Life in a Medieval Village Read online

  Another important factor was the family’s ability to pay. Merchet was highest when the bride was an heiress or a widow, generally ranging from five shillings to four pounds. Where no land was involved but only chattels, the range was far lower, sometimes as little as six pence. Muriel daughter of Richard Smith, an Elton cotter, paid three shillings, while Alexander atte Cross and Hugh in Angulo, both virgaters from the elite families, gave five for their daughters, and Emma wife of Richard Reeve six shillings eight pence for hers.33 Many daughters of Elton villeins too poor to be taxed evidently married without paying merchet.

  The actual ceremony of rural marriage, or more precisely the lack of ceremony, was a long-standing problem for the Church. Many village couples saw no need for more than a kiss and a promise, which left room for debate over the nature of the alleged promise. The great twelfth-century legal authorities, Gratian and Peter Lombard, had wrestled with the question of what constituted a legal marriage, and Pope Alexander III (1159—1181) had laid down rules: a valid marriage could be accomplished either by “words of the present” (I take thee, John…) or by “words of the future,” a more indefinite promise, if it was followed by consummation. Consent of the two parties alone was indispensable. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) stipulated that the wedding must be public and the bride must receive a dowry, but made no provision for witnesses, and did not even insist on Church participation.34

  Most marriages were arranged between families, and sometimes property considerations resulted in mismatches, such as those described by William Langland:

  It is an uncomely couple . by Christ, so me thinketh To give a young wench . to an old feeble, Or wed any widow . for wealth of her goods, That never shall bairn bear . but if it be in [her] arms.35

  Robert Manning’s Handlyng Synne had much to say about the evils of such marriages. When couples were married for property and not love, it was “no right wedding.” A man who married a woman “for love of her cattle” would have regrets:

  When it is gone and is all bare

  Then is the wedding sorrow and care.

  Love and cattle then are away,

  And “wellaway,” they cry and say.36

  Even worse was for a man to “wed any woman against her will,”37 strictly forbidden by the Church, and improbable in the village, where, unlike the castle, most marriages involved some courtship and even sexual contact.

  Peasant couples usually spoke their vows at the church door, the most public place in the village. Here the priest inquired whether there were any impediments, meaning kinship in a degree forbidden by the Church. The bridegroom named the dower which he would provide for his wife, giving her as a token a ring and a small sum of money to be distributed to the poor. The ring, according to a fourteenth-century preacher, must be “put and set by the husband upon the fourth finger of the woman, to show that a true love and cordial affection be between them, because, as doctors say, there is a vein coming from the heart of a woman to the fourth finger, and therefore the ring is put on the same finger, so that she should keep unity and love with him, and he with her.”38

  Vows were then exchanged, and the bridal party might proceed into the church, where a nuptial Mass was celebrated. At one such Mass a fourteenth-century priest addressed the wedding party: “Most worshipful friends, we are come here at this time in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,…to join, unite, and combine these two persons by the holy sacrament of matrimony, granted to the holy dignity and order of priesthood. Which sacrament of matrimony is of this virtue and strength that these two persons who now are two bodies and two souls, during their lives together shall be…one flesh and two souls.”39

  The ceremony was usually followed by a feast, a “bride ale,” in a private house or a tavern. In Warboys and some other villages, the groom was obligated to treat the manorial servants to a dinner with “bread, beer, meat or fish” on “the day on which he takes a wife.”40

  Enough couples in the village, however, continued to speak their vows elsewhere—in the woods, in a tavern, in bed—to make “clandestine marriage” a universal vexation for the Church courts. Typically, a girl sued a man who disclaimed his promise, though sometimes the shoe was on the other foot. Not until the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church’s Council of Trent in the sixteenth century was clandestine marriage effectively abolished by requiring witnesses.41

  “Clandestine marriage” obviously shaded off into seduction. Robert Manning condemned men who

  …beguile a woman with words;

  To give her troth but lightly

  For nothing but to lie by her;

