1. [1] During the hundred years that followed the restoring of law and order by great changes had come about in England. English society, government, books, and speech, all alike showed deep marks of the new thoughts and feelings that, step by step, had spread over Western Europe, and set up that form of civilization which we call medieval. A civilization which had Rome for its religious centre, and looked to Paris, , and Salerno for its learning, and the French and English courts for its literature. A knot of states whose commerce, regulated by self-governing guilds, flowed westward from the great Italian trading republics, through the fairs of France and Germany to the marts of Flanders and the ports of England and Gascony, till the circuit of trade ended

2. [2] The form of government which was set in working order by lasted long, as it was not only well fitted for the wants of his day, but could easily be suited by slight changes to the shifting needs of later times. revised it, and the statesmen of made new use of it in the Good Parliament, but its main features remain even in our own times. The active power was in the hands of the king and his Council, and was carried out by ministers, officers, and judges chosen by the Crown. What the courts and boards were which made up the central admzinistration may be best seen from Tables I., II., III. The great struggle of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in England was not the old one, whether the king was to rule at his will-for since the Charters all were agreed that

"the Law was above the King"

The Great Council of the Realm, during the reign of by the separate summons of knights of the shire (see Great Charter), and under by the summons of burgesses, grew from a gathering of nobles and crown-tenants into a regularly-called representative assembly fully entitled to speak for the whole nation. The old belief

" that what touches all should be treated of by all"

Local government in the shires was carried on by the shire-moots and hundred-moots under the eye of the sheriff and hundred-elders. These were controlled in matters of justice by the Royal Judges, who went regular circuits through each county to hold courts of assize. In matters of revenue the sheriff was helped by coroners and escheators (officers chosen in the shire-moot to look after the king's rights over felons' land and the like), and had to give his account and pay his dues to the Exchequer Court twice a year. In matters of police and militia the new decrees as to the fyrd (see p. 33), the making of high constables of the counties, and the heavy fines of the king's judges had all bettered matters much. The sheriff was still the highest officer in the county, but he was chosen by the freeholders of the county (till 's reign), and so carefully looked after that his means of misusing his power were slight, and the chief complaints from the counties now refer rather to the harshness or bribery of the royal officers and judges, and show little illwill to the sheriff or his officers.

An example of a criminal trial in 's time will show best how like and how unlike the law system followed was to that of our own time. A man supposed to have committed a murder is taken by the village watchman and handed over to the sheriff for safe keeping till the king's judges come round and the assize courts are held. At a shire-moot then held, the grandjury having heard the proofs against the prisoner present him as guilty. He is now taken into the assize court before the king's judge and a sworn petty [small] jury of twelve of his neighbours (named by four knights chosen in the shire-moot for this duty); but if he pleads not guilty [claims to be innocent] after the indictment [accusation] is read to him, the jury, who are supposed to have personal knowledge of the matter, settle whether he is guiltless or not; if they give a verdict against him the judge gives sentence of death according to law, and this is shortly carried out; if, on the other hand, the jury hold him quit of the charge, he is set free. Witnesses were not often called on either side; the prisoner had to defend himself. The goods and lands of convictfelons (persons found guilty of bad crimes) were forfeited to the Crown, hence prisoners, fearing lest their families should suffer, would sometimes

"Bretton,"

3. [3] The Church was richer than ever, and its hold on the people stronger even than before; for though it suffered for a time under the greedy grip of the kings and the heavy hand of the Pope's legates and tax-gatherers, yet the nation did not forget the patriotic stand made by such men as the Bishops of , Worcester, and Chester, and Archbishops Stephen and Edmund, in the fight for the

"liberties of this realm."

The Universities, which for long were among the chiefest stays of the Church, had now sprung into being. The abbey schools of Oseney and the friars' lectures at S. Mary's becoming under the Pope's bull a studium generale known as the Corporation or University of the scholars of , organized after the pattern of the famous University of Paris. And we have a set of charters by and following kings dealing with the maintenance of good order and the supply of cheap bread and wine among the riotous and needy students. Many of these were so poor that they used to get their bread by begging under written leave given by the Chancellor (as the head of the University was called). Kindly rich men often left money to found for the use of the poorer students. The keepers of these chests lent money on pledge without interest for a year, so that a scholar could by this means keep himself till he was able to earn money by his learning. The scholars used to live in lodgings kept by masters of the University called Inns or Hotels; of these there were many, for as yet there were no colleges. Every scholar belonged to one of the two Nations or Societies into which the University was divided, according as each man came from the north or south of the Trent. Irishmen and Welshmen, of whom there were many at , belonged to the South Nation. Every year the members of each Nation chose an agent, called their proctor, from among the masters of the University to look after their interests. There were four Faculties or branches of learning -Theology, Law, Medicine, and the Arts. Scholars usually began with the Arts course, studying first the

"threefold way,"

"four-fold way,"

Filii nobilium, dum sunt iuniores Mittuntur in Franciam fieri doctores."

