If ecclesiastical law means anything, then the London citizen must have spent most of his time in doing penance. Besides the common crimes of violence, perjury, theft, and so forth, the Church advanced the doctrine that there were eight capital crimes, namely, pride, vainglory, envy, anger, despondency, avarice, greed, and luxury. For greed a man had to fast and do penance for three years. For despondency, he had to fast on bread and water till he became once more exhilarated.
The chief weapon of the Church at a time when the executive is weak is penance. For the Anglo-Saxon his priest was armed with a code of penances so long and so heavy that one cannot believe that it was ever enforced. Can we, for instance, believe that free men would consent to live on the coarsest food and do penance for three years as a punishment for eating with too great enjoyment? We are told that if a man killed any one in public battle he was to fast forty nights. Then King Alfred must have been doing penance all the days of his life—which is absurd. Again, can one believe that sinners consented to wear iron chains round the body, to lie naked at the feet of the person offended, to go about with a rope round their necks, to abstain from water, hot or cold? Can we believe that any one, especially any rich or noble person, would sell his estate, give one-third to the poor, one-third to the clergy, and keep no more than one-third for himself and his family?
Penance, however, could be commuted by payments in money. This shows, not the greed and avarice of the Church, but the weakness of the Church. Another way of getting through penance was by paying people to perform the penance for the sinner. Thus, a man who was ordered a thirty-six days’ fast could engage twelve men to fast for three days each. Or if he was ordered a year’s fast, he would arrange for 120 men to fast, in the same way, for three days each. As I said above, it is the weakness of the Church that one perceives. The Bishops denounced crime; they showed the people how grievous a sin was this or that, by imposing heavy penance; then because only a few would consent to perform such penances, they were obliged to be content with evasions and vicarious performance. As the Church grew stronger, penance became more reasonable.
There was a church in nearly every street, and a parish to every church. Some of the churches were built as an act of penance. We are sometimes tempted to believe that the power of the Church must have been an intolerable tyranny; yet the violence of the time called for the exercise of arbitrary authority, and, at the very worst, it was better to be in the hands of the Church than in those of the King.
IV. The Temporal Government
In the administration of the City, the Bishop and the Portreeve were the two principal officers; the former represented more than the ecclesiastical life, because the Church governed the life of every man at every step in his pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave. The Portreeve was the king’s officer: he looked after customs, dues, tolls, etc. The port is neither “Porta,” the gate; nor “Portus,” the harbour; it is “Portus,” the enclosed space: “Portus est conclusus locus quo importantur merces et inde exportantur” (Thorpe, 1. 158). The Portreeve was the civil magistrate, as the Bishop was the ecclesiastical. Other officers were the “Tungerefa,” or Tunreeve, whose business it was to inquire into the payment of custom dues. The “Caccepol” (Catchpole), or Beadle, was perhaps a collector. And there were the Jurats or Jurors, called sometimes testes credibiles, who acted as witnesses in every case of bargain or sale. The laws of Edgar said: “Let every one of them on his first election as a witness take an oath that neither for profit, nor for fear, nor for favour, will he ever deny that which he did witness, nor affirm aught but what he did see and hear. And let there be two or three such sworn men as witnesses to every bargain.” The “Wic-reeve” is also mentioned, but this is probably only another name for Town-reeve. He is mentioned in an edict issued by two Kentish kings, Hlothhere and Edric (673-685). “If any Kentish man buy a chattel in Lundewic, let him have two or three witnesses or a king’s wic-reeve.” Wright takes this officer to have been one appointed by the Kings of Kent to look after their interests in a town belonging to the Kings of Essex. Why should it not mean simply the reeve of the port, i.e. the reeve of the Kings of Essex? “If it be afterwards claimed of the man in Kent, let him then vouch the man who sold it him, or the wic at the king’s hall.” Criminals were tried in open court by their fellows. They might be acquitted by the oaths of those who had known them long. If they were found guilty, the punishments were cruel: they were deprived of hands, feet, tongue, eyes; women were hurled from cliffs into the river, or burned; floggings were inflicted. Ordeals were practised—that of the “corsned,” or consecrated barley-bread, which only the innocent could swallow;—this ordeal was supposed to have killed Earl Godwin; that of cold water, that of hot water, that of hot iron. Not, however, the ordeal by battle. Of all other ordeals the event was uncertain: in that by battle one or the other had to die. The citizen of the tenth century had the greatest possible objection to such an ordeal. Later on, under Norman rule, he protested continually against this liability, until the King conceded his freedom from it.
