England in the Middle Ages: the Angevins 1154-1216

By Peter Simpson

Following on from the popular first book in this series covering the Norman period, "The Angevins" traces the establishment and growth of the English nation state. Covering the reigns of Henry II, Richard I and the infamous King John, the narrative flows from the ending of the civil war known as the Anarchy to the First Baron's War and the Magna Carta.

With over 190 illustrations and maps, the format has been designed to enable the reader to absorb the essence of the period. This is a serious history book with easy readability.

The author’s encyclopedic knowledge of the English Middle Ages has enabled him to delve into fascinating details of the time and the links with England today to be found in language, institutions and places.

"England in the Middle Ages: The Angevins” is ideal for scholars, students, visitors to England, and for the general history reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664168169

Peter Simpson

Peter Simpson has spent a lifetime studying the history of his native England after graduating from the University of Kent with a B.A. in the subject. His experiences in global business and travel have allowed him to explain the science, technology and business developments of the Middle Ages while his interest in art and architecture brings a sensitive interpretation to the aesthetics of the time. He is a member of the Medieval Academy of America. In writing this series of books on England in the High Middle Ages he has set out to bring this formative period of the British State to scholars, students and the general history reader. Peter and his wife Donna own and manage a specialized Market Research and Consulting firm and live in Lewiston, New York and Estero, Florida with a collection of cats.

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Copyright © 2021 by Peter Simpson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 08/03/2021

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

List of World Heritage Sites Dating to This Period and Featured in these Books.

Foreword

PART ONE

Prologue

Chapter 1 Urban Life

Towns, Cities and Commerce

City Layouts and Roads

Guilds and Trades

City of London

Cities, Real Property and the Law

The Jewish Community

Chapter 2 Life in the Countryside

Parish and Hundred Organization

Life in Manors

Barons, Knights and Tournaments

Building and Bridges

Agriculture, Markets and Economic Cycles

International Trade and Shipping

Chapter 3 Religion

Abbeys, Monasteries and Priories

Church Impact on Cities

England in Europe

Religious Pilgrimage and Relics

The Knights Templar and Hospitaller

Ecclesiastical Art, Music and Wealth

Death and Memoria

Chapter 4 Arts and Sciences

Language and Literature

Contemporary Historical Perspective

Education, Philosophy and Science

Art

PART TWO

Chapter 1 The First Angevin King

Chapter 2 The Early Years of the Reign of Henry II, 1154-1162

Expansion of the Monasteries

The Military Orders

Chapter 3 The Emergence of the English State

The Justice System

The Departments of State

The Exchequer

Seals and Charter Authenticity

Documentation

Management of the Currency

Chapter 4 Women in the Angevin Period

Chapter 5 Royal Justice and the Dispute with the Church, 1162-1172

Chapter 6 Trouble in the Family, 1171-1179

Chapter 7 The Last Decade

PART THREE

Chapter 1 Richard and the Crusades

Chapter 2 A King’s Ransom

Chapter 3 The Lion at Liberty

Chapter 4 The Early Reign of King John, 1200-1203

Chapter 5 Back to France, 1204 – 1206

Chapter 6 Dispute with the Church, 1207 – 1211

Chapter 7 The Loss of France, 1212-1214

Chapter 8 The Road to Runnymede, 1214 – 1216

Chapter 9 The Last Journey

Appendix: Original Documents

The Constitutions of Clarendon

A Translation of the Charter of Absolution of King Henry II 1172 (also known as the Compromise of Avranches)

Assize of Arms 1181

Henry I Coronation Charter

A Translation of the Magna Carta 1215

Bibliography

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1 A reproduction of a Norman village at Montrichet Castle

2 The city walls at York dating from the eleventh to the fourteenth century

3 The Keep at Norwich Castle

4 Typical selection of Medieval food

5 Map of London around 1300

6 The Jew’s House in Lincoln

7 The ruins of Norham Castle in Northumberland

8 The Keep at Newcastle built by Maurice the Engineer

9 Carlisle Castle

10 The ruins of Hadleigh Castle in Essex

11 A wall built of sea stones at Baconsthorpe Castle in Norfolk

12 The remains of the medieval bridge at Exeter in Devon

13 A drawing of Exeter showing the stone bridge

14 Map of Shrewsbury from A Tour in Wales by Thomas Pennant

15 Tarr Steps on Exmoor, Devon

16 The Cloisters at Cîteaux

17 Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire

18 Another view of Rievaulx Abbey.

19 The Monk’s dormitory at Cleeve Abbey in Somerset

20 A model of the original Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds

21 The Norman Gate and Bell Tower at St. Edmunds Abbey

22 Southwell Minster in Nottinghamshire

23 The nave of Southwell Minster

24 The Ruins of Roche Abbey in South Yorkshire

25 The West Portico of Peterborough Cathedral.

26 The flying buttresses of York Cathedral

27 The soaring nave at Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire

28 Durham Cathedral exterior.

29 Durham Cathedral interior.

30 The West End of Wells Cathedral in Somerset.

31 Beverley Minster.

32 Malmesbury Abbey church and ruined chancel

33 The south porch at Malmesbury

34 The south porch at Malmesbury showing Christ in Majesty

35 Ely Cathedral. The West Tower

36 Hereford Cathedral

37 The Shrine of the Three Magi, 1180, Cologne Cathedral.

38 The Basilica in Maastricht, The Netherlands

39 Trinity Chapel Canterbury

40 Windows from Trinity Chapel Canterbury

41 Polignac with a church on top of one of the many volcanic plugs

42 Interior of the circular choir of the Templar Church in London.

43 Exterior View of the Templar Church in London

44 A Page from Orm’s manuscript showing his edits

45 Laon Cathedral

46 A painting from the Bury Bible

47 The Winchester Bible, twelfth century

48 From the Calendar in the Hunterian (or York) Psalter

49 Late twelfth century windows at Canterbury Cathedral

50 Older buildings (but later than our period) in the English Weald

51 Chartres Cathedral

52 Detail of a stained-glass window in Chartres Cathedral

53 The effigies of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in Fontevraud Abbey

54 The Norman Entrance to St. Christopher’s Church in Winfrith, Dorset

55 A Reconstruction of Wigmore Castle

56 The view from the ruins of Bridgnorth Castle

57 The Cathedral at Poitiers

58 Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in the window of Poitiers Cathedral

