Possessions of the different classes in England—Condition of Colchester in 1301—Tools, stock-in-trade, furniture, &c.—Supply of food—Comparative duration of human life—Want of facilities for commerce—Plenty and civilization not productive of effeminacy—Colchester in the present day.

It will be desirable to exhibit something like an average view of the extent of the possessions of all classes of society, and especially of the middling and labouring classes, in this country, at a period when the mutual rights of capitalists and labourers were so little understood as in the fourteenth century. We have shown how, at that time, there was a general round of oppression, resulting from ignorance of the proper interests of the productive classes; and it would be well also to show that during this period of disunion and contest between capital and labour, each plundering the other, and both plundered by arbitrary power, whether of the nobles or the crown, production went on very slowly and imperfectly, and that there was little to plunder and less to exchange. It is difficult to find the materials for such an inquiry. There is no very accurate record of the condition of the various classes of society before the invention of printing; and even after that invention we must be content to form our conclusions from a few scattered facts not recorded for any such purpose as we have in view, but to be gathered incidentally from slight observations which have come down to us. Yet enough remains to enable us to form a picture of tolerable accuracy; and in some points to establish conclusions which cannot be disputed. It is in the same way that our knowledge of the former state of the physical world must be derived from relics of that former state, to which the inquiries and comparisons of the present times have given an historical value. We know, for instance, that the animals of the southern countries once abounded in these islands, because we occasionally find their bones in quantities which could not have been accumulated unless such animals had been once native to these parts; and the remains of sea-shells upon the tops of hills now under the plough show us that even these heights have been heaved up from the bosom of the ocean. In the same way, although we have no complete picture of the state of property at the period to which we allude, we have evidence enough to describe that state from records which may be applied to this end, although preserved for a very different object.

In the reign of Edward III., Colchester, in Essex, was considered the tenth city in England in point of population. It then paid a poll-tax for 2955 lay persons. In 1301, about half a century before, the number of inhabitant housekeepers was 390; and the whole household furniture, utensils, clothes, money, cattle, corn, and every other property found in the town, was valued at 518l. 16s. 0-3/4d. This valuation took place on occasion of a subsidy or tax to the crown, to carry on a war against France; and the particulars, which are preserved in the Rolls of Parliament, exhibit with great minuteness the classes of persons then inhabiting that town, and the sort of property which each respectively possessed. The trades exercised in Colchester were the following:—baker, barber, blacksmith, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carter, cobbler, cook, dyer, fisherman, fuller, furrier, girdler, glass-seller, glover, linen-draper, mercer and spice-seller, miller, mustard and vinegar seller, old clothes seller, saddler, tailor, tanner, tiler, weaver, wood-cutter, and wool-comber. If we look at a small town of the present day, where such a variety of occupations are carried on, we shall find that each tradesman has a considerable stock of commodities, abundance of furniture and utensils, clothes in plenty, some plate, books, and many articles of convenience and luxury to which the most wealthy dealers and mechanics of Colchester of the fourteenth century were utter strangers. That many places at that time were much poorer than Colchester there can be no doubt: for here we see the division of labour was pretty extensive, and that is always a proof that production is going forward, however imperfectly. We see, too, that the tradesmen were connected with manufactures in the ordinary use of the term; or there would not have been the dyer, the glover, the linen-draper, the tanner, the weaver, and the wool-comber. There must have been a demand for articles of foreign commerce, too, in this town, or we should not have had the spice-seller. Yet, with all these various occupations, indicating considerable profitable industry when compared with earlier stages in the history of this country, the whole stock of the town was valued at little more than 500l. Nor let it be supposed that this smallness of capital can be accounted for by the difference in the standard of money; although that difference is considerable. We may indeed satisfy ourselves of the small extent of the capital of individuals at that day, by referring to the inventory of the articles upon which the tax we have mentioned was laid at Colchester.