The Anglo-Saxon laws are simply amazing as regards the punishments ordered for those offenders who were of servile rank. Their savage cruelty shows that the masters were afraid of the slaves. If a slave woman stole anything she might be whipped unmercifully, thrown into prison, and kept there; thrown over a precipice, drowned, or even burned to death. In the last case she was to be burned by eighty other women slaves, every one of whom was to contribute a log towards the fire. If a man slave committed a similar offence he might be stoned to death by eighty other slaves, and if one of those eighty missed his mark three times he was to be flogged. Since, however, slaves cost money, and were valuable property, it is not probable that they were often destroyed for slight offences. On the other hand, they were cruelly flogged. A small drawing in a contemporary MS. shows the flogging of a slave. He is stripped naked; his left foot is confined by a circle; two men are flogging him with thorny handles. The cruelty of the punishment, thus brought home to one, seems atrocious. But flogging was not the worst or the most cruel punishment. Every kind of mutilation was practised in ways almost unspeakable. Mutilation, indeed, was continued as a punishment long after the Conquest. We shall see, for instance how Henry I. punished the “moneyers” who had debased the coin by striking off their right hands and depriving them of their manhood. Eyelids were cut off, noses, lips, ears, hands, feet; the victims of this barbarity were to be seen on every road in every town. Those who were not slaves, but freemen, were, as a rule, treated with far more clemency. First, for the man not taken red-handed, there was the ordeal to which he might appeal. There was next the “compurgation,” in which the accused had to find a sufficient number of reputable persons to swear that he was not capable of the offence charged. Or again, many offences could be cleared by penance, and since penance included fasting, which is impossible for the weak and the old, the repetition of prayers and singing of Psalms was allowed as a substitute; and since these do no good except to the penitent, compulsory almsgiving was further allowed as a substitute. So that, although the Church attempted to make of the last mode of punishment a real and substantial fine in proportion to the means of the sinner, the natural, certain, and inevitable result followed: that all crimes could be atoned for by those who could pay the fines, and that in the Christian Church there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Also, as naturally followed in course of time, it became customary to classify most crimes by a kind of tariff. Those of violence, greed, and lust, which were common in an age of violence, were priced at so much apiece. Those, however, of murder of kin, arson, treason, witchcraft, were held “bootless,” i.e. not to be atoned for by any fine. Then a very curious institution existed, called the Frank pledge. Every man in the country belonged to a tithing or company of ten; every company of ten belonged to a company of a hundred; every crime had to be paid for by the tithing, or the hundred; thus it happened in this way it was made the interest of every one that the tithing or the hundred should be kept free from crime.
The punishment of women by drowning was practised in very early times by the ancient Germans and Anglo-Saxons. It was continued down to the middle of the fifteenth century, when it was finally, but not formally, abolished. But women were drowned on the Continent in the eighteenth century. The London places of execution were the Thames, and the pools of St. Giles, Smithfield, St. Thomas Watering, and Tyburn. Sometimes the criminal was sewn up in a sack with a snake, a dog, an ape—if one could be procured—and a cock.