59 Harbottle Castle

60 St. Andrew’s Church, Sempringham, Lincolnshire

61 A reproduction of a seal of the Knights Templar

62 White Notley Church

63 A reconstruction of Northampton Castle

64 A reconstruction of Northampton Castle

65 The ruins of Buildwas Abbey

66 Model of Old Sarum from the West

67 Gisors Castle in Normandy, built in this octagonal form by Henry I

68 The Keep of Richmond Castle

69 Ruins of the original part of Battle Abbey built by William I

70 A section of the Pipe Roll for 1194

71 Henry II short cross silver penny

72 A series D Tealby penny dating to 1168-1170

73 A Henry II half penny

74 The nave of Lincoln Cathedral

75 Canterbury Cathedral today

76 Henry II and Thomas Becket in disputation

77 The remnants of Clarendon Palace, Wiltshire

78 Henry II confronting Becket

79 The Cathedral of St. Etienne at Sens

80 The thirteenth century fortifications at Fougères

81 The Castle at Chinon today

82 The Basilica of St. Sernin in Toulouse

83 The Church of the Holy Trinity in Bosham, West Sussex

84 Castle ruins at Domfront in Normandy

85 Thomas Becket sails to England

86 Saltwood Castle c. 1830

87 The Ruins of Knaresborough Castle in north Yorkshire

88 The interior of Canterbury Cathedral

89 Young Henry being served with a toasting cup by his father

90 Aerial View of the Ruin of Bonneville-sur-Touques Castle

91 Berwick on Tweed as seen from across the estuary

92 Framlingham Castle

93 Alnwick Castle as it appears today

94 The Bargate, part of the city defenses of Southampton

95 Rocamadour in the Dordogne

96 The tomb of Young Henry in Rouen Cathedral

97 The Gate at Clerkenwell Priory as it appeared in the 1⁸th Century

98 Notre Dame in Paris

99 Crusader Citadel at Le Sephorie (now Zippori)

100 The Horns of Hattin, showing the arid nature of the battlefield

101 The Monastery of St. Sabbas (Mar Saba in Arabic)

102 The town of Saumur today, seen from the site of Henry’s castle.

103 The view from the twelfth century castle of Fresnay-sur-Sarth

104 Perveril Castle, remote in the Derbyshire Peak District

105 A view of Lincoln Castle

106 The small town of Vézelay today

107 The Abbey of Vézelay

108 The old city of Acre

109 The Old City of Jaffa

110 View from the Templar castle at Latrun

111 The ruins of Dürnstein Castle on the River Danube

112 Trifels Castle

113 Nottingham Castle

114 The Chậteau Galliard

115 The view of Les Andelys from the Chậteau Galliard

116 Châlus Castle

117 King Richard’s tomb at Fontrevault

118 Baron Carlo Marochetti’s equestrian statue of Richard I

119 Rouen Cathedral

120 The village of Lavardin

121 The Castle walls at Angers

122 The ruined priory at Dunwich

123 Mont Orgueil Castle

124 The keep at Guildford Castle

125 The ruins of Chateau D’Arques-la-Battaille, near Dieppe

126 The Abbey of Fontaine Guerard in Radepont

127 Corfe Castle in Dorset

128 Ruins of Falaise Castle

129 Ruins of Falaise Castle showing the Keep

130 Chateau Galliard at Les Andelys on the Seine

131 The Ruins of the Keep at Knaresborough Castle

132 Niort Castle

133 The cathedral at Poitiers

134 The twelfth century church of the Abbey aux Dames in Saintes

135 The ruins of St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury

136 The ruins of John’s Castle at Odiham

137 Chichester Cathedral in Sussex

138 Haverfordwest Castle as it appeared in 1794

139 An Impression of St. Thomas’ Chapel on London Bridge

140 Brougham Castle in Northumberland

141 The cathedral at Soissons

142 Portchester Castle looking much as it did in John’s time

143 A fourteenth century image of Prince John fighting the French

144 A halberd head

145 Peyrusse-le-Roc Castle in the Dordogne

146 The bridge of St. Martial, Limoges

147 The St. Jacques Gate and bridge at Parthenay

148 Worcester Cathedral still appears much as it did in 1214

149 The ruined keep of Knepp Castle

150 Warkworth Castle

151 The keep at Rochester Castle

152 The ruins of Pontefract Castle

153 The ruins of Dunbar Castle and the entrance to the harbor

154 Hedlingham Castle keep

155 A fragment of the London Wall

156 A view of a section of wall at Richborough Castle

157 The ruins of the shell keep of Farnham Castl

158 Dover Castle. It had the last square keep built in England

159 Replica of the water lifting system in the Keep at Dover Castle

160 The High Weald looking north from the South Downs

161 Newark Castle

162 King John’s tomb in Worcester Cathedral

LIST OF MAPS

Map 1. The principal cities of England in 1150

Map 2. Winchester in 1148

Map 3. Richard I’s official tournament sites

Map 4. England and Gascony

Map 5. Historic Coastal Wetlands of Eastern and South Eastern England

Map 6. Major Cities besieged during the Anarchy

Map 7. The main sites of pilgrimage in England, Wales, Gascony and Spain in the twelfth century

Map 8. France, Poitou and Toulouse. The campaigns of 1159

Map 9. Ranulf de Glanville’s offices in Northern England

Map 10. The location of significant meetings between Henry II and Thomas Becket

Map 11. The campaign of 1164

Map 12. The locations of Domfront and Fétreval and Henry II’s travel 1170

Map 13. The flight of the Young King Henry

Map 14. The realignment of power in France, 1181-1182

Map 15. The campaigns of 1187

Map 16. Henry II’s last journey

Map 17. The routes of the Third Crusade

Map 18. Richard I’s route home from the Third Crusade

Map 19. The key points in France 1195-1196

Map 20. King John’s escape

Map 21. The campaigns of 1201

Map 22. King John’s campaign in France 1214.

Map 23. The military situation in July 1214

Map 24. King John’s last military campaign

Map 25. King John’s movements following the signing of the Magna Carta

Map 26. The Fall 1215 campaign in South East England

Map 27. The campaigns of 1216

List of World Heritage Sites Dating to This

Period and Featured in these Books.