4. [5] Now that people were taking pleasure in reading and learning, there were of course many books written, and the Court of England was as noted for its historians and poets as for its lawyers and statesmen. In the reign of the Treasurer Richard (), one of the judges, Roger of Howden (), and the Dean of S. Paul's (Ralf of Dissay), who had been one of the royal clerks, wrote Chronicles in Latin. The monks too, Robert, prior of S. Michæl's Mount (died ), William the Little of Newbury (died about ), and many more wrote in the Year-Books, which were now regularly kept in every great abbey, the history of their own days. A more

dedicated his book to Robert of Gloucester. It was first put into French by Geoffrey Gaimar, who made a rhyming history of England for Queen Eleanor out of it and the ; Wace of Jersey, a canon, used it for his verse-history, the Brut (called after "Brutus the Trojan"), and from this book of Wace's Layamon or Lawman, Leofnoth's son, the priest of Earnley on Severn, put it into English verse, c. , in a long and stirring poem, written partly in the Old English alliterative metre, partly in the new French rhyming metre. This is the first long English poem that had been made since 's day, and it marks the beginning of a new era in English literature which lasted down to the Reformation, in which Englishmen took the French poets and Latin prose-writers for their models, and in which English books were part of the great medieval literature which was common to all Christian countries.

From this time forward though many Englishmen still write in Latin for the learned and in French for the gentry, yet side by side with every French or Latin book there is an English one written, and little by little the bulk of books come to be penned in English. Thus side by side with Latin and French sermons and books of prayer we find sermons and even the Gospels in English by the end of 's reign, and about the famous Gospel lessons of , an Austin canon (which we have in his own hand and spelling), written in a regular blank verse without rhyme or alliteration. To 's reign belong the of Bishop Poer, the of Grossetete (both in French and English), the earliest English play, , and the Wise Sayings ascribed to the old English

"the murder of Evesham."

Now, too, the English poets of the South and Midlands have learned the French song-metres, and pour forth songs and lays and carols and hymns on all kinds of subjects. At first they also composed in French and Latin, or even mixed all the three tongues in one song; but they soon found that English is as musical and as powerful as any foreign language, and kept more and more to it alone.

5. [6] When people began to write in English again at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the English tongue had undergone great changes, and these changes had not taken place evenly throughout the land, so that there were, as Gerald of Barry noticed, three distinct dialects or forms of English, so different that a man from would not understand a man from Guildford, and a man from Peterborough could hardly make himself understood by either. The Southern dialect was the most like the Old English in sound and in words; it had changed least. The Northern dialect had changed most; not only had the words been greatly shortened and clipped, and most of the verb and noun endings either gone altogether or fading away quickly, but the Northern words of the Danish and Norwegian settlers had already driven out and replaced a great number of common English words, so that most of the household words north of the Humber differed from those of the South and Midlands. The Midland dialect is the most notable for us, for from it springs the English we speak and write to-day. It had cut down its words almost as much as the Northern dialect; it had whittled its cases down to , but it had, like the Southern dialect, kept most of the old stock of

The changes in English had hitherto been mostly in form, for even the words the Northmen brought with them were words such as the forefathers of the English had known and spoken. But in the thirteenth century crowds of wholly foreign words were brought into use, so that by about one-tenth of the words in common use in books were of French or Latin birth. How this came about it is easy to see: the friar, often a foreigner or brought up abroad, in his sermons would use the French or Latin words, which the people would soon get hold of; the doctor, the lawyer, the teacher, were obliged to use foreign words for medical, legal, and philosophical terms that had never been heard of in England, and their patients, clients, and pupils copied them; the merchant described his foreign wares in high-sounding foreign words; the lady who talked French at Court, and took her fashions from Paris or Bourdeaux, used French or Gascon words for the new dresses and the new dishes which came from abroad; the knight who had been a page at the royal court or the bishop's palace, and served oversea in his youth, had none but French terms for his business, war, and for his amusements, the joust and the chase. Even the builder and the engineer who came from Normandy or Flanders would bring in many words, which would spread among their workmen. Thus from all sides new words came pouring in during the whole thirteenth century, till the tide turned, and men began to look upon English as a rich and noble speech that could do very well without borrowing any more.