The right of taking a part in the government of his country was always held and claimed by the Anglo-Saxon freeman. Thus in London, all causes were tried, and all regulations for the ordering of the City were made, by the citizens themselves in open court. The Hustings, a Danish Court, was held once a week, on Monday. The Folkmote was held on occasion, and not at stated times. The men were called together by the bell of St. Paul’s, to Paul’s Cross; there, in a tumultuous assemblage, everything was discussed, not without blows and even slaying or wounding, for every man carried his knife. It was difficult to persuade the citizens to meet without arms, because to carry no arms was the outward mark of the slave; even the clergy carried arms. Only while performing penance the freeman must lay aside his sword; and that, no doubt, was a greater penalty than the fast. Another distinguishing mark of the freeman was his long hair: the slaves had their hair cut close; the most shameful punishment that could be inflicted on a free woman was to cut off her hair.
Wright is of opinion that the existence of London was continuous, and that it was never taken or sacked by the Saxons. We have seen the evidence for the desertion of the City. He adduces the example of Exeter, where English and Welsh continued to live on equal terms; he acknowledges that this could only have been done by virtue of an original composition with the English conquerors.
He points out, however, apart from his theory, the very important fact that London was in many respects a free commercial city, making laws for itself and claiming privileges and concessions which imply claims to the exercise of independent jurisdiction, notably in the law made by the Bishop and Reeves of London for the citizens in the year 900. Such powers the City certainly possessed and used at that and earlier times; they were, however, powers not laid down by law, but assumed as the occasion demanded, and neither disputed nor allowed by the King. Later on, the citizens pretended to have possessed their privileges from the first foundation of their City, which they carried back as far as the foundation of Rome.
V. The Manners and Customs of the People
As regards the poor of London, the laws relating to them were most strict and clear. Everybody had to give to the Church the tenth part of his possessions and incomings: the tithe, according to a law of Ethelred, was to be divided into three equal parts, of which one was to go to the maintenance of the church fabric—the altars, the service of the church, and the offices belonging thereto; the second part was to go to the priests; and the third part to “God’s poor and needy.” Archbishop Egbert issued a canon to the same effect. King Edgar enjoined the same division. And not only did tithes carry with them this provision for the poor, but the faithful were also exhorted to other almsgiving. For instance, if a man fasts, let him give to the poor what he has saved by his abstinence; and if by reason of any infirmity he is unable to fast, let him give to the poor instead. Every church, every monastery, had its guest-house or poor-house, where the poor were received and fed. Archbishop Wilfred, in 832, fed daily, on his different manors, twenty-six poor men: to each he gave yearly twenty-six pence for clothing; and on his anniversary he gave twelve poor men each a loaf of bread and a cheese, and one penny. This practice was continued after his death by endowments. In the same way there were endowments for the poor at Canterbury, Ely, and elsewhere. We must, therefore, remember that round every parish church in the City of London there were gathered daily, for their share of the tenth part, “God’s poor and needy”—the aged, the infirm, the afflicted—belonging to that parish.
The daily life of the King in his palace or on his journeys is not difficult to make out. That of the people, the priest, the merchant, the craftsman, is impossible to discover—only a few general customs can be noted. To begin with, the Anglo-Saxon was a mighty drinker: in drinking he was only surpassed by the Dane; bishops were even accused of going drunk to church; all classes drank to excess. They had drinking bouts which lasted for days: during this orgy they illustrated their Christian profession by praising the saints and singing hymns between their cups, instead of singing the old war songs; the young king, Harthacnut, as we know, drank himself to death. But the feasting and the hard drinking seldom fell to the lot of the ordinary craftsman. We may believe that this honest man drank as much as he could get and as often as he could afford, but ale and mead then, as now, cost money. How the craftsman worked, for what wage, for how long, how he was housed, how he was fed, we may ask in vain.
