Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History
by Paul Vinogradoff
1892

Preface

    A foreigner's attempt to treat of difficult and much disputed
points of English history requires some justification. Why should
a Russian scholar turn to the arduous study of English mediaeval
documents? Can he say anything of sufficient general interest to
warrant his exploration of so distant a field?
    The first question is easier to answer than the second.
    There are many reasons why we in Russia are especially keen
to study what may be called social history -- the economic
development of nations, their class divisions and forms of
co-operation. We are still living in surroundings created by the
social revolution of the peasant emancipation; many of our elder
contemporaries remember both the period of serfdom and the
passage from it to modern life; some have taken part in the
working out and putting into practice of the emancipating acts.
Questions entirely surrendered to antiquarian research in the
West of Europe are still topics of contemporary interest with us.
    It is not only the civil progress of the peasantry that we
have to notice, but the transformation and partial decay of the
landed gentry, the indirect influence of the economic convulsions
on politics, ideas, and morality, and, in a more special way, the
influence of free competition on soil and people that had been
fettered for ages, the passage from 'natural husbandry' to the
money system, the substitution of rents for labour, above all,
the working of communal institutions under the sway of the lord
and in their modern free shape. Government and society have to
deal even now with problems that must be solved in the light of
history, if in any light at all, and not by instinct groping in
the dark. All such practical problems verge towards one main
question: how far legislation can and should act upon the social
development of the agrarian world. Are economic agencies to
settle for themselves who has to till land and who shall own it?
Or can we learn from Western history what is to be particularly
avoided and what is to be aimed at? I do not think that anybody
is likely to maintain at the present day, that, for instance, a
study of the formation and dissolution of the village community
in the West would be meaningless for politicians and thinkers who
have to concern themselves with the actual life of the village
community in the East.
    Another powerful incitement comes from the scientific
direction lately assumed by historical studies. They have been
for a long time very closely connected with fine literature:
their aim was a lifelike reproduction of the past; they required
artistic power, and stirred up feelings as well as reflective
thought. Such literary history has a natural bent towards
national tradition, for the same reason that literature is
attracted by national life: the artist gains by being personally
in touch with his subject; it is more easy for him to cast his
material into the right mould. Ancient history hardly constitutes
an exception, because the elements of classical civilisation have
been appropriated by European nations so as to form part of their
own past. What I call literary history has by no means done all
its work. There is too much in the actions of men that demands
artistic perception and even divination on the part of the
historian, to allow this mode of treatment to fall into decay.
But nobody will deny that historical study is extending more and
more in the direction of what is now called anthropology and
social science. Historians are in quest of laws of development
and of generalisations that shall unravel the complexity of human
culture, as physical and biological generalisations have put into
order our knowledge of the phenomena of nature.
    There is no subject more promising from this point of view
than the history of social arrangements. It borders on political
economy, which has already attained a scientific standing; part
of its material has been fashioned by juridical doctrine and
practical law, and thereby moulded into a clear, well-defined
shape; it deals with facts recurring again and again with much
uniformity, and presenting great facilities for comparison; the
objects of its observation are less complex than the phenomena of
human thought, morality, or even political organisation. And from
the point of view of the scientific investigator there can be no
other reason for taking up a particular epoch or nation, but the
hope of getting a good specimen for analysis, and of making use
of such analysis for purposes of generalisation.
    Now I think that there can be no better opportunity for
studying early stages of agrarian development than that afforded
by English mediaeval history. The sources of information are
comparatively abundant in consequence of the powerful action of
central authority; from far back in the feudal time we get legal
and fiscal documents to enlighten us, not only about general
arrangements but even about details in the history of landed
property and of the poorer classes. And the task of studying the
English line of development is rendered especially interesting
because it stands evidently in close connexion with the
variations of the same process on the continent. Scandinavian,
German, French, Italian, and Spanish history constantly present
points of comparison, and such differences as there are may be
traced to their origins just because so many facts are in common
to start with. I think that all these considerations open a
glorious vista for the enquirer, and the interest excited by such
publications as those of Fustel de Coulanges proves that the
public is fully alive to the importance of those studies in spite
of their dry details.
    What could I personally undertake to further the great
objects of such investigation? The ground has been surveyed by
powerful minds, and many controversies show that it is not an
easy one to explore. Two main courses seemed open in the present
state of the study. A promising method would have been to
restrict oneself to a definite provincial territory, to get
intimately acquainted with all details of its geography, local
history, peculiarities of custom, and to trace the social
evolution of this tract of land as far back as possible, without
losing sight of general connexions and analogies. How instructive
such work may become may be gathered from Lamprecht's monumental
monograph on the Moselland, which has been rightly called by its
author 'Deutsches Wirthschaftsleben im Mittelalter.' Or else, one
might try to gather the general features of the English mediaeval
system as embodied in the numerous, one might almost say
innumerable, records of the feudal period, and to work back from
them into the imperfectly described pre-feudal age. Such enquiry
would necessarily leave out local peculiarities, or treat them
only as variations of general types. From the methodical point of
view it has the same right to existence as any other study of
'universalities' which are always exemplified by individual
beings, although the latter are not made up by them, but appear
complicated in every single case by additional elements.
    Being a foreigner, I was driven to take the second course. I
could not trust myself to become sufficiently familiar with local
life, even if I had the time and opportunity to study it closely.
I hope such investigations may be taken up by scholars in every
part of England and may prosper in their hands; the gain to
general history would be simply invaluable. And I was not sorry
of the necessity of going by the second track, because I could
hope to achieve something useful even if I went wrong on many
points. Every year brings publications of Cartularies, Surveys,
Court-rolls; the importance of these legal and economic records
has been duly realised, and historians take them more and more
into account by the side of annals and statutes. But surely some
attempt ought to be made to concentrate the results of scattered
investigation in this field. The Cartularies of Ramsey, Battle,
Bury St. Edmunds, St. Paul's, the Hundred Rolls, the Manorial
Records of Broughton and King's Ripton, give us material of one
and the same kind, which, for all its wealth and variety,
presents great facilities for classification and comparison.(1*)
I have seen a good many of these documents, both published and in
manuscript, and I hope that my book may be of some service in the
way of concentrating this particular study of manorial records. I
am conscious how deficient my work is in many respects; but if by
the help of corrections, alterations, additions, it may be made
to serve to some extent for the purpose, I shall be glad to have
written it. I may say also that it is intended to open the way,
by a careful study of the feudal age, for another work on the
origins of English peasant life in the Norman and pre-Norman
periods.
    One pleasant result the toil expended on mediaeval documents
has brought me already. I have come into contact with English
scholars, and I can say that I have received encouragement,
advice, and support in every case when I had to apply for them,
and in so large and liberal a measure as I could hardly hope for
or expect. Of two men, now dead, I have to repeat what many have
said before me. Henry Bradshaw was the first to lay an English
MS. cartulary before me in the Cambridge University Library; and
in all my travels through European libraries and archives I never
again met such a guide, so ready to help from his inexhaustible
store of palaeographical, linguistic and historical learning.
Walford Selby was an invaluable friend to me at the Record Office
-- always willing and able to find exactly what was wanted for my
researches.
    It would be impossible to mention all those from whom I have
received help in one way or another, but I should like to speak
at least of a few. I have the pleasant duty of thanking the
Marquis of Bath for the loan of the Longleat MS. of Bracton,
which was sent for my use to the Bodleian Library. Lord Leigh was
kind enough to allow of my coming to Stoneleigh Abbey to work at
a beautiful cartulary in his possession, and the Hon. Miss
Cordelia Leigh took the pains of making for me some additional
extracts from that document. Sir Frederick Pollock and Mr York
Powell have gone through the work of reading my proofs, and I owe
to them many suggestions for alterations and improvements. I have
disputed some of Mr Seebohm's opinions on mediaeval history; but
I admit freely that nobody has exercised a stronger influence on
the formation of my own views, and I feel proud that personal
friendship has given me many opportunities of admiring the
originality and width of conception of one who has done great
things for the advancement of social history. As for F.W.
Maitland, I can only say that my book would hardly have appeared
at all if he had not taken infinite trouble to further its
publication. He has not only done everything in his power to make
it presentable to English readers in style and wording, but as to
the subject-matter, many a friendly suggestion, many a criticism
I have had from him, and if I have not always profited by them,
the blame is to be cast entirely on my own obstinacy.

