A/N: Part II, paper 13 (ie. "Death in the Middle Ages" essay written in Michaelmas term of the 2009/10 academic year.

The early sixteenth century saw the beginning of the English Reformation, a process that had succeeded, at least temporarily, in separating England from the Roman Catholic Church by 1536. For historians such as Dickens this represented a victory for the masses; dissatisfied with incompetent and immoral clergy, Dickens claimed the impetus for the English Reformation came from below. If this were the case it would seem to suggest that society’s response to the dying and the dead would change significantly, as the customs and traditions of the old religion were swept away. However it is now apparent that the Reformation was a more piecemeal affair. Beliefs changed only slowly, customs, in many cases, even more so. As a result there is often a discrepancy between the way in which people responded to the dying and the dead in the aftermath of the Reformation, and the reasoning behind it.

Pre-reformation religion has often been accused, in the words of Galpern, of being a “cult of the living in the service of the dead”. Death permeated almost every aspect of the medieval world as a result of the Church’s insistence that one’s own mortality should never be far from one’s mind. To this end the dying were treated in very specific ways. The fifteenth century ‘guidebooks’ on how to die, such as the Ars Moriendi, explained how those present at the death bed should ensure that the dying person made an explicit statement of faith, and received the last rites. The advent of Protestantism might be expected to have changed this in two ways. Firstly, the sacrament of the last rites was abolished, branded as nothing more than popery. There was also a shift away from placing such high levels of importance on making declarations of faith.

The reason for this was the slow demise of the theory of purgatory. Whereas in the later middle ages a person might reasonably expect their soul to go to purgatory when they died, to await the verdict of the last judgement, by the 1530s there were serious doubts about its existence. Tyndale, for example, claimed that as purgatory had no grounding in the bible it was an invention that served only ‘to purge thy purse’. The Chantry Act of 1547 seemed to confirm this, sweeping away over two thousand such foundations. As one could no longer hope to purge their worldly sins after death, emphasis moved away from the deathbed and onto leading a pious and virtuous life. Faith became something to be proven in everyday actions, meaning the deathbed became less of a trial for the dying.

Similarly fundamental shifts can be seen in attitudes towards the corpse itself. Evangelical fervour for instance was adamant that the pomp and ceremony of late medieval burials be done away with. They were a symbol of vanity. In 1588 for example girdler, Richard Walter, refused even to allow the preaching of a sermon at his funeral, claiming that it was just ‘superstition’ and would serve no purpose. Yet, lavish burials remained popular amongst the better off; perhaps nowhere better exemplified than in the ostentatious royal funerals of the period. However the justification behind such displays had subtly changed. Instead of principally reminding people to pray for their souls, the extravagant tombs of the wealthy served almost exclusively as markers of worldly status. It was important that the funeral was fitting and ‘proper’ for a person of their status, and pains were taken to ensure this more for the sake of their living friends and relatives than for the dead themselves. Increasingly it was accepted that the dead could not benefit from the actions of the living, a radical and fundamental shift away from medieval understandings.

Again, the issue of where an individual was to be buried changed in emphasis. Before the Reformation people wanted to be buried near the Church altar, so that they might receive the benefit of proximity to the holy wafer during mass. Post-Reformation burial requests, unsurprisingly given the removal of mass from Anglican Church activity, tended to have a different focus. John Veron claimed that ‘wheresoever we are buried, we are buried in the Lord’s earth’. If specific demands were made, they were often for burial near to what had been the deceased’s customary pew in Church. This again suggests a preoccupation with stressing how pious an individual had been in life, rather than with how to ease their suffering after death as had been the case in the later middle ages.

Further examples of changing beliefs can be seen even in the survival of old Catholic customs surrounding death. The tolling of a bell to let the community know somebody had died continued for decades in many places. In the Catholic tradition this was to encourage people to pray for the soul of the deceased. The post-reformation practice on the other hand seems to have been more about common expectations of the ‘proper’ procedure to follow on someone’s death. As late as 1623 William Reade, minister at Cropredy, Oxfordshire, offended parishioners by refusing ‘the ringing of a peal’ for local widow, Margery Winter. There was no theological basis to people’s discontent; rather they felt that Reade was denying Winter the basic rights of the dead. The practice of sitting with the dead body overnight proved similarly difficult to stamp out. For the Church it symbolised superstition and dubious theology, but for those involved it was more of a customary expectation of things that ought to be done for the dead.

Post-Reformation wills might be expected to differ radically from those of the late medieval period. Then the primary concern of testators was often provision for their souls. This could include bequests of money and gifts to the Church to ensure their soul was prayed for, to ease their time in purgatory. With the removal of purgatory from the popular mindset, and the abolition of the chantries this became both an unnecessary and a difficult request. During the reinstatement of Catholicism under Mary, less than a generation since its original suppression, Sussex schoolmaster Gabriel Fowlle asked in his will for ten priests to sing masses for him. Importantly however was his comment that this should be done ‘if they can be got’, suggesting that resources just could not meet demand. What we see generally post-reformation are requests for sermons instead of for masses. Alderman William Dane provided for a sermon every Sunday for thirty weeks in 1563 for example. This implies a fundamental shift in society’s response to death and the dying, it was understood that the dead could not benefit from prayers, but the living could reap great reward from the opportunity to hear sermons.
A comparable picture is observable when looking at post-reformation almsgiving and charity. A crucial part of medieval wills, charitable bequests ensured your name lived on, allowing the living to pray for your soul. Because of this connection with purgatory some people felt the practice should be forgotten. In 1604 for example alderman Richard Goddard refused to provide a distribution of alms at his burial, arguing that such an action was ‘but a popish imitation of such as were desirous after their death to have their soul prayed for.’ This was a fairly extreme view however. Far more typical were charitable donations made to help the ‘deserving’ poor. To the medieval mind, the prayers of paupers were powerful because they did not carry sins such as avarice as heavily as the better off. With the removal of concerns over intercession for the soul we see a greater trend towards such distinctions as ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’. This reveals the fundamental shift in why charity was being given. Rather than to help the soul of the dead, it was to help the living. The undeserving poor, it was felt, would gain little from charity and so could be excluded.

In conclusion the Reformation resulted in a fairly fundamental shift in society’s response to the dead and the dying, particularly in relation to beliefs. Customs such as bell tolling for the dead, and almsgiving in wills continued but the reasoning behind the actions changed. With the demise of purgatory as official doctrine people ceased to tailor their responses to death to easing the pains of the soul. Instead the focus was on the living. Funeral sermons could offer nothing to the dead, but offered comfort to the living. Similarly requests for obits, trentals and other memorials for the dead were replaced with improving sermons for the good of the living. In a way post-reformation society saw the dead and the dying as providing a service for the living, rather than the other way around. 

• P. Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2002) 
• D. Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death: ritual, religion, and the life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997) 
• A. Kreider, English Chantries: the road to dissolution (Cambridge, 1998) 
• N. Tyacke (ed.), England’s Long Reformation, 1500-1800 (1998) 
• S. Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (2002), Intro.

A/N: Part II, paper 13 essay written in Michaelmas term of the 2009/10 academic year. 

If medieval religion was obsessed with death, as historians have long asserted, it was perhaps even more acutely concerned with ‘good death’. This was a death that conformed to certain expectations, both religious and social. Understandings of what constituted a ‘good death’ did not remain entirely static across the period, reflecting changes in theology and social structure. However by the fifteenth century was even a growing demand for ‘handbooks’ on how to die, such as ‘The Art of Dying Well’. Yet even with this apparent codification of the ‘good death’ there remained inconsistencies. The Church and the people were not always in agreement.

The cornerstone of a ‘good death’ in this period was a death in which the dying person’s faith was above suspicion. Temptation bore heavily on the dying, the deathbed becoming the scene of a battle between the forces of good and evil for the soul of the dying. The belief that this battle was happening around them can be seen in the way people interpreted what the dying person said. Ailred of Rievaulx’s fevered rambling in 1167 was believed by those around his deathbed as a dialogue with angels for example. If the temptations planted by the devil, such as impatience and vainglory, could be overcome then, as Richard Rolle’s The Book of the Craft of Dying claimed, ‘The day of a man’s death is better than the day of his birth.’ Yet, as St. John had made clear, ‘He who does not believe is already judged.’ This understanding can be seen in the treatment of the non-Christian dead. Jews, Pagans, ex-communicates, and even unbaptised infants, were all barred from burial in consecrated ground. In the mid-thirteenth century Pope Alexander IV even went so far as to rule that anyone who knowingly buried a heretic in consecrated ground would themselves be ex-communicated. To die convinced of the Christian faith was of the utmost importance.