The whole stock of a carpenter's tools was valued at one shilling. They altogether consisted of two broad axes, an adze, a square, and a navegor or spoke-shave. Rough work must the carpenter have been able to perform with these humble instruments; but then let it be remembered that there was little capital to pay him for finer work, and that very little fine work was consequently required. The three hundred and ninety housekeepers of Colchester then lived in mud huts, with a rough door and no chimney. Harrison, speaking of the manners of a century later than the period we are describing, says, "There were very few chimneys even in capital towns: the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued out at the roof, or door, or window. The houses were wattled, and plastered over with clay; and all the furniture and utensils were of wood. The people slept on straw pallets, with a log of wood for a pillow." When this old historian wrote, he mentions the erection of chimneys as a modern luxury. We had improved little upon our Anglo-Saxon ancestors in the article of chimneys. In their time Alcuin, an abbot who had ten thousand vassals, writes to the emperor at Rome that he preferred living in his smoky house to visiting the palaces of Italy. This was in the ninth century. Five hundred years had made little difference in the chimneys of Colchester. The nobility had hangings against the walls to keep out the wind, which crept in through the crevices which the builder's bungling art had left: the middle orders had no hangings. Shakspere alludes to this rough building of houses even in his time:—

Even the nobility went without glass to their windows in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. "Of old time," says Harrison, "our country houses, instead of glass, did use much lattice, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak, in checkerwise." When glass was introduced, it was for a long time so scarce that at Alnwick Castle, in 1567, the glass was ordered to be taken out of the windows, and laid up in safety, when the lord was absent.

The mercer's stock-in-trade at Colchester was much upon a level with the carpenter's tools. It was somewhat various, but very limited in quantity. The whole comprised a piece of woollen cloth, some silk and fine linen, flannel, silk purses, gloves, girdles, leather purses, and needle-work; and it was altogether valued at 3l. There appears to have been another dealer in cloth and linen in the town, whose store was equally scanty. We were not much improved in the use of linen a century later. We learn from the Earl of Northumberland's household book, whose family was large enough to consume one hundred and sixty gallons of mustard during the winter with their salt meat, that only seventy ells of linen were allowed for a year's consumption. In the fourteenth century none but the clergy and nobility wore white linen. As industry increased, and the cleanliness of the middle classes increased with it, the use of white linen became more general; but even at the end of the next century, when printing was invented, the paper-makers had the greatest difficulty in procuring rags for their manufacture; and so careful were the people of every class to preserve their linen, that night-clothes were never worn. Linen was so dear that Shakspere makes Falstaff's shirts eight shillings an ell. The more sumptuous articles of a mercer's stock were treasured in rich families from generation to generation; and even the wives of the nobility did not disdain to mention in their wills a particular article of clothing, which they left to the use of a daughter or a friend. The solitary old coat of a baker came into the Colchester valuation; nor is this to be wondered at, when we find that even the soldiers at the battle of Bannockburn, about this time, were described by an old rhymer as "well near all naked."

The household furniture found in use amongst the families of Colchester consisted, in the more wealthy, of an occasional bed, a brass pot, a brass cup, a gridiron, and a rug or two, and perhaps a towel. Of chairs and tables we hear nothing. We learn from the Chronicles of BrantÔme, a French historian of these days, that even the nobility sat upon chests in which they kept their clothes and linen. Harrison, whose testimony we have already given to the poverty of these times, affirms, that if a man in seven years after marriage could purchase a flock bed, and a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself as well lodged as the lord of the town, "who peradventure lay seldom on a bed entirely of feathers." An old tenure in England, before these times, binds the vassal to find straw even for the king's bed. The beds of flock, the few articles of furniture, the absence of chairs and tables, would have been of less consequence to the comfort and health of the people, if they had been clean; but cleanliness never exists without a certain possession of domestic conveniences. The people of England, in the days of which we are speaking, were not famed for their attention to this particular. Thomas À Becket was reputed extravagantly nice, because he had his parlour strewed every day with clean straw. As late as the reign of Henry VIII., Erasmus, a celebrated scholar of Holland, who visited England, complains that the nastiness of the people was the cause of the frequent plagues that destroyed them; and he says, "their floors are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lie unmolested a collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and of everything that is nauseous." The elder Scaliger, another scholar who came to England, abuses the people for giving him no convenience to wash his hands. Glass vessels were scarce, and pottery was almost wholly unknown. The Earl of Northumberland, whom we have mentioned, breakfasted on trenchers and dined on pewter. While such universal slovenliness prevailed as Erasmus has described, it is not likely that much attention was generally paid to the cultivation of the mind. Before the invention of printing, at the time of the valuation of Colchester, books in manuscript, from their extreme costliness, could be purchased only by princes. The royal library of Paris, in 1378, consisted of nine hundred and nine volumes,—an extraordinary number. The same library now comprises upwards of four hundred thousand volumes. But it may fairly be assumed that, where one book could be obtained in the fourteenth century by persons of the working classes, four hundred thousand may be as easily obtained now. Here then was a privation which existed five hundred years ago, which debarred our ancestors from more profit and pleasure than the want of beds, and chairs, and linen; and probably, if this privation had continued, and men therefore had not cultivated their understandings, they would not have learnt to give any really profitable direction to their labour, and we should still have been as scantily supplied with furniture and clothes as the good people of Colchester of whom we have been speaking.

