saxon times we find that the inhabitants of a town were banded together to keep the peace, thus forming a society pledged to each other—the Peace or Frith Guild. It lost nearly all its real power in later Saxon and Norman times. But it did not actually die out, and it appears that from this Frith Guild what we now understand by a corporation took its rise. The guild was a great power in some of the Saxon towns; only those belonging to it could trade in the town, and its members were very slow to admit outsiders to share in their privileges.

We have seen that the free, or nearly free, tuns gradually came under the power of an overlord—the king, a bishop, a baron, or a monastery, as the case might be—and very little real power was left to the guild. The overlord appointed a reeve to look after his interests, and the government of the place was in his hands. Yet the old Frith Guild seems to have regulated matters connected with the customs of the town, which did not interfere with the lord's rights.