                Paul Vinogradoff

NOTES:

1. Miss Lamond's edition of Walter of Henley did not appear until
the greater part of my book was in type. I had studied the work
in MS. So also I studied the Cartulary of Battle Abbey in MS.
without being aware that it had been edited by Mr Scargill Bird.
Had Mr Gomme's Village Communities come to my hands at an earlier
date I should have made more references to it.

Introduction

    When the time comes for writing a history of the nineteenth
century, one of the most important and attractive chapters will
certainly be devoted to the development of historical literature.
The last years of a great age are fast running out: great has
been the strife and the work in the realm of thought as well as
in the material arrangement of life. The generations of the
nineteenth century have witnessed a mighty revival of religious
feeling; they have attempted to set up philosophical systems as
broad and as profound as any of the speculations of former times;
they have raised the structure of theoretical and applied science
to a height which could hardly have been foreshadowed some two
hundred years ago. And still it is to historical study that we
have to look as the most characteristic feature of the period.
Medieval asceticism in its desperate struggle against the flesh,
and Puritanism with its sense of individual reconciliation with
God, were both more vigorous forms of religious life than the
modern restorations of faith and Church, so curiously mixed up
with helplessness, surrender of acquired truth, hereditary
instincts, and utilitarian reflection. In philosophy, Hegel's
metaphysical dialectic, Schopenhauer's transformation of Kant's
teaching, and the attempts of English and French positivism at
encyclopaedical science may be compared theoretically with
Plato's poetical idealism or with the rationalistic schools of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But it would be
difficult to deny, that in point of influence on men's minds,
those older systems held a more commanding position than these:
Hegel seems too arbitrary and phantastical, Schopenhauer too
pessimistic, positivism too incomplete and barren as to ultimate
problems to suit the practical requirements of philosophy; and
people are already complaining of the decay of philosophical
study. In science, again, the age of Darwin is certainly second
to none, but it has to share its glory with the age of Newton,
and it may be reasonably doubted whether the astronomer,
following in the footsteps of Galileo and Kepler, was not
actuated by even greater thirst and pride of knowledge than the
modern biologist or geologist. It is otherwise with regard to
history.
    Students of science are wont to inveigh against the inexact
character of historical research, its incoherence and supposed
inability to formulate laws. It would be out of place here to
discuss the comparative value of methods and the one-sided
preference given by such accusers to quantitative analysis; but I
think that if these accusers were better acquainted with the
subject of their attacks, or even more attentive to the
expressions of men's life and thought around them, they would
hardly dare to maintain that a study which in the short space of
a century has led to a complete revolution in the treatment of
all questions concerning man and society, has been operating only
by vague assumptions and guesses at random. An investigation into
methods cannot be undertaken in these introductory pages, but a
general survey of results may be attempted. If we merely take a
single volume, Tocqueville's Ancien Regime, and ask ourselves
whether anything at all like it could have been produced even in
the eighteenth century, we shall have a sense of what has been
going on in the line of historical study during the nineteenth.
Ever since Niebuhr's great stroke, historical criticism has been
patiently engaged in testing, sifting, and classifying the
original materials, and it has now rendered impossible that
medley of discordant authorities in which eighteenth-century
learning found its confused notions of Romans in French costume,
or sought for modern constitutional ideas as manifest in the
policy of the Franks. Whole subjects and aspects of social life
which, if treated at all, used to be sketchily treated in some
appendix by the historian, or guessed at like a puzzle by the
antiquarian, have come to the fore and are recognised as the
really important parts of history. In a word, the study of the
past vacillates no longer between the two extremes of minute
research leading to no general results and general statements not
based on any real investigation into facts. The laws of
development may still appear only as dim outlines which must be
more definitely traced by future generations of workers, but
there is certainly a constant progress of generalisation on
firmly established premises towards them.
    What is more striking, the great change in the ways and
results of history has made itself felt on all the subjects which
surround it. Political economy and law are assuming an entirely
new shape under the influence of historical conceptions: the
tendency towards building up dogmatic doctrine on the foundation
of abstract principle and by deductive methods is giving way to
an exact study of facts in their historical surroundings, and to
inquiries into the shifting conditions under which the problems
of social economy and law are solved by different epochs. As a
brilliant representative of legal learning has ironically put it,
it would be better for one nowadays to be convicted of petty
larceny than to be found deficient of 'historical-mindedness.'
The influence of historical speculation on politics is yet more
definite and direct: even the most devoted disciples of
particular creeds, the most ardent advocates of reform or
reaction dare not simply take up the high standing ground of
abstract theory from which all political questions were discussed
less than a hundred years ago: the socialist as well as the
partisan of aristocracy is called on to make good his contention
by historical arguments.
    It may be urged that the new turn thus taken is not
altogether beneficial for practical life. Men of fanatical
conviction were more likely to act and die for the eternal truth
revealed to them, than people reflecting on the relative
character of human arrangements. But can one get blissfully
one-sided by merely wishing to be so? And is it not nobler to
seek knowledge in the hope that it will right itself in the end,
than to reject it for the sake of being comfortable? However this
may be, the facts can hardly be denied: the aspiration of our age
is intensely historical; we are doing more for the relative, than
for the absolute, more for the study of evolution than for the
elucidation of principles which do not vary.
    It will not be my object to give a sketch of the gradual rise
of historical study in the present century: such an undertaking
must be left to later students, who will command a broader view
of the subject and look at it with less passion and prejudice
than we do now. But Lord Acton's excellent article has shown that
the task is not quite hopeless even now, and I must try, before
starting on my arduous inquiry into the social history of the
middle ages in England, to point out what I make of the work
achieved in this direction, and what object I have in view
myself. Quite apart from any questions of detail which may come
under consideration as the treatment of the subject requires it,
I have to say in what perspective the chief schools of historians
present themselves to my view, in what relation they stand to
each other, to show how far they have pushed the inquiry, and
what problems still remain unsolved. Such a preliminary sketch
must not be carried out with a view to criticism and polemics,
but rather as the general estimate of a literary movement in its
various phases.
    It is a remarkable fact, that the vast importance of the
social side of history has been recognised later than any other
aspect of that study. Stating things very broadly, one may say
that it was pushed to the fore about the middle of our century by
the interests and forces at play in actual life: before 1848 the
political tendency predominates; after 1848 the tide turns in
favour of the social tendency. I mean that in the first half of
the century men were chiefly engaged in reorganising the State,
in trying to strike a balance between the influence of government
and the liberties of the people. The second half of the century
is engrossed by the conflict between classes, by questions of
economical organisation, by reforms of civil order. Historical
literature, growing as it was in the atmosphere of actual life,
had to start from its interests, to put and solve its problems in
accordance with them. But it is no wonder that the preceding
period had already touched upon a number of questions that were
fated to attract most attention in later research. The rise of
the Constitution, for instance, could not be treated without some
regard being paid to the relative position of classes; it would
have been out of the question to speak of political feudalism
without taking into account the social bearing of the system. And
so a sketch of the literary treatment of social questions must
begin with books which did not aim directly at a description of
social history.
    I shall not detain the reader over the work achieved in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The learning of a Selden or
of a Madox is astounding, and a student of the present day has to
consult them constantly on particular questions; but they never
had in mind to embrace the history of their country as a whole.
Facts are brought into a system by Coke, but the system is
strictly a legal one; undigested historical knowledge is made to
yield the necessary store of leading cases, and, quite apart from
the naive perversion of most particulars, the entire view of the
subject is thoroughly opposed to historical requirements, for it
makes the past an illustration of the present, and regards it as
planned on the same lines. There is no lack of books setting
forth historical proof for some favourite general thesis or
arranging facts according to some general idea, but such attempts
were distinguished by unbounded imagination and by endless
sacrifices of fact to the object of the writer's devotion. The
curious literary by-play to the struggle of political party which
Aug. Thierry has artistically illustrated in France from the
writings of Boulainvilliers and Dubos, Mably and Lezardiere,
could certainly be matched in England by a tale of the historical
argumentation of Brady, or Petyt, or Granville Sharp. Nothing can
be more eloquent in a sense than the title given by this last
author to his book on the system of frankpledge: -- "An account
of the Constitutional English Polity of Congregational Courts,
and more particularly of the great annual court of the people,
called the View of Frankpledge, wherein the whole body of the
Nation was arranged into the regular divisions of Tythings,
Hundreds, etc.: -- the happy effect of that excellent
institution, in preventing robberies, riots, etc., whereby, in
law, it was justly deemed 'Summa et maxima securitas:' -- that it
would be equally beneficial to all other nations and countries,
as well under monarchical as republican establishments; and that,
to the English Nation in particular, it would afford an effectual
means of reforming the corruption of Parliament by rendering the
representation of the people perfectly equal, in exact numerical
proportion to the total number of householders throughout the
whole realm."