  With that guile thou makest her assent,

  And bringest you both to cumberment.42

  Court records contain numerous instances of women leaving their villages in company of men without any mention of marriage. They contain even more frequent instances of “leirwite” or “legerwite” (lecher-wite), a fine for premarital sex, literally for lying down. On some manors a separate fine called “childwite” was levied for bearing a child out of wedlock, but in Elton premarital sex and pregnancy were lumped together. Twentytwo cases of leirwite are listed in surviving Elton records between 1279 and 1342, with fines of either sixpence or twelve pence, in a single case three pence. In all but one, only the woman is named, and she paid the fine; in the single exception, in 1286, Maggie Carter and Richard Miller were fined sixpence each.43

  Daughters of the elite families figure prominently among those convicted. Despite the fine, little social stigma seems to have been attached to premarital sex. One theory is that peasant women may have become pregnant as a prelude to marriage in order to prove their fertility. In Elton in 1307, Athelina Blakeman paid a leirwite of twelve pence; in the same year’s accounts her father paid two shillings merchet “for giving his daughter Athelina in marriage.”44 Premarital sex was thus followed by marriage. The village community seems to have taken a liberal attitude toward young people’s sexual activities; in 1316 an Elton jury was fined “because they had concealed all these [five] leirwites.”45

  A more serious matter was adultery, a threat to the family. It lay in the province of the Church courts, but the lord exacted a fine too, usually under a curious legal rationale: the parties had “wasted the lord’s chattels in chapter.” G. G. Coulton once interpreted this recurring phrase as reflecting the lord’s control over the marriage of peasant women.46 The lord, however, had little to do with arranging peasant marriages. The same words are used in regard to men convicted of adultery, and a reasonable explanation is that the lord used the pretext of loss of village resources as an opportunity to collect a fine of his own in a province that was normally the Church’s. The Church court identified the guilty parties in a way that neighbors might be reluctant to do in the manorial court.47 In the Elton records between 1279 and 1342, six cases of adultery are cited, in three of which only the women are mentioned, in two only the men, in one both parties. Edward Britton, studying the Broughton court rolls between 1294 and 1323, found twenty-four adultery cases, ten citing both the guilty parties, eight only the man, six only the woman.48

  Divorce (divortium—synonymous with annulment) was a recurring problem for the Church among the aristocracy, who searched for ways to dissolve a barren or disappointing marriage, but among the peasants it was a rarity. When it did occur among villagers, the commonest ground was bigamy. Couples sometimes separated, however, either informally or under terms arranged by a Church court, though the latter expedient was expensive and therefore not normally undertaken by villagers.

  In the village as in castle and city, babies were born at home, their birth attended by midwives. Men were excluded from the lying-in chamber. Literary evidence suggests that the woman in labor assumed a sitting or crouching position.49 Childbirth was dangerous for both mother and child. The newborn infant was immediately prepared for baptism, lest it die in a state of original sin. If a priest could not be located in time, someone else must perform the ceremony, a c
ontingency for which water must be kept ready. If the baptizer did not know the formula in Latin, he must say it in English or French: “I christen thee in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”50

  The words must be said in the right order. If the baptizer said, “In the name of the Son and the Father and the Holy Ghost,” the sacrament was invalid. Robert Manning told the story of a midwife who said the wrong words:

  She held it on her lap before,

  And when she saw that it would die,

  She began loud for to cry,

  And said, “God and Saint John,

  Christen the child both flesh and bone.”

  When the priest heard the formula she had used, he cried, “God and Saint John give thee both sorrow and shame…for in default a soul is lost,” and he commanded her no longer to deliver babies. Robert Manning concluded,

  Being a midwife is a perilous thing Unless she knows the points of christening.51

  John Myrc in his Instructions for Parish Priests (early fifteenth century) advised that if the baby seemed likely to die, “though the child but half be born/ Head and neck and no more,” the midwife should “christen it and cast on water.” If the mother died before the child could be born, the midwife must free the child with a knife, to save its life, or at least to assure baptism.52

  Under normal circumstances the child was washed and sometimes (though not universally) swaddled, the godparents were summoned, and godmother or midwife carried the baby to the church, where the font was kept ever ready. The mother was not present, and in fact was not permitted to enter the church until several weeks later, when she had undergone the ritual of “churching,” purification after childbirth.