Like the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon was of an imaginative nature; he not only believed in spirits and demons, but he made a great and complete scheme of mythology into which we need not here inquire; when he was converted to Christianity he surrendered himself to a blind belief in the doctrines of the Church. Many noble and royal persons in the revival of the eighth century showed, as we have seen, the sincerity of their belief so far as to lay down their rank and enter monasteries, or to go off barefooted on pilgrimage. With the majority, their new religion was something added to the old. We are not to suppose that this old mythology was known to the common people, any more than the book of Ovid’sMetamorphoses was known to the average Roman citizen. The Christian Church introduced its teaching gradually, being content to pass over many pagan practices. The Church said nothing while the people continued to believe that the foul fiend entered into the body of a person newly dead and walked about in that body all night. They believed in the power of raising spirits, in magic and witchcraft; they wore amulets and charms for protection; they believed in “stacung,” i.e. “sticking,” a method of killing an enemy by which the slayer simply stuck a thorn or a pin into his enemy and prayed that the part wounded might mortify and so cause death. It was an easy method, but one that offered the obvious objection that you cannot stick a pin into any part of a man without causing him pain; nor can you pray at the same time without his hearing the prayer. Therefore one must believe that the would-be murderer ran great risk himself of being murdered. There were, however, instances in which persons were believed to have caused death by this method. In the tenth century, for instance, we get a glimpse of wild justice. We see a man running madly through the streets; he reaches the nearest gate; he flies across the moor, where none pursue him; he is heard of no more. The crowd which ran after him turned back. They made for a house—not a hovel—a substantial house, where he had lived with his aged mother; they beat down the door; they rushed in; they came out shouting that they had found the accursed thing; they dragged out the old woman shrieking for mercy. “Witch! sorceress! She has bewitched Ælsie by sticking and by prayer. He is sick unto death. She must die.” They hauled her along the streets; they reached the bridge; they hurled the poor creature, now covered with blood and shrieking no longer, into the river. She floated for a second; she sank; again she rose to the surface; then she was seen no more, and the crowd returned. The King for his part confiscated the lands of the sorceress and her son.
Loftie gives the following passage concerning this event. It is from a document in the Society of Antiquaries. Note by the way that it proves the existence of the bridge in 960 or thereabouts:—
“Here is made known in this writing, that bishop Æthelwold and Wulfstan Uccea exchanged lands, with the witness of King Ædgar and his ‘witan.’ The bishop gave to Wulfstan the land at Washington, and Wulfstan gave him the land at Jaceslea and at Aylesworth. Then the bishop gave the land at Jaceslea to Thorney, and that at Aylesworth to Peterborough; and a widow and her son had previously forfeited the land at Aylesworth, because they had driven an iron pin into Ælsie, Wulfstan’s father, and that was detected: and they drew the deadly thing forth from her chamber. They then took the woman and drowned her at London Bridge; and her son escaped, and became outlaw; and the land went into the hands of the king; and the king then gave it to Ælsie, and Wulfstan Uccea his son gave it again to Bishop Æthelwold, as it is here above said.”
The method of “sticking” was continued, but with modifications. The operator no longer stuck a thorn into his enemy. He made a waxen image of him and stuck pins into the image, with a prayer that the man might feel the agony of the wound; he placed it before the fire, and prayed that as the waxen image melted away, so his enemy might waste away and die. The superstition lingered long; perhaps it still has followers and believers. In the fifteenth century the greatest lady in the land was compelled to do penance and was committed to a life-long prison for practising this superstitious rite.
Philtres and love potions were greatly in request; the people practised astrology and divination. Their medicine was much mixed with superstition: thus they knew the medicinal properties of certain plants, but in using them certain prayers had to be said or sung; they practised bleeding, but not when the moon was crescent and the tide was rising; the use of relics was prescribed for every possible disease.
It is a great pity that we have neither an Anglo-Saxon house nor any detailed description of one left. There are, it is true, some drawings of houses in the MSS. of the period, but the buildings are presented conventionally; they are indicated for those who would recognise them without too great an adherence to truth. Take that on p. 225. There is, it will be perceived, a central hall. On one side is the chapel—part of the wall is taken out so as to show the lamp burning before the altar; beside the chapel is a small room, perhaps the chaplain’s chamber; on the other side are two chambers: one belongs to the men-at-arms, the other to the maids; the court is full of beggars, to whom the lord and the lady are serving food, while the maids are bringing out clothes for two adults who are standing at the door in a state of Nature. There is a round building at the back—the walls of the house are of masonry up to a certain height, when timber begins; there is but one floor. The hall was hung with cloths or tapestry; it was furnished with benches and with movable tables on trestles.