It was not enough however to just assume that the dying had faith. Instead they had to prove it. A long list of questions and answers, ranging from whether the individual believed in God to their willingness to amend their ways if they should recover, were prescribed. Beyond this the dying were expected to make confession on the deathbed and, in return, receive the sacrament of anointment and the viaticum. The importance of making confession can be seen in the ruling during intense plague years that emergency confessions could be made to lay men, or even lay women. The anointing of the body too was believed to safeguard the corpse from being used as an instrument of the devil. Deathbed rituals readied the soul for its journey, and provided a time frame for the dying and those attending the deathbed. In spite of ecclesiastical reassurance many lay people continued to believe that those who were administered these last sacraments and survived, would go on to lead a kind of half life, prohibited from eating meat or engaging in sexual intercourse. So far we have seen that a ‘good death’ comprised of proving one’s faith, and the following of ritual.

The lengthy obligations tradition demanded of the dying hints at another component of the ‘good death’, namely that it be sedate and somewhat prolonged. Sudden death was feared by Christians, the popularity of St. Christopher being largely the result of his status as a protector against it. It meant that people did not have time to arrange their affairs, or make confession and receive the sacraments. In literary examples of ‘good’ deaths the dying often make long speeches, as Cardinal Wolsey does in George Cavendish’s ‘Life’, and have time to pass on advice and make wills. They are aware of death approaching and might, like monks, ask to be laid on the floor or dressed in a hair shirt as a symbol of piety. Even at the everyday level wills were routinely made on the deathbed; the highly stylised conventions of medieval wills suggest that those attending the deathbed made sure to prompt the dying into remembering what was expected of them in such documents. As Binski argues a ‘good death’ in this period was ‘domesticated and regulated’.

Equally as important were the contents of these vital documents. As the doctrine of purgatory became more clearly defined over the eleventh and twelfth centuries the importance of provision for alms and charity in wills grew. Now it seemed more likely that everyone would have a chance of eventually reaching heaven, not just the like of monks and nuns. These final acts of kindness were thought to help ease their souls through the pain of purgatory. For this reason the better off also organised trentials of masses for the anniversary of the death, the poor gave money for votive lights or other small gifts as a way to get their name on the bede roll. In fact such provision was deemed so important that many organised their wills years before their death. Edward the Black Prince established his chantry chapel, to say mass for his soul in perpetuity, in 1363 – 13 years before he died. It was also a time to organise funerary arrangements. Philip Repingdon asked for a pauper’s burial in 1424 as a sign of his piety, whilst John Paston I’s family spent over £200 on his funeral in 1466. If one died a ‘good death’ there would be time to deal with all their remaining worldly affairs so they might concentrate solely on what was to come in their final moments.

Acceptance of death can be inferred from all this as a component of a ‘good death’. The Art of Dying Well, a popular pamphlet of the fifteenth century, advised that ‘one should never give a sick person too much hope that he will regain his physical health’. This might prevent the dying from properly preparing for death. Examples of those who accept death calmly, even with welcoming arms, are praised in medieval literature. The death of Abbot William of Fecamp in 1031 for example was described in glowing terms by Ralph Glaber. The abbot, knowing his time was short, dispensed advice and then retreated to his rooms to wait patiently for death. This correlates with The Book of the Craft of Dying which advised the dying to pray, cry out and weep (in the heart), commit the soul to the father, and then willingly give up the spirit. Just as Christ did on the cross. In this way the process of death could be, to an extent, understood in a time when it was often not even certain if death had occurred.

For Philip Aries this regulation of death represented a ‘tame death’, a death that was accepted and carried out with the minimum of fuss and emotional attachment. However there is much to suggest that this ideal death discussed here, the death of the prescriptive literature, did not always correspond to the reality. For example in the guide books the family and friends at the bedside grieved with restraint, the dying person themselves quietly accepting their fate. Yet evidence shows this was not always the case. Margery Kempe described how she was often invited to attend the sickbeds of the dying; her tendency to exaggerated grief, wailing and howling, was certainly not what the Church advised for such scenes. The dying too could be less than resigned to their fate. Cardinal Wolsey only became accepting in his final moments, having argued with his physicians and servants that he was going to recover. In the Danse Macabre this is exemplified in the peasant’s admission that “I have wished after death full oft, although I would have fled him now.” It is apparent that the ideal, the ‘good’ death did not always reflect the reality of death.

In some instances there was disagreement between social groups over what constituted a ‘good’ death. For the Church a sudden death, as discussed, was the marker of a ‘bad’ death. Yet for some of the military men of the aristocracy a quick death on the battlefield was preferable to the sedate, domesticated death encouraged by the Church. Even in instances where a complete consensus might be expected there are complications. The death of criminals was likened to the death of Christian martyrs and, indeed, if they confessed and requested the sacrament of the viaticum executed criminals could be buried in consecrated ground. Even if the Church could not absolve their sins there was still hope that God might take mercy upon their souls, they were not beyond help. Again with cases of suicide, the worst death in medieval understanding, the individual would not necessarily be denied a proper burial within the boundaries of the graveyard. Concessions were made for those who were not mentally sound at the time of the act. If consensus could be reached over what constituted a ‘good’ death, it was also not always clear cut what constituted a ‘bad’ death.

In conclusion the ‘good’ death of the middle ages was, to a large extent, a literary construct; an idealised version of something which was inevitably an individual experience. There was sometimes disagreement over what constituted a good death, as in the case of the militaristic aristocracy. A sudden death, in their opinion, was not always bad. Whilst a majority might have strove to conform with the Church’s prescribed way of death, and the popularity of death ‘manuals’ from the fifteenth century seems to suggest this was the case, the reality was often quite different.

• P. Aries, Western Attitudes towards Death from the Middle Ages to the Present (1974) 
• N.L. Beaty, The Craft of Dying: a study of the literary tradition of the ars moriendi in England (New Haven, 1970) 
• G. Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey 
• D. Crouch, ‘The culture of death in the Anglo-Norman world’, in Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, ed. C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997) 
• C. Daniell, Death and Burial in medieval England (1997) 
• P. Jupp & C. Gittings (eds), Death in England, an illustrated history (Manchester, 1999), chaps 3-5. 
• M.R. McVaugh, ‘Bedside Manners in the Middle Ages’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 71 (1997) 
• B. Poschmann, transl. F. Courtenay, Penance and Anointing of the Sick (1969) 
• J. Shinners, ed. and transl., ‘The Art of Dying Well’, in Medieval Popular Religion 1000-1500: a reader 
• R. Swanson, ed. and transl., ‘The Book of the Craft of Dying’, in Catholic England: faith, religion and observance before the Reformation (Manchester 1994)

A/N: Everything you ever wanted to know about conking it in medieval England. They say you should revise by explaining to other people, so this blog post was originally written as revision for my undergraduate history exams.


This paper covers religion and rituals surrounding death in the period (roughly) 1050 - 1550. This covers key milestones such as the Norman conquest of 1066, the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, the Black Death of 1348, and the Protestant Reformation. The general trend is one of increased centralisation of, and codification by, the Catholic Church. 'How To' manuals are issued to priests (E.g. Archbishop Pecham's 'Ignorantia Sacaerdotum' in 1281), and visitations by bishops inspire endless hysteria at the ignorance and wickedness of both parish priests and the peasantry.

For Protestant historians such as Dickens it is this disillusionment with the divide between Church doctrine and actual practice which led to a bottom-up rebellion. The people were sick of the Catholic Church and welcomed Henry VIII's reforms. Catholic historians disagree; Eamon Duffy, the leading revisionist on the issue, argues that Catholicism was a strong and vibrant religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Reformation, this school claims, was forced on the people from above. 

Everything for this paper is interlinked, so there may be some awkward overlap between categories. 


Before we begin! Britain was a Christian place before the Norman invasion - however much the nasty Normans might have tried and justified their arrival as 'but pope we were just going to show them how to worship God properly'. There is speculation however as to how much the Christianity of the people reflected the Christianity of the Church, there was still a lot of what we would call 'pagan' practice going on.

One of the overarching themes of late medieval Christianity was the obsession with the idea that the End Times were coming. There were Seven Ages and many believed, like Bonaventure (d. 1274), that they were living in the sixth. Soon Jesus would return for the Second Coming and the dead would be resurrected. They would then undergo the Last Judgement and be whisked off to Heaven, or condemned to the fires of Hell. All of this would be preceded by plenty of portents though, so we would all know when it was coming...

In medieval lists there are fifteen signs of the Apocalypse:

• Sea rises to the mountain tops. 
• And then sinks. 
• Fish and sea creatures gather. 
• The seas burn. 
• Trees and plants bleed. 
• Buildings collapse. 
• Rocks implode. 
• An earthquake strikes. 
• It leaves the earth leveled. 
• People lose the power of speech. 
• The dead rise. 
• The stars fall. 
• The living die so as they can rise with the dead. 
• Earth and sky are swallowed by fire. 
• Sun and moon wait for the second coming of Christ. 