England

• Canterbury Cathedral

• Cornwall and West Devon (tin and silver) Mining Landscape

• St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury

• St. Martin’s Church, Canterbury (the oldest church in England)

• Durham Castle and Cathedral

• Westminster Abbey

• Fountains Abbey

• Tower of London

France

• Amiens Cathedral

• Avignon – Historic Center

• Bourges Cathedral

• Chartres Cathedral

• The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes

• Mont St. Michel

• Provins (town of medieval fairs)

• Routes to Santiago de Compostela

• Toulouse

• Vezelay Church and Hill

Germany

• Aachen Cathedral

• Cologne (Koln) Cathedral

Israel

• Acre – Old City

• Jerusalem – Old City and Walls

Italy

• Palermo – Anglo-Norman

Lebanon

• Tyre

Spain

• Santiago Compostela

• Routes of Santiago Compostela

• Toledo

Syria

• Krak du Chevaliers (AKA Crac des Chevaliers)

List of World Heritage Sites Dating to This Period and Featured in these Books.

England

• Canterbury Cathedral

• Cornwall and West Devon (tin and silver) Mining Landscape

• St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury

• St. Martin’s Church, Canterbury (the oldest church in England)

• Durham Castle and Cathedral

• Westminster Abbey

• Fountains Abbey

• Tower of London

France

• Amiens Cathedral

• Avignon – Historic Center

• Bourges Cathedral

• Chartres Cathedral

• The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes

• Mont St. Michel

• Provins (town of medieval fairs)

• Routes to Santiago de Compostela

• Toulouse

• Vezelay Church and Hill

Germany

• Aachen Cathedral

• Cologne (Koln) Cathedral

Israel

• Acre – Old City

• Jerusalem – Old City and Walls

Italy

• Palermo – Anglo-Norman

Lebanon

• Tyre

Spain

• Santiago Compostela

• Routes of Santiago Compostela

• Toledo

Syria

• Krak du Chevaliers (AKA Crac des Chevaliers)

FOREWORD

This is the second book in a series about the history of England in the High Middle Ages. The preceding volume, The Normans, is already published and successive volumes on the Plantagenets are due to start being published in late 2022 or 2023.

Much has been written of the Norman, Angevin, and Plantagenet period and most of the original sources from that time are freely available in modern English, online or in older books. There are many fine studies of the period written mostly by academics, often quite narrow in scope, organized into topics rather than sequential events, and can be very expensive to purchase. I have drawn on them all, but my objective is to produce a series of books which is affordable, readable, accurate, well balanced, and covers a broad range of time and topic, organized in chronological order to tell the story in terms of the flow of events and socio-economic trends.

As our story begins, the nineteen-year civil war which history has labelled The Anarchy has come to a close, as neither of the two warring factions could achieve victory. The Empress Matilda, Henry I’s daughter and only surviving legitimate child, had quit the fight, and her staunchest supporter, Robert of Gloucester had died. On the other side, King Stephen’s eldest son Eustace was soon to die. The Church had brokered a peace based on Henry of Anjou becoming Henry II of England on Stephen’s death, which occurred less than a year after the Peace of Wallingford was concluded.

In this way the eighty-eight-year dynasty of the Normans gave way to the Angevins who lasted just fifty-four years with three kings.

The Norman Conquest had turned into an act of colonization in which thousands of Anglo-Saxon earls and churchmen had been displaced by as few as 200 Norman and allied barons and bishops. The rise of the stone castle and the relative supremacy of defense over attack adversely affected the population at large. Instead of small groups of well-armed men settling disputes in battle, warfare became a giant game of chess, with a large dose of Monopoly, in which the siting and occupation of castles and defended towns and cities created powerful zones of influence. Well defended castles could seldom be reduced quickly. Starvation and disease were the defenders’ main enemies and the tedious task of undermining the walls, where that was even possible, the major threat. The quickest way to defeat a rival was to devastate their land, burning cottages, mills, barns, and other assets, driving off livestock and killing or chasing away the inhabitants. Such devastation could affect an area for generations.

A significant change in this period was the development of a cash economy. Money depended on the intrinsic value of the precious metal from which it was made, almost entirely silver at this time. The discovery of large deposits of silver in Germany in the second half of the twelfth century boosted the money supply of Europe and helped enable the commutation of feudal military service to a cash payment, which was used in turn to hire mercenaries. These were often younger sons of barons for whom little or no land could be found. It also enabled service rents to be commuted to money rents and in doing so helped drive the growth of towns and cities.

Castles were not the only major stone buildings springing up. Religious houses, abbeys, monasteries, convents, priories, and friaries were being established everywhere. Ahead of the cathedral building boom, which was to follow, these religious institutions spread progress in medicine, mechanical engineering, creative arts, and literacy, representing a church that was a great temporal and well as spiritual power and thus very wealthy.

At the beginning of the Angevin regime the war between the Empress Matilda and King Stephen for the throne of England was in part driven by a barony that was heavily invested in properties in both England and what is now northern and western France. The barons required a leader who would defend and secure both and they were willing to meet the costs of doing so. After Henry II’s death in 1189 there were many barons with mainly or entirely English holdings who, along with the population at large, were less supportive of the ruinous cost of fighting the French.

In attempting to describe what life was like and how the events and violence of this time affected the ordinary people of England, we are confronted by having little in terms of contemporary records. We must piece together what there is with the historical and archeological efforts of many scholars. Inevitably I am drawing some inferences, and I have tried to be open about this with phrases such as we have to imagine or it might have been the case and so on. I want to help the reader see the people of this time as not too different from us. True, they did not have the printing press, did not have the skill of perspective drawing or painting, had lost much of the knowledge and science of the Greeks and Romans, and had only a rudimentary understanding of physics and chemistry, but their emotional, reasoning, and social and economic processes were very similar to our own. I hope this comes through in the content.

Another point of emphasis is the role played by a small number of remarkable women who stood at their husband’s side (or often managed affairs while they were gone campaigning) and did as well or better than many men in the most challenging of circumstances. Women at this time could inherit substantial resources and positions and be wealthy and powerful in their own right.

The Angevins were kings of England who were counts of Anjou as well as having Anglo—Norman antecedents. The word Angevin originates from their county capital of Angers. The Empress Matilda was never undisputed Queen of England but contended for the throne with King Stephen for nearly 20 years. She was married to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and with him founded the Angevin dynasty of her successors Henry II, Richard I, and King John, Angevins all.