In the Saxon household the special occupation of the women was the construction of clothing. They carded the wool; they beat the flax; they sat at the spinning-wheel or at the weaver’s loom; they made the clothes; they washed the clothes; they embroidered and adorned the clothes; the female side in a genealogy was called the spindle side. Kings’ daughters, notably the grand-daughters of King Alfred, distinguished themselves by their work with the spinning-wheel and the needle. The Norman admired the wonderful work of the Saxon ladies; the finest embroideries shown in France were known as English work. Thomas Wright (Womankind in Western Europe, p. 60) gives very complete testimony on this point:—
“The Anglo-Saxon ladies of rank were especially skilful in embroidery, and that from a very early period. English girls are spoken of in the life of St. Augustine as employed in skilfully ornamenting the ensigns of the priesthood and of royalty with gold, and pearls, and precious stones. St. Etheldreda, the first Abbess of Ely, a lady of royal rank, presented to St. Cuthbert a stole and maniple which she had thus embroidered with gold and gems with her own hands. At a later period, Algiva or Emma, the queen of King Cnut, worked with her own hands a stuff bordered in its whole extent with goldwork, and ornamented in places with gold and precious stones arranged in pictures, executed with such skill and richness that its equal might be sought through all England in vain. Dunstan is said to have designed patterns for the ladies in this artistic work. The early historian of Ely tells a story of an Anglo-Saxon lady who, having retired to lead a religious life in that monastic establishment, the nuns assigned to her a place near the Abbey, where she might occupy herself more privately with young damsels in embroidery and weaving, in which they excelled. We trace in early records the mention of women who appear to have exercised these arts as a profession. We find, for instance, in the Domesday Book, a damsel named Alwid holding lands at Ashley in Buckinghamshire, which had been given to her by Earl Godwin for teaching his daughter orfrey or embroidery in gold, and a woman named Leviet or Leviede is mentioned in Dorsetshire as employed in making orfrey for the king and queen.”
It is also remarked by Wright that the names given to women indicate a high respect for womanhood: such as the names of Eadburga—the citadel of happiness; Ethelburga—the citadel of nobility; Edith (Eadgythe)—the gift of happiness; Elfgiva-the gift of the fairies; Elfthrida—the strength of the fairies, or the spiritual strength; Godiva (Godgifa)—the gift of God.
There are, so far as I know, no traditions of any nunnery in London before the Conquest. The name Mincing Lane, which is certainly Mincheon Lane or Nuns’ Lane, points probably to property belonging to a nunnery. Perhaps there was a nunnery within the City before the occupation by the Danes. If so, it perished and was forgotten. Just as men were required to fight and not to lead monastic lives, so women were required to become mothers of fighting men, and not to enter a cloister. I think there may have been a nunnery, because London did not escape the wave of religious revival, and also because one was necessary for the education of girls. At nunnery schools the girls were educated with far greater care than our own girls till the last twenty years or so. They learned Latin, rhetoric, logic, and, according to Wright, “what we call popular science.” They also learned embroidery. “From the statements of the Anglo-Saxon writers, we are led to believe that the Anglo-Saxon nuns had no objection to finery themselves, and they are accused of wearing white and violet chemises, tunics, and veils of delicate tissue, richly embroidered with silver and gold, and scarlet shoes.” (Wright, p. 86.)
The evening of the ordinary man was not wholly given up to drinking. The musicians came in and played on harp and trumpet, pipes, horn, and fiddle. The gleemen sang and recited; the tumbling-girls played their tricks.