So now you know - be on the lookout for imploding rocks!


Understanding Sin 

There are two types of sin: 'original' and 'voluntary'. The former refers to the intrinsic sin everyone was believed to have inherited from the Fall of Man, following the failure of Adam and Eve to resist the temptation of eating from Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was dealt with by baptism. The latter was a far more complicated matter entirely.

There are four steps to the absolution of voluntary sin:

• The penitent must feel inner sorrow or contrition for hir sins. 
• Ze must make confession of them by mouth to a priest. 
• Ze must perform some penitential act to make amends for them. 
• Ze must be reconciled by the priest who utters words of absolution over them. 

(Furthermore there are three types of voluntary sin:

• Spirit (pride, sloth, wrath, and envy - countered with prayers, and acts of humility and compassion) 
• Flesh (gluttony and lust - countered with mortification of the flesh (i.e. fasting, scourging, etc)) 
• Intermediate (greed and avarice - countered with almsgiving and mortification of the flesh)) 

Which step of the absolution process was seen as most important changed over the period. In the twelfth century contrition was seen as the most important aspect by theologians such as Peter Abelard (d. 1142) and Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1142). But Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) stressed the role of the priest - it was felt in the later middle ages that Jesus worked through the priest to absolve the penitent, in a way analogous to the baptism formula.


Regular (i.e. annual) lay confession only became a universal practice after it was demanded by Lateran IV in 1215. Before this it tended to depend on the zealousness of local priests, as with the Laon school in the twelfth century. The Vita of William of Norwich describes throngs of people queuing to make confession on Maundy Thursday in the 1140s, for instance. Lateran IV also warned that any priest who broke the sanctity of the confessional would find themselves consigned to a strict monastery to conduct their own penance.


Penitential handbooks, such as Burchard of Worms early eleventh century work, were widely used. These laid out the penance to be carried out for sins. In 1070 penitential ordinances were imposed on the Normans who had fought during the invasion. For example 'anyone who knows that he killed a man in the great battle must do penance for one year for each man that he killed. Anyone who wounded a man, and does not know whether he killed him or not, must do penance for forty days for each man he thus struck (if he can remember the number).' He also stated that killing in a private war or feud demanded a penance of seven years. (Tariffed penance wasn't new however - in 747 the Anglo-Saxon council heard of a man who had racked up 300 years worth of fasting.)


In the early period these penances were so arduous that people put off making confession until the deathbed, which was seen as a very risky thing to do by the Church. Leo the Great (d. 461) said that they would likely still be saved as 'no-one was to be despaired of while he was still in body', but Augustine (d. 430) maintained that delayed repentance could not guarantee salvation. In our period rigorous punishment of the flesh is not fully satisfactory, merely an outward sign of contrition. Penance was becoming less of a public humiliation (perhaps most famous is Henry II prostrating himself in front of Beckett's tomb in 1174), and more of a private practice.

Purgatory stems from this idea, codified by Anselm, that baptism was an unearned gift. Nothing done on earth could be sufficient to remove voluntary sin. The 'culpa' was absolved, but the 'poena' remained. But, as God was merciful and would not see his flock burn in Hell, there had to be some way in which satisfaction could be made in the otherworld. In the 1150s Peter Lombard claimed that, so long as one was contrite, their sins could be purged in purgatory.


PURGATORY 

Purgatory is a kind of middle ground, where the not so good and the not so bad souls go. Here you are purged of earthly sin, the soul cleansed in readiness for the last judgement. Le Goff claimed that it was a concept 'born' in the twelfth century (reflecting the growing use of tertiary models of understanding, rather than simple binary) but, whilst it may not have been formally codified at the beginning of our period, there were vague ideas that the division between heaven and hell might not be strictly clear. Bede's Vision of Drythelm (c. 730) tells the story of a pious Northumbrian layman who dies and is shown the afterlife, before returning to life the following morning:


Here the idea of an intermediate place between Heaven and Hell is clearly established. (There are in fact four places: Heaven, Hell, and a lesser version of each.) This view was also made explicit in the writings of St. Augustine (d. 430) and Julian of Toledo (d. 690). Later, in 1184, The Knight Owein's Journey Through St. Patrick's Purgatory - which proved to be wildly popular with medieval audiences; more than 150 Latin manuscripts are extant - sketched a similar picture. These middling places were often held to be accessible from Earth, like St. Patrick's cave in Ireland. In Italy it was even believed that Mount Etna was the mouth of Hell.


What we're seeing is a bottom-up demand for more inclusive religion. In the tenth century the Church, using Anselmian thinking, was teaching that only pious monks and martyrs were guaranteed to be saved. ('Few will be saved, and most of these will be monks.') This became more of an issue as the aristocracy became better educated, and more capable of understanding what they were being told. Ignorant bliss was now the preserve of the peasantry. The rich were aware that their privileged lifestyle would make it harder for them to get into heaven, even if they confessed regularly as the Augustinians recommended.

Herbert de Losinga (d. 1119), Bishop of Norwich, had stressed the importance of praying and giving alms for the dead. This intensified. This, in part, explains the rise of the friars who were 'in the world but not of the world' in the thirteenth century. Their lives of poverty and simplicity make the ideal reciprocants of charity, as they could then sing mass in return, another way in which to ease the soul through purgatory; by 1300 the Franciscans and Dominicans had 120 houses in England. Indulgences and pilgrimages also became popular ways to garner holy favour. Urban II issued a plenary indulgence to those who took part in the First Crusade in the late eleventh century; crusading was seen as a 'supersatisfactory' penitential act.

The Church now made efforts to encourage the establishment of perpetual chantry chapels. Here a resident priest would say daily mass for the soul of the benefactor. In the 1930s H. Maynard Smith said that these cantorists were 'pests in the parishes' but, in actual fact, they often performed an invaluable pastoral role. Either way, spending on them by the aristocracy was lavish as, in the words of Colin Platt, a way of 'easing their way through purgatory'. The Black Prince established his in 1363, a full 13 years before his actual death.

By the time the doctrine of purgatory received official papal sanction at the Council of Lyons in 1274, there was already a whole industry in place to support it.

The Reformation saw the entire concept of purgatory swept away. The Chantry act of 1547 put an end to masses being said for dead. Tyndale said purgatory's only purpose was 'to purge thy purse', referring to the expense incurred in obtaining them in the first place. In 1604 alderman Richard Goddard refused even to provide a distribution of alms at his burial, arguing that such an action was 'but a popish imitation of such as were desirous after their death to have their souls prayed for'. Henry Brinklow (d. 1546) claimed that prayers did as much good for the soul as 'a man's breath blowing in the sail' did for a great ship.


A GOOD DEATH 


Whether you think medieval Catholicism was vibrant or not, you cannot deny that death was a major preoccupation during this period. And it wasn't enough just to die, you had to die well. There were even the equivalents of 'The Dummy's Guide To...' on the subject, the 'Ars Moriendi' (The Art of Dying, from the fifteenth century). E.g. William Caxton's 1490 'The Arte & Crafte to Know Well to Dye'. Today most people tend to want to die in their sleep, unaware of the event. This was emphatically not the case in the late medieval period.

Sudden death was feared because it didn't give you time to prepare, and go through all the ritual of death. Ideally you would know in advance when you were going to die, and it was a sign of saintliness to be able to predict it. Others might see signs which would forewarn them. Celestial voices heralded the passing of Wulfric of Haselbury in 1155 for example. In accounts of death, the dying (wo)man is generally said to have known their time was coming. In the Life of Cardinal Wolsey, written in the 1550s for instance, the Cardinal is recorded as saying: 'My time draweth on fast. I may not tarry with you...'

Secular affairs would be settled on the deathbed, as well as religious ones. Wills might be made out, witnessed by the usual deathbed attendants - the priest, family, friends, and neighbours. (To die alone was viewed as a terrible thing, like the death of an animal.) Medieval wills tend to be very formulaic, and full of custom and convention; presumably those in attendance would make sure nothing expected was left out. As well as serving a pragmatic function, this settling of affairs was seen as necessary to make sure the soul was unencumbered with mortal worries. To this end Nigel d'Aubigny wrote desperate letters to King Henry II and his own brother when he fell ill in the 1120s, begging them to confirm the restorations of lands monies to those he had wronged.



This might seem like a contradiction until you understand that God doesn't want you to despair that you might not get better. Of course you're not going to get better! No, you should prepare to die but not despair that you won't get to heaven. The reason why people wanted to be sentient on the deathbed is so they could reassert their faith, and receive the last rites. The viaticum would only be given if moriens was conscious and able to keep the wafer down. There was real fear that, in the delirium which preceded death, moriens might succumb to the trickery of the Devil. Some tried to pre-empt this in their wills, for example in 1483 Geoffrey Kidwell asks his friends and kinsmen to witness before God that 'whatsoever trouble of mind may happen to me at my departing out of this world that I believe in God and trust only to his mercy.' This was all important because as, St. John had said, 'he who does not believe is already judged'.


