H. R. Wilton Hall

“ In our towns almost every tower and spire which we see is a modern building, though the styles may vary from Norman to Perpendicular and [Pg 179] seventeenth century. Modern buildings, churches, halls, public offices, and private houses are mostly imitations of the work of past ages. There is no nineteenth-century style of English architecture. Some day, perhaps, England may develop a new style of architecture, such as the world has never yet seen, but at the present time we can only copy and adapt the work of those who have gone before us. ”

“ One of the pleasantest sights, to a Londoner at any rate, is the market-place of an old-fashioned country town on a market-day. In many such towns the weekly market is held, in the open air, in the same place where it has been held for centuries. Probably none of the houses round the market square are as old as the market, but the buildings, altered and rebuilt as they have been, take us back several centuries, and speak of days long gone by. ”

“ Men, who were not very good or very religious, began to respect the lives and works of the monks. We find thanes and kings not only allowing monks to settle on some of their unoccupied land, but making over to them some of their own land, on condition that they and their children after them might always have a share in the prayers of these good men. We see, too, that whole vills came gradually into the hands of some monasteries; so that the convent became the lord of the vill, instead of a thane or a king. ”

“ Summary.—Trading towns, like London, gradually arose: the Saxons took to trades and trading; and towns sprang up over the land. The townsmen were jealous of any overlord, and better able to make a stand against him than the men in the vills. Their folk-moots were important, and the men held very tightly to any privileges which the town had, and were always on the look-out to secure fresh rights. Gradually they became rich, and needed the king's protection, and both the king and the town had to depend a great deal upon each other. ”

“ Now, though every manor had a lord, where the lord held many manors it was quite impossible for him to be living in the manor-house of each of them, and looking after his estate himself. He could, if he chose, let out some portions of these manors to a man beneath him in rank, on exactly the same conditions as the king had granted to him. The man must swear to be his vassal, and appear, when required, with his proper number of men, to fight his lord's battles. ”

“ The little Canadian boy's question can be asked about every town and village in the land. There are no two places exactly alike; each one has its own history, which, however simple it may be, is quite worth knowing. The busy manufacturing town, with its tens and hundreds of thousands of people, where all is movement and bustle, has its history; and the lonely country village, where everybody knows everybody else, has often a history even more interesting than that of the big town ”

“ Towers, spires, turrets, gables, gateways, and archways in all styles of architecture abounded. There were, of course, many things in the towns which we should not have liked, but they had a pleasant variety which our modern towns have not. Thousands of streets in our towns are just rows and rows of houses, all alike, all ugly, and very dull and dreary to look at and to live in.
3. In the reign of King Henry VIII all the religious houses were suppressed, and given up into the king's hands. The life that had gone on in them for centuries came to an end. ”

“ We have said that the Tudor period was a time of building of big houses and mansions. Every [Pg 163] county in England has some such houses to show. Many of them were built of stone, some partly of brick and stone. Their style shows that the English or old fashion of Gothic building was dying out. Italian ideas and Italian ornament were coming into favour. No doubt one reason why so much of the old work was ruthlessly destroyed was because it was out of fashion. It is astonishing, even in these days, how much good work is destroyed just because it has gone out of date. ”

“ There were, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, in all parts of the country, hundreds of bare, gaunt ruins where once had been flourishing houses and centres of life and work. It may seem strange to us that the materials left were not sold and cleared away, and the sites made tidy. We must remember, however, that people could not build houses either in town or country as they chose. In Queen Elizabeth's reign the laws against building new houses were very strict indeed, so that there was not a very great demand for building material. ”

“ In the villages the dangers arising from want of proper drainage and from impure water were not quite so great as in the towns. Yet even now, in this twentieth century, how to drain our villages [Pg 96] properly, and provide them with a good water-supply, are questions needing attention in many places. We have seen that the houses in the villages were usually close together, and men had not realized that dirt is one of the greatest enemies of mankind. There are a good many people, even in our time, who see no great harm in having pigsties, refuse-heaps, and manure-heaps close to their houses. ”

“ Even nowadays, in this twentieth century, without knowing much about a boy personally, we can tell a good deal about his habits from the treasures he turns out of his pockets. Hard-hearted mothers and teachers call these treasures rubbish, but the contents of a lad's pockets are a pretty sure indication of the boy's tastes. ”

“ The people in the towns, who were more interested in trade than the people in the villages, saw how very important and profitable a fair was—that it was something "with money in it"—and the towns were very anxious to get the right to hold one or more annual fairs. But the overlord, the king, had a voice in the matter, because each stall set up, and each bale of goods, brought in "by right" an income. ”