    Historical research, in the true sense of the word, was
indeed making its first appearance in the eighteenth century, and
it was more fruitful in England than in any other country,
because England was so far ahead of the Continent in its
political condition: the influence of an intelligent society in
political affairs had for its counterpart a greater insight into
the conditions of political development. But the great English
historians of the eighteenth century were looking to problems in
other fields than that of social history. Robertson was prompted
by an interest in the origins of that peculiar community called
Western Europe, so distinctly dismembered in its component States
and so closely united by ideal and material ties; Gibbon could
see the shadows of the old world in which the new world was
living; both had been attracted to research by an admirable sense
of influences deeper and stronger than nationality, or State, or
class, and both remained indifferent to the humbler range of
English social history. Hume took his stand on England, but he
had to begin with a general outline and the explanation of the
more apparent changes in State and Church.
    In this way current notions on our questions remained towards
the close of the eighteenth century still undisturbed by writers
of a high order. We may take as a fair sample of such current
notions Sir William Blackstone's historical digressions,
especially those in the second volume of his Commentaries. There
is no originality about them, and the lack of this quality is
rather an advantage in this case: it enables us through one book
to glance at an entire literature. I may be allowed to recall its
most striking points to the mind of my readers.
    The key to the whole medieval system and to the constitution
emerging from it is to be found in feudalism. 'The constitution
of feuds had its original from the military policy of the
northern or Celtic nations, the Goths, the Huns, the Franks, the
Vandals, and the Lombards, who poured themselves into all the
regions of Europe, at the declension of the Roman Empire. It was
brought by them from their own countries, and continued in their
respective colonies as the most likely means to secure their new
acquisitions, and to that end large districts or parcels of land
were allotted by the conquering general to the Superior officers
of the army, and by them dealt out again in smaller parcels or
allotments to the inferior officers and most deserving soldiers.'
'Scarce had these northern conquerors established themselves in
their new dominions, when the wisdom of their constitutions, as
well as their personal valour, alarmed all the princes of Europe.
Wherefore most, if not all, of them thought it necessary to enter
into the same or a similar plan of policy. And thus, in the
compass of a very few years, the feudal constitution, or the
doctrine of tenure, extended itself over all the western world.'
    'But this feudal polity, which was thus by degrees
established over all the Continent of Europe, seems not to have
been received in this part of our island, at least not
universally and as a part of our national constitution, till the
reign of William the Norman. This introduction, however, of the
feudal tenures into England by King William does not seem to have
been effected immediately after the Conquest, nor by the mere
arbitrary will and power of the Conqueror, but to have been
gradually established by the Norman barons, and afterwards
universally consented to by the great Council of the nation.'
'The new polity therefore seems not to have been imposed by the
Conqueror, but nationally and freely adopted by the general
assembly of the whole realm.' 'By thus consenting to the
introduction of feudal tenures, our English ancestors probably
meant no more than to put the kingdom in a state of defence by
establishing a military system. But whatever their meaning was,
the Norman interpreters... gave a very different construction to
this proceeding, and thereupon took a handle to introduce, not
only the rigorous doctrine which prevailed in the duchy of
Normandy, but also such fruits and dependencies, such hardships
and services, as were never known to other nations.' 'And from
hence arises the inference, that the liberties of Englishmen are
not (as some arbitrary writers would represent them) mere
infringements of the king's prerogative, but a restoration of the
ancient constitution, of which our ancestors had been defrauded
by the art and finesse of the Norman lawyers, rather than
deprived by the force of the Norman arms.' The structure of the
component parts is (for Blackstone) as ancient as the
constitution of the whole. The English manor is of Saxon origin
in all its essential characteristics, but the treatment of the
people within the manor underwent a very notable change in
consequence of the Norman invasion. In Saxon times the common
people settled on folkland were immersed in complete slavery,
Their condition was improved by the Conquest, because the Normans
admitted them to the oath of fealty. And the improvement did not
stop there: although the peasantry held their plots only by base
tenure and at the lord's will, the lord allowed in most cases a
hereditary possession. In this way out of the lord's will custom
arose, and as custom is the soul or vital principle of common
law, the Courts undertook in the end to protect the base tenure
of the peasantry against the very lord whose will had created it.
Such was the rise of the copyhold estate of modern times.
    Blackstone's work is a compilation, and it would be out of
the question to reduce its statements to anything like
consistency. The rationalistic mode of thought which has left
such a peculiar stamp on the eighteenth century, appears in all
its glory in the laying out of the wise military polity of
feudalism. But scarcely has our author had time to show the rapid
progress of this plan all round Europe, when he starts on an
entirely new tack suggested by his wish to introduce a historical
justification of Constitutional Monarchy. Feudal polity is of
late introduction in England, and appears as a compact between
sovereign and subjects; original freedom was not destroyed by
this compact, and later infringements of contractual rights by
kings ultimately led to a restoration and development of ancient
liberties. In the parts of the treatise which concern Private Law
the keynote is given throughout by that very Norman jurisprudence
on which such severe condemnation is passed with regard to Public
Law. The Conquest is thus made to appear alternately as a source
of danger, struggle, and hardship from one point of view, and as
the origin of steady improvement in social condition from
another. In any case the aristocratic cast of English life is
deduced from its most ancient origins, and all the rights of the
lower orders are taken as the results of good-humoured concession
on the part of the lords of the soil and of quiet encroachment
against them.
    Statements and arguments in Blackstone's style could hold
water only before that great crisis in history and historical
literature by which the nineteenth century was ushered into the
world. The French Revolution, and the reaction against it, laid
open and put to the test the working of all the chief forces
engaged in historical life. Government and social order,
nationality and religion, economic conditions and modes of
thought, were thrown into the furnace to be consumed or
remoulded. Ideas and institutions which had towered over
centuries went down together, and their fall not only brought
home the transitory character of human arrangements, but also
laid bare the groundwork of society, which however held good in
spite of the convulsions on its surface. The generation that
witnessed these storms was taught to frame its politics and to
understand history in a new fashion. The disorderly scepticism of
the eighteenth century was transformed by Niebuhr into a
scientific method that paved the way by criticism to positive
results. On the other hand, the Utopian doctrines of political
rationalism were shattered by Savigny's teaching on the
fundamental importance of tradition and the unconscious organic
growth of nations. In his polemic with Thibaut, the founder of
the historical school of law enters a mighty protest against
wanton reform on the ground of a continuity of institutions not
less real than the continuity of language, and his: History of
Roman Law during the Middle Ages, demonstrated that even such a
convulsion as the Barbarian Invasion was not sufficient to sweep
away the foundations of law and social order slowly formed in the
past. Eichhorn's 'History of German Public and Private Law' gave
detailed expression to an idea which occurs also in some of
Savigny's minor works -- to the idea, namely, that the German
nations have had to run through their history with an engrained
tendency in their character towards political dismemberment and
social inequality. This rather crude attempt at generalising out
some particular modern features and sanctioning them by the past
is of historical interest, because it corresponds to the general
problem propounded to history by the Romantic school: viz. to
discover in the various manifestations of the life of a nation
its permanent character and the leading ideas it is called to
embody in history.
    The comparative soundness of the English system had arrayed
it from the very beginning on the side of Conservatism against
Revolution, and Burke was the first to sound the blast of a
crusade against subversive theories. No wonder the historical
discoveries on the Continent found a responsive echo in English
scholarship. Allen took up the demonstration that the Royal power
in England had developed from the conceptions of the Roman
Empire. Palgrave gave an entirely new construction of Anglo-Saxon
history, which could not but exercise a powerful influence on the
study of subsequent periods. His book is certainly the first
attempt to treat the problems of medieval social history on a
large scale and by new methods. It deserves special attention.