The following are specimens of thirteenth-century English from each dialect, at the beginning and end of 's reign; the borrowed words in the text are italicized:-

SOUTHERN ENGLISH (, c. ).

Dame, thu ert i-weorred and thine von beodh so stronge

[Lady, thou art warred-on, and thy foes are so strong

thet tu ne meiht nonesweis, withuten sukurs af me,

[that thou might in-no-way, without help of me,

etfleon hore honden.

fly-from their hands.]

SOUTHERN ENGLISH (Nicholas of Guildford, c. ).

Vor hit is soth Alvred hit seide,

[For it is true Alfred it said,

And one hit mai in boke rede,

[And one it may in book read,

Evrich thing mai losen his godhede

[Every thing may lose its goodness

Mid un-methe and mid over-dede.

[By want-of-measure and by excess.]

NORTHERN ENGLISH (Psalms, c. ).

Oppenes your yates wide : yhe that princes ere in pride

[Open your gates wide ye that princes are of pride,]

And yates of ai uphoven be yhe: and King of blisse

[And gates of eternity, uplifted be ye and the-King of bliss

income sal he.

come-in shall he.]

MIDLAND ENGLISH (Orm's Gospel Lessons, ).

A consonant doubled shows that the vowel before it is short.

Icc hafe wennd inntill Ennglissh: goddspelless hallyhe lare

[I have turned into English the-Gospel's holy lore

Affterr thatt little witt thatt me : min Drihhtin hafethth

[According-to the little wit that to-me my Lord hath

lenedd.

lent.

Thu thohhtesst tatt itt mihhte wel : till mikell frame turrnenn

[Thou thoughtest that it might well to great profit turn

Yiff Ennglissh folk forr lufe off Crist : itt wollde yerne lernenn

[If English folk for love of Christ it would eagerly learn,

And follghenn itt and fillenn itt: withth thohht withth word

[And follow it and full-fill it with thought, with word,

withth dede.

with deed.]

MIDLAND ENGLISH (Grossetete's , ).

On Englisch I chul mi reson schowen : for him that con not

[In English I shall my discourse show for them that cannot

i-knowen

understand

Nouther French ne Latyn : on Englisch I chul tellen him

[Either French or Latin in English I shall tell them

Wherefore the world was i-wrauht : and after hou he was

[Wherefor the world was made and afterwards how it was

bitauht

granted

Adam ure fader to be his : with al the merthe of paradis.

[To-Adam our father to be his with all the mirth of paradise.]

It is well worth while to pay good heed to the books and the tongue of England in the thirteenth century, for in them we have the springs of all that has been said or sung by our best poets and writers ever since, and the thirteenth century is as much the fountain-head of modern English speech and books and style as it is of the English Constitution of to-day. Orm and Bishop Poer and the nameless song-writers and preaching friars were doing the same work in their way as Earl and Bishop Grossetete did in theirs.

6. [7] England had become richer during the long peace in spite of the civil war, and the towns had grown larger and more prosperous. London was now far the biggest city in England, its wealth and the number of its citizens are dwelt on by many writers. Its mayor, for Richard had given the burgesses the right of choosing their own chief officer, was an officer of power and dignity, who served with earls and barons as a warden of the Charter which the city banner-bearer, Fitz-Walter, had done so much to win. The levy which followed the red standard of S. Paul from the twenty-four city wards was a little host in itself. But besides its own citizens, London had a large foreign population. There were Norman shippers; Gascon wine merchants; Flemish wool-buyers; Lombard goldsmiths, money-lenders, and middlemen; Danish and Norwegian sailors, who brought fur and fish and fir timber in exchange for cloth and wine, and enjoyed all rights of trade the same as Englishmen by old custom from Cnut's days; Easterlings, whose warehouse or was the centre of the large Baltic trade; and Jews, who had their own laws and customs and rulers in the Jewry under the king's particular order. As in Eastern towns to-day, those of a trade lived together, and each little lane had its own craft, to which the names of the City streets still bear witness. In Cornhill were the clothiers, in Coleman Street the tailors, in Candlewick Street the drapers; scribes and lawyers dwelt in Chancery Lane, goldsmiths in Westcheap, in the Vintry the wine merchants, the pepperers or grocers in Soper's Lane [Queen Street]: by S. Mary's Axe lived the skinners; near Newgate the butchers, in Lothbury the braziers, the smiths and tanners at Holborn, and by the Fleet the sea-coal dealers and lime-burners had their wharfs. The great