After death came yet more ritual, the 'ringing of a peal' as an announcement for instance, and the funeral. It was good form to have everything planned out before you actually snuffed it, and many people put a lot of thought into the event. They could be expensive; in 1475 Thomas Stoner's funeral feast alone came to over £74. The arrangements could be meticulous. Lady Bergavenny, for example, wanted to be buried in Hereford, but the journey was not to start until all the equipment – hearse etc – was ready and the whole household had proper black clothing. At the top end of the scale, Henry V’s funeral procession took 2 months to get from Vincennes in France to Dover. Some chose a pauper’s burial like Philip Repingdon (d. 1424) who wanted to be buried ‘under the clear and open firmament of the sky, not in church or monastery, because I think I am unworthy of such burial’.

Of course what you actually got depended on how well your wishes were carried out. In 1466 John Paston I's funeral cost £230, 4x the going rate. Two windows in the church had to be removed to clear the smoke from the number of torches lit during the dirige! Yet in 1471 his wife was still moved to write to her son, John Paston II, ‘It is a shame, and a thing that is much spoken of in this country, that your father’s gravestone is not made. For God’s love, let it be remembered and purveyed for in haste.’ Action had yet to be taken in May 1478.

However this was not the only model of the 'good death'. Sometimes a sudden, and even violent death could be welcomed. Death on the battlefield was attractive in two ways. If on crusade the victim died a martyr, and was guaranteed salvation. In more mundane scenarios the culture of chivalry put the battlefield death on a pedestal. Violent deaths could be martyrs' deaths: St. Stephen, for instance, was stoned to death.

Other deaths were definitely bad however. There was a legal distinction between natural and unnatural death, with coroners to rule on it from 1194. The worst was suicide, from which there could be no redemption. (This stance was progressively softened during this period, with more and more people being excused under the 'not in their right mind' banner.)

The Reformation did away with much of the ritual death, although a lot of it lingered on under the guise of tradition. As late as 1623 William Reade, minister at Cropredy Oxfords, offended parishioners by refusing the 'ringing of a peal' for local widow Margery Winter. Roy Porter argues that it wasn't the Reformation which changed attitudes to death, but the advancement of medical science. The use of painkillers (laudanum from the sixteenth century, and morphine from the nineteenth) at the death bed meant people were no longer sentient at the time of death. (Although there is controversy over whether Porter's argument of linear progression on this is valid.)


REMEMBERING THE DEAD 

Much about a good death was ensuring you would be remembered. Death days were more important to the medieval psyche than birthdays, exemplified by the numerous Saints Days celebrated. In fact, birthdays were often so hazily remembered others needed to be called in to corroborate the date. In 1407, for instance, a writ of age for Bernard, son and heir of Edmond Mussenden, used the following to prove the boy's age:

• Simon Herryes, 60 and more: his father died that day. 
• William Wodeward, 50 and more: that day married Alice his wife. 
• Philip Wolf, 50 and more: his daughter Joan broke her shin that day. 

Wills contained lots of individual bequeaths, so as to remain a part of many people's lives. They also left money and goods to the Church, and arranged for masses to be said. William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1396), requested 15,000 masses. Lady Alice West of Hampshire provided £8.10s for 4,4000 masses to be said within 14 nights of ther death in 1395. In 1509 Sir John Gilliot gave 60 shirts to the bedridden poor in his will. In 1514 Alice Bumpstead left 2d to each of the ‘two women that shall sew my winding sheet.’ Common people left rings to adorn the saints, E.g. Yorkshire widow, Margaret Stapleton, left her best gold ring to hang around the neck of an image of Christ at Newburgh in 1466. The less well off could plump for votive lights. These tokens could get your name on the Bede-Roll, which would be read aloud in church.


Churches became something of a museum for the history of the local landed family. Almost everyone dreamed of being buried within the church in the late medieval period; in Salisbury, for instance, 65% of wills expected burial in the churchyard before 1399. In the fifteenth century 61% were asking for burial within the church. The rich might literally spread their memory around a bit; separate burial of the heart was well established by 1200. For example in 1199 Richard I’s was granted to Rouen Cathedral. King John’s went to Caxton Abbey. The papacy regularly complained about this division of the body and in 1300 Boniface VIII had to pass the Detestande Feritatis Bull which prohibited boiling the flesh off the bones for the purposes of transportation for burial.

Some were prohibited from being buried in consecrated ground: pagans, Jews, excommunicates, lepers, pregnant women, unbaptised infants, etc. Heretics could be removed posthumously. John Wycliffe - the father of 'Lollardy' - was buried at Lutterworth in 1384. His works were found heretical in 1415 and an exhumation order was issued. Another in December 1427 finally forced action. Wycliffe was dug up, burned and had his ashes thrown into a nearby stream.


THE RETURNING DEAD 

Today the returning dead, in their various forms, are little more than a source of titillation. RPatz covered in white pressed powder, or the cast of zombie movie remake 306 lumbering around like a bunch of overpaid idiots. But back in the later middle ages the returning dead were much more of a real concern; Richard II even employed a bodyguard to protect him from the Earl of Arundel's corpse. This fear was undoubtedly encouraged by the less advanced medical knowledge they had on hand. It was all too common for a 'corpse' to still be alive, King Louis IX (d. - for real - 1270) went on to live for years after being pronounced dead! Bodies were typically watched over before the burial, just to make sure.

Attitudes towards the dead body were not the same as they are today. Whilst the corpse inspired revulsion, it was likely less intense than we would feel: death had yet to be sanitised. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council insisted: 'all rise again with their own individual bodies, that is, the bodies which they now wear'. Saintly bodies were revered, and it was believed that the something of the saint lived on in their remains. (There was always a fine line between miracle and magic as far as the laity were concerned. If they weren't sprinkling the holy wafer on their crops, they were busy dipping handkerchiefs in the spattered brains of Thomas Beckett or stealing finger bones for personal use when remains went on display.) The gall bladder and three small gall stones of Chiara of Montefalco, Abbess of an Umbrian monastery (d. 1308) were displayed at the Church of Santa Crace, and were reputed to have healed several people.

Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, cut the cloth covering the arm of the remains Mary Magdalen at Fecamp Abbey, Normandy on a visit in the late twelfth century. He then proceeded to kiss the bone and bite into it - much to the horror of the Abbot! When the remains of Bishop Hugh Latimer performed a miracle by curing a blind women before being buried in Lincoln Cathedral, it was seen as proof 'that he was alive and present'. In 1240 the Abbot of Pontigny had to admonish the corpse of Englishman Edmund Rich of Canterbury not to do anything spectacular until they reached the abbey lest the crowds become uncontrollable. Not all the dead were saints however.

In the early medieval period the returning dead were invariably hostile: restless evil spirits, usually intent on revenge. They were dealt with by being buried in boggy places, or being pinned in the grave to stop them walking. Caesar of Heisterbach (d. 1240) said that bad death led to unquiet souls and, indeed, the living world was plagued with visitors from the other side. Accounts of these creatures were so frequent that in c. 1196 William of Newburgh said 'were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, he undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome'.


Initially the returning dead are similar to the modern day vampire or zombie, in that they keep their physical body. These 'revenants', it has been suggested, had a lot in common with the Icelandic draugr (vampire), perhaps suggesting a survival of Norse beliefs in England. The revenant rots, but it does not decompose, and spreads sickness and disease wherever it goes. The Abbot of Burton, c. 1090, told the story of two peasants who run away from their lord and seek refuge in another's jurisdiction. (Under medieval law unfree peasants were chattels of the lord whose land they are on, thus a lord could not just take back an escapee peasant as he was poaching his neighbour's property.) Having started a feud they died but,


It is the evil of their actions which sees them walk again. The inhabitants of the village fall sick, and most died, not from blood sucking but from disease spread by the foul stench of death. However blood sucking is also implied; 'They found them intact, but the linen cloths over their faces were stained with blood.' Then 'they cut off the men's heads and placed them in the graves between their legs, tore out the hearts from their corpses, and covered the bodies with earth again.' The hearts were burned and 'they crackled with a great sound and everyone there saw an evil spirit in the form of a crow fly away from the flames. Soon after this was done both the disease and the phantoms ceased.'

The concept of purgatory confused the logic of the ghost. Evil souls would go straight to Hell, from which there was no escape. This meant that walking corpses were possessed by demons. In the sixteenth century, Buonaventura Farinerio, a Franciscan Friar wrote an exorcists manual which claimed, ‘When demons enter human bodies, they almost always appear to the person first in the form of a man who died an evil death, or sometimes they show themselves as one of the person’s relatives.’ The other option was that the corpse was inhabited by a good soul in need of help. William Newburgh, writing in the twelfth century, told this tale: #30.