    The author sat down to his work before the Revolution of
1830, although his two volumes were published in 1832. He shares
the convictions of very moderate Liberalism, declares in favour
of the gradual introduction of reforms, and against any reform
not framed as a compromise between actual claims. Custom and
tradition did not exclude change and development in England, and
for this reason the movement towards progress did not tear that
people from the inheritance of their ancestors, did not disregard
the mighty agency of historical education. In order to study the
relative force of the elements of progress and conservatism in
English history, Palgrave goes behind the external play of
institutions, and tries to connect them with the internal growth
of legal principles. It is a great, though usual, mistake to
begin with political events, to proceed from them to the study of
institutions, and only quite at the end to take up law. The true
sequence is the inverse one. And in England in particular the
Constitution, with all its showy and famous qualities, was formed
under the direct influence of judicial and legal institutions. In
accordance with this leading view Palgrave's work begins by a
disquisition on classes, forms of procedure and judicial
organisation, followed up by an estimate of the effects of the
different Conquests, and ultimately by an exposition of the
history of government. We need not feel bound by that order, and
may start from the conclusion which gives the key to Palgrave's
whole system.
    The limited monarchy of England is a result of the action of
two distinct elements, equally necessary for its composition. It
is a manifestation of the monarchical power descended both in
principle and in particular attributes from the Roman Empire. If
this political idea had not been at work the Kingdoms of the
barbarians would have presented only loose aggregates of separate
and self-sufficient political bodies; on the other hand, if this
political idea had been supreme, medieval Kings would have been
absolute. The principles of Teutonic and of Roman polity had to
work together, and the result was the medieval State with an
absolute King for its centre, and a great independence of local
parts. The English system differed from the continental in this
way, that in England the free judicial institutions of the
localities reacted on the central power, and surrounded it by
constitutional limitations, while the Continent had to content
itself with estates of a very doubtful standing and future. It is
easy to see in this connexion how great an importance we must
assign to the constitution of local Courts: the shires, hundreds,
and townships are not mere administrative divisions, but
political bodies. That the Kingdom formed itself on their basis,
not as an absolute but as a parliamentary monarchy, must be
explained in a great measure by the influence of the Norman
Conquest, which led to a closer union of the isolated parts, and
to a concentration of local liberty in parliament.
    But (such is Palgrave's view) the importance of Conquests has
been greatly overrated in history. The barbarian invasion did not
effect anything like a sudden or complete subversion of things;
it left in force and action most of the factors of the preceding
period. The passage from one rule to another was particularly
easy in England, as most tribes which occupied the island were
closely related to each other. Palgrave holds that the Britons,
Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans all belong to one and the same
Teutonic race. There were, of course (he allows), Celtic elements
among the Britons, but the greater part consisted of Belgian
Kymrys, whose neighbours and kin are to be found on the Continent
as Saxons and Frisians. The conquest of the island by bands of
seafaring Saxons did not lead by any means to the wholesale
destruction and depopulation which the legendary accounts of the
chronicles report. The language of the Britons has not been
preserved, but then no more has the Celtic language in Gaul. The
Danish and Norman invasions had even less influence on social
condition than the Saxon. It is only the Roman occupation that
succeeded in introducing into the life of this island important
and indestructible traits.
    If we look at the results of all these migrations and
ethnographical mixtures, we have first to notice the
stratifications of English society according to rank. It is
settled definitely enough in the Saxon period on an aristocratic
basis. In the main, society consists of eorls and ceorls,
noblemen and serfs. The difference does not consist merely in a
diversity of legal value, social influence and occupation, but
also in the fact that the ceorl may economically and legally be
dependent on the eorl, and afterwards on the thane. How did this
aristocratic constitution arise? Social distinctions of this kind
may sometimes originate in the oppression of the weak by the
strong, and in voluntary subjection, but, as a rule, they go back
to conquest. There is every reason to believe that the
Anglo-Saxon conquerors, who were very few in number, became the
privileged class of the new States, and reduced the Britons to
serfdom; a corroboration of this assumption may be found in the
fact that the services of Celtic and Saxon peasantry are
extremely alike.
    It is more difficult to trace the influence of different
races in the agrarian system, of which the township or manor is
the unit. It is by comparing it with the forms in its immediate
neighbourhood that one gets to understand its origin. The Roman
organisation of husbandry and ownership on the basis of
individualism is too well known to be described. In marked
contrast with it stands the Celtic community, of which survivals
were lingering for a long time in Ireland and Wales. Here the
land is in the ownership of tribal groups: rights of individuals
and families expand and collapse according to the requirements
and decisions of the entire tribe; there is no hereditary
succession, but every grown-up clansman has a claim to be endowed
with a plot of land, and as a consequence of this, all land in
separate possession is constantly liable to be divided by the
tribal community. The Anglo-Saxon system is an intermediate stage
between Roman individualism and Celtic communalism. No wonder
that the Saxons, who at home followed a system closely resembling
the Celtic, modified it when they got acquainted with Roman forms
and entered into their Roman inheritance in Great Britain. The
mixed organisation of the township was the result of the
assimilation.
    Such are in the main those conclusions of Palgrave which have
a direct bearing on the questions before us. It is easy to
perceive that they are permeated by certain very general
historical conceptions. He is greatly impressed by the 'Vis
inertiae' of social condition, and by the continuity of
historical development arising from it. And so in his work the
British population does not disappear without leaving any traces
of its existence; the Roman dominion exercises a most conspicuous
influence on important aspects of later condition -- on central
power, feudalism, and agrarian organisation: the most recent of
the Conquests -- the Norman invasion -- is reduced to a
comparatively secondary share in the framing of society. The
close connexion between Palgrave's ideas and the currents of
thought on the Continent is not less notable in his attempts to
determine the peculiarities of national character as manifested
in unconscious leanings towards certain institutions. The
Teutonic system is characterised by a tendency towards federalism
in politics and an aristocratic arrangement of society. The one
tendency explains the growth of the Constitution as a
concentration of local self-government, the other leads from the
original and fundamental distinction between a privileged class
and a servile peasantry to the original organisation of the
township under a lord.
    There can be no question as to the remarkable power displayed
in Palgrave's work, or as to the value of his results. He had an
enormous and varied store of erudition at his command, and the
keenest eye for observation. No wonder that many of his theories
on particular subjects have been eagerly taken up and worked out
by later scholars. But apart from such successful solutions of
questions, his whole conception of development was undoubtedly
very novel and fruitful. One of Palgrave's main positions -- the
intimate connexion between the external history of the
Constitution and the working of private law in the courts --
opened a wholly new perspective for the study of social history.
But naturally enough the first cast turned out rather rough and
distorted. Palgrave is as conspicuous for his arbitrary and
fanciful treatment of his matter, as for his learning and
ingenuity. He does not try to get his data into order or
completeness, and has no notion of the methods of systematic
work. Comparisons of English facts with all kinds of phenomena in
the history of kindred and distant peoples sometimes give rise to
suggestive combinations, but, in most cases, out of this medley
of incongruous things they lead only to confusion of thought. In
consequence of all these drawbacks, Palgrave's attempt only
started the inquiry in most directions, but could not exhaust it
in any.
    The two great elements of Western civilisation -- Roman
tradition and Teutonic tendencies -- were more or less peacefully
brought together in the books of Savigny, Eichhorn, and Palgrave.
But in process of time they diverged into a position of
antagonism. Their contrast not only came out as a result of more
attention and developed study. It became acute, because in the
keen competition of French and German scholarship, historians,
consciously and unconsciously, took up the standpoint of national
predilection, and followed their bias back into ancient times.
