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Citizenship 1066-1625
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During the Middle Ages the king was seen as God's deputy
- at the apex of a world in which all people had a defined
and static place. The Norman conquest allowed William and
his successors to claim this unrivalled position. From the
king flowed land and justice, administered in descending order
by people appointed to deputise for him. In practice, however,
the complex relationship between the Crown and the three 'estates'
- commons (peasants), clergy and aristocracy - meant that
all monarchs needed the agreement of their subjects to rule
effectively. The nature of this agreement took many forms,
and changed substantially between Norman and Stuart times.
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The most important development was the gradual
inclusion of the opinions and rights of the lowest of the three
estates (the commons) in the shaping of royal policies, laws,
and ideas about how the country should be ruled. This change
was resisted, with the Crown, clergy and aristocracy (nobles,
knights and other landowners) often combining to control the
freedoms of the lower orders. Nevertheless, English history
up to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 witnessed a gradual
rise in the effective influence of the majority of the population.
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| Freedoms and rights for the wider population were
usually obtained only at the expense of the elite. This of course
led to conflict, and many of the laws passed can be interpreted
as instruments for preserving the rights of the few over the
wishes of the many. Life for the vast majority of the population
was determined by their connection to the land and to the church
- since their earthly and spiritual wellbeing was regulated
by the church and by the overlordship of the aristocrats who
owned the land on which they lived and worked. |
Social restrictions on hunting, 1390
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Religion, heresy and the state
For much of the medieval period, challenges to the church's
authority in England were rare. From time to time the conduct
of individual priests and the extent of the pope's influence
provided causes for concern, but it was not until the 1370s
that a heretical religious movement first appeared in England.
To help fund war with France, an Oxford don named John Wycliffe
had been recruited by the Crown to persuade people to pay
more of their taxes to the king, rather than to the pope.
But, instead, Wycliffe began to promote his own ideas. His
followers, known as Lollards, believed that the church was
not essential to an understanding of God, and that translating
the Bible into English would end church control of people's
lives. |
| After Henry IV's accession in 1399, Lollard heresies
were suppressed. Then under Henry V (1413-22) the machinery
of Parliament was used to enforce religious practices approved
by the state, with dissenters prosecuted as criminals - a situation
that continued into the 19th century. Nevertheless, at the beginning
of the 15th century support for Lollardy was widespread among
the aristocracy. Figures such as Sir John Oldcastle hatched
conspiracies and were prosecuted for their beliefs; and the
survival of cells of reformers meant that an underground culture
of religious nonconformity was still thriving at the time of
the Reformation. |
Prosecution of Lollards, 1414
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During the first quarter of the 16th century
the church and state saw a shift in their previously stable
relationship, as common
lawyers
increasingly attacked the jurisdiction of church law and
church courts. Moreover, with the spread of printing and the
popularity of religious tracts among early printed works, it
became difficult for the church to keep strict control over
how private religious ideas and practices differed from established
public conventions. As humanist ideas reached English universities,
around 1500, prosecutions of heretics mounted. By the 1520s,
when Martin Luther's reformist ideas began to circulate in England,
there were already debates about religious practice between
traditionalist and reforming churchmen. As the Reformation
gathered momentum, conflict between Catholics and Protestants
became the dominant political and military force across Europe. |
Land, plague and
economy
At the start of the medieval period, most of the rural population
of England was tied to the land and to lords through manors
held from the king and major nobles. Tenants held and worked
the lord's land in exchange for their labour and payments
of produce. In return, they received the lord's protection.
They had very few rights beyond those granted by their lord,
and the ruling elites (the aristocracy and clergy) were, not
surprisingly, determined to hold on to their own privileges.
Such tied tenants or 'bondmen'
(who might be either serfs
or villeins
) were treated as commodities and, since they had a financial
value, formed part of the lord's estate.
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Tenements for bondmen, 1391
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Second Statute of Labourers, 1351
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This social structure provided officials
and servants for the lord's household, his courts and his personal
lands. The lord's tenants and servants were also his private
army in times of conflict. Many of the English archers that
earned a fearsome reputation during the Hundred Years' War -
at battles such as Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and
Agincourt (1415) - were recruited from the estates of the knights
who were the captains of the English armies. The wars with France
fostered a greater sense of national identity among the country's
rulers (especially during periods of military success such as
the reign of Henry V), but the hardship, disease and fear of
death experienced during medieval campaigns did little to improve
the status of the ordinary soldiers who did most of the fighting. |
The Black Death destroyed perhaps a third of England's
population between 1348 and 1350, and subsequent epidemics of
plague (such as the one in 1361) took a further toll. Nevertheless,
the system of tied labour continued into the 15th century -
and even in the early 16th century disputes regarding 'tied'
status were being brought before the royal courts. Aristocrats,
clergy and some leading members of the commons introduced laws
designed to peg labour prices at pre-plague levels and restrict
the movement of workers. But the massive, rapid drop in population
brought about by the plague had given the surviving peasants
of England real economic power for the first time. Personal
economic freedom, whereby hard toil on the land or at a trade
benefited individuals and their families, rather than a superior
landlord, was an important step towards securing personal rights.
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Act concerning
artificers and labourers, 1514
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(307k) | Transcript |
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