The term Angevin Empire is often used, but of course there was no Angevin Emperor. This neologism did not come about until the nineteenth century and was not used at the time of these events. The whole area was the personal fiefdom of the king of England. With that title came a whole string of duchies and counties in France, for some of which the English king was a vassal of the king of France.

This period is one in which a recognizable nation-state of England was emerging, with a central government, financial management system, and justice system that can be seen as direct predecessors of the systems in place today. It was also a time when the feudal system was at the very beginning of its decline, to be replaced by a cash economy. Even the idioms of the day were becoming familiar. Writing his question-and-answer manual on the English Treasury, Richard de Lucy around 1180 wrote as a response to a question from his student Magna quaestio est quae which translates exactly as That’s a great question! We might as well be listening to a business meeting or classroom session in the twenty-first century. We are used to looking at the Middle Ages through the lens of Shakespeare, Hollywood, and dry, event driven history, but life was no more formal, no more stilted, no less human than it is today. Without too much speculation this book seeks to engage the reader with the human side of Angevin England alongside the events and culture of the period.

The events narrated here include a bewildering number of characters, many of whom have the same name; there is a plethora of Williams, Henrys, Roberts and Matildas. There was also a broad geographical scope, including political borders that no longer exist. I have tried to make all this as clear as possible and to make this an enjoyable and easy book to read. To help the reader keep all the people’s names straight I generally spell out their full title like Henry II or King Richard. This may be a bit tedious, but it means that the reader does not have to stop and wonder who a particular player is.

There were many titles such as John Fitz Smith, Fitz meaning son of. At that time and later the spelling varied. Fitz was run together with the last name in many cases. As far as possible I have used the original spellings, which accounts for the inconsistences you will see.

Compared to later centuries there is relatively little remaining of eleventh and twelfth century architecture, literature, poetry, and music. In art we have a certain amount of stained glass and objects as well as charters, legal documents, and books. All this represents the intelligentsia and the influential. I have been careful to select illustrations that show items and buildings from the period.

A huge debt of gratitude is owed to my friend Caroline (Connie) Stuckert, Ph.D., editor and contributor to The People of Early Winchester (Oxford University Press, 2017) who undertook the daunting task of editing the manuscript and challenging many of my assumptions and interpretations. She improved the book greatly and all remaining errors of fact or judgment are mine alone.

Thanks are also due to Professor Martin Biddle and the Winchester Excavations Committee for the use of a map of medieval Winchester, and to James A. Galloway for the use of his map of the coastline of medieval England. Painton Cowen, an outstanding expert of medieval stained glass, was most helpful and has allowed me to use images from his website TheRoseWindow.com.

No words can express my gratitude to my wife, Donna, for sharing my interest, tolerating my obsession, and actively helping, especially in the matter of photographs and illustrations.

Please enjoy this excursion into English medieval history.

Angevin%20Family%20Tree.jpg

Angevin Genealogical Table

PART ONE

LIFE IN ENGLAND IN THE

LATE TWELFTH CENTURY

PROLOGUE

The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it.

Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography, 1937

England is a country of green and blue. Rolling country, its highest peak is Scafell Pike in the Lake District at just over 3,200 feet (975 meters), and nowhere is it extensively flat except in East Anglia. Rivers and streams are mostly short but are numerous; only two are over 200 miles (320 kilometers), the Severn and the Thames, and many come in around 75 miles (120 kilometers). Every type of temperate landscape can be found, from mountain to rolling downs and from marshes to tall and demanding moors. Within an area of only 50,000 square miles (130,000 square kilometers) it displays to this day great diversity and beauty (by comparison New York State in the United States covers 54,000 square miles).

The size of the population and the details of the landscape in our period are somewhat controversial but for our purposes generalities are sufficient. Where today 55 million people make their home in England (1,100 for every square mile), by the end of the Anarchy and the accession of Henry II there were perhaps two to two and half million, or around 45 people for every square mile.¹ Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were much less populous, much more barren.

The population of England was diverse. It was principally made up of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Danish stock. A very small number of people of Norman descent made up almost the entire aristocracy and higher ecclesiastical hierarchy.

If we could fly low and slow over the land at the end of the Anarchy, we would find a swath from Yorkshire in the Northeast through the Midlands and down to the South Coast dotted with nucleated villages surrounded by large communally worked fields. Associated pastures, woods, rivers, and ponds provided all the needs of a rural and agrarian life. If it were March or April, we would see men and boys out with teams of six or eight oxen plowing the rich, heavy soil. If it were August, whole families would be in the fields gathering wheat or other cereals into staves, ready to be threshed and taken to the Lord’s mill for grinding into flour. If it were September, we might see groups gathering acorns and kindling, or harvesting naturally growing fruit trees. In the cottages, wives would be brewing beers and ciders. Here and there we would see great abbeys and monasteries or lesser priories, also with outlying farms and worked fields. Often the abbey would have large flocks of sheep or mining operations and quite complex outbuildings. Cities and towns often would be in view, with signs of expansion and improvement. Stone masons might be raising defensive boundary walls or building new homes and workshops outside the walls. Some larger villages would show defensive earthworks left over from recent fighting. However, we might see some urban areas partially ruined. If we flew over Lincoln or Winchester, we would see them still partly burnt out with their walls demolished. Here and there we would see it was market day. Local inhabitants would be driving livestock or carrying or carting in their surplus production for sale in the nearest town. In a few small cities built within old Roman encampments, such as Chester, we see some remnant of Roman discipline, with streets laid out in rectangular fashion on a clear north-south and east-west axis of major roads, but that was already breaking down into the familiar maze of erratic lanes. This disorder was not to be challenged until Christopher Wren and others proposed rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666, and William Penn and others laid out cities such as Philadelphia in the New World in an age of rationality. Peering at these English cities today on Google Earth®, it is almost impossible to see any order within the line of the old town walls.

Illus%201%20Norman%20Village%20bw.jpg

Illustration 1. A reproduction of a Norman village at Montrichet Castle in Essex showing the simple timber palisading that provided a degree of protection.