Aug. Thierry, while protesting against the exaggerations of
eighteenth-century systems, considered the development of
European nations almost entirely as a national struggle
culminating in conquest, but underlying most facts in the history
of institutions. He began, for the sake of method, by tracing the
conflict on English ground where everything resolved itself to
his eye into open or hidden strife between Norman and Saxon. But
William the Bastard's invasion led him by a circuitous way to the
real object of his interest -- to the gradual rise of Gallo-Roman
civilisation against the Teutonic conquest in France: historical
tendencies towards centralised monarchy and municipal bourgeoisie
were connected by him with the present political condition of
France as the abiding legacy of Gallo-Roman culture
    Men of great power and note, from Raynouard and B. Guerard
down to Fustel de Coulanges in our own days, have followed the
same track with more or less violence and exaggeration. They are
all at one in their animosity towards Teutonic influence in the
past, all at one in lessening its effects, and in trying to
collect the scattered traces of Romanism in principle and
application. The Germans did not submit meekly to the onslaught,
but went as far as the Romanists on the other side. Lobell,
Waitz, and Roth -- to speak only of the heads of the school -- have
held forth about the mighty part which the Teutons have played in
Europe; they have enhanced the beneficial value of Germanic
principles, and tried to show that there is no reason for laying
to their account certain dark facts in the history of Europe. The
Germanist school had to fight its way not only against Romanism,
but against divers tenets of the Romantic school as represented
by Savigny and Eichhorn, of which Romanists had availed
themselves. The whole doctrine was to be reconsidered in the
light of two fundamental assumptions. The foundations of social
life were sought not in aristocracy, but in the common freedom of
the majority of the people: the German middle class, the
'Burgers,' who form the strength of contemporary Germany, looked
to the past history of their race as vouching for their liberty.
The destinies of that particular class became the test of social
development. Then again the disruptive tendency of German
national character was stoutly denied, and all the historical
instances of disruption were demonstrated to be quite independent
of any leaning of the race. In the great fermentation of thought
which led indirectly to the unification of Germany, the best men
in the country refused to believe that Western Europe had fallen
to pieces into feudalism because Teutonic development is doomed
to strife and helplessness by deeply engrained traits of
character. German scholarship found a most powerful ally in this
period of its history in the literature of kindred England:
German and English investigators stood side by side in the same
ranks. Kemble, K. Maurer, Freeman, Stubbs, and Gneist form the
goodly array of the Germanist School on English soil.
    Kemble's position is, strictly speaking, an intermediate one:
in some respects he is very near to Eichhorn and Grimm; although
his chief work was published in 1849, he was not acquainted with
Waitz's first books. But Kemble is mostly in touch with those
parts of Eichhorn's theory which could be accepted by later
Germanists; other important tenets of the Romantic School are
left in the shade or rejected, and as a whole Kemble's teaching
is essentially Germanistic. Kemble's 'Saxons in England' takes
its peculiar shape and marks an epoch in English historical
literature, mainly because it presents the first attempt to
utilise the enormous material of Saxon Charters, in the
collection of which Kemble has done such invaluable work. With
this copious and exact, but very one-sided, material at his
disposal, our author takes little notice of current tales about
the invasion of Great Britain by Angles and Saxons. Such tales
may be interesting from a mythological or literary point of view,
but the historian cannot accept them as evidence. At the same
time one cannot but wish to try and get certain knowledge of an
historical fact, which, as far as the history of England is
concerned, appears as the first manifestation of the Teutonic
race in its stupendous greatness. Luckily enough we have some
means to judge of the invasion in the names of localities and
groups of population. Read in this light the history of Conquest
appears very gradual and ancient. It began long before the
recorded settlements, and while Britain was still under Roman
sway. The struggle with the Celts was a comparatively easy one;
the native population was by no means destroyed, but remained in
large numbers in the lower orders of society. Notwithstanding
such remnants, the history of the Anglo-Saxon period is entirely
Teutonic in its aspect, and presents only one instance of the
general process by which the provinces of the Empire were
modified by conquerors of Teutonic race.
    The root of the whole social system is to be found in the
Mark, which is a division of the territory held jointly by a
certain number of freemen for the purposes of cultivation, mutual
help and defence. The community began as a kinship or tribe, but
even when the original blood ties were lost sight of and modified
by the influx of heterogeneous elements, the community remained
self-sufficient and isolated. The whole fabric of society rested
on property in land: as its political divisions were based on the
possession of common lands, even so the rank of an individual
depended entirely on his holding. The Teutonic world had no idea
of a citizen severed from the soil. The curious fact that the
normal holding, the hide, was equal all over England (33 1/2
acres) can be explained only by its origin; it came full-formed
from Germany and remained unchanged in spite of all diversities
of geographical and economical conditions.
    The transformation of medieval society is, for Kemble,
intimately connected with the forms of ownership in land. The
scanty population of ancient times had divided only a very small
part of the country into separate holdings. The rest remained in
the hands of the people to supply the wants of coming
generations. The great turn towards feudalism was given by the
fact that this reserve-fund lapsed into the hands of a few
magnates: the mass of free people being deprived of its natural
sphere of expansion was forced to seek its subsistence at the
hands of private lords (loaf-givers). From the point of view of
personal status the same process appears in the decrease of
freedom among the people and in the increase of the so-called
Gesid. According to Teutonic principles a man is free only if he
has land to feed upon, strength to work, and arms to defend
himself. The landless man is unfree; and so is the Gesidcundman,
the follower, however strong and wealthy he may be through his
chiefs grace. The contrast between the free ceorls tilling their
own land and the band of military followers, who are always
considered as personally dependent -- this contrast is a marked
one. From the first this military following had played an
important part in German history. Most raids and invasions had
been its work, and sometimes whole tribes were attracted into its
organisation, but during the first period of Saxon history the
free people were sufficiently strong to hold down the power of
military chiefs within certain bounds. Not so in later
development. With the growth of population, of inequalities, of
social competition, the relations of dependency are seen
constantly gaining on the field of freedom. The spread of
commendation leads not only to a change in the distribution of
ranks, but to a dismemberment of political power, to all kinds of
franchises and private encroachments on the State.
    I may be excused for marshalling all these well-known points
before the public by the consideration that they must serve to
show how intimately these views are connected with the general
principles of a great school. The stress laid by Kemble on
property in land ought to be noticed especially: land gets to be
the basis of all political and social condition. This is going
much further than Palgrave ever went; though not further than
Eichhorn. What actually severs Kemble from the Romantics is his
estimate of the free element in the people. He does not try to
picture a kind of political Arcadia in Saxon England, but there
is no more talk about the rightless condition of the ceorls or
the predominance of aristocracy. The Teutonic race towers above
everything. Although the existence of Celts after the Conquests
is admitted, neither Celtic nor Roman elements appear as
exercising any influence in the course of history. Everything
takes place as if Germanic communities had been living and
growing on soil that had never before been appropriated.
Curiously enough the weakest point of Kemble's doctrine seems to
lie in its very centre -- in his theory of social groups. One is
often reminded of Grimm by his account of the Mark, and it was an
achievement to call attention to such a community as distinct
from the tribal group, but the political, legal, and economical
description of the Mark is very vague. As to the reasoning about
gilds, tithings, and hundreds, it is based on a constant
confusion of widely different subjects.
    Generally speaking, it is not for a lawyer's acuteness and
precision that one has to look in Kemble's book: important
distinctions very often get blurred in his exposition, and though
constantly protesting against abstract theories and suppositions
not based on fact, he indulges in them a great deal himself.
Still Kemble's work was very remarkable: his extensive, if not
very critical study of the charters opened his eyes to the
first-rate importance of the law of real property in the course
of medieval history: this was a great step in advance of
Palgrave, who had recognised law as the background of history,
but whose attention had been directed almost exclusively to the
formal side to judicial institutions. And Kemble actually
succeeded in bringing forward some of the questions which were to
remain for a long time the main points of debate among
historians.
    The development of the school was evidently to proceed in the
direction of greater accuracy and improved methods. Great service
has been done in this respect by Konrad Maurer. He is perhaps
sometimes inclined to magnify his own independence and dissent
from Kemble's opinions, but he has undoubtedly contributed to
strengthen and clear up some of Kemble's views, and has gone
further than his predecessor on important subjects. He accepts in
the main Kemble's doctrines as to the Mark, the allotment of
land, the opposition of folkland and bookland, and expounds them
with greater fulness and better insight into the evidence. On the
other hand he goes his own way as to the Gesids (Gefolgschaft),
and the part played by large estates in the political process.
Maurer reduces the importance of the former and lays more stress
on the latter than Kemble. Altogether the German scholar's
investigations have been of great moment, and this not only for
methodical reasons, but also because they lead to a complete
emancipation of the school from Eichhorn's influence.