Town life of the thirteenth century centred round the merchant-guilds and craft-guilds; the latter were now forming in nearly every trade. They bought the right of making their own bylaws for the good ordering of the trade and the benefit of its members. A boy taking to a particular craft was first bound apprentice to learn his trade with a mastercraftsman. When he had served his time he became a free journeyman (from the French, journee, a day's work), who could work for any master who chose to employ him at regular wages by the day. As soon as he had earned enough money to set up for himself, he paid his fee, showed his masterpiece, a test bit of work which proved his fitness, and was enrolled as master-craftsman. There was a guild-feast at least once a year, to which all the guild brethren came dressed in the livery of the company; and the brethren besides looking to the good of their trade, took care to provide a handsome burial and due services for companions who died, and succour for those who were in bodily distress or poverty. Women were companions of the guild just like men. In London and other big cities the burgesses and merchants oftentimes showed jealousy of the craft-guilds, but the latter managed to hold their own in the end. From the commonalty of the city forced the aldermen and richer folk to take Thomas Thomasson as mayor, and again in they would have Walter Hervey against the will of the aldermen.

Other towns, though they could not equal London, were yet growing in size and wealth also. , beside its great yearly fair, had a large wine trade; Worcester was famous for its wheat, Hereford for its cattle; had no small fish trade; exports copper and tin; at Stourbridge Common by Cambridge was held the biggest fair in England; Boston too had its fair, which was the scene of a raid by a gang of gentlemen robbers in , wherein the town was fired, and more damage done, it was said, than all the wealth of England could repay; Yarmouth was the greatest seaport in the east as was in the west; merry and lordly Durham were capitals of large districts; and were the biggest northern towns, and was the Manchester of medieval England.

We hear more than once of terrible riots in the towns, where the burgesses, upon some breach of the charters they had bought from king or bishop, rose in arms for redress. Thus the good folk of Bury carried on a fifty years' feud with the monks of St. Edmund's Minster, in which they appealed both to arms and to law; and in the 30,000 burgesses of burned the cathedral and sacked the priory, killing the monks' servants, for which the king fined the town 3000 marks and had many of the burgesses drawn and hanged. But he did not dare to take away their rights or charter, or to justify the monks for the evil deeds which had angered the townsmen. King was very favourable to the east-coast towns and the Cinque Ports; but his son was no lover of the towns, and had a marked dislike to the Londoners, which they did not fail to return.

7. [8] All towns changed much outwardly in the thirteenth century. Henry Ethelwin's son, the first mayor, put forth an order in London after a great fire, that in future all houses must be tiled, that party-walls must be at least sixteen feet high and two feet thick, and that chimneys must be properly built of brick or stone for the greater safety of the city. This by degrees led to the replacement of the old straw-thatched daub-and-wattle cots by little stoutly-built one-storied houses. The building of new churches, chapels, friaries went on fast, and many wealthy aldermen or privileged aliens began to raise large stone houses. The new Pointed style of architecture was brought in from France, which ousted the old Roman or Round-arch style that had prevailed for so long, for it was stronger, lighter, and allowed of greater variety. The marks of the new style are the pointed arch, the scientific vaulting with three sets of ribs, the long, narrow, lancet-headed windows grouped together, the pillars made up of fine clustered shafts, with beautiful deeply-carven capitals, the lofty roofs raised on arch-buttressed walls, and the tall graceful stone spires. Among the best examples of the is the Cathedral at Salisbury, raised by Bishop Poer, of which Robert of Gloucester sings :-

" In the year of grace

Twelve hundred and twenty-two, I count, in the fair place

Of the noble minster of Salisbury they laid down the first stone,

Than which men know in Christendom fairer work none.

There was the Legate Pandulf, as all would have it done,

He laid the first five stones: first for the Pope laying one;

The second for our young king [Henry III.]; the third, as men say,

For the good Earl of Salisbury, William la longue espee;

The fourth for the Countess; the fifth he set, 'tis said,

For the Bishop of Salisbury, and then no more he laid."