The dead were becoming less of a terror, and more of a pain in the backside. They wanted expensive trentals of masses and people - who were sometimes complete strangers to the deceased - to go about putting all their affairs in order. It was also becoming more common for the dead to appear as a non-corporeal wraith, rather than as a revenant. William of Newburgh often writes of ghosts pestering people until they give and conjure them. In the Byland Abbey ghost stories (c. 1400) ghosts are used as exempla, stressing the importance of alms and masses.


Late-medieval macabre: It is sometimes said this developed in response to the Black Death, but the truth is that it was in vogue long before as a way of driving home the vanity of worldly concerns.

• The Three Living and the Three Dead. 'As you are, I was. As I am, you shall be.' This was around in written accounts by the late thirteenth century. 
• Transi Tombs. These are tombs carved to represent cadavers, you only see these from the late fourteenth century onwards. Eg. AB Henry Chichele's at Canterbury (d. 1443). 
• Dance of Death. The earliest known example is from 1312. The text was translated into English by John Lydgate c. 1430s. Holbein's is perhaps the most famous version, from the 1530s. 

Although I would / have fled him now ... 

[The Child Answers] A word I cannot speak 

I am so young / I was born yesterday ... 

I came but now / and now I go on my way 

Of me no more / no tale shall be told 

The will of God / no man can withstand 

As soon dyeth / a young man as an old"

After the Reformation: Protestant doctrine discredits the idea of ghosts. But ghosts remain in folklore and superstition - suicides were buried at crossroads into the nineteenth century in an attempt to stop them walking. In the seventeenth century ghosts become common motifs, serving a romantic function. Basically we see a move from official doctrine, to superstition.

Classic nuggets of wisdom from William of Pagula's Oculus Sacerdotis (c.1320): 


Don't you just love the medieval church!?

I've been going through some old folders to see what I even had in them. Turns out some old university notes and essays. Plus a prelim paper for Historical Tripos Part I (2008). I figured it might be interesting to see some past exam questions, so I'll link this up to my university essay masterlist.

Reading through the questions, I have no idea which ones I attempted to answer. Probably the one on the Magna Carta. Maybe the question on Edward II - he was my favourite. Who knows? It was just too long ago!

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University of Cambridge

PRELIMARY EXAMINATION FOR PART I OF THE HISTORICAL TRIPOS 2008

Tuesday 22 April 2008           1.30 to 4.30

Paper 3

BRITISH POLITICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, 1050-1509

Answer three questions.

STATIONERY REQUIREMENTS
20 Page Answer Book x 1
Rough Work Pad


1   What had the Norman Conquest changed by 1087?

2   What role did Normandy play in the politics of the reigns of William II and Henry I?

3   In portraying Stephen's reign as a period of 'anarchy', have historians been imposing an anachronistic notion of state power?

4   How original were the legal reforms of Henry II?

5   What was at issue between John and the papacy?

6   Account for the changing role of Magna Carta between 1215 and 1272.

7   Either (a) Why did Edward I legislate?

     Or (b) Were the tensions of Edward I's reign merely quarrels over money?

8   Can we reconcile the portrayal of Edward II's reign as both a time of lack of royal interest in government and as a period of expansion in the powers of the monarchial 'state'?

9   How useful is the opposition between 'war state' and 'law state' in understanding Edward III's reign?

10   Account for the changing significance of the royal household between 1258 and 1376.

11   'A misfit in his own class.' [V.H. GALBRAITH] How far were Richard II's troubles a consequence of his dissent from contemporary ideals of noble male behaviour?

12   Either (a) Was Scotland a more dangerous enemy for England than France during the Hundred Years War?

    Or (b) What was the contribution of either Ireland or Wales to English politics between 1200 and 1400?

13   Either (a) Why did things get better for Henry IV after 1406?

    Or (b) How much did the successes of Henry V's reign owe to the lessons of his father's failures?

14   Is it more helpful to regard Glyn Dwr's [sic] revolt as a political or social rebellion?

15   Why did the secular political authorities begin to intervene in the prosecution of heresy?

16   How, if at all, did the power of English queens change between either 1066 and 1272 or 1215 and 1483?

17   How convincing is the portrayal of the first twenty years of Henry VI's reign as a period of calm and consensus?

18   What does a comparison of the Peasants' Revolt (1381) with Jack Cade's rebellion (1450) tell us about the changing nature of the political public in late medieval England?

19   What can an analysis of local politics tell us about the roots of the Wars of the Roses?

20   How can we reconcile Edward IV's political miscalculations with evidence of his administrative inventiveness?

21   How accurate would it be to portray the fall of Richard III as a Lancastrian restoration?

22   What, if anything, was 'new' about the monarchy of Henry VII?

Main terms: 

Direct Management – Central management of estates. Turned to if inflation puts economic pressure on lords or if they are confident they can make profit from continued inflation.

When? 

Early C12th = farming out.
1240 -> 1315 = direct exploitation says Britnell.
From 1180s -> says Harvey. Pipe rolls 1155 – 1216: last estate wholly at farm in 1169, the first wholly under direct management in 1194. By 1214 nearly all 42 estates in the sample still had some manors at farm.
Contraction of the demesne. Postan says it happened c13th, Mate argues for the 1380s. Lomas says the process was more gradual. Tavistock abbey still held large parts of the estate in hand as late as c16th. And at Durham only 8 of 22 manors were continuously in hand from 1290 to 1325.

Why?

Monetary Inflation: (Harvey) eg. Winchester estates, price of corn, livestock, etc almost trebled 1180-1220. Land prices rose. Inflation was expected to continue, meaning that it made financial sense to replace relatively low customary rents with direct management. Lords bought more land or reclaimed lease land; Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmund cancelled £19 of arrears owed by Walter of Hatfield to reclaim four manors. The number of markets increased, c13th 8 new ones in Breckland alone, meant cash crops were viable. Corn sales made up 2/3 of the manors total income 1201/02 at Tewkesbury. They needed money to feed the vogue for conspicuous consumption. Thomas de Berkley for example spent £148 in 1345/6 *just* on bedding and feeding guests horses! Direct management was the best way to do this.

Changing attitudes of the lords explains timing. Previously local areas couldn’t support large households so they moved around; by c13th markets meant time was divided between 2 or 3 fave residences. Eg. Earl Marshal ordered supplies to be sent to Soham and Framlingham from a manor at Kennet, Cambridgeshire in 1299. Cash crops were grown and sold for absentee lords. Greater centralisation was thus needed. Eg. Isabelle de Forz had a dispersed flock of 7000 sheep in 1260 controlled centrally through a stock keeper and 10 shepherds.

Growth in number and scope of estate bureaucrats. C12th progress in education = literacy and legal training. Estate management guides (eg. That by Walter de Henley) were in wide circulation, they advised employment of a steward trained in the law (increasingly important) to oversee the estate. Bailiffs to make accurate accounts, reeves to oversee day to day work. On smaller estates literate lords could take on these offices – eg. Henry de Bray served as a steward at St. Andrew’s priory before becoming a landlord himself at Harleston, Northampton. Annual records being kept from the 1270s. Record keeping became invaluable for lords, for example at the manor courts – especially following the statute of Westminster in 1275 which introduced novel disseisin. Problems: pluralism of office, falsification of accounts. But there were auditiors to check accounts. Office could be held for many years – eg. William Kille was reeve of Oakington for 16 years. Could lead to experience rather than corruption.

Population Growth. The population doubled between 1086-1347. This resulted in land hunger, which pushed up land value. But farming out was characterised by long term leases and fixed rents. Eg. Over was leased for life to William Pecche at £6 p.a. in 1088. In 1237 it was still in the family’s possession but the rent had only risen to £7. Commutation of labour services -> landless labourers cheaper to employ. 1310 Abbot of Battle found it cost more to provide meals for tenants doing customary labour services than to hire workers. This made DM economically viable. Large workforce + high demand for goods.

RETURN TO FARMING OUT – WHY? 

Abuse of the bureaucratic system: Manorial courts were increasingly restricted by red tape and cases were often delayed and otherwise obstructed. Reeves in particular were accused of not recording all payments and keeping stuff back for themselves. Arbitration meant things weren’t recorded. Statute of Quia Emptores, 1290, loans sub-infeudation of the lords land, making farming out safer.

Decline in population. Agrarian crisis of 1315-22 killed off 10% and the Black Death of 1348 50%. This meant there were less workers, who were thus able to demand (and receive) higher wages and concessions despite the Ordinance (1349) and Statute (1351) of Labourers. Economic recession in the 1370s led to enforcements of these and “manorial reaction”. Land fell vacant and became a means of patronage rather than income – longer lease terms became the norm. By the early c16th 99 years was the average, 40 had seemed exceptional in 1250.