    As to the Conquests, Germanist views have been formulated
with great authority by Freeman. A comparison of the course of
development in Romance countries with the history of England, and
a careful study of that evidence of the chronicles which Kemble
disregarded, has led the historian of the Norman Conquest to the
conclusion, that the Teutonic invaders actually rooted out most
of the Romanised Celtic population of English Britain, and
reduced it to utter insignificance in those western counties
where they did not destroy it. It is the only inference that can
be drawn from the temporary disappearance of Christianity, from
the all but complete absence of Celtic and Latin words in the
English tongue, from the immunity of English legal and social
life from Roman influence. The Teutonic bias which was given to
the history of the island by the Conquest of Angles and Saxons
has not been altered by the Conquest of the Normans. The foreign
colouring imparted to the language is no testimony of any radical
change in the internal structure of the people: it remained on
the surface, and the history of the island remained English, that
is, Teutonic. Even feudalism, which appears in its full shape
after William the Bastard's invasion, had been prepared in its
component parts by the Saxon period. In working out particulars
Freeman had to reckon largely with Kemble's work and to strike
the balance between the conflicting and one-sided theories of
Thierry and Palgrave. Questions of legal and social research
concern him only so far as they illustrate the problem of the
struggle and fusion of national civilisations. His material is
chiefly drawn from chronicles, and the history of external facts
of war, government, and legislation comes naturally to the fore.
But all the numberless details tend towards one end: they
illustrate the Teutonic aspect of English culture, and assign it
a definite place in the historical system of Europe.
    Stubbs' 'Constitutional History,' embracing as it does the
whole of the Middle Ages, is not designed to trace out some one
idea for the sake of its being new or to take up questions which
had remained unheeded by earlier scholars. Solid learning,
critical caution and accuracy are the great requirements of such
an undertaking, and every one who has had anything to do with the
Bishop of Oxford's publications knows to what extent his work is
distinguished by these qualities. If one may speak of a main idea
in such a book as the Constitutional History of a people, Stubbs'
main idea seems to be, that the English Constitution is the
result of administrative concentration in the age of the Normans
of local self-government formed in the age of the Saxons. This
conclusion is foreshadowed in Palgrave's work, but what appears
there as a mere hypothesis and in confusion with all kinds of
heterogeneous elements, comes out in the later work with the
overwhelming force of careful and impartial induction. Stubbs'
point of view is a Germanist one. The book begins with an
estimate of Teutonic influence in the different countries of
Europe, and England is taken in one sense as the most perfect
manifestation of the Teutonic historical tendency. The influx of
Frenchmen and French ideas under William the Conqueror and after
him had important effects in rousing national energy,
contributing to national unification, settling the forms of
administration and justice, but at bottom there remained the
Teutonic character of the nation. The 'Constitutional History'
approaches the question of the village community, but its object
is strictly limited to the bearing of the problem on general
history and to the testimony of direct authority. It starts from
the community in land as described by Caesar and Tacitus, and
notices that Saxon times present only a few scattered references
to communal ownership. Most of the arable land was held
separately, but the woods, meadow, and pasture still remained in
the ownership of village groups. The township with its rights and
duties as to police, justice, and husbandry was modified but not
destroyed by feudalism. The change from personal relations to
territorial, and from the freedom of the masses to their
dependency, is already very noticeable in the Saxon period. The
Norman epoch completed the process by substituting proprietary
rights in the place of personal subordination and political
subjection. Still even after conquest and legal theory had been
over the ground, the compact self-government of the township is
easily discernible under the crust of the manorial system, and
the condition of medieval villains presents many traces of
original freedom.
    Gneist's work is somewhat different in colouring and closely
connected with a definite political theory, Tocqueville in France
has done most to draw attention to the vital importance of local
self-government in the development of liberal institutions; and
Stubbs' history goes far to demonstrate Tocqueville's general
view by a masterly statement as to the origins of English
institutions. In Gneist's hands the doctrine of decentralisation
assumes a particular shape by the fact that it is constructed on
a social foundation; the German thinker has been trying all along
to show that the English influence is not one of self-government
only, but of aristocratical self-government. The part played by
the gentry in local and central affairs is the great point of
historical interest in Gneist's eyes. Even in the Saxon period he
lays stress chiefly on the early rise of great property, and the
great importance of 'Hlafords' in social organisation. He pays no
attention to the village community, and chiefly cares for the
landlord. But still even Gneist admits the original personal
freedom of the great mass of the people, and his analysis of the
English condition is based on the assumption, that it represents
one variation of Teutonic development: this gives Gneist a place
among the Germanists, although his views on particular subjects
differ from those of other scholars of the same school.
    Its chief representatives have acquired such a celebrity that
it is hardly necessary to insist again, that excellent work has
been done by them for the study of the past. But the direction of
their work has been rather one-sided; it was undertaken either
from the standpoint of political institutions or from that of
general culture and external growth; the facts of agriculture, of
the evolution of classes, of legal organisation were touched upon
only as subsidiary to the main objects of general history. And
yet, even from the middle of the century, the attention of Europe
begins to turn towards those very facts. The 'masses' come up
with their claims behind the 'classes,' the social question
emerges in theory and in practice, in reform and revolution;
Liberals and Conservatives have to reckon with the fact that the
great majority of the people are more excited, and more likely to
be moved by the problems of work and wages than by problems of
political influence. The everlasting, ever-human struggle for
power gets to be considered chiefly in the light of the
distribution of wealth; the distribution of society into classes
and conditions appears as the connecting link between the
economical process and the political process. This great change
in the aspect of modern life could not but react powerfully on
the aspect of historical literature. G.F. von Maurer and Hanssen
stand out as the main initiators of the new movement in our
studies. The many volumes devoted by G.F. Maurer to the village
and the town of Germany are planned on a basis entirely different
from that of his predecessors. Instead of proceeding from the
whole to the parts, and of using social facts merely as a
background to political history, he concentrates everything round
the analysis of the Mark, as the elementary organisation for
purposes of husbandry and ownership. The Mark is thus taken up
not in the vague sense and manner in which it was treated by
Kemble and his followers; it is described and explained on the
strength of copious, though not very well sifted, evidence. On
the other hand, Hanssen's masterly essays on agrarian questions,
and especially on the field-systems, gave an example of the way
in which work was to be done as to facts of husbandry proper.
    Nasse's pamphlet on the village community may be considered
as the first application of the new methods and new results to
English history. The importance of his little volume cannot
easily be overrated: all subsequent work has had to start from
its conclusions.
    Nasse's picture of the ancient English agricultural system,
though drawn from scanty sources, is a very definite one. Most of
the land is enclosed only during the latter part of the year, and
during the rest of the year remains in the hands of the
community. Temporary enclosures rise upon the ploughed field
while the crop is growing; their object, however, is not to
divide the land between neighbours but to protect the crop
against pasturing animals; the strips of the several members of
the township lie intermixed, and their cultivation is not left to
the views and interests of the owners, but settled by the
community according to a general plan. The meadows are also
divided into strips, but these change hands in a certain rotation
determined by lot or otherwise. The pasture ground remains in the
possession of the whole community. The notion of private
property, therefore, can be applied in this system only to the
houses and closes immediately adjoining them.
    Then the feudal epoch divides the country into manors, a form
which originated at the end of the Saxon period and spread
everywhere in Norman times. The soil of the manor consists of
demesne lands and tributary lands. These two classes of lands do
not quite correspond to the distinction between land cultivated
by the lord himself and soil held of him by dependants; there may
be leaseholders on the demesne, but there the lord is always free
to change the mode of cultivation and occupation, while he has no
right to alter the arrangements on the tributary portion. This
last is divided between free socmen holding on certain
conditions, villains and cottagers. The villains occupy equal
holdings; their legal condition is a very low one, although they
are clearly distinguished from slaves, and belong more to the
soil than to the lord. The cottagers have homesteads and crofts,
but no holdings in the common fields; the whole group presents
the material from which, in process of time, the agricultural
labourers have been developed.
    The common system of husbandry manifests itself in many ways:
the small holders club together for ploughing; four virgates or
yardlands have to co-operate in order to start an eight-oxen
plough. The services are often laid upon the whole village and
not on separate householders; on the other hand the village, as a
whole, enters into agreement with the lord about leases or
commutation of services for money.
    Each holding is formed of strips which lie intermixed with
the component parts of other holdings in different fields, and
this fact is intimately connected with the principle of joint
ownership. The whole system begins to break up in the thirteenth
century, much earlier than in France or Germany. As soon as
services get commuted for money rents, it becomes impossible to
retain the labouring people in serfdom. Hired labourers and
farmers take the place of villains, and the villain's holding is
turned into a copyhold and protected by law. Although the passage
to modern forms begins thus early, traces of the original
communalism may be found everywhere, even in the eighteenth
century.