Everywhere we would see stone Norman churches built in the Romanesque style with their graveyards and priests’ cottages. The Norman Gothic style, with its pointed rather than rounded arches and window frames, would shortly be putting in its first appearance. We would see stone castles with their moats and outworks, their stables and armories, food stores and kitchens. If we were lucky, we might see the king or a great noble in progress with his retinue of knights, clerks, officials, justices, clerics, carts, and baggage as they traveled around the country living off of their land holdings and settling disputes. Barely inhabited parts of the country were made up of moors and heaths, mountains, and marshes, but even here isolated farms or hamlets could be seen, often with sheep flocks representing the main activity.

This was the England that Henry of Anjou, King Henry II, came to rule.

The rebellions of Henry II’s sons would not have much physical, or even economic, effect on England during his kingship. Henry’s reign was characterized by control and a reasonable degree of predictability which allowed economic growth and population expansion.

There were a number of drivers of economic and population growth. One was the expanding money supply driven by large discoveries of mineable silver in Germany. Another was improvement in agricultural productivity and the amount of land under cultivation. The latter came from both land drainage and from assarting, the practice of turning Royal Forest or baron’s woodland over to cultivation for cash rent, which accelerated under the reigns of Richard and John.

Anyone living at the time might have assumed that England was in for a long period of peace and prosperity.

CHAPTER ONE

Urban Life

Towns, Cities and Commerce

The growth in abbeys and monasteries was paralleled by the growth in towns and cities. Some had their early beginnings in Church administration when bishops became natural leaders as the Roman administration of England dissolved. Cathedrals eventually grew up on or near the sites of Roman towns including Chester, Canterbury, York, Gloucester, Exeter, Lincoln, London, Chichester, Winchester, and St. Albans. Roman sites not only had the advantages of (often) defensive walls and a ready supply of building stone but also the remnants of the Roman road system. Others originated in the ninth century, when King Alfred and his thanes built burhs² with a road network for defense against incursions, principally from Denmark. These were defended towns of some sophistication. Winchester, for example, was equipped with a new water supply and grid street system.³ Other burhs included Southampton, Portchester, Hastings, Lewes, Wilton, Warwick and Worcester, all of which feature in this book. Still more towns developed around the larger castles built by the Normans, such as Alnwick in the North and Arundel in the South.

Markets, light industries, and, during the period we are covering, town governments chartered by the Crown gradually developed in these towns. They all had open areas where crops could be grown and livestock and poultry kept, but they increasingly traded goods and services for agricultural produce from the surrounding area.

Map%201%20Main%20Cities%201150300.jpg

Map 1. The principal cities of England in 1150.

As the map shows, most of the major cities in 1150 are familiar names today as cathedral and county towns. However, a clutch of port towns in Lincolnshire and Norfolk, including King’s Lynn, also make the grade because of their importance in international trade, and they are addressed below.

Following the damaging period of the Anarchy, urban areas flourished once again. As much as abbeys were usually established in remote areas, English cathedrals were almost exclusively urban creations. Each with their sacred relics, association with a saint, and wondrous architecture, they were centers of wealth, artistry, and pilgrimage. Towering over their cities and visible for miles around, they purchased many goods and services, owned considerable land, and exercised great influence. In England, the presence of a cathedral defined a city. The archbishop or bishop was a very powerful official in city life and national government. While there might often be a royal castle with its constable and garrison, the main secular power was increasingly made up of merchants, moneyers and money lenders. The emergence of a wealthy merchant class was paired with the need for King John and King Richard to sell privileges to support their military operations. Selling charters for markets, fairs, and ultimately city self-government was very attractive because they stimulated economic activity and did not reduce assets owned by the Crown, as did the granting of lands or tax exemptions.

Some fairs became major international events. The Stourbridge Fair near Cambridge was chartered by King John in 1199 to support a leper chapel and colony. It grew to be one of the largest and best attended fairs in Europe, with international traders and merchants participating. Then there were many smaller fairs. The Benedictine Nunnery at Elstow in Bedfordshire, founded in 1078 by Judith, Countess of Bedford and a niece of William I, was granted a fair by Henry I. In 1170 Henry the Young King (Henry II’s eldest son) found it necessary to write to the reeves and burgesses of Bedford, the county town, not to molest men coming to the fair (a sure sign that they had been molested), and not to infringe on privileges granted to the fair by both Henry I and his father.

Portsmouth, an up-and-coming naval base in the process of being fortified, needed an economic base to support it. It was not mentioned in the Domesday Book although a number of small settlements that eventually became a part of the town were. To promote the formation of a town in 1194 King Richard granted that:

… the citizens of Portsmouth have every week in the year on one day in the week, on Thursday, a market with all the liberties and free customs which our citizens of Winchester or Oxford or others of our lands have… And we have established and given and granted a fair to continue, once a year, for fifteen days at the Feast of St. Peter’s Chains. (August 1st)⁴

These grants, dearly paid for by the towns that received them, had to be planned for, the money gathered by subscription of those who stood to benefit, petitioned, and finally chartered. Portsmouth had already been enhanced by a chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket, built in 1184 by the monks of nearby Southwick Priory.

Monarchs did not only grant markets but also established local monopolies. Jocelin of Brakelond recorded that the monks of Ely established a fair at Lakenheath, 16 miles (26 kilometers) northeast of Bury St. Edmunds, and thus negatively impacted business at Bury’s market. The Abbot at Bury offered a payment for Ely to desist, but they refused. In 1202, King John responded to the Abbot of Bury’s petition to have his registrar review the terms of his charter authorizing Ely’s market. It was discovered that the terms of that charter were that it was not to be to the detriment of their neighbors. King John put the matter to rights by issuing a writ that no market could be held within the liberty of St. Edmund’s without the abbot’s agreement. In typical form John extracted 40 silver marks from St. Edmund’s for this justice.⁵

Charters for towns and cities were of different types. In 1156, for example, Oxford was granted that it shall be quit of toll and passage and all the customs throughout all England and Normandy by land and water, by the coast of the sea.⁶

By 1100 there were 169 markets and eight fairs in England, which in 1200 had grown to 356 markets and 146 fairs.⁷ This meant that in 1200 there was one market for every 140 square miles (225 square kilometers). As 140 square miles can be made up of a square just 12 miles (19 kilometers) a side, almost everybody was within a day’s journey of a market, which were held on one, or sometimes two, days per week. Access to large markets promoted competition and restrained prices, rather like driving to a superstore instead of shopping in your neighborhood.