End of inflation. After the Black Death prices remained fairly stable. In 1370 most landlords’ income was scarcely 10% less that it had been before the plague. Mid 1370s = poor harvests, flooding, murrain caused some to revert to farming out. Eg. The monks of Canterbury Cathedral priory in 1337/8. But they reclaimed the land the following year when the situation improved. Bumper harvests of 1370s (“Indian Summer”) leads to a fall in grain prices. Specialisation wasn’t feasible for most, although some did (eg. Great Chart focussed on making tiles 1373 -> price rose from 2s. per thousand in 1340s to 3s. 6d – 5s. per thousand in the 1370s.

How successful were landlords at exploiting their lands? 
Postan: subsistence economy. No investment by lords.
Marxists: Lords consume rather invest profits. Crisis of distribution.
But poor evidence for secular lords, we rely on generalising ecclesiastical lords.
Evidence is only for the really great lords.
Lords *did* reinvest (c. 5%), they assarted land, kept accounts, intensive farming, etc.
Lords position is precarious. They need to consume conspicuously, etc.

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Why might you be asked a question on it? (ie. Historiography) 

Traditionally people believed that the medieval population grew steadily until it was checked by the Black Death in 1348. Then in the 1930s Postan used Malthusian theory to argue that the population was already in decline by that point. [Malthus? The idea that over population leads to “land hunger”; there isn’t enough land to support the population. So there must a positive mortality check or a preventive fertility check as a result of the declining standards of living.] This view has since been challenged; Russell and Harvey argue that the population *was* sustainable and continued to grow until the exogenous check of the plague. 

How can we tell what the population was doing anyway? 

There are no accurate figures. Lack of records renders all absolute numbers estimates at best. Using the 1086 Domesday survey – which didn’t cover all of England and listed only tenants not subtenants – and the 1377 poll tax returns – which were widely evaded and only counted over 14s – historians realistically estimate that the population in 1086 was between 1-2 million and in 1347 was between 4-7 million. (Counting backwards from c. 2.5-3million in 1377 – obviously depends on individual interpretations of the impact of plague too…)

So we need to look elsewhere. Postan, Ricardo and economic historians like Hatcher, Miller and Titow suggest looking at the ratio of people to land resources. If their theory is correct the holding size per head would decrease throughout the period regardless of transfer of demesne and colonisation. Harvey and Russell encourage a more complex approach – land holding size isn’t everything! Look at animals, or trade in the area.

General Figures: 

• 1086-1315: Recorded households at Fleet increased 62x. (Hatcher) 
• Population density reached almost 300 per square mile in some parts of the country by 1300. 
• Growth in chevage payments (showing land hunger). EG. Forncett Manor, Norfolk there were 100 anlepimen pa between 1275 and 1300. 
• The population of Norwich City grew from 16,000 in 1310 to 25,000 in 1333. 
• In Kineton Hundred (S.E.Warwickshire) the landholding population hardly grew at all. On some manors it was actually smaller in 1279 compared to 1086! (Hatcher) 

EVEN IF FIGURES AREN’T 100% WE CAN SEE THE GENERAL TRENDS!

Rents, cash paid for land 

• Postan et al claimed they rose, proving the existence of land hunger. For example on the Winchester manor of Fonthill entry fines rose from 1s-1s8d per virgate in 1214 to 8s+ after 1277. 
• Merchet fines (to marry widows w/ land) also rose dramatically. John Attepond paid £3.6s.8d in Cottenham. The same year Henry Waveney paid 2s. for a marriage licence for his landless daughter. 
• BUT. Winchester estates not typical (v. conservative). On the Ramsey estates the highest entry fine for the period 1290-1320 was 5m (£3.6s.8d) for a virgate (c. 30 acres) compared to the £10 Postan found on the Winchester estates. 
• Outsiders paid more than the locals. For example Henry Osbern paid £6.13s.4d at Halesowen instead of the customary 6s.8d in 1294 for half a virgate. (Razi) 
• Entry fines were often flexible, eg. At Chalgrave 1281-90 a son paid 13s.4d to succeed his father in half a virgate. A daughter taking up a similar holding from her mother paid just 6s.8d. 

IF LAND HUNGER WERE THAT DESPERATE, ALL RENTS WOULD HAVE BEEN PUSHED UP!

Size of Holdings 

• If Postan is correct the size of holdings will significantly decrease across this period. Eg. The Winchester tithing penny records show that, in Taunton, there were 3.3 acres of arable land per adult male in 1248, but only 2.5 acres in 1311 despite transfer of demesne land. 
• Land is transferred from desmesne, and unused land was colonised and converted to arable. Eg. Royal forests were sold off. 23,000 acres of Walland marshes in Kent were “inned” for this purpose. 
• 1235 Statute of Merton makes it easier for lords to sell off common land (so long as they leave sufficient pasture for free tenants) 
• BUT. Technology. 
• Economic diversity. 
• Homans claimed that peasants had to inherit land in order to be able to marry and sustain a family. In Boughton however 23% of resident families in the period 1288-1340 had more than one son who acquired land. Despite plot splitting 49% of families 1280 – 1549 had a child who married between the ages of 18 and 22 at Halesowen. (Early marriage = indicator of economic prosperity) 
• No consensus over how much land was needed. Harvey claims industry would mean a plot of 2 acres was perfectly sustainable in Cornwall. 

Marginal Land 

• Poor soil quality. Eg. Sandy soils of Breckland. 
• Soil exhaustion, eventually leads to vacant land. Eg. 50 acres at Pickering in 1326. 
• Geographically marginal. Eg. Kent marsh intakes only usable with regular uneconomic applications of manure. Bishop of Ely’s reclaimed land was prone to frequent flooding according to 1251 records. 
• Markets were volatile and unstable. Eg. Between 1280 and 1350 grain prices fluctuated an average of 26.6% pa. 
• Few peasants had a planned production strategy, they just sold their surpluses. 
• In times of crisis manufactured goods (eg. Glass from the Forest of Dean) was hard to sell. Such industrialised areas then bore the full strain of not being able to produce satisfactory food crops. 
• THE PUSHING OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION INTO UNSUITABLE MARGINAL LAND IS CLEAR EVIDENCE OF LAND HUNGER CAUSED BY POPULATION GROWTH. 
• BUT. In Cornwall plots of 2 acres were the norm. But 1 in 10 adults worked in the tin mining industry. Yields weren’t inevitably poor, there were higher labour to land ratios. Eg. 6x higher than on demesne land in E.Norfolk. Also draught animal to land ration was higher – Downham court rolls suggest that many C14th peasants owned some. Of all peasant animals wandering illegally onto sown land 42% were horses.

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England was not a completely illiterate nation before the Norman Conquest; the Anglo-Saxon chronicle making a good case in point, however, literacy was mostly restricted to high churchmen and monks. 1066 would appear to be nothing more than a further barrier to English literacy – at least Old English (ie. Language used for the written word) had something nominally in common with the spoken tongue. The Normans spoke French and wrote in Latin; learning to read suddenly got a lot more complicated!

Despite these setbacks literacy did increase significantly. Some historians argue that as much as 60% of the English population were literate by 1530. That’s all well and good, I hear you cry, that some stuffy academic with elbow patches tells us that but how do we know it really increased at all?

• The number of schools increased substantially, suggesting that a higher number of people were receiving education. And not for the sole purpose of becoming a priest! Eg. Moran found that in York diocese there were 13 grammar schools in 1300; by 1548 this figure had more than quadrupled to 68. The 1406 Statute of Apprentices enabled even the sons of serfs to be educated: many local priests maintained song or reading schools for the purpose of educating the less well off. (That’s pretty much everyone cos around 80% of the population were peasants – SS) 

• Aston draws attention to the increasing number of bibles and service books in the hands of the laity from the 13th century. (eg. from looking at bequests in wills). John Claydon, a London skinner, was burnt to death in 1415 along with his heretical copy of “Lanterne of Lizt.” (Although he was illiterate – his servant had been able to read it to him!) By 1530 men were making livings as booksellers in the cities. 

The main problem when considering late medieval literacy is the fact that historians have come to no consensus on a definition of literacy. In 1066 to be considered literacy Joe Bloggs would have had to be able to read and write in Latin. By 1500 he was literate so long as he could read OR write (with minimal proficiency) in Latin OR the vernacular in contemporary eyes. In addition, for much of the medieval period the idea of Clericus:Literatus reigned supreme: in the medieval mind o be literate meant you were a churchman. To be a layman implied you were illiterate. Just like black can not be white, a layman could not be literate – although they clearly were. This serves to confuse records, for example in court proceedings people are referred to as “illiterate” meaning they were laymen rather than that they couldn’t read.