    Nasse's pamphlet is based on a careful study of authorities,
and despite its shortness must be treated as a work of scientific
research. But if all subsequent workers have to reckon with it in
settling particular questions, general conceptions have been more
widely influenced by Sir Henry Maine's lectures, which did not
aim at research, and had in view the broad aspects of the
subject. Their peculiar method is well known to be that of
comparing facts from very different environments -- from the
Teutonic, the Celtic, the Hindu world; Maine tries to sketch a
general process where other people only see particular connexions
and special reasons. The chapters which fall within the line of
our inquiry are based chiefly on a comparison between Western
Europe and India. The agrarian organisation of many parts of
India presents at this very day, in full work and in all stages
of growth and decay, the village community of which some traces
are still scattered in the records of Europe. There and here the
process is in the main the same, the passage from collective
ownership to individualism is influenced by the same great
forces, notwithstanding all the differences of time and place.
The original form of agrarian arrangement is due to the
settlement of a group of free men, which surrenders to its
individual members the use of arable land, meadows, pasture and
wood, but retains the ownership and the power to control and
modify the rights of using the common land. There can be no doubt
that the legal theory, which sees in the modern rights of
commoners mere encroachments upon the lord, carries feudal
notions back into too early a period.
    The real question as conceived by Maine is this -- By what
means was the free village community turned into the manor of the
lord? The petty struggles between townships must have led to the
subjugation of some groups by others; in each particular village
the headman had the means to use his authority in order to
improve his material position; and when a family contrived to
retain an office in the hands of its members this at once gave
matters an aristocratical turn. In Western Europe external causes
had to account for a great deal in the gradual rise of
territorial lordship. When the barbarian invaders came into
contact with Roman civilisation and took possession of the
provincial soil, they found private ownership and great property
in full development, and naturally fell under the influence of
these accomplished facts; their village community was broken up
and transformed gradually into the manorial system.
    Maine traces economic history from an originally free
community; Nasse takes the existence of such a community for
granted. The statements of one are too general, however, and
sometimes too hypothetical, the other has in view husbandry
proper rather than the legal development of social classes.
Maurer's tenets, to which both go back, present a very coherent
system in which all parts hold well together; but each part taken
separately is not very well grounded on fact. The one-sided
preference given to one element does not allow other important
elements to appear; the wish to find in the authorities suitable
arguments for a favourite thesis leads to a confusion of
materials derived from different epochs. These defects naturally
called for protest and rectification; but the reaction against
Maurer's teaching has gone so far and comes from such different
quarters, that one has to look for its explanation beyond the
range of historical research.
    Late years have witnessed everywhere in Europe a movement of
thought which would have been called reactionary some twenty
years ago. Some people are becoming very sceptical as to
principles which were held sacred by preceding generations; at
the same time elements likely to be slighted formerly are coming
to the front in great strength nowadays. There have been liberals
and conservatives at all times, but the direction of the European
mind, saving the reaction against the French Revolution and
Napoleon, has been steadily favourable to the liberal tendency.
For two centuries the greatest thinkers and the course of general
opinion have been striving for liberty in different ways, for the
emancipation of individuals, and the self-government of
communities, and the rights of masses. This liberal creed has
been, on the whole, an eminently idealist one, assuming the easy
perfectibility of human nature, the sound common sense of the
many, the regulating influence of consciousness on instinct, the
immense value of high political aspirations for the regeneration
of mankind. In every single attempt at realising its high-flying
hopes the brutal side of human nature has made itself felt very
effectually, and has become all the more conspicuous just by
reason of the ironical contrast between aims and means. But the
movement as a whole was certainly an idealist one, not only in
the eighteenth but even in the nineteenth century, and the
necessary repressive tendency appeared in close alliance with
officialism, with unthinking tradition, and with the egotism of
classes and individuals. Many events have contributed of late
years to raise a current of independent thought which has gone
far in criticising and stemming back liberal doctrines, if not in
suppressing them. The brilliant achievements of historical
monarchy in Germany, the ridiculous misery to which France has
been reduced by conceited and impotent politicians, the excesses
of terrorist nihilism in Russia, the growing sense of a coming
struggle on questions of radical reform -- all these facts have
worked together to generate a feeling which is far from being
propitious to liberal doctrines. Socialism itself has been
contributing to it directly by laying an emphatic stress on the
conditions of material existence, and treating political life
merely as subordinate to economic aims. In England the repressive
tendency has been felt less than on the Continent, but even here
some of the foremost men in the country are beginning, in
consequence of social well-known events, to ask themselves:
Whither are we drifting? The book which best illustrates the new
direction of thought is probably Taine's 'Origines de la France
Contemporaine.' It is highly characteristic, both in its literary
connexion with the profound and melancholy liberalism of
Tocqueville, and in its almost savage onslaught on revolutionary
legend and doctrine.
    In the field of historical research the fermentation of
political thought of which I have been speaking has been
powerfully seconded by a growing distrust among scholars for
preconceived theories, and by the wish to reconsider solutions
which had been too easily taken for granted. The combined action
of these forces has been curiously experienced in the particular
subject of our study. The Germanist school had held very high the
principle of individual liberty, had tried to connect it with the
Teutonic element in history, had explained its working in the
society described by Tacitus, and had regretfully followed its
decay in later times. For the representatives of the New School
this 'original Teutonic freedom' has entirely lost its
significance, and they regard the process of social development
as starting with the domination of the few and the serfdom of the
many. The votaries of the free village community have been
studying with interest epochs and ethnographical variations
unacquainted with the economic individualism of modern Europe,
they have been attentive in tracing out even the secondary
details of the agrarian associations which have directed the
husbandry of so many centuries, but the New School subordinates
communal practice to private property and connects it with
serfdom. We may already notice the new tendency in
Inamasternegg's Wirthschaftsgeschichte: he enters the lists
against Maurer, denies that the Mark ever had anything to do with
political work, reduces its influence on husbandry, and enhances
that of great property. The most remarkable of French
medievalists -- Fustel de Coulanges -- has been fighting all
along against the Teutonic village community, and for an early
development of private property in connexion with Roman
influence. English scholarship has to reckon with similar views
in Seebohm's well-known work.
    Let us recall to mind the chief points of his theory. The
village community of medieval England is founded on the equality
of the holdings in the open fields of the village. The normal
bolding of a peasant family is not only equal in each separate
village, but it is substantially the same all over England.
Variations there are, but in most cases by far it consists of the
virgate of thirty acres, which makes the fourth part of the hide
of a hundred and twenty acres, because the peasant holder owns
only the fourth part of the ploughteam of eight oxen
corresponding to the hide. The holders of virgates or yardlands
are not the only people in the village; their neighbours may have
more or less land, but there are not many classes as a rule, all
the people in the same class are equalised, and the virgate
remains the chief manifestation of the system. It is plain that
such equality could be maintained only on the principle that each
plot was a unit which was neither to be divided nor thrown
together with other plots. Why did such a system spread all over
Europe? It could not develop out of a free village community, as
has been commonly supposed, because the Germanic law regulating
free land does not prevent its being divided; indeed, where this
law applies, holdings get broken up into irregular plots. If the
system does not form itself out of Germanic elements, it must
come from Roman influence; one has only the choice between the
two as to facts which prevail everywhere in Western Europe.
Indeed, the Roman villa presents all the chief features of the
medieval manor. The lord's demesne acted as a centre, round which
coloni clustered-cultivators who did not divide their tenancies
because they did not own them. The Roman system was the more
readily taken up by the Germans, as their own husbandry,
described by Tacitus, had kindred elements to show-the condition
of their slaves, for instance, was very like that of Roman
coloni. It must be added, that we may trace in Roman authorities
not only the organisation of the holdings, but such features as
the three-field partition of the arable and the intermixed
position of the strips belonging to a single holding.
    The importance of these observations taken as a whole becomes
especially apparent, if we compare medieval England with Wales or
Ireland, with countries settled by the Celts on the principle of
the tribal community: no fixed holdings there; it is not the
population that has to conform itself to fixed divisions of land,
but the divisions of land have to change according to the
movement of the population. Such usage was prevalent in Germany
itself for a time, and would have been prevalent there as long as
in Celtic countries, if the Germans had not come under Roman
influence. And so the continuous development
of society in England starts from the position of Roman
provincial soil.
