Life in a Mediaeval City, Illustrated by York in the XVth Century — 03 - Chapter IV: Civil Life, Parliamentary and National Life

A.

CIVIC LIFE

"Parish government formed the unit in the government of the city.

Each parish was a self-governing community, electing its own officers with the exception of its rector, making its own bye-laws, and, to meet expenses, levying and collecting its own rates.

Its constables served as policemen, attended the Sessions, and acted as the fire brigade.

They looked after the parish-trained soldiers, acted as recruiters, and had the care of the parish armour, which was kept in a chest in the church.

They distributed money among lame soldiers, gathered trophy money, relieved cripples and passengers, but unfeelingly conveyed beggars and vagabonds to prison.

The parish soldiers kept watch and ward over the parish defences.

The parish stocks, in which offenders were placed, stood near the churchyard stile.

The constables were also responsible for such lighting as the parish required, and kept the parish lanthorn.

"The officials looked after the parish poor, dispensing charity by gifts of bread and money.

The parish boundaries were perambulated every Ascension Day.

Parish dinners were held on the choosing of the churchwardens, the visitation of the Archdeacon, etc. The parish officials invoked the aid of the law when parochial rights were infringed, especially by neighbours.

The church was the centre of parochial life and in it the business of the parish was transacted.

"Parishes were grouped as wards.

The wards chose city Councillors, and these elected their Aldermen.

The six wards formed the municipality over which presided the Mayor.

The Corporation exercised a general supervision over the whole of the parishes of which there were forty-five.

"Gradually the duties and powers of the various parish officials have been transferred to the City Council.

The united parish soldiers became the city trained bands.

In 1900 the last remnant of parochial officialdom passed into the power of the Corporation when parish overseers ceased to exist, and, for rating purposes, the City of York became one parish instead of the original forty-five separately rated areas."

[1] The Cathedral, _i.

e. _ the Liberty of St. Peter, and the Royal Castle were outside municipal control.

The Archbishops also had their privileges.

They had once owned all the city on the right bank of the Ouse.

In the fifteenth century they still retained many of their privileges and possessions in this quarter, as, for example, the right of holding a fair here in what was formerly their shire.

These archiepiscopal rights have not all lapsed, for in 1807 the Archbishop of the time, successfully asserting his legal rights, saved from demolition the city walls on the west side of the river.

York was a royal borough, that is, the freemen of the city had to pay rent to the king, from whom it was farmed directly.

It was not owned by any knight or lord, that is, apart from the Archbishop's possessions, which belonged to the western section of the city; the city proper was almost entirely on the opposite side of the river.

The King retained possession of certain properties, such as Galtres Forest, lying in the valley stretching northwards from York.

He had a larder and a fish pond at York; also a court, offices, and a prison (Davy Hall, of which the name alone remains) for the administration of the forest.

These town-properties were, of course, entirely extra-parochial.

York received a long succession of royal charters.

Henry I. granted the city certain customs, laws and liberties, and the right to have a merchant guild.

The possession of these rights was confirmed by King John in the first year of his reign.

In 1396 Richard II.

, at York, made the city a county in itself.

In consequence the office of bailiff was replaced by that of sheriff.

The King's official representative in the city was called the sheriff, whose office in York has been continuous down to the present day.

The sheriffs--there were usually two--were responsible for the maintenance of order, for the local soldiery, and the collection of the royal taxes and dues.

The sheriff was a busy and important mediæval official.

The Mayor was the real governor of the city.

He was a powerful official and literally ruler of the city.

In practice he was most often a wealthy and important merchant; and, like the Aldermen, belonged to the group of men who governed the trade guilds as well as the municipality.

Various symbols were attached to his office.

The chief objects among the corporation regalia at the present time are the sword, mace, and cap of maintenance.

There were three city councils, "the twelve," "the twenty-four," and "the forty-eight," as they were called.

There were the Aldermen and Councillors--the "lords" and "commons" of the municipal parliament.

The ordinary council-chamber was at Ouse Bridge: the other was the Common Hall, the present Guildhall.

Sometimes the whole community of citizens met, when for the moment the government of the city became essentially and practically democratic.

This was only done on important occasions to decide broad questions of policy, or when numbers were needed to enforce a decision.

The commons really possessed no administrative power.

The form of civic government was supposed to be representative, but as a matter of fact it was not only not founded on popular election (a procedure enforced in 1835 by the Municipal Reform Act), but was kept exclusively in the hands of the wealthy merchant and trading class, the middle class.

Men of this class became Aldermen.

When a vacancy occurred in the upper house of civic government, they chose a man like themselves.

The Mayor was elected by the Aldermen, who naturally chose one of themselves.

In fact the government of the city was in the hold of a "close self-elected Corporation."