The Anglo-Saxon love of music and poetry gives us a higher opinion of the people than we might form from all that we have learned. Applying all his qualities, good or bad, to the Londoner, it will be found that he has transmitted them to the generations coming after him. For he was a lover of freedom, valiant in the field; a lover of order and justice; impatient under ecclesiastical control, yet full of religion; fond of music, poetry, singing and playing; given to feasting and addicted to drunkenness. These attributes distinguished the Londoner in the tenth century, and they are with him still after a thousand years.
The sports and pastimes of the City were the same for London as for the rest of the country. The citizens were passionately fond of hunting and hawking; they baited animals, as the bull, the bear, and the badger; they were fond of swimming, skating, and rowing, of dancing, and of tomfoolery, jumping, tumbling, and playing practical jokes. Of these amusements, hunting was by far the most popular with all classes. We have seen that the Londoner had deep forests on all sides of him, beyond the moor on the north of his wall, beyond the Dover causeway on the south, beyond the Lea on the east, beyond Watling Street on the west. The forests were full of wild cattle, bears, elk, buffalo, wild boars, stags, wolves, foxes, hares, and the lesser creatures; as for the wolves, they were a terror to every village. Athelstan and Edgar organised immense hunts for the destruction of the wolves; under the latter they were so greatly reduced in number that he is generally said to have exterminated them. As regards the hunting of the elk or the wild boar, it was a point of honour to meet the creature face to face after it had been roused from its lair by the dogs, and driven out maddened to turn upon its assailant. In single combat the hunter met him spear and knife in hand, and either killed or was killed. Sometimes nets were employed; these were stretched from tree to tree. Dogs drew the creatures into the nets, where they were slaughtered. Once Edward the Confessor, a mighty hunter, discovered that his nets had been laid upon the ground by a countryman. “By God and His Mother!” cried the gentle saint, “I will serve you just such a turn if ever it comes in my way.”
The country was famous for its breed of dogs. There were bloodhounds strong enough to pull down bulls; wolfhounds which could overtake a stag or a wolf or a bear; a kind of bulldogs remarkable for their overhanging jowls; harriers, greyhounds, water spaniels, sheep-dogs, watch-dogs, and many other kinds.
The Game Laws, which restricted the right of hunting, formerly universal, were introduced by Cnut. Every man, however, was permitted to hunt over his own land.
Akin to hunting was the sport of hawking. This was greatly followed by ladies, for whom other kinds of hunting were too rough. Hawks of good breed were extremely valuable. It was not only by hawking that birds were caught. The Londoner employed nets, traps, slings, and bird-lime. He had only to go down the river as far as Barking or Greenwich to find innumerable swarms of birds to be trapped and netted. Of his indoor pastimes one must not omit to mention the making and answering of riddles, a game with pawns—“taeflmen”—and dice, called “taefl,” and the game of chess. The last of these was a fearful joy on account of the rage which seems always to have seized the man who was defeated. Witness the following anecdote:—
“Among the most enthusiastic of chess-players was Cnut the Great, but he was by no means an agreeable antagonist. When he lost a game, or saw that he was on the eve of doing so, he very commonly took up the huge chess-board on which he played, and broke it on the head of his opponent. He was on one occasion playing with his brother-in-law, the Earl Ulf, when the earl, seeing that he had a forced mate, and knowing the king’s weakness for knocking out the brains of successful antagonists, quietly left the table. Cnut, who guessed his motive, shouted after him: ‘Do you run away, you coward?’ To which the other, who had lately rescued the king in an unfortunate engagement with the Swedes, replied, ‘You would have been glad to have run faster at the Helga, when I saved you from the Swedes who were cudgelling you.’ Cnut endeavoured to bear the retort patiently, but it was too irritating for his temper. On the following morning he commanded one of his Thanes to go and murder Ulf; and though, in anticipation of the king’s vengeance, Ulf had taken sanctuary in the church of St. Lucius, the bloodthirsty order was carried into effect.”