Let us see what accumulated supply, or capital, of food the inhabitants of England had five centuries ago. Possessions in cattle are the earliest riches of most countries. We have seen that cattle was called "live money;" and it is supposed that the word capital, which means stock generally, was derived from the Latin word "capita," or heads of beasts. The law-term "chattels" is also supposed to come from cattle. These circumstances show that cattle were the chief property of our ancestors. Vast herds of swine constituted the great provision for the support of the people; and these were principally fed, as they are even now in the New Forest, upon acorns and beech-mast. In Domesday Book, a valuation of the time of William the Conqueror, it is always mentioned how many hogs each estate can maintain. Hume the historian, in his Essays, alluding to the great herds of swine described by Polybius as existing in Italy and Greece, concludes that the country was thinly peopled and badly cultivated; and there can be no doubt that the same argument may be applied to England in the fourteenth century, although many swine were maintained in forests preserved for fuel. The hogs wandered about the country in a half-wild state, destroying, probably, more than they profitably consumed; and they were badly fed, if we may judge from a statute of 1402, which alleges the great decrease of fish in the Thames and other rivers, by the practice of feeding hogs with the fry caught at the weirs. The hogs' flesh of England was constantly salted for the winter's food. The people had little fodder for cattle in the winter, and therefore they only tasted fresh meat in the summer season. The mustard and vinegar seller formed a business at Colchester, to furnish a relish for the pork. Stocks of salted meat are mentioned in the inventory of many houses there, and live hogs as commonly. But salted flesh is not food to be eaten constantly, and with little vegetable food, without severe injury to the health. In the early part of the reign of Henry VIII., not a cabbage, carrot, turnip, or other edible root, grew in England. Two or three centuries before, certainly, the monasteries had gardens with a variety of vegetables; but nearly all the gardens of the laity were destroyed in the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. Harrison speaks of wheaten bread as being chiefly used by the gentry for their own tables; and adds that the artificer and labourer are "driven to content themselves with horse-corn, beans, peason, oats, tares, and lentils." There is no doubt that the average duration of human life was at that period not one-half as long as at the present day. The constant use of salted meat, with little or no vegetable addition, doubtless contributed to the shortening of life, to say nothing of the large numbers constantly swept away by pestilence and famine. Till lemon-juice was used as a remedy for scurvy amongst our seamen, who also are compelled to eat salted meat without green vegetables, the destruction of life in the navy was something incredible. Admiral Hosier buried his ships' companies twice during a West India voyage in 1726, partly from the unhealthiness of the Spanish coast, but chiefly from the ravages of scurvy. Bad food and want of cleanliness swept away the people of the middle ages, by ravages upon their health that the limited medical skill of those days could never resist. Matthew Paris, an historian of that period, states that there were in his time twenty thousand hospitals for lepers in Europe.

The slow accumulation of capital in the early stages of the civilization of a country is in a great measure caused by the indisposition of the people to unite for a common good in public works, and the inability of governments to carry on these works, when their principal concern is war, foreign or domestic. The foundations of the civilization of this country were probably laid by our Roman conquerors, who carried roads through the island, and taught us how to cultivate our soil. Yet improvement went on so slowly that, even a hundred years after the Romans were settled here, the whole country was described as marshy. For centuries after the Romans made the Watling-street and a few other roads, one district was separated from another by the general want of these great means of communication. Bracton, a law-writer of the period we have been so constantly mentioning, holds that, if a man being at Oxford engage to pay money the same day in London, he shall be discharged of his contract, as he undertakes a physical impossibility. We find, as late as the time of Elizabeth, that her Majesty would not stay to breakfast at Cambridge because she had to travel twelve miles before she could come to the place, Hinchinbrook, where she desired to sleep. Where there were no roads, there could be few or no markets. An act of parliament of 1272 says that the religious houses should not be compelled to sell their provisions—a proof that there were no considerable stores except in the religious houses. The difficulty of navigation was so great, that William Longsword, son of Henry II., returning from France, was during three months tossed upon the sea before he could make a port in Cornwall. Looking, therefore, to the want of commerce proceeding from the want of communication—looking to the small stock of property accumulated to support labour—and looking, as we have previously done, to the incessant contests between the small capital and the misdirected labour, both feeble, because they worked without skill—we cannot be surprised that the poverty of which we have exhibited a faint picture should have endured for several centuries, and that the industry of our forefathers must have had a long and painful struggle before it could have bequeathed to us such magnificent accumulations as we now enjoy.

The writers who lived at the periods when Europe was slowly emerging from ignorance and poverty, through the first slight union of capital and labour as voluntary exchangers, complain of the increase of comforts as indications of the growing luxury and effeminacy of the people. Harrison says, "In times past men were contented to dwell in houses builded of sallow, willow, plum-tree, or elm; so that the use of oak was dedicated to churches, religious houses, princes' palaces, noblemen's lodgings, and navigation. But now, these are rejected, and nothing but oak any whit regarded. And yet see the change; for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oaken men; but now that our houses are made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but many, through Persian delicacy crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration. In those days, the courage of the owner was a sufficient defence to keep the house in safety; but now, the assurance of the timber, double doors, locks, and bolts, must defend the man from robbing. Now have we many chimneys, and our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses. Then had we none but rere-dosses, and our heads did never ache." These complaints go upon the same principle that made it a merit in Epictetus, the Greek philosopher, to have had no door to his hovel. We think he would have been a wiser man if he had contrived to have had a door. A story is told of a Highland chief, Sir Evan Cameron, that himself and a party of his followers being benighted, and compelled to sleep in the open air, when his son rolled up a ball of snow and laid his head upon it for a pillow, the rough old man kicked it away, exclaiming, "What, sir! are you turning effeminate?" We doubt whether Sir Evan Cameron and his men were braver than the English officers who fought at Waterloo; and yet many of these marched from the ball-room at Brussels in their holiday attire, and won the battle in silk stockings. It is an old notion that plenty of the necessaries and conveniences of life renders a nation feeble. We are told that the Carthaginian soldiers whom Hannibal carried into Italy were suddenly rendered effeminate by the abundance which they found around them at Capua. The commissariat of modern nations goes upon another principle; and believes that unless the soldier has plenty of food and clothing he will not fight with alacrity and steadiness. The half-starved soldiers of Henry V. won the battle of Agincourt; but it was not because they were half-starved, but because they roused their native courage to cut their way out of the peril by which they were surrounded. The Russians of our time had a notion that the English could not fight on land, because for forty years we had been a commercial instead of a military nation. The battle of the Alma corrected their mistake. When we hear of ancient nations being enervated by abundance, we may be sure that the abundance was almost entirely devoured by a few tyrants, and that the bulk of the people were rendered weak by the destitution which resulted from the unnatural distribution of riches. We read of the luxury of the court of Persia—the pomp of the seraglios, and of the palaces—the lights, the music, the dancing, the perfumes, the silks, the gold, and the diamonds. The people are held to be effeminate. The Russians, from the hardy north, can lay the Persian monarchy any day at their feet. Is this national weakness caused by the excess of production amongst the people, giving them so extravagant a command over the necessaries and luxuries of life that they have nothing to do but drink of the full cup of enjoyment? Mr. Fraser, an English traveller, thus describes the appearance of a part of the country which he visited in 1821:—"The plain of Yezid-Khaust presented a truly lamentable picture of the general decline of prosperity in Persia. Ruins of large villages thickly scattered about with the skeleton-like walls of caravansaries and gardens, all telling of better times, stood like memento moris (remembrances of death) to kingdoms and governments; and the whole plain was dotted over with small mounds, which indicate the course of cannauts (artificial streams for watering the soil), once the source of riches and fertility, now all choked up and dry; for there is neither man nor cultivation to require their aid." Was it the luxury of the people which produced this decay—the increase of their means of production—their advancement in skill and capital; or some external cause which repressed production, and destroyed accumulation both of outward wealth and knowledge? "Such is the character of their rulers," says Mr. Fraser, "that the only measure of their demands is the power to extort on one hand, and the ability to give or retain on the other." Where such a system prevails, all accumulated labour is concealed, for it would otherwise be plundered. It does not freely and openly work to encourage new labour. Burckhardt, the traveller of Nubia, saw a farmer who had been plundered of everything by the pacha, because it came to the ears of the savage ruler that the unhappy man was in the habit of eating wheaten bread; and that, he thought, was too great a luxury for a subject. If such oppressions had not long ago been put down in England, we should still have been in the state of Colchester in the fourteenth century. When these iniquities prevailed, and there was neither freedom of industry nor security of property—when capital and labour were not united—when all men consequently worked unprofitably, because they worked without division of labour, accumulation of knowledge, and union of forces—there was universal poverty, because there was feeble production. Slow and painful were the steps which capital and labour had to make before they could emerge, even in part, from this feeble and degraded state. But that they have made a wonderful advance in five hundred years will not be difficult to show. It may assist us in this view if we compare the Colchester of the nineteenth century with the Colchester of the fourteenth, in a few particulars.