In the old-fashioned war-gear which had been so long unchanged changes were now made which led the way to the gradual disuse of mail in favour of plate armour. To the simple mail-coat were added hose, gloves, and a hood of mail; the helmet was made heavier and closed, save for slits for eyesight and breathing; a breastplate was beginning to be worn in jousts; the shield was lessened to a small triangle; and pieces of hardened leather or of brass or steel-plate were worn on the shoulders and over the knees and elbows, where the mail was weakest. Horsemen bore heavy cutlasses, maces of steel and iron, hammers and picks, and their lances were longer and heavier than before, and used underhand. Englishmen began to take to the longbow, a weapon the power of which was not known before, and

The science of Heraldry, a regular system of marks by the bearing of which a knight might be known and his family clearly shown, was now worked out, in imitation most likely ot the emblems of family and office borne by the Saracens. Shield, pennon, and horse-trappings were painted with the owner's mark or cognizance, while he himself bore his coat of arms, a knee-long, sleeveless frock of linen painted or silk-broidered with the same emblems. Thus the English kings took for their arms three golden leopards on a red shield; the French kings bore silver lily-flowers sprinkled over a blue shield; the Scottish king a rearing red lion within an open red border ornamented with lily-flowers on a gilded shield, just as they still stand in one quarter of the royal arms; the Hastings family bore a lady's sleeve of red upon a gilded shield; the Marshals a red lion on a ground half gold, half green; the Clares three red gables on a gold shield; the Montforts a white double-tailed lion rearing on a red shield.

The fashion of noble men and women's clothes was also changed during the thirteenth century by fresh forms of dresses and new kinds of silk stuff, such as velvet, samite, sendal, baldekin, and of costly furs brought from the East. The shape and make of kirtle or gown, hose and shoes, was still the same; the upper garments varied much. A married lady's dress was shaped like that of a nun's now, with wimple, veil, overgown, and long round mantle; but the wimple was of lawn, the veil of silk, the mantle and gown of precious stuff and bright colours. In winter overgown or surcoat and mantle were furred throughout. Gentlemen wore gowns or surcoats falling below the knee, with embroidered hems. Richard had one of pink silk covered with silver moons and stars. had one of purple samite with the three leopards worked in gold on the back and front. Sometimes they wore shorter frocks called , embroidered at the neck and deeply jagged at the edges of the skirt and sleeves. Both ladies and gentlemen wore hose of fine dyed cloth, and shoes of stained leather, often beautifully embroidered in fretwork. Travellers carried low round hats in bad weather, and clergymen would often have a light linen cap or coif over their tonsured heads; but as a rule all men and unwedded ladies went bareheaded, with a chaplet of flowers on holidays and merry-makings, and at other times a cord or ribbon to keep the hair off the

8. [9]  It is difficult to get at the average cost of living in the thirteenth as compared with former centuries, for tillage was still so rude that a fourfold return was reckoned a good yield, and crops often failed altogether, so that prices varied greatly. Thus the average price of wheat was 4s. 6d. per quarter, but there are years when it sunk as low as is. and others when it rose to 80s. Still on the whole prices seem to have risen since the time of Domesday. A skilled outdoor labourer was paid about 2d. a day, an ordinary workman 1d.; the price of a bullock was about 8s. 6d., of a pig 6d. An acre of good plough-land was worth 6d., meadow-land 3s. or 4s., and wood is. per acre. The labourer at harvest-time was allowed daily two herrings, a quartern barley-loaf, ale to drink, and milk for cheese; his ordinary food was porridge of oatmeal, rye or barley bread, skim-milk, and soft cheese, and rarely he had a meal of stock-fish or of bacon, or perhaps a morsel of salt mutton, or a dish of fresh fish from the river. Game or fresh meat he never tasted. In the towns, though barley-bread and oatmeal porridge were the staple food, the burgess would have meat and kail, and pastry and puddings, and drink ale to his meals instead of water or milk. The population seems to have reached the number of 3,000,000.

[1] Medieval Europe.

[] [1154-1272.]

[2] The English Constitution of the thirteenth century.

[3] Church and Universities.

[4] See Glossary

[5] English writers and English books,1130-1280.

[6] Changes in the English tongue in the thirteenth century.

[7] Towns and craft-guilds.

[8] New fashions in building, arms, and dress.

[9] Food, cost of land and living, population.