The civic spirit developed a good deal during the fifteenth century, no doubt in connection with the simultaneous increase in the wealth and social pretension of the rising merchant middle class.

It appeared in the greater respect bestowed on the office of Mayor and the pomp and reverence attached to his position.

The "right worshipful" the Mayor and the Aldermen wore rich state robes edged with fur.

In addition, contemporary city records reflect the new spirit in such expressions as "the worshupful cite," "the said full honourabill cite," "this full nobill city."

This spirit, however, developed more fully in the sixteenth century.

The Mayor held his court in the Common Hall, where he heard pleas about apprentices and mysteries (_i.

e. _ the rules of the crafts);

offences against the customs of the city; breaches of the King's peace.

It was his duty to administer the statute merchant.

The Recorder was the official civic lawyer.

The governors of the city were intimately connected with the control of trade, and the rule of the pageants.

These phases of city life overlapped considerably and were interdependent.

Weaving was the principal trade.

The Mayor and Aldermen were the masters of the mysteries of the weavers.

Power to enforce the ordinances of the other mysteries was granted by the Mayor and Corporation.

There were times when the King took the government into his own hands.

This was done during the rebellion of the Percies, a northern family skilled and experienced in rebelling.

Henry IV.

withdrew the right of government from the city in 1405, but he restored it in 1406 after the execution of Archbishop Scrope, who had been so popular with the people of York.

Of mediæval punishments the most obvious were the stocks, a contemporary picture of which is to be seen in one of the stained-glass windows of All Saints', North Street.

Examples of stocks survive in the churchyards of Holy Trinity, Micklegate, and St. Lawrence's. They were near the entrance to the churchyard and commanded full public attention.

The petty offender, condemned to spend so many hours in the public gaze and subject to whatever treatment the public chose to inflict on him, sat on the ground or on a low seat, while his feet were secured at the ankles by two vertical boards.

The upper was raised for the insertion of the ankles in the specially cut-out half-round holes in each board, so that when the boards were touching and in the same vertical plane, the ankles were completely surrounded by wood.

To its political importance York owed the ghastly exhibition of heads and odd quarters of traitors and others who had gained punishment of national importance, which usually consisted of "hanging, drawing and quartering," when the quarters and the head were sent to London and the principal towns of the kingdom to be exhibited on gateways, towers, and bridges.

This practice served to provide the public with convincing proof that a traitor was actually dead, and was very necessary in an age when Rumour, "stuffing the ears of men with false reports" held sway over "the blunt monster with uncounted heads, the still discordant wavering multitude."

Micklegate Bar was so used.

In Shakespeare's _Henry VI.

_ Queen Margaret makes, with reference to the Duke of York, this bitter play of words:-- "Off with his head and set it on York gates;

So York may overlook the town of York."

One very interesting practice in connection with the mediæval system of law and policing was the use of the right of sanctuary.

The monasteries, the Minster, and all churches had this right of giving a sacrosanct safety to criminals and others flying from their pursuers, whether officers of the law or the general mob, whose right, be it noted, it was to join in the chase after offenders (the "hue and cry") and help to arrest them.

Provided the pursued reached the prescribed area, which, in some cases, as at the nationally famous sanctuary of St. John of Beverley, prevailed for some distance from the church itself, he was safe from his pursuers.

Hexham Abbey and Beverley Minster still exhibit their sanctuary chairs or frith-stools.

In the north door of Durham Cathedral there is an ancient, massive knocker, the rapper, of the form of a ring, being held in the mouth of a grotesque head.

The frith-stool, to which the seeker went at once, stood near the high altar at which he made his declarations on oath.

His case was carefully investigated and often sanctuary-seekers were allowed to exile themselves from the kingdom.

The coroner was the public officer of inquiry.

The Church took every care that the crime of breaking the sanctuary so granted was regarded not at all lightly.

The right of sanctuary, after being changed to apply to certain towns only--among them York--continued till it was ended by law in the reign of James I. Condemned heretics were burnt[2] at Tyburn, the site of local executions, some way from Micklegate Bar along the main south road.

B.

PARLIAMENTARY AND NATIONAL LIFE

According to the general principle, the King was the ultimate and absolute owner and ruler of the land and people.

The rights, liberties, customs, and powers possessed by individuals and corporate bodies were specified parts of the royal power which the King had granted on some consideration or other.

Thus, knights, archbishops, and nobles received lands and rights in return for the provision, when required, of military service by themselves and a certain force of their retainers, except that no personal military service was required from the archbishop from the very nature of his calling.

The monasteries and other Church institutions had many possessions and rights.

The Church, which was established in the realm before Parliament, was a very great owner of land.

The authorities of cities, with their trade-guilds, received the right of trading, or holding markets, and of levying tolls or municipal taxes.