The broader charters granted a large measure of self-government. In the twelfth century London, Canterbury, Dover, Lincoln, Nottingham, Norwich, Oxford, Newcastle, Southampton, and Bristol were chartered with self-government. London was especially favored because of its power and its role as the seat of royal government. The burgesses appointed their own sheriff and judges and collected all the dues which formerly had been paid by the inhabitants of the county to the King. In return, every year the Londoners paid £300 sterling to the King. In addition, court trials for Londoners were to be held only in London.⁸

Provincial cities benefited as well. In an 1157 charter Henry II promised Lincoln that any man who bought property and occupied it for a year and a day without challenge was confirmed in ownership in perpetuity and that any man who came into the city and dwelt for a year and a day should be a free citizen.⁹ This meant that a runaway serf would become a freeman if he could just survive for that one year, and with more and more labor required in the towns his new employer had both a motive to keep him free and to keep a hold over him until that freedom was established. As the mortality rate in towns and cities was higher than in the country, a constant stream of urban immigrants was required.¹⁰

The cumulation of charters could become very complex. Fordwich was a port town on the River Stour, 2.6 miles (4 kilometers) east of Canterbury, in Kent. In the twelfth century the Stour was navigable to Fordwich and met the Wantsum Channel which ran from Sandwich on the east coast to Reculver on the north Kent coast (see Map 5 below). The channel has long since silted up and Fordwich is now miles inland.¹¹ Over time those granted exemption from tolls at Fordwich included all the freemen of the Cinque Ports, the burgesses of Canterbury, the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the freemen of the town of Milton Regis, which lay on the north Kent coast and was the shipping route to London. The men of the abbeys of St Albans (north of London) and Battle near the Sussex coast were also exempt from Fordwich tolls. Both abbeys were major trading partners with Canterbury and held lands in the area. The traders of Antwerp, and the lords and freemen of Guînes and the adjacent Fiennes near the French coast around Calais, also were granted freedom of Fordwich tolls.¹² They lay on the trading routes from the French and German hinterlands.

The key market for grains from the north Kent coast was the City of London. This coast is the southern boundary of the Thames Estuary, which is naturally tidal up to and beyond the London bridge. Agricultural produce, which has a relatively low value to volume/weight ratio, could be economically boated up the river on the incoming tide. No wonder that the Archbishop of Canterbury and Christ Church Priory (Canterbury) held many large manors here and so carefully guarded their privileges and level of competition.¹³

These developments led to the newly emerging merchant class grasping the reins of city governance and beginning their long climb to becoming pre-eminent over the land-owning classes. It ultimately took 600 years and required the Industrial Revolution to push them over the line.

Professor Bartlett provides a fascinating case study, that of Stratford-upon-Avon, famous now as the birthplace of William Shakespeare. By the late twelfth century it was a manor of 42 villeins and some small holders belonging to the Bishop of Worcester. A new incumbent bishop, John of Coutances, a nephew of the Bishop of Lincoln, was elected to the see in January 1196. He decided that a borough would be created at Stratford with a weekly market and burbage holdings paying one shilling a year. Within 50 years the cash value of the holding rose from 16 shillings per year to £12 per year¹⁴ plus all kinds of other fines and tolls.

Cities and towns stood on land, which was the ultimate value and unit of account, not just for area occupied, but also for goods and services generated by it and flowing across it, justice dispensed within it, and so on. Over time, cities and towns negotiated fixed annual cash payments to cover all these dues. They had to put in place mechanisms for fairly distributing these obligations and collecting and paying the cash amounts due, which in turn sponsored communal responsibility and identity and, no doubt, disputes.

Throughout the Norman and Angevin periods (1066-1216) the merchant class had little or no national political voice. They did not attend royal councils, church synods, or chapter meetings. Their political power was restricted to their own town or city. There was no sense of common interest or concerted action between centers. In fact, the opposite was true, as each urban center strove to equal and exceed the privileges bestowed on its rivals. Only at the end of the Angevin dynasty, when King John was tapping into cities for money for his wars and the barons were at war with him, do we see any emergence of urban power in the provisions of the Magna Carta, discussed in detail later.

A new office arose, that of Mayor or Lord Mayor, inspired by similar positions on the Continent. The first Mayor of London was elected under the charter granted by King John upon his accession to the throne in 1189. Henry Fitz Ailwin was the first to hold the post. He was of English origin; his grandfather, Leofstan, had been Portreeve of London (from port, a market or walled town and reeve, a high-ranking supervisory official) under Henry I. Henry Fitz Ailwin was a draper, his business being in cloth; he was very wealthy and influential, holding lands in Hertfordshire, Surrey, and Kent. He held the position of Mayor until his death in 1212.

City Layouts and Roads

Cities were the nodal points of the road system that further encouraged the redevelopment of Roman community sites linked by the still surviving metaled Roman roads. Looking down on the cathedral cities on Google Earth® we can often pick out the line of the walls, main thoroughfares that cross in the middle, street names like Westgate and Eastgate, Wall Street and Ditch Road. Beyond those crossing streets and lacking the Roman disciplined city governments, properties and streets developed all higgledy-piggledy.¹⁵ There are exceptions and contrasts, however. Looking at the map of modern Oxford (a defensive burgh originally laid out by King Alfred), we see many streets crossing roughly at right angles reflecting an ancient grid pattern, while the streets of the City of London north and east of the Tower ramble aimlessly, perhaps because the old Roman walls encompassed a great area and control was more difficult. The main streets were fronted by inns, shops, and merchant’s homes. In the back streets we find the artisans’ houses and shops, and everywhere churches and chapels. While in the eleventh century we might have seen open spaces and small holdings within the walls, by the later part of the twelfth century most cities and towns were fully built up and the urban sprawl was extending outside the walls, compromising the defensibility of the city. In the optimistic short-term thinking of humankind, few people thought that the city would have to be defended again.

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Map 2. Winchester in 1148.

Reproduced by permission of the Winchester Excavations Committee

For the most part city walls were a corporate, not a royal, investment. They had a value beyond defense. They often delineated the town or city and the extent of its jurisdiction. Gates enabled control of who came and went, ensuring that certain goods potentially competing with guild produced wares were not admitted, that tolls could be collected, and that criminals could be detected. In some cases, gates existed without continuous walls and were more for the regulation of commerce than defense.