  Preliminary baptismal rites were performed, as in marriage, at the church door. The priest blessed the child, put salt in its mouth to symbolize wisdom and exorcise demons, read a Bible text, and ascertained the child’s name and the godparents’ qualifications. The party then moved into the church to the baptismal font. The child was immersed, the godmother dried it and dressed it in a christening garment, and the priest anointed it with holy oil. The ceremony was completed at the altar with the godparents making the profession of faith for the child. The christening party then repaired to the parents’ house for feasting and gift-giving.53

  Children were usually named for their principal godparents. Variety of Christian names was limited in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, usually Norman rather than Anglo-Saxon, the most popular in Elton being John, Robert, Henry, Richard, William, Geoffrey, Thomas, Reginald, Gilbert, Margaret, Matilda, Alice, Agnes, and Emma. Less common were Nicholas, Philip, Roger, Ralph, Stephen, Alexander, Michael, Adam, and Andrew, Sarah, Letitia, Edith, and Beatrice. There were as yet no Josephs or Marys.

  Unlike the lady of the castle or many city women, the peasant mother normally nursed her own children. Only if the mother had no milk, or if she died, was a wet nurse employed. The evidence of the coroners’ rolls indicates that during the first year of life, infants were frequently left alone in the house while their parents worked in the fields, looked after the animals, or did other chores. Older children were more likely to be left with a sitter, usually a neighbor or a young girl. Although neglect on the part of busy parents might lead to tragedy, little evidence exists of infanticide, a commonplace of the ancient world.54

  Medieval parents have been accused by certain modern writers of a want of feeling toward their children, but even in the comparative poverty of the kind of literary expressions—correspondence and memoirs—that have recorded such sentiments for more recent times, the charge scarcely stands up. Between the lines in the accounts of the coroners may be read again and again the anguish of parents over a lost child: one father searching for his son, drowned in a ditch, “found him, lifted him from the water, could not save him, and he died”;55 another, whose son was struck by lightning in a field, “came running toward him, found him lying there, took him in his arms to the house…thinking to save him”;56 a mother dragged her son out of a ditch “because she believed she could save him”;57 a father whose son fell into the millpond “tried to save [him] and entered the water but could do nothing.”58 Sometimes peasants gave their lives for their children, as in one case when a father was killed defending his young daughter from rape.59

  A fourteenth-century sermon pictures a mother and her child: “In winter, when the child’s hands are cold, the mother takes him a straw or a rush and bids him warm it, not for love of the straw, to warm it, but to warm the child’s hands [by pressing them together].” When the child falls ill, “the mother for her sick child takes a candle, and makes a vow in prayers.”60

  The coroners’ rolls yield rare glimpses of children at work and play: the baby in the cradle by the fire; little girls following their mothers around, helping stir the pot, draw water, gather fruit; little boys following their fathers to the fields, to the mill, or fishing, or playing with bows and arrows. A sermon pictures a child using his imagination, playing “with flowers…with sticks, and with small bits of wood, to build a chamber, buttery, and hall, to make a white horse of a wand, a sailing ship of broken bread, a burly spear from a ragwort stalk, and of a sedge a sword of war, a comely lady of a cloth, and be right busy to deck it elegantly with flowers.”61

  A child, said one preacher, did not bear malice, “nor rancor nor wrath toward those that beat him ever so sorely, as it happened for a child to have due chastising. But after thou hast beaten him, show him a fair flower or else a fair red apple; then hath he forgotten all that was done to him before, and then he will come to thee, running, with his embracing arms, to please thee and to kiss thee.”62

