R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

Such was English social life before the days of Puritanism; but it must be said, this pleasant freedom of manners was accompanied by much laxity with regard to social ties. Our Venetian visitor found, side by side with English courtesy, an absence of domestic affection which seemed to him altogether amazing: of licentiousness he saw instances in this country, but none of a man in love; and though Englishmen kept jealous guard over their wives, offences against married life could always among them in the end be condoned for money. For their children they seemed to have no affection, sending them out to service in other homes as soon as they reached the age of seven, or nine at the utmost, in order that they might learn manners. These observations are fully confirmed by the evidence of the Paston Letters, where, among other things, we read of a young lady of twenty in a respectable family being repeatedly beaten and having her head broken in two or three places at a time, so that she was inclined to marry an elderly and ill-favoured suitor to escape from her mother’s tyranny.

This painful absence of natural feeling was largely owing to the feudal system of wardships, by which heirs under age were disposed of in marriage without their own consent, and that union which lays the foundation of all social life was commonly made a matter of bargain and sale. It was anything but an ideal condition of society; yet the nation was polite, well ordered, and, on the whole, very submissive to authority. The people loved their King, and even when their affection came to be sorely tried, honoured him with a respectful obedience which later generations found it impossible to pay to his successors.

WE are accustomed to remark on the extraordinary economic changes which have taken place during the last three hundred years. Commercial intercourse has increased enormously; the age of invention has brought about a veritable revolution in the processes of manufacture; and agriculture has been indirectly, but deeply, affected by these influences. Despite the growth, however, in the volume of trade, in the mass of wealth, and in the numbers of the population, similar principles of economic policy and commercial enterprise have been in vogue all this time. The seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries belong to the same period in the world’s history. The turning-point was passed when the age of geographical discovery opened up the possibility of communication between all parts of the globe; and when the seventeenth century began, there had been time for the readjustment of the more limited ambitions of the Middle Ages to the new conditions. Rival nationalities were trying then, as they are to-day, to strengthen their naval and military forces with the aid of resources drawn from distant lands; and a close analogy is observable between the practices which were then pursued by the most progressive countries and some of the expedients which are being proposed at the present time. The commercial struggles and the economic controversies of the seventeenth century may seem petty and trivial; but the atmosphere is perfectly familiar, since they are thoroughly modern in character.

The preceding period of three hundred years with which we are concerned at present-the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries -was also a time of rapid movement in the economic sphere; but the changes which occurred in that era contrast forcibly with those of the modern world. There are few indications of steady growth in those troubled times; they were marked, instead, by the break up of medieval society and the reconstruction of economic organisation on entirely different lines. It is probable that according to modern standards no startling change in the total volume of trade occurred between the reign of Philip the Fair and the accession of Henry of Navarre; but during that time the methods of commercial practice had been fundamentally altered, and the institutions which controlled industrial activity had been remodelled. Although the processes of manufacture and agriculture remained almost the same, there was a veritable revolution in commerce at the close of the Middle Ages; and as its result, every aspect of economic life and every member of the body economic was transformed. The drastic character of these changes will be more easily understood, if we try to compare economic life in the earlier part of the fourteenth century, when medieval institutions were at their best, with the state of affairs at the opening of the seventeenth, when the modern period was already beginning.

The area traversed by fourteenth century merchants was very restricted, when compared with the voyages of Dutch or English traders in the seventeenth century. Medieval Christendom was hemmed in on the east and south by Mohammadan lands; and though Europeans ventured to the borders of these territories and founded factories at many points in them, they could not penetrate into the interior or establish direct commercial connexions with the distant regions which supplied spices and silk. Maritime intercourse was confined to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, the Baltic and the North Sea, and the eastern border of the Atlantic. Within these narrow geographical limits, each commercial community aimed at obtaining a profitable monopoly in some line of trade, and at ousting competitors; this policy gave rise to arbitrary restrictions on trading voyages. The Genoese and the Venetians contended for the possession of the commerce of the Black Sea; Venice succeeded in controlling the trade on the Adriatic and in the valley of the Po; the merchants of the Hanse towns would not admit any rivals in the Baltic. The command of particular harbours carried with it a supremacy in neighbouring waters, and secured the exclusive possession of particular routes so long as coasting voyages were in vogue. The geographical discoveries of the fifteenth century not only opened new regions to maritime intercourse, but they also gave a new form to commercial rivalry. The maintenance of privileged rights at particular ports was less important in the new era when the compass had come into common use; with the wide field for their activities presented by the New World and the now accessible East, merchants no longer confined themselves to struggling for a share of the limited trade which had grown up at special points; statesmen learned to vie with each other in trying to extend the market for goods by establishing factories in remote lands and planting colonies, for this seemed to be the secret of commercial success. Political and commercial considerations were so closely mingled at the opening of the seventeenth century that it is difficult to distinguish the trading enterprise from the military ambition of this period; but at least it may be said that the merchants who were content to abide by the old routes and methods of business were being rapidly deposed from their former supremacy.

As compared with the conditions which prevail in modern days, society in the fourteenth century was very definitely organised in recognised groups. Personal relations were not easily alterable at will; there were few opportunities for change of employment or even for change of residence from one place to another. In rural districts the peasantry were everywhere practically attached to particular estates as serfs; and the artisan classes had but little encouragement to migrate from place to place, though in some callings, such as that of masons, special provision was made for undertaking work in any locality where building was required; while in other instances there seems to have been a recognised period of Wanderjahre. Even the merchants engaged in active trade were forced, as we have seen, to keep to certain routes of commercial connexion, and at other times their operations were confined to transactions in some one class of goods and no other; there was comparatively little freedom for change in any department of trading activity. In the most advanced communities such restrictions had not been swept away entirely even at the beginning of the seventeenth century; but they were much criticised, and the difficulty of enforcing them was increasing.