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Illustration 2. The city walls at York dating from

the eleventh to the fourteenth century.

Walls also spoke to the wealth of a city that not only could afford the walls but had a level of wealth needing defending. Built to look imposing from the outside, they were a part of the urban ego. When Henry II tore down the defenses of Lincoln as punishment for its participation in the 1173-1174 revolt, he was doing more than destroy its military capacity, he was emasculating the city community.

Not all cities had defenses at this point. The city walls of Norwich, for example, were not begun until 1294, which further demonstrates that defense was not the only role of walls.¹⁶ The city was not defenseless though. There was a strong stone castle with a square keep on a motte which dates to about 1100 when the original Norman motte was made higher and the foundations laid.

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Illustration 3. The Keep at Norwich Castle.

We must not suppose that all towns had walls or earthworks at any point in their history. Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire is a small market town which became very wealthy in succeeding centuries, based on the wool trade. It contains 256 listed buildings of historical interest, but few, if any, from our period. Lower High Street runs through the center and the properties on the north side of the street each stand at the head of a long narrow lot which stretches back 300 feet (91 meters) to a street called Back Ends. Chipping Campden never had a defensive wall or a large castle. Its layout mimics that of many other eleventh and twelfth century villages, with houses close together for mutual support and community life and thin strip gardens running back from them. This suggests that Chipping Campden grew up from an agricultural village into a small market town and then a trade center. Chipping comes from cēping, the Anglo-Saxon word for market.¹⁷

Boston in Lincolnshire also seems to have had no defensive walls or castle but became a major trading port, second only to London, as described below. Its layout focused on the church of St. Botolph and the adjacent marketplace for general goods while horse, cattle, and sheep markets thrived on the periphery. Property lots were laid out along the main streets running back as far as 200 feet (60 meters) and were generally 20-25 feet (6-8 meters) wide.¹⁸ Unlike the old cities with their plethora of churches and chapels, these newer settlements largely focused on one central place of worship.

Roads were important and are not well documented in our period. We saw in the preceding volume that Henry I had issued writs for the width and maintenance of roads and bridges. The building of hundreds of castles and manors, as well as the development of monasteries and towns, all prompted the development of roads linking together these institutions. The need of freemen to attend Hundreds Courts, for sheriffs to travel to London twice a year to render accounts, and the development of county towns with their cathedrals and royal castles all demanded an increasingly complex network of roads beyond the Roman system, which had primarily existed to link legionary fortresses and important ports. Lady Stenton has made the point that, while we know little of this network, it had to have existed, and there are no records of complaints about its condition or the difficulties of travel. Of course, foot traffic and horse riders are relatively nimble and could move around obstacles, while the growing traffic of heavily laden four-wheel carts placed a greater strain on road conditions and required remedial steps such as planking or corduroy surfacing of difficult spots, or minor re-routing of the roadway.¹⁹

While rivers were important for the transport of goods and many cities and towns owed their existence to a navigable waterway, they were also major barriers where they had to be crossed. Fords were seasonal and unreliable. Furthermore, the newly adopted four-wheel cart was almost impossible to pull out of a muddy bottom and could only negotiate fords having a solid rock or stone riverbed. Reliable bridges were essential and did their part to reshape the economic landscape. The building of a stone bridge with 10 arches over the River Nadder at Salisbury, along with a new cathedral, in 1247 brought about the swift decline of Wilton, the county town of Wiltshire since the eighth century.

Guilds and Trades

There was another influence in towns and cities – guilds. They had been known in the Roman Empire as voluntary associations of craftsmen and artisans. In Medieval England there were four types. The most common were craft guilds (goods) and merchant guilds (services). But there were also frith guilds and religious guilds. Frith is a Saxon word for peace or freedom, and they can be seen as charitable organizations, a sort of Rotary Club. These latter two types of guild were voluntary, philanthropic, and approved by the Church. The craft and merchant guilds were, however, based on privilege, monopoly, and protectionism, and were railed against by the chroniclers. In 1116 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded This land…often was oft and sorely shwincked by the guilds which the king took both within the boroughs and without.²⁰ Shwinck is an old English word which in this context means hardship.

Merchant guilds were formed with the purpose of obtaining royal sanction for monopolies in trade. Given the power to make regulations having the force of law, they controlled product quality, pricing, and who could and could not trade in a given town or commodity. Drawn together by common interest, they formed a brotherhood that took care of the widows and orphans of members as well as of sick members. They were constituted with an alderman (Old English aldormann rooted in elder but meaning man of high rank), and a small group of wardens (from Old Norman French wardein meaning guardian) who were the eyes, ears, and enforcers of the guild. Initially made up of town burgesses, the membership could be inherited or even sold, and could pass from a member to his widow who could then exercise membership in her own right.

The rise of the merchant was linked to the rise of the walled city and the defended town. Their goods were relatively safe inside those defenses and they could make safe investments in property and in industry. Putting capital into a startup operation such as a ropewalk or a tannery and sharing in the profits was not lending or receiving interest and was therefore legal. Monetary credit could also be created by deferring the payment of bills for goods and services. For example, a producer might sell goods to a merchant to be transported to a distant market and defer payment of his bill until the goods were sold and the merchant had returned. Such arrangements needed both trust and confidence in the free and peaceful movement of goods. Turbulent and warlike times could collapse this source of lubricating credit for the growing economy.