Historians too have come to wildly different figures using their own definitions. Du Boulay claimed 40% were literate by 1530; Sir Thomas More was even more optimistic putting the figure at 60% - both based their estimates on reading ability. Cressy, defining literacy as the ability to write, claimed only around 10% were literate by 1530. Without clear records any figure can only be an estimate with a high error margin – but even so that’s a pretty big difference! For essay purposes literacy can be defined as “minimal competence in reading Latin or the Vernacular.” Writing was considered a separate art for the majority of the period (c.1050 – 1550)

So, who became literate? When? And, why? 

Kings: They could generally read even before the Conquest. Evidence of letters, etc written in kings’ own hand.

Nobility: If the King is known to be able to read it increases the status of literacy, the nobility is quick to jump on the bandwagon. Noble women learn to read so they can emulate the idea of female piety portrayed in depictions of the Virgin Mary: to be able to read and contemplate scripture. They then passed on literacy to their children. Men learnt, on the whole, or more pragmatic business reasons: record keeping was becoming increasingly common, for example the 1086 Domesday book and the introduction of chancery and plea rolls in the late 12th/early 13th century. Also the movement towards direct exploitation of estates from the late 12th century onwards meant literacy became the norm for the nobility by the end of the 12th century. The work of Chaucer and Gower in the reign of Richard II was mostly confined to the court circle, but suggests the nobility could read in English by this time.

Gentry: The written word was used more and more increasingly throughout this period, as evidenced by the development of the cursive script in around 1200 to allow scribes to write faster. Statutes of 1275 and 1293 established the coronation of Richard I (1199) as the limit of memory, eroding the importance of oral testimony. The gentry became literate to emulate their betters, to directly manage their estates, and to gain positions in the increasingly paper based legal system or as estate officials. The Seneschaucy, a mid 13th century estate management guide, presumes that the estate steward and bailiff would both be able to read French. By 1300 literacy had become the norm for the gentry. Eg. In 1293 Sir Hugh was put on trial for rape: he was unable to read from a roll to challenge the accusation which sent the court into chaos (someone had to whisper the words in his ear so he could say them aloud). Clearly by this point the ability to read amongst the upper classes was taken for granted.

Upper Peasantry (Yeomen, Husbandsmen, Craftsmen, Merchants…): Initiallt this class was only becoming passively literate, that is to say they became familiar with seeing the written word – the importance of it was well understood. During the 1381 peasant’s revolt, for example, hundred rolls and other records were burned. The main impetus for this class becoming literate was pragmatic: they needed it for business purposes. By 1422 the guild of brewers recognised that whilst their members might be ignorant of French and Latin, they could still keep records in English. Literacy was seen as a way to get on in life; ie. Getting into positions of local officialdom such as serving on juries or working as JP or Reeve. Religion also played its part; the Black Death of 1348 wiped out around 40% of the clergy (-Hatcher) and their replacements were for the most part ill-educated. By 1548 46% of chantry chaplains in York diocese had had very little to no education. This led people to want to be able to read the bible for themselves. From the 1370s Lollard vernacular translations made this possible (eg. 1410 translated copies of Speculum Vite Christi were in wide circulation). The introduction of the printing press to England in the 1470s made books more affordable and demand for service books massively outstripped supply. (60% of those sold had to be imported.) John Gratchet, the major York bookseller between 1516 and 1533, made his living just from selling service books.

Lower Peasantry and the Unfree: Now nobody’s suggesting the great unwashed were sat around debating the finer points of illiteration in the Floretum. They were however becoming increasingly literate in the passive sense. In the 12th century church paintings had depicted hellish demons collecting up mispronounced hymns and gossip, in the form of sounds, into his sack. From the 1280s the demon had become a scribe who noted down the congregations misdemeanours on parchment. The written word had been demystified, by the 1240s even vagrants were expected to carry around testimonials of trustworthiness. By 1300 even the unfree had to have a seal suggesting that almost everyone read (or at least recognise) their own name.

Conclusion 

Literacy was actually pretty common by 1550, even serfs could probably recognise their own name. The reason for this had been devotional and, to a greater extent, pragmatic. Society had come increasingly to depend on the written word, which in turn had led to a growing number of people being able to make sense of it so as to help them get on in life.

This was my A-level history coursework, written back in 2006 - the sources were, if I remember correctly, provided and a certain number had to be included and analysed. I've gone through and SPAG checked a little, and added in relevant outside links and pictures, but other than that it's all the work of my 17 year old self...


As Britain entered the 1830s the atmosphere was tense. Europe was growing increasingly unstable and the old order appeared to be falling; France, for example, was in the middle of a second revolution to overthrow Charles X. Once the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in 1829 the path was clear for Parliamentary reform to become the big political issue of the day. As Lord Grey said, ‘reform is inevitable; it is the spirit of the age.’ Pressure for reform quickly began to mount, worsened by the economic depression the threat of revolution then became tangible. However revolution never came to pass, what did was the Great Reform Act of June 1832. Many historians have since hailed this Act as a glorious step forward on the road to democracy and a great victory for the middle classes. However in recent times this view, so prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, has given way to a more moderate assessment and even, in some cases, a complete denunciation.

Political pressure was the main reason why Parliamentary reform had become an issue. Reform movements had been in existence as early as the 1790s (for example the London Corresponding Society had been formed in 1792), although the issue was largely ignored during the Napoleonic wars (1795-1815) as it was seen as unpatriotic. However by 1830 it was widely felt that the issue could be ignored no longer. The main reason was that the system was simply outdated: there were 202 English boroughs returning 404 MPs to Parliament. But, as borough status had been granted in the middle ages, many were now nothing more than ‘rotten’ or ‘pocket’ boroughs. These were boroughs where the electorate was small (or, as in the case of Old Sarum, non-existent) and often open to corruption, the ‘rotten’ boroughs being particularly notorious. In some boroughs candidates bribed voters or threatened them with violence, whilst in others the choice of MP was left to the local landowner who sponsored their preferred candidate (although often enough there was no competition), a system known as ‘patronage.’ The power of patronage was such that eight Tory Lords could, between them, control 50 seats in the House of Commons. The Tories argued that this system allowed young politicians to gain experience, as had been the case with Pitt the Younger. But still people began to call for secret ballot and a redistribution of seats; there was real concern that the huge new cities such as Manchester and Liverpool had no Parliamentary representation.


In addition the lack of uniform voting qualifications in the boroughs had begun to appear old fashioned and ludicrous to the public. In some boroughs every adult male ratepayer could vote (known as ‘Scot and Lot’ boroughs), yet in others the vote was severely restricted, for example in Dulwich you had to own shares in the local salt mine. Even the county voting qualification of being a 40/- freeholder dissatisfied people; the value of money had changed to such an extent that in some areas almost anyone with land could vote. However it would be wrong to think that the right to vote was enjoyed by much of the British public - only 11% of the adult male population could vote. People began to take exception to this, which leads us to the second factor behind the significance of political pressures for reform. Since the first French revolution in 1792 there had been a phenomenal growth in the interest in radical ideas. Early reformists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau brought the idea of democratic government to the masses. In the UK Tom Paine, whose literary style was clear enough to be understood by even the working classes, was very influential in spreading the idea that a government was not legitimate unless it had been elected, in fair elections, by the will of the people. The working classes, sections of the middle classes and radical MPs in Parliament came to support this radical view. Radical MPs began to apply pressure from within for reform and, when Tory PM Lord Wellington said that he did not believe reform was necessary, the outrage it caused forced his resignation.

The Tories were left in bad shape; they had been divided over the Catholic emancipation act and had only won the election because of patronage. In addition many Tories shared Wellington’s view: they had no desire to see any reform Act pass. If political pressures had brought Parliamentary reform to the public’s attention, economic pressures would ensure it would become one of the biggest issues of the 19th century. There are two aspects to the economic pressures. The first is that throughout the late 18th and early 19th century Britain had grown into an industrial nation, and these new industrialists wanted to secure their interests. The new industrial towns had no Parliamentary representation, yet areas that had been of medieval importance often sent many MPs to Parliament. Cornwall, for example, sent 44. The newly affluent industrialists were quick to point out that as the providers of Britain’s power and wealth they ought to have more say in the running of the country.


Lord Eldon, undoubtedly a Tory agreeing with the views of his party leaders (Wellington in the House of Lords and Peel in the Commons) is clearly worried about further reforms the Bill might lead to, not an unexpected reaction from a man who was influential in the passing of Pitt's repressive legislation in the 1790s. (For example the 1795 Treasonable Practices Act which outlawed, for a time, the works of Tom Paine.) Although it must be remembered that the democratic ideals of universal suffrage and annual parliaments were also completely outrageous to the majority of politicians, and to a significant proportion of the general public. The popular belief of these people is as Eldon argues, that if passed the structure of society would fall apart. This was the first version of the Bill and the public were not as demonstrative at this time as they later became. Perhaps if Eldon could have foreseen the public reaction he would have been less keen to suggest revolution would be preferable to the Reform Bill. Also it should be considered that Eldon is possibly exaggerating, relating a worst-case scenario in order to play on his colleagues’ emotions and ensure a verdict in favour of the Tories. However from what we know of Lord Eldon this is unlikely, he was a reactionary Tory and had been throughout his long political career; his fears were undoubtedly shared by many of the more conservative members of Parliament. The source is useful for showing the kinds of arguments being put forward by the opposition, and it is noteworthy that both sides of the debate are using ‘scare-tactics’ - the Tories suggesting an unstoppable wave of reform was about to be unleashed, whilst the Whigs and their supporters retaliated by suggesting that the only alternative was revolution. This clearly shows how serious the reform crisis was for such extreme views to be so prevalent.