  Small children played; older ones did chores. In their teens, both boys and girls moved into the adult work world, the girls in and around the house, the boys in the fields. Contrary to what was formerly believed, in this period village children were not ordinarily sent away to become servants in other people’s households or to be apprenticed at a craft. Most remained at home.63

  The Middle Ages produced the world’s first hospitals and medical schools, but these important advances hardly affected life in the village. Doctors practiced in city and in court. Villagers were left to their own medical devices. Even the barbers who combined shaving with bloodletting (a principal form of therapy) and tooth-pulling (the sole form of dentistry) were rarely seen in villages. Most manorial custumals provided for a period of sick leave, commonly up to a year and a day. “If [the villein] is ill, so that he cannot leave his house,” states a Holywell custumal, “he is quit of all work and heusire before the autumn, except plowing [which presumably he would have to pay someone else to do]. In the autumn he is quit of half his work if he is ill, and he will have relaxation for the whole time he is ill, up to a year and a day. And if his illness lasts more than a year and a day, or if he falls ill again, from that time he will do all works which pertain to his land.”64

  Life was short. Even if a peasant survived infancy and childhood to reach the age of twenty, he could not expect to live much beyond forty-five, when old age (senectus) began.65 The manorial records make no mention of diseases, though to the well-known afflictions of tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid, violence, and accident may probably be added circulatory disorders: stroke and heart attack. The coroners’ rolls list several cases of fatal accidents from “falling sickness”—epilepsy. Invalids flocked on pilgrimage to Canterbury and other shrines: spastics, cripples, paralytics, the mentally ill, and the scrofulous (skin disease was especially prevalent in a not very well washed society).

  The most pathetic of the medieval sick, however, were excluded from the benefits of the shrine. Leprosy, mysteriously widespread, inspired a vague terror that outlasted the Middle Ages. Its victims were isolated, either singly or in colonies, and were permitted to emerge in public only when clothed in a shroud and clacking a pair of castanets in warning. The isolation of lepers represented a remarkable advance in medical theory, the recognition of contagi
on, but at the same time a sad irony, since leprosy (Hansen’s disease) is only slightly contagious. The Elton court rolls record a single possible mention of the disease in the fine in 1342 of “Hugh le Lepere” for carrying away the lord’s stubble.66

  As in all societies, the old and infirm depended on the younger generation for help when they were no longer able to work their land. The commonest form such help took in the thirteenth century was an arrangement between tenant and heir, in essence an exchange of the older person’s land for the younger person’s work. The holding was transferred to the heir, who promised in return to maintain the parents, widowed father or mother, or other aged relative, either in a separate dwelling or as free boarders. Typically the son accepted the holding’s obligations of work service, rent, and fees, and pledged himself to support his parent or parents, stipulating that he would provide them with a separate house or “a room at the end of the house” that had been theirs, food, fuel, clothing, and again and again “a place by the fire.” Most such arrangements must have been informal, leaving no trace in the records, but they were also spelled out in written contracts, entered in the manorial court rolls.67

  Both sermons and moral treatises warned parents against handing over their land to their sons without such safeguards. Men gave their children land, said Robert Manning, to provide sustenance in their old age; better for them to keep it “than beg

  Man warming himself at the fire. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Ms. 385, f. 6v.

  it at another’s hand.” In illustration he told a version of the already old story of the “Divided Horsecloth”: a man gave his son “all his land and house and all his cattle in village and field, so that he should keep him well in his old age.” The young man married and at first bade his wife “to serve his father well at his will.” But soon he had a change of heart, and began to be “tenderer of his wife and child than of his father,” and it seemed to him that his father had lived too long. As time passed, the son served him worse and worse, and the father began to rue the day he “gave so much to his son.” One day the old man was so cold that he begged his son to give him a blanket. The son called his little boy and told him to take a sack and fold it double and put it over his grandfather. The child took the sack and tore it in two. “Why have you torn the sack?” asked the father. The child replied: