The second stage which we propose to trace in connection with the evolution of education, is that in which the responsibility for the provision of educational facilities, the organisation of education, the control and the recognition of teachers, were tacitly regarded by the State as among the functions which ought to be undertaken by the Church.

A consideration of this question will involve, as a necessary preliminary, some reference to the political ideas of the Church in the Middle Ages. It would be difficult to discover any ideas which could be considered as political in their character in connection with the labours of those mission priests who were responsible for the introduction of Christianity into England. Separation from the body politic, rather than a desire to participate in its activities, was a distinguishing characteristic of those monks who formed the nucleus of the Catholic Church of this country. With the progress of time, however, a change in this respect became evident. The Church tended to develop into a great social and quasi-political institution, and the question of the relation of the ecclesiastical to the secular power became of increasing importance. Various factors contributed to produce this result. Not the least significant of them was the development of the Feudal System, to which is due, to a great extent, the development of the temporal power and rank of the Church, because the great ecclesiastics were not only the leading men of the Church but also great feudal lords.

By the Feudal System is meant the system of government prevailing in Western Europe in medieval times. Though the problems connected with its origin and development cannot yet be regarded as definitely settled, yet opinion is practically united upon the main points; such differences as continue to exist relating mainly to minor points of detail. We may summarise the essential features of Feudalism in its more complete forms by saying that “the State no longer depends upon its citizens, as citizens, for the fulfilment of public duties, but it depends upon a certain few to perform specified duties, which they owe as vassals of the king, and these in turn depend upon their vassals for services which will enable them to meet their own obligations towards the king.”[116] In other words, the individual citizen had little or no consciousness of any duty he might owe to the State; his horizon was limited by his responsibilities to his over-lord.

It is possible to trace the origin of the Feudal System to two practices known to Roman Law. One of these was the “precarium.” Under this form the small landowner, induced by a fear of the effects of the disordered condition of the times, gave up his land to some powerful landowner whose position was strong enough to command respect. This land he received back again no longer as owner but as tenant. The other practice—the “patrocinium”—was of a similar character. The poor freeman, desirous of the protection he could not otherwise secure, attached himself to the household of a great lord, and in return for the protection thus gained he gave to the rich man such services as a freeman might perform.

At the time of the Frankish invasion of Gaul, these practices were found in operation, and as they corresponded in their main features to customs current among the Franks, the German customs and the Roman customs merged the one in the other and in their new form were adopted by the invaders. The coupling of the special obligation of military service as a condition of land tenure was strengthened by the efforts of Charles the Great. The growth in size of the Frankish empire, resulting in campaigns being necessary at great distances, produced a modification of the existing practice. Of special significance was his ordinance that the vassals should come into the field under the command of their lords; as a result, each lord endeavoured to secure as fine a body of vassals as possible. Gradually it thus came about that the inherent duty of the citizen to defend his country “was transferred from a public obligation into a private contract.” The Feudal System developed further when other functions of the State passed into the hands of individuals. Of great importance in this connection was the acquisition of the power of “jurisdiction,” by which the administration of justice passed out of the power of the State so far as persons residing within the limits of the fief were concerned. Thus it gradually came to pass that all real power passed from the State and centred in individual lords with the result that patriotism and a common national feeling were almost entirely wanting.

Yet, from the very time of its origin, the Feudal System contained within itself factors which influenced its decline and fall. The only force that held together a fief was the personal ability of the successive generations of lords, coupled with the nature of their success in maintaining order and security and in compelling outlying landlords to recognise their supremacy. But vassals were ever ready to throw off their allegiance and to assert sovereign rights, if the opportunity occurred, and neighbouring great barons would not scruple to entice the vassals of a rival to change their over-lord. When the Feudal System became fixed, such things might become less frequent, but, generally speaking, the law of the survival of the strongest prevailed.

Sooner or later, the Feudal System was certain to result in a period of anarchy. In this country, that period occurred on the death of Henry I., when the feudal party refused to abide by the oaths which the late king had made them swear to his daughter Mathilda. The Peterborough continuation of the English Chronicle describes this period of anarchy “in words with which in their pregnant simplicity no modern description can possibly vie.”[117] “They filled the land full of castles, and filled the castles with devils. They took all those that they deemed had any goods, men and women, and tortured them with tortures unspeakable: many thousand they slew with hunger ... and they robbed and burned all the villages so that thou mightest for a day’s journey nor ever find a man dwelling in a village nor land tilled. Corn, flesh, and cheese, there was none in the land. The bishops were for ever cursing them but they cared nought therefor.... Men said openly that Christ and His saints slept. Such and more than we can safely say we suffered nineteen years for our sins.”

Apart from the practical and tangible effects of the Feudal System, medieval theorising on politics brought forward arguments to support the contention that the Church was not only distinct from, but was in certain essential respects superior to, the State. The starting point in such theorising was the dogma of the two powers, the Spiritual and the Temporal, the power of the priesthood derived from the King of Kings, the power of the State derived from the ability to exercise force.

Ecclesiastics maintained that of these two powers the greater dignity pertained to the spiritual. This arose directly from the views of the early Church as to the relative importance of the earthly life and of the life to come. To save souls was more important than to regulate physical life; hence, those whose function it was to save souls were not only more worthy of honour than those who simply sought to control temporal activities, but they possessed an authority of a higher and more responsible character. The claim of the Church to a power of inspection and correction in reference to the behaviour and motives of secular rulers enhanced its authority still further. To the sacerdotal mind not only were princes laymen, but of all laymen they were the class most prone to sin and consequently were most in need of clerical censure. Among the duties of the kings which were imperatively insisted upon were “respect for and protection of the Church and her ministers.” Hincmar, Gregory VII., and Innocent III. are prominent among those who may be quoted as the protagonists of the claim to ecclesiastical pre-eminence.

A weapon of great value in the enforcement of ecclesiastical demands was that of excommunication and anathema. This was considered to correspond to the death penalty of the Mosaic law, the employment of the sword of the Spirit. If, however, the fear of excommunication was insufficient to gain from a reluctant monarch respect for the wishes of the Church, then the power of deposition was resorted to. The authority to do this was based on the power claimed by the Church of absolving their members from the oaths of allegiance they had taken. This power was of special significance in a feudal state of society, at a time when the tendency to renounce allegiance was continually present and opportunity and pretext alone lacking.

The Norman Conquest not only intensified the development of the Feudal System in this country, but it also contributed largely to the recognition of the separate power of the Church. The Conquest had resulted in the administration of the country passing under the control of men who were “better managers, keener, more unscrupulous, less drunken and quarrelsome, better trained, hardier, thriftier, more in sympathy with the general European movements, more adventurous, more temperate.... The result was inevitably better organisation, quicker progress, great exactions and oppressions in Church and State.”[118] Moreover, the invasion had claimed to possess a religious character and to have for its object the regaining of an heritage which had been “filched by a perjured usurper.” The existing archbishops, bishops, and abbots fled or were deprived of their positions, and their places were filled, generally but not always, by men of foreign race. These men were not merely ecclesiastics, but were feudal lords in addition, and the temporal possessions they held in virtue of their dignities were not only considerable in themselves but, owing to various causes, were continually increasing. The clergy were thus in possession of increasing powers and additional interests, separate from and independent of the rest of their countrymen. The tendency was more and more marked for the Church to become conscious of her temporal powers, to feel jealous of her privileges, and insistent upon her rights.

This analysis of the relationship of Church and State, as it developed subsequent to the Norman Conquest, is necessary to enable us to realise the part taken by the Church in regard to education. The Church was not conceived of as a spiritual organisation existing simply for the purpose of promoting a closer fellowship between God and man, but rather as the partner of the State, and as having under her control all those national activities which might be described as “spiritual” in the special sense in which the term was employed at that time. Hence the central authority of the State was merely the organisation which controlled the activities which were definitely temporal. Regarded from the point of view which was common from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, education was essentially “spiritual,” and consequently was classed under the activities for which the Church alone was responsible.

We pass next to consider the social and economic condition of the country during that period in which the Feudal System was the prevailing system of government. This is necessary because experience has shown that a close connection exists between the social and economic condition of a country and its system of education, in fact, it is impossible properly to understand the educational organisation of a country apart from its social development.

The Manorial System may be regarded as the social counterpart of the feudal mode of government. When the Manorial System first emerges upon the stage of history it is recognised that two elements enter into its constitution, the seignorial and the communal; a lord and a group of dependents having rights in common. The origin of the manor is a problem which is still obscure. The question at issue is whether a servile population, working for a superior who was absolute owner of the land, existed “from time immemorial,” or whether, at a particular stage of the development of a free community, an overlord succeeded in gaining the ascendancy and in imposing his will upon it. Two theories have been advanced. The Mark theory[119] maintains that a certain district, marked off from districts of a similar character, was held in common ownership, and that the Manorial System arose when through some particular cause the authority of a lord became recognised. The other theory is that set out by Seebohm in his English Village Community, where a connection is traced between the early English village and the Roman vill, and the conclusion arrived at that the English villages were servile and manorial from the earliest days of the Anglo-Saxon period.

Without attempting to express an opinion as to these two hypotheses, we may take “Domesday Book” as our starting point. From that book, we learn that over the greater part of England, villeins, cottars or bordars, and slaves made up the whole of the population of the country apart from the governing classes. Subsequent to the Norman Conquest, we can trace a rapid increase in the number of free tenants, due to a variety of circumstances, of which the chief were (1) the commutation by villeins of their services for money payments, (2) the enclosure and letting out of portions of the waste land, (3) the renting of portions of the lord’s own demesne. The term “free tenants,” as Professor Ashley has shown, is elastic enough to cover men in very different positions, “from the military tenant who had obtained a considerable holding in return for service in the field, down to the tenant who had received at a money rent one or two acres of the demesne, or of new cleared ground.”[120] The larger number of those who were known as free tenants were clearly virgate-holding villeins or their descendants, who had commuted their more onerous labour services of two or three days a week for a fixed sum of money, and who had been freed from what were regarded as the more servile “incidents” of their position.

In practice the manorial system implied that freedom of movement and choice of occupation scarcely existed. Even before serfs could send their children to school, it was necessary that the consent of the lord should be obtained, and in many cases fines were exacted before this permission was granted. Thus, in the single manor of Woolrichston, in Warwickshire, we learn that in 1361, Walter Martin paid 5s. for the privilege of putting his son “ad scholas”; in 1371, William Potter paid 13s. 4d. that his eldest son might go “ad scholas,” and Stephen Prout paid 3s. 4d.; in 1335, William at Water paid for a licence for his younger son William “ad sacrum ordinem promovendum.”[121]

The point which we wish to emphasise here, is that the only real social distinction on a manor was that between a lord and his tenants. Between these two grades there was a great gulf fixed. Socially, they were as far asunder as the poles. Between the tenants themselves the social separation was slight. “The yardling and the cotter worked in the same way; their manner of life was the same.”[122] Even the priest in charge of the majority of the village churches belonged to the same social grade as his parishioners, and, in many cases, he was as poor as any of them, and glad enough to get a few acres and to add to his income by joining in the common agriculture.[123]

Passing from the villages to the towns, we may note that at the time of the Norman Conquest there were only about eighty towns in England, and that most of these towns were distinguishable from the villages only by the earthen mounds which surrounded them. Even a town of the first rank cannot have had more than 7,000 or 8,000 inhabitants. Until the second half of the twelfth century, the majority of the burgesses still occupied themselves principally in the cultivation of the common fields, and only a minority specialised in trade or handicraft.[124]

Meredith distinguishes four stages in the evolution of a town, but he also makes the important proviso that though the majority of the towns passed through these various stages, yet it cannot be said that any one type of organisation prevailed in any given half-century. Certain factors might combine to make a particular town of great importance and to facilitate its rapid progress; hence the stage of development reached by one town early in the twelfth century might not be attained by another town until a century or more later. The stages are:—

(1) The embryo municipality is but slightly differentiated from a manorial village.

(2) The inhabitants increase in number and in wealth and are able to purchase self-government. At this stage a gild merchant is formed.

(3) The gild merchant loses its importance; its legislative and judicial work is undertaken by the municipality, whilst the separate craft gilds look after the interests of the various trades.

(4) The clear demarcation between town and country breaks down. The capitalist and wage-earning classes emerge and the central government makes inroads into the legislative powers of the municipality and gradually dispenses with the executive work of the crafts.

Is it possible to trace a connection between a social and economic condition such as we have described as existing in the manors and towns, and education? It is obvious that there could be little or no demand for education, because, before education is demanded, its value must be perceived. During this period there could not exist any idea of the culture value of education, the value of education for its own sake. Those who held official positions as bailiffs or stewards in connection with manorial estates might find a certain amount of education of value, but neither the demands of commerce nor the amenities of social life were sufficiently insistent to create a wish for education.

The main demand for education at this time came from those who desired some position or other in connection with the Church. As will be shown in a subsequent chapter, the Church provided facilities for education for three reasons: as a partner of the State she was responsible for providing it; as holding the view that intellectual training was necessary for moral perfection it was, of necessity, her mission to supply it; and in order that a sufficient number of adequately equipped clerks should be forthcoming, it would be imperative that she should take the necessary action.

An important question now arises. To whom did the Church offer facilities for education? To the gentry and nobility? To the middle classes? Or to the labouring classes? This question must be considered, partly because it arises out of our analysis of the social structure, and partly because of the views expressed by various writers on English education.[125]

The nature of the education received by the children of the “nobility and gentry” will be considered in Chapter VI.; here it will be sufficient to state that the intellectual part of their education was given by a priest, but it was provided at the expense of the relatives of those who received it; hence, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, the Church did not “provide” facilities for the education of the children who were of “gentle” lineage.

Two social classes remain: the middle classes and the “gutter poor,” as Mr. Leach elegantly terms them.[126] Which of these two classes did the Church endeavour to educate?

The answer is obvious when we consider the social structure of the period. For practical purposes,[127] the middle class in England did not exist until about the close of the fourteenth century. The social distinctions between the various classes of tenants on a manor were so slight as to be negligible; one class tended to merge into the other, so that it was impossible to draw a clear line of demarcation between them. Consequently when the question is asked as to the social grade for whom the Church provided educational facilities, the answer is that such facilities were offered regardless of social standing, and were available for the poorest, even the “gutter poor” if the term is desired.

Indisputable evidence of the social grade of those who attended the schools of the Church in the tenth century is available. Not only were the various classes of persons who were employed on agricultural labour, such as shepherds, cowherds, swineherds, represented, but even members of the “unfree” class are described as being present in the school of which Abbot Aelfric gives us a picture.[128]

As we shall be obliged to return to this subject again, on account of the common misconception, we may now defer further consideration.