It is unsurprising that the radicals chose to focus on the Whigs, who were more open to reform because it would be beneficial to them to break the hold of patronage. Also in the 1790s, Lord Grey, who replaced Wellington, had been heavily involved in the original reform movements. However it would be misleading to suggest the Whigs were a party of reformers. In fact the party suffered significant divisions over the issue. Many Whig backbenchers felt the Act was far too radical.


This source clearly outlines the wishes of the industrialists; they wanted to be able to vote for representatives who would protect their interests in Parliament. The Leeds Mercury, which would have been widely read by the middle and working classes, puts forward quite a radical argument. The article suggests the decency and hard working nature of the middle classes should entitle them to the vote but it also suggests that it is in fact the aristocracy who are 'lazy and indolent'. It suggests that those clinging to Parliament’s traditional structure are doing so, not out of concern for promising MPs being denied political experience or even the inability of the lower classes to make informed choices of candidates, but rather out of an unwillingness to put in the work that modern society demanded. This is reflected in the calls for ‘responsive’ government to pass legislation to improve living and working conditions - the middle classes and the Leeds Mercury wanted more from Parliament than many of the aristocratic MPs were willing to give. That the Leeds Mercury uses the phrase 'a Representative of their own choice' is revealing as it is a direct attack against those MPs who were saying that it did not matter that the system was so messy. They suggested that the variety meant everyone was represented anyway. The middle classes themselves riled against such views, they wanted nothing less than a redistribution of seats and an extension of the franchise. The source also shows what the Mercury and it’s readership thought of industry. The manufacturers are 'great', because not only are they providing employment they have also turned Britain into a powerful and prosperous nation. It is important to note that this article if from July 1830, before Wellington was forced to resign, thus giving some idea of how passionate a topic Parliamentary reform was. This pressure increased steadily as reform became tangible to those it mattered so much to.

This sentiment was deepened by the fact that the Tory government had passed the Corn Laws in 1815 to protect British farmers from foreign competition, yet no protection had been afforded the manufacturers. The growing support of the new idea of ‘free trade’ (a removal of tariff barriers which would strengthen trade relationships with other countries and so make it easier to sell British goods abroad) led industrialists to support Parliamentary reform. The Act would no doubt favour the Whigs who were fast beginning to be seen as a reform party. The second aspect is the economic depression. As Norman Gash said in his 1979 book, 'Aristocracy and People', "What precipitated parliamentary reform was the coincidence of a cabinet crisis and the severe economic depression in the country." Were it not for the growing desperation the working class might not have become involved in the reform debate. However in times of extreme poverty the masses turn to radical ideas: this can be seen in the growing membership of political unions, for example. In December 1831 the NPU (National Political Union) had only 6000 members, that number would grow to 20,000 by the end of the reform crisis. The working classes began to see Parliamentary reform as the only way to improve their position and became heavily involved, for instance at the Merthyr uprising, which was essentially a strike dressed up as a political demonstration. Panic quickly spread amongst the upper classes, unrest from the lower orders could well end in revolution and many MPs began to apply pressure to their colleagues, reasoning that reform was preferable to revolution.


The source suggests that unless the bill is passed there will be revolution. This is the first version of the bill and it shows how great the fear of revolution was that Macaulay, a Whig, was already using this argument. However it ought to be remembered that he may be exaggerating his fears in an effort to sway nervous Whigs and Tories and obtain a party victory. He said in another speech that Parliament ought to "reform that you may preserve" suggesting he understood which arguments were most likely to persuade the more reluctant members of Parliament. But, evidence suggests that Macaulay truly was interested in progressive ideas and reform. He was deeply involved in the Anti-Slavery Society and would later lend active support in the campaign for the Ten Hour Act. Macaulay felt strongly in favour of Parliamentary reform, something we know from other speeches he gave in its support, even though his own constituency was a rotten borough and if the act were passed he would be left without a seat in Parliament. Whilst showing the strength of Macaulay’s beliefs it should be considered that perhaps the call for reform was so great that politicians were willing to lose seats if it improved the overall system, certainly this must have been the case for the bill to eventually get the support of the Commons. It should also be noted that Macaulay was later to become a prominent historian who believed the 1832 Reform Act was truly great, telling Edinburgh electors in a speech in 1839 "... to the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe it that the House of Commons has been purified."


In addition there were social pressures for reform. Industrialisation had led to the rapid growth of new towns and the population. The working class lived in squalid cramped conditions, working long hours for poor pay. The middle class had also grown in size and influence and become increasingly politically aware, they set up unions such as the BPU (Birmingham Political Union, formed in 1830 by Thomas Attwood), they also encouraged the working class to get involved. There were large numbers of the middle class who saw it as their duty to improve the working classes, educating them and so forth, this created a politically aware working class, something the government of the day greatly feared, their fears grew as the middle and working classes started to ally themselves in pursuit of reform. There was growing demand for more responsive government, traditionally governments were discouraged from interfering in individual affairs; the concept of ‘Laissez Faire’ was very popular, it suggested that if left alone problems, such as rural poverty, would rectify themselves. However people began to feel that the government should provide for the poor and improve living conditions. The act came to be seen as the first step towards it, suggesting the extent to which the masses pushed for it, whilst also giving an idea of how much the traditionally minded ruling classes resisted it.

There were clearly many pressures for reform but what were the effects of the Act? Is it valid to say that the Act was nothing more that administrative tinkering?


In direct contrast to the Tories panicked exclamations of unstoppable reform and the fall of the establishment, and to Grey’s claims that the Act would satisfy everyone and totally negate the need for further reform, Grenville offers a more realistic view of the likely outcome on the passing of the Reform Act. The reference to 'we have not gone far enough' suggests that he is a Member of Parliament and as such would understand the Act’s limitations. The public’s imaginations had indeed run riot, encouraged by information put forward by the new political movements. For example, William Cobbett in an April edition of “The Weekly Political Register” claimed a reform of Parliament would do everything from put food on the table to put an end to the workhouses. The main significance of this source is to show that everybody expected much from reform, yet it was uncertain what it would, in fact, deliver.


The Act brought about changes that were a clear improvement on the old system. Voting qualifications had been updated and made uniform. This is shown in the table below:

• Adult males owning freehold property worth at least 40 shillings (£2) per annum. 
• Adult males in possession of a copyhold worth at least £10 per annum. ii. Adult males leasing or renting land worth at least £50 per annum. 

Borough -

• Adult males owning or occupying property worth at least £10 per annum provided: A) That they had been in possession of the property for at least one year and had paid all taxes charged on that property. B) That they had not been in receipt of parish poor relief during the previous year. 
• Voters who did not qualify under i. but who had exercised a vote in a borough before 1832 retained the right to vote in that borough (unless, of course, the borough had disappeared under the Act) during their lifetimes, provided that they lived in, or within 7 miles of, the borough where they would vote.

This got rid of the confusion of the old system which Grey had claimed was 'indefensible'. These changes resulted in the franchise increasing from around 1 in 10 men to 1 in 5, a proportion which was to remain roughly the same until the second Reform Act was passed in 1867. However there were still problems: the voting qualifications meant that in areas where land value was high, such as London. the majority of land owners could vote, whilst in areas where land value was low, such as Merthyr, very few people could vote. Out of a population of 144,000 in Birmingham, for example, only 7,000 households met the £10 value needed to gain the vote. In addition tenants-at-will could now vote, but as they had no security could be evicted if they voted against the preferred candidate of their (most probably Tory) landlord; this problem was particularly evident in west Wales. The solution to this problem, secret ballot, was not introduced until 1872.

The main issue the Act had tried to tackle was the problem of the rotten and pocket boroughs. The table below goes some way to highlighting its success:

England -

• 56 borough constituencies (cited as schedule A boroughs in the Act) lost their representation entirely. 
• 30 boroughs (schedule B) lost one of their two members. 
• 22 new party boroughs (schedule C) created with two members. 
• 19 new parliamentary boroughs (schedule D) created with one member. 
• County representation increased. One county to have 6 members, 26 to have 4, 7 to have 3, 6 to retain 2, Isle of Wight to become a separate, single member constituency. 

Wales -