They received also the right of making their own local laws or bye-laws.

These authorities, whether individuals or corporate bodies, to whom rights and liberties were granted, had their own officers and laws controlling their liberties.

Besides the King's peace, there were, therefore, the jurisdictions of these various rights granted from the supreme royal authority.

[Illustration: KNIGHTS DOING PENANCE AT A SHRINE.

_From a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript.

_] From York there went to the national Parliament the lord Archbishop of York, the lord Abbot of St. Mary's Abbey, those nobles who resided in the city and were Lords Temporal, and the two representatives of the commonalty of the city.

The body of Lords Spiritual was of great importance in the Middle Ages.

The Convocation of the lords of the Church had itself a share in the governing of the nation as well as of the Church, its own particular sphere.

The Church was one of the most powerful and richest factors in national affairs.

The clear division of the Parliament of the Middle Ages into three groups reflects the sharp divisions that there were between the three great classes of the nation--the nobles, the clergy, the people.

In the fifteenth century, as in other centuries, York was frequently visited by the King.

From time to time, as when the King and Court proceeded north during the wars with Scotland, Parliament was moved to York, where it was held in the Chapter House of the Minster.

Six of the seven windows of the Chapter House contain their original stained glass, in which appear shields of King Edward I. and members of the Court.

The Chapter House was used as a Parliament house during the reigns of the first three Edwards.

The King, in mediæval times, was actual commander-in-chief, and it suited him well for Parliament to meet in the political capital of the north, so that he could continue the civil administration while conducting warfare in the north.

Henry IV.

was in York on several occasions, chiefly because of rebellions.

The house of Percy, which engaged frequently in revolt and faction, led the rebellion of 1403 in which Henry Percy, called Hotspur, was killed at the battle of Shrewsbury.

Harry Hotspur, whom Shakespeare made in accordance with tradition the fiery and valorous counterpart of Prince Hal, Henry IV.'

s heir and Falstaff's companion, was buried in the Minster.

When Archbishop Scrope headed a revolt, also not unconnected with the Percies, from York and was arrested, Henry IV.

hastened to York, and the popular archbishop was executed forthwith, a royal and sacrilegious deed that caused intense indignation especially among the people of York, who for some months lost the right of local government as a result of this affair.

The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), a long internecine feud between kings, lords, and landed gentry, affected the towns but little.

The baronage suffered heavily, the middle class lightly.

No town ever stood a siege, while Towton was the only battle in which the common soldiers had heavy losses.

Warwick made it a practice to spare the commoners, whereby he conciliated the people.

Under Yorkist rule, after the decisive battle of Towton (1461) England can be described as not unprosperous.

One very notable feature was the immense amount of building that was done, and that not so much of castles, as of country houses, churches, and cathedrals, so many of which splendidly adorn the land to-day.

The only people seriously affected by the Wars of the Roses were the main participants.

Compared with modern warfare, which is unabated scientific extermination, mediæval warfare was often of the nature of a mild adventure.

The size of the opposing forces was very small even compared with the scanty population.

The chief weapons were lances, swords, long-bows, and cross-bows, but protective armour was worn.

The fighting was generally sporadic and desultory and the casualties were very few.

It was at York that Henry VI.

awaited the news of the result of the battle of Towton.

Edward IV.

entered York as victor after the battle.

York, like other cities at the time, took care to maintain the good graces of both sets of combatants.

Although through the Wars of the Roses national parliamentary government ultimately broke down and gave way to the strong personal kingship of Henry VII.

, the towns, which actually suffered little, increased their local powers.

Civic

government developed much and trade flourished during the century.

York had a good friend in Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

The city was very loyal to him and helped him by raising troops in his support.

When he visited York he was received with immense festivity and magnificence.

The Mayor and Corporation in their correspondence with him addressed him as "our full tender and especial good lord."

They had to thank him "for his great labour now late made unto ye king's good grace for the confirmation of the liberties of this city."

But for his death at Bosworth, York would have benefited greatly by his munificence.

Henry VII.

was in York in 1487. After Bosworth (1485) the city had assured him of its loyalty.

The marriage of Henry of Richmond, who represented the House of Lancaster, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV.

Duke of York, fittingly followed the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses.

With Henry VII.'

s reign a new era began in English history.

Throughout the century the city could not avoid contact with rival parties and powers.

In spite, however, of rebellions and the Wars of the Roses, the capital of the north managed generally to steer a safe course through many storms.

Other links with national affairs were the periodic visits of the King's judges who travelled on circuit over the country, stopping at important centres to hold assize there.

Their duties consisted not only in settling matters of litigation, but also in reviewing the way in which all the King's affairs were being conducted in each locality.

They supervised the work of the sheriffs.