The education of the boy was conducted at monasteries. One knows that there were schools in every monastery, and that every minster had its school; and that probably the four oldest schools of London—St. Paul’s, St. Martin’s, St. Anthony’s, and St. Mary-le-Bow, were of Anglo-Saxon foundation. We know, further, that at these schools the teaching was carried on by means of catechism, and that the discipline was severe, but we do not know what children were admitted to these schools, and whether the child of the craftsman was received as well as the child of the Thane. Athletics were not neglected—leaping, running, wrestling, and every kind of sport which would make the body more active and the frame more capable of endurance were encouraged. Until the time of Alfred very few even of the highest rank could read or write. The monasteries with their schools did a great deal to remove the reproach. The boys rose before daybreak and joined the brethren in singing the Psalms appointed for the early service. They assisted at first mass and at the mass for the day; they dined at noon and slept after dinner; they then repaired to their teacher for instruction.
Food in London was always plentiful; it was very largely the same as at present. The people killed and ate oxen, sheep, and swine; they had game of all kinds; wild birds in myriads frequented the marshes and the lowlands of Essex; the rivers were full of fish. Barley-bread was eaten by children and the lower orders; they had excellent orchard-land, and a plentiful supply of apples, pears, nuts, grapes, mulberries, and figs. In the winter they had salted meat. Their drink was ale, wine, mead, pigment, and morat. Pigment was a liquor made of honey, wine, and spice. Morat was a drink made of honey mixed with the juice of mulberries.
The Londoner’s house was luxurious, according to the luxury of the time. The walls were adorned with hangings, mostly of silk embroidered with figures in needlework. These hangings and curtains were of gaudy colours, like the fashionable dresses. The benches, seats, and footstools were richly carved. The tables were sometimes decorated with silver and gold. The candlesticks were of bone or of silver. The mirrors were of silver. The beds were provided with rich and soft pillows and coverings, bearskins and goatskins being used for blankets. There was great store of silver cups and basins; the poorer sort used vessels of wood and horn. Glass began to come into general use about the time of the Norman Conquest. At least twelve different precious stones were known. Spices were also known, but they were difficult to procure and highly prized. The warm bath was used constantly, but not the cold bath, except as a penance.
In every city, town, nay, every monastery and every village, it was necessary that there should be artificers to make everything that was wanted. The women did the weaving, sewing, dressmaking and embroidery. We need not attempt to enumerate the trades of the men. A list of them will be found in Mediæval London. (See vol. i. App. ii.)
The population of London can only be guessed, but there are certain facts which afford some kind of clue. Thus, when Alfred entered the City there was practically no population, unless the slaves of the Danes remained. The City filled up rapidly with the increase of security and the development of trade. Foreign merchants once more flocked to the Port; they settled in the City and became Londoners. The defeat of Swegen and Olaf, and afterwards of Cnut, clearly proves that the citizens were strong enough to beat off a very large and powerful army. This fact is alone sufficient to prove that the City contained a population enormous for the period. In the twelfth century FitzStephen says that London could furnish 60,000 fighting men—a manifest exaggeration. In Domesday Book, prepared after the devastating wars of William, and with the omission of some counties and many towns, we arrive at a population of a million and a half. If we allow for London an eighth part of the population of the whole country, we have 187,500. For other reasons (see p. 190), I think that the population of London at the beginning of the eleventh century was probably about 100,000.
There are many other things about the City of King Edward which we should like to know. Among them are: the procedure at a folkmote; the exact procedure in the trial of a person charged with an offence; the real extent of the power exercised by the Church, e.g. those penances so freely imposed, were they laid upon all citizens or only upon certain persons more devout than the rest? What kind of education was given to the boys and girls of the lower classes? Again, one would like to know what was the position and what the work of a slave in London. Outside London, Domesday Book records 26,500 slaves in all; but in London itself nothing is known about their number. Taking the population of London as one-eighth that of the whole country, the number of slaves would be about 3300. Since there is no trade which has ever been held in contempt by the working classes of London, it is probable that there was no trade specially set apart for the slaves.