In the reign of Edward III. Colchester numbered 359 houses of mud, without chimneys, and with latticed windows. In the reign of Queen Victoria, according to the census of 1851, it has 4145 inhabited houses, containing a population of 19,443 males and females. The houses of the better class, those rented at ten pounds a year and upwards, are commonly built of brick, and slated or tiled; secured against wind and weather; with glazed windows and with chimneys; and generally well ventilated. The worst of these houses are supplied, as fixtures, with a great number of conveniences, such as grates, and cupboards, and fastenings. To many of such houses gardens are attached, wherein are raised vegetables and fruits that kings could not command two centuries ago. Houses such as these are composed of several rooms—not of one room only, where the people are compelled to eat and sleep and perform every office, perhaps in company with pigs and cattle—but of a kitchen, and often a parlour, and several bedrooms. These rooms are furnished with tables, and chairs, and beds, and cooking-utensils. There is ordinarily, too, something for ornament and something for instruction;—a piece or two of china, silver spoons, books, and not unfrequently a watch or clock. The useful pottery is abundant and of really elegant forms and colours; drinking-vessels of glass are universal. The inhabitants are not scantily supplied with clothes. The females are decently dressed, having a constant change of linen, and gowns of various patterns and degrees of fineness. Some, even of the humbler classes, are not thought to exceed the proper appearance of their station if they wear silk. The men have decent working habits, strong shoes and hats, and a respectable suit for Sundays, of cloth often as good as is worn by the highest in the land. Every one is clean; for no house above the few hovels which still deform the country is without soap and bowls for washing, and it is the business of the females to take care that the linen of the family is constantly washed. The children, very generally, receive instruction in some public establishment; and when the labour of the day is over, the father thinks the time unprofitably spent unless he burns a candle to enable him to read a book or the newspaper. The food which is ordinarily consumed is of the best quality. Wheaten bread is no longer confined to the rich; animal food is not necessarily salted, and salt meat is used principally as a variety; vegetables of many sorts are plenteous in every market, and these by a succession of care are brought to higher perfection than in the countries of more genial climate from which we have imported them; the productions too of distant regions, such as spices, and coffee, and tea, and sugar, are universally consumed almost by the humblest in the land. Fuel, also, of the best quality, is abundant and comparatively cheap.

If we look at the public conveniences of a modern English town, we shall find the same striking contrast. Water is brought not only into every street, but into every house; the dust and dirt of a family is regularly removed without bustle or unpleasantness; the streets are paved, and lighted at night; roads in the highest state of excellence connect the town with the whole kingdom, and by means of railroads a man can travel several hundred miles in a few hours, and more readily than he could ten miles in the old time; and canal and sea navigation transport the weightiest goods with the greatest facility from each district to the other, and from each town to the other, so that all are enabled to apply their industry to what is most profitable for each and all. Every man, therefore, may satisfy his wants, according to his means, at the least possible expense of the transport of commodities. Every tradesman has a stock ready to meet the demand; and thus the stock of a very moderately wealthy tradesman of the Colchester of the present day is worth more than all the stock of all the different trades that were carried on in the same place in the fourteenth century. The condition of a town like Colchester—a flourishing market-town in an agricultural district—offers a fair point of comparison with a town of the time of Edward III.