Guarantees and service exchanges could be complicated. This example from 1199 demonstrates how complex transactions could be:

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. In the year of the Incarnation 1199, on the fifteenth day of February. Let it be clear to all reading or hearing these presents that we, Bartholomew Mazellier, of Marseilles, and Peter Vital, by common consent, have jointly accepted in the city of Messina from you, Stephen de Manduel and William Benlivenga 1,600 tarins of gold (Messina weight) weighing fifty-three and a third ounces, at the risk of God and the sea; for which, by a secure contract, we agree to give you in Provence fifty-five solidi in royal crowns of Marseilles for each ounce, i.e., the sum of £146.13s.3d. We owe this money and we are bound to return it to you, peacefully and without molestation, up to one month after the ship in which we sail shall have arrived at Marseilles, or other port of safety in Provence, for discharging its cargo; and for your greater security we have pledged to you 141 pigs which we jointly own on that same ship. Moreover, I, Peter Vital, put in pledge with you four sacci of gall-nuts of my own, being two quintaria of Acre less twenty-seven rotae, and six bundles of licorice wood, being three quintaria of Acre less one third. I, Bartholomew, add as my own pledge five bundles of soft leather, namely 324 skins, and nine bundles of licorice wood, being six quintaria of Acre less eighteen rotae; but if those pledges are worth more than the debt to you, it will be to our credit, the rest to yours. At that time, I, the said Bartholomew, have taken by agreement from you, Stephen de Manduel, eight ounces of gold, half of which belongs to Hugh Vivaldi, for which I ought to pay to you in Provence twenty-two pounds of the said money, for which I put twenty-five pigs in pledge with you and one quintarium of licorice wood and eighteen rotae by the weight of Acre. If the money is in small coins or debased lawfully in weight, we ought to pay you a mark of fine silver for fifty-seven solidi until the whole debt is paid. We expect those things of you, just as they have been written, without fraud or trickery, on the safe arrival of the ship or of the greater part of the goods of the ship. This was done at Messina, in the month and year stated, in the presence of these witnesses: Hugh Aldoard, etc.²¹

The complexity, balance, and good faith is this document is striking. The de Manduels were a prominent merchant family of Marseilles. Their agents sealed this transaction in Messina on the island of Sicily. The standard measures of Messina and Acre in the Holy Land were used, along with a range of commonly understood measures.

This growing band of wealthy merchants was the beginning of a social transformation that took centuries to mature. This was a transformation from elite status and political power conferred by kings and subsequently by birth, to power derived from mercantile and industrial wealth.

Craft guilds were not a complement to merchant guilds, but a force that undermined them. Operating in similar ways and with similar corporate welfare provisions, they were formed to break through the monopolies of the merchants with their depressive effect on wholesale pricing and control of the channels of distribution for goods. They mandated standards, employed journeymen (itinerant craftsmen who were not members and who may not have been apprenticed), and practiced the apprentice system that taught the necessary skills and at the same time provided a source of bonded free labor.

Merchant and craft guilds paid the Crown annually for their charters. The charters enabled guild members to fix prices and were an annuity for the Crown. An example is the grant by Henry II about 1175:

Know y that I have granted and confirmed to the corvesars [shoemakers] of Oxford all the liberties and customs which they had in the time of King Henry [I] my grandfather, and that they have their guild, so that none carry on their trade in the town of Oxford, except he be of that guild.

I grant also that the cordwainers who afterwards may come to the town of Oxford shall be of the same guild and shall be of the same guild and shall have the same liberties and customs which the corvesors had or ought to have.

For this grant and confirmation, however, the corvesors and cordwainers ought to pay me every year an ounce of gold.²²

This type of arrangement could be challenged by those who did not benefit from it. In 1202 the City of London petitioned King John to abolish the Weavers’ Guild, probably because there were enough influential people who wanted to benefit from the rising demand and prices for English woolen cloth overseas. The terms of the weaver’s charter from Henry II forbade any non-members practicing the trade. They paid the king 18 silver marks, worth about £12. The charter of abolishment was written out and sealed:

Know ye that at the petition of our Mayor and citizens of London we have granted and by this present charter confirmed that the weaver’s guild shall no longer exist henceforth in our City of London, nor shall it on any account be revived. But because we have been wont to receive yearly eighteen marks of silver from the Weaver’s Guild, the aforesaid citizens shall pay every year to us and our heirs twenty marks of silver at the feast of St. Michael at our Treasury.²³

The Weavers’ Guild members fought back and outbid the City to save their existence.

Not all guild charters offered exclusivity. Henry II’s charter establishing a Cordwainers’ (shoemakers who worked in leather) Guild in Oxford provided that any new cordwainers coming to the city would become guild members.²⁴

Guilds generated business, supported standards and honest dealing, provided a backbone for town economy, and protected and supported members and their families. Glanville, writing in 1188, compared them to chartered town governments and saw them as another form of efficient government. Indeed, being made up of the most prominent members of the urban community they often were the government and, in the way in which organizations actually function, the senior members probably made decisions for the guild and the town with little regard for which role they were fulfilling. They were firmly within the culture of cooperative self-government prevailing in England at this time and were seen as being responsible, upstanding, and beneficial to the community at large. However, they ultimately became a restraint on trade, especially international trade, and eventually the great economist king, Edward III, clipped their wings.

Guilds were common in the building trades for plasterers, painters, whitewashers, and carpenters. Masons, however, were different. To become a master mason, which included many of the roles of architect and Master of Works, a lengthy apprenticeship and period of education was necessary. Educated to age 14 in a grammar school or an abbey school, apprentices then spent three years learning to choose and work stone. From 17 to 21 they received an education in geometry before starting work in earnest and still with much to learn. Successful master masons were wealthy and highly esteemed.

A much larger and less well documented group were carpenters, as many houses and other vernacular buildings were built mostly of wood. The origin of carpenters is lost in time. In the New Testament Christ and his father were carpenters, which was at the least seen as a respectable hands-on trade. In building carpenters would not only build whole new structures but also repair, adapt, and extend others. Wood does not last forever, especially if it is in contact with wetness or damp, so there was an ongoing business in maintenance. As the skill was passed down from father to son, family names became established such as Carpenter, Woodwright and Housemaker. Other specializations included barrel and cask making (Cooper) and making carts (Cartwright), wheels (Wheeler, Wheelwright or just Wright), and many more.

Building stone was brought to London and other sites over long distances and, as a matter of practicality and cost, mostly by water. London sits in an artesian clay basin with no local building stone. There was clay for brick making but that art, known to the Romans, was not reintroduced into England until the thirteenth century even though bricks were common in northern Europe in the twelfth century. Therefore, almost everything was made of wood, plates and forks, vats and sinks, gutters and pipes, furniture, candlesticks and holders, doors and window frames, and much more. Standards of work would range from cheap ware churned out in back streets to fine custom decorative moldings.

At the opposite end of the artistic scale from cathedral art was earthenware. English clays were not and are not good for making fine china without additives and technologies not known at that time. Earthenware jugs and bowls were commonplace, but few if any survive intact from the twelfth century. Ordinary