    The Saxon invasion did not destroy what it found in the
island. Roman villas and their labourers passed from one lord to
the other -- that is all. The ceorls of Saxon times are the
direct descendants of Roman slaves and coloni, some of them
personally free, but all in agrarian subjection. indeed, social
development is a movement from serfdom to freedom, and the
village community of its early stages is connected not with
freedom, but with serfdom.
    Seebohm's results have a marked resemblance to some of the
views held by the eighteenth-century lawyers, and also to those
held by Palgrave and by Coote, but his theory is nevertheless
original, both in the connexion of the parts with the whole, and
in its arguments: he knows how to place in a new light evidence
which has been known and discussed for a long time, and for this
reason his work will be suggestive reading even to those who do
not agree with the results. The chief strength of his work lies
in the chapters devoted to husbandry; but if one accepts his
conclusions, what is to be done with the social part of the
question? Both sides, the economic and the social, are
indissolubly allied, and at the same time the extreme
consequences drawn from them give the lie direct to everything
that has hitherto been taken for granted and accepted as proved
as to this period. Can it really be true that the great bulk of
free men was originally in territorial subjection, or rather that
there never was such a thing as a great number of free men of
German blood, and that the German conquest introduced only a
cluster of privileged people which merged into the habits and
rights of Roman possessors? If this be not true and English
history testifies on every point to a deeper influence exercised
by the German conquerors, does not the collapse of the social
conclusion call in question the economical premises? Does not a
logical development of Seebohm's views lead to conclusions that
we cannot accept? These are all perplexing questions, but one
thing is certain; this last review of the subject has been
powerful enough to necessitate a reconsideration of all its chief
points.
    Happily, this does not mean that former work has been lost. I
have not been trying the patience of my readers by a repetition
of well-known views without some cogent reasons. The subject is
far too wide and important to admit of a brilliantly unexpected
solution by one mind or even one generation of workers. A
superficial observer may be so much struck by the variations and
contradictions, that he will fail to realise the intimate
dependence of every new investigator on his predecessors. 'The
subjective side of history,' as the Germans would say, has been
noticed before now and the taunt has been administered with great
force: 'Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst, das ist im Grund der
Herren eigener Geist, in dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln,' Those
who do not care to fall a prey to Faust's scepticism, will easily
perceive that individual peculiarities and political or national
pretensions will not account for the whole of the process. Their
action is powerful indeed: the wish to put one's own stamp on a
theory and the reaction of present life on the past are mighty
incitements to work. But new schools do not rise in order to pull
down everything that has been raised by former schools, new
theories always absorb old notions both in treatment of details
and in the construction of the whole. We may try, as conclusion
of our review of historical literature, to notice the permanent
gains of consecutive generations in the forward movement of our
studies. The progress will strike us, not only if we compare the
state of learning at both ends of the development, but even if we
take up the links of the chain one by one.
    The greatest scholars of the time before the French
Revolution failed in two important respects: they were not
sufficiently aware of the differences between epochs; they were
too ready with explanations drawn from conscious plans and
arrangements. The shock of Revolution and Reaction taught people
to look deeper for the laws of the social and political organism.
The material for study was not exactly enlarged, but instead of
being thrown together without discrimination, it was sifted and
tried. Preliminary criticism came in as an improvement in method
and led at once to important results. Speaking broadly, the field
of conscious change was narrowed, the field of organic
development and unconscious tradition widened. On this basis
Savigny's school demonstrated the influence of Roman civilisation
in the Middle Ages, started the inquiry as to national
characteristics, and shifted the attention of historians from the
play of events on the surface to the great moral and intellectual
currents which direct the stream. Palgrave's book bears the mark
of all these ideas, and it may be noticed especially that his
chief effort was to give a proper background to English history
by throwing light on the abiding institutions of the law.
    None of these achievements was lost by the next generation of
workers. But it had to start from a new basis, and had a good
deal to add and to correct. Modern life was busy with two
problems after the collapse of reaction had given way to new
aspirations: Europe was trying to strike a due balance between
order and liberty in the constitutional system; nationalities
that had been rent by casual and artificial influences were
struggling for independence and unity. The Germanist School arose
to show the extent to which modern constitutional ideas were
connected with medieval facts, and the share that the German
element has had in the development of institutions and classes.
As to material, Kemble opened a new field by the publication of
the Saxon charters, and the gain was felt at once in the turn
given towards the investigation of private law, which took the
place of Palgrave's vague leaning towards legal history. The
methods of careful and cautious inquiry as to particular facts
took shape in the hands of K. Maurer and Stubbs, and the school
really succeeded, it seems to me, in establishing the
characteristically Germanic general aspect of English history, a
result which does not exclude Roman influence, but has to be
reckoned with in all attempts to estimate definitely its bearing
and strength.
    The rise of the social question about the middle of our
century had, as its necessary consequence, to impress upon the
mind of intelligent people the vast importance of social
conditions, of those primary conditions of husbandry,
distribution of wealth and distribution of classes, which ever,
as it were, loom up behind the pageant of political institutions
and parties. Nasse follows up the thread of investigation from
the study of private law towards the study of economic
conditions. G.F.v. Maurer and Maine enlarge it in scope,
material, and means by their comparative inquiry, taking into
view, first, all varieties of the Teutonic race, and then the
development of other ethnographical branches. The village
community comes out of the inquiry as the constitutive cell of
society during an age of the world, quite as characteristic of
medieval structure, as the town community or 'civitas' was of
ancient polity.
    The consciousness that political and scientific construction
has been rather hasty in its work, that it has often been based
upon doctrines instead of building on the firm foundation of
facts -- the widely spread perception of these defects has been
of late inciting statesmen and thinkers to put to use some of
those very elements which were formerly ignored or rejected. The
manorial School -- if I may be allowed to use this expression --
has brought forward the influence of great landed estates against
the democratical conception of the village community. The work
spent upon this last phenomenon is by no means undone; on the
contrary, it was received in most of its parts. But new material
was found in the manorial documents of the later middle ages, the
method of investigation 'from the known to the unknown' was used
both openly and unconsciously, comparative inquiry was handled
for more definite, even if more limited purposes. Great results
cannot be contested: to name one -- the organising force of
aristocratic property has been acknowledged and has come to its
rights.
    But the new impetus given to research has caused its
originators to overleap themselves, as it were. They have
occupied so exclusively the point of view whence the manor of the
later middle ages is visible that they have disregarded the
evidence which comes from other quarters instead of finding an
explanation which will satisfy all the facts. The investigation
'from the known to the unknown' has its definite danger, against
which one has to be constantly on one's guard: its obvious danger
is to destroy perspective and ignore development by carrying into
the 'unknown' of early times that which is known of later
conditions. Altogether the attempt to overthrow some of the
established results of investigation as to race and classes does
not seem to be a happy one. And so, although great work has been
done in our field of study, it cannot be said that it has been
brought to a close -- 'bis an die Sterne weit.' Many things
remain to be done, and some problems are especially pressing. The
legal and the economical side of the inquiry must be worked up to
the same level; manorial documents must be examined
systematically, if not exhaustively, and their material made to
fit with the evidence established from other sources of
information; the whole field has to be gone over with an eye for
proof and not for doctrine. A review of the work already done,
and of the names of scholars engaged in it, is certainly an
incitement to modesty for every new reaper in the field, but it
is also a source of hope. It shows that schools and leading
scholars displace one another more under the influence of general
currents of thought than of individual talent. The ferment
towards the formation of groups comes from the outside, from the
modern life which surrounds research, forms the scholar, suggests
solutions. Moreover, theoretical development has a continuity of
its own; all the strength of this manifold life cannot break or
turn back its course, but is reduced to drive it forward in ever
new bends and curves. The present time is especially propitious
to our study: one feels, as it were, that it is ripening to
far-reaching conclusions. So much has been done already for this
field of enquiry in the different countries of Europe, that the
hope to see in our age a general treatment of the social origins
of Western Europe will not seem an extravagant one. And such a
treatment must form as it were the corner-stone of any attempt to
trace the law of development of human society. It is in this
consciousness of being borne by a mighty general current, that
the single scholar may gather hope that may buoy him against the
insignificance of his forces and the drudgery of his work.