“ The king had swept away all the goods and gifts which had been made to monasteries, churches, and hospitals; the free-will offerings of many generations had gone into the pockets of the king; the institutions which had been founded to help the poor had become the private property of the king's favourites. It was not likely that people would be very keen to offer their money for the relief of the poor, and though urged to give what they could, they were very backward in doing so. ”

“ Clerks, or the clergy, were drawn from all classes of society, from the royal family down to the serfs on the manors. In fact, before the time of the Black Death, the only way in which a serf could become a freeman was by buying his freedom or by becoming a clerk. A serf who wanted his son to rise to a better position than his own would try to get him made a clerk; for the moment he became a clerk he was a free man.
12. But to attain his purpose the serf must first have the permission of his master or overlord. All overlords were not tyrants by any means. ”

“ You must remember, too, that there were several different kinds of land-owners or overlords—the king, the great lords, bishops, colleges, and monasteries. The manors, of which these estates were made up, in the course of centuries were divided and subdivided in many ways as the land became more valuable. Many people might thus have an interest in one manor which a couple of hundred years before had been in the hands of one person only. ”

“ Small bodies of men bound themselves by simple rules to live and work and worship together. Frequently they made their settlements in lonely, desolate places, which they worked to bring under cultivation. So there sprang up settlements, or convents, of these religious people, living under their own rules. Work and worship went side by side. It was a new kind of life, different from the life in the "tun" which the early Saxons were used to; but, in time, it had a mighty influence in the land, and played an important part in the making of England. ”

“ Summary.—The history of our present towns and villages really begins with the Saxons. The Saxons had been used to a settlement very like the early Aryan settlement. All the men had equal rights, and the business of the community was settled in the folk-moot. When new settlements were formed they looked back to the early settlement as their home: they were all of one kin. Gradually the chief man of the first home was looked upon as their chief or king. The land was shared amongst the men in strips in the common field, and the shares changed from time to time. ”

“ With the coming of William the Conqueror to England began a great period of building in this country. There was what we may almost call a "great rage" for founding or establishing religious houses and churches, and for building castles. All the religious houses have gone, and nearly all the castles, but in their ruins we can see specimens of Norman work. In a large number of old churches we can see very good examples of this style. In Hampshire especially there is scarcely one old church, even in the most out-of-the-way village, which has not some Norman work to show. ”

“ There are a great many tombs in the churches in various parts of the country, and much money was spent upon them in this and in the next century. They are raised some two or three feet from the ground; the sides are divided into panels and ornamented with rich carvings and shields of arms, brilliantly coloured and gilded. On the top of the tombs are to be seen effigies carved in stone of the man and his wife, lying on their backs, with hands clasped. The men are usually in armour, and their wives in the dress of the time, with strange-looking head-dresses. ”

“ From the members of these trade guilds in a town the town guild, or corporation, was formed to rule the town according to its ancient customs and charters, and to obtain for the town as many new rights and privileges as possible. There is much in the corporation of a great city like London, with its many companies, or guilds, which is connected with city life and work of the Middle Ages. ”

“ Sports have an important place in the life of towns and villages nowadays; but, though cricket and football are old games really, they have not always been as popular as they are now. Cricket, in some form or other, was played in the thirteenth century; indeed all games where a ball is used are more or less ancient. It seems to have been played at Guildford as early as 1598, but modern cricket only dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. Kent seems to have led the way, and Hampshire was the home of the game in 1774. ”

“ In the reign of King Edward III Oxford was the most famous seat of learning in Europe. Many of its students were foreigners, but, as everyone could talk Latin as well as he could his native language, they had no real difficulty in making themselves understood.
Summary.—Our universities began about the thirteenth century. A university is a corporation, or body of learned men banded together to teach. Scholars were attracted to the universities from the schools, and encouraged and helped to go to them. Hostels were gradually started for scholars [Pg 137] in the university town. ”

“ The observation which is directed to noting the numbers on the motor cars, the names of locomotives, and the collection of postage-stamps and picture post-cards, can also be usefully turned, say, to noting the styles of architecture which really mark broadly great periods of our national life and development; and may help us, perhaps more than anything else, to arrange our ideas of the days of old in a proper order and sequence. An old building may be an excellent date-book. ”

“ In all parts of England to-day we have parks, belonging to big mansions; and our big towns and cities have their parks too, which are usually recreation-grounds for the people. A park in Norman and in Early English times was very different in appearance from our parks, whether in town or country. Just as the king had his great forests for hunting wild beasts, so in the later Norman times the great lords were anxious to enclose pieces of waste and forest land for the same purpose. ”