0304B

The number of religious orders also greatly increased during the 12th century. In particular, many Cistercian monasteries were established. The White Monks (so-called from the colour of their habits) were bound by their Customs to settle in unpopulated lands, which they termed 'deserts'. Many of their monasteries were founded in remote upland areas, but if benefactors granted them land in a long-settled district, they sometimes depopulated it to create a technical desert. The population boom assisted their recruitment of the lay brothers who worked their big estates, and were often engaged in sheep-ranching. Some Cistercian abbeys held mining concessions in the Pennines and the mountains of the Lake District.
In the towns, the Augustinian order was now conspicuous. The Black Canons, introduced to England in the early 12th century, often established hospitals and almshouses, although by 1200 they had usually delegated direct management control of these. Several other new orders also flourished, including the distinctively English order of Gilbertines (dating from the 1130s). The urban poor often neglected regular religious observance, following their migration from their village communities and subsequent failure to integrate into urban parishes, since they could only afford to live in shanty-slums outside the walls. From the 1220s, however, they experienced the evangelising activities of the major orders of friars, the Franciscans and Dominicans.
The rising population of the countryside led the lords to demand high �entry fines� when peasant sons succeeded their fathers in the family landholding. Peasants mere subject to their manorial lord, to whom each household owed certain weekly labour-services on his demesne (the land reserved for his benefit). To some extent they mere protected from the arbitrary imposition of extra services by the custom of the manor, which was voiced by the peasants' spokesman, the reeve, in face of demands made by the baliff on behalf of the lord or his steward. As corn prices increased, lords tended to exploit their estates directly rather than leasing them out at a fixed rent, the previous practice. Surplus produce front the lord's demesne was sold. Village and manor were not identical. A manor might be larger or smaller than one village, although the multi-village manors of earlier times were dwindling as lands were sold or divided between heiresses. Several manors could increasingly be found within a single village.
Nor did every village coincide with a parish. In earlier times several villages might have been within the parochia of one �mother church�, but by about 1200 the parochial structure was established in the form which survived until the 19th century, when it was again extended. Old-established churches safeguarded their parochial rights, in which financial interests predominated. When new churches (termed �chapels�) mere built to meet the needs of recently-established hamlets, their existence was sometimes challenged in the church courts. At best, the congregations of these chapels then had to trek miles to the mother-church on the chief feast-days, and render the traditional seasonal offerings there. Churches were the only public buildings in villages, and the nave of the parish church accomodated public gatherings of many kinds, although there was no seating, apart perhaps from a bench around the walls for the old and the frail. The laity were soon to become collectively responsible for the upkeep of the nave and its furnishings. Religious instruction was conveyed verbally in homilies authorised by the bishops, who did not trust ill-educated parish priests to compose their own sermons. Visual instruction was often provided by large-scale wall paintings around the interior of the church.
Disease was rampant and not much could be done to alleviate it. The Benedictine monasteries still transmitted some medical knowledge, but increasingly even their own monks were treated by non-monastic physicians. Gradually, over the 12th century, more up-to-date knowledge was studied in the medical schools of Montpelier, Bologna and Salerno. By 1200 physicians trained at these centres were frequently recorded in England, although their medicine was available only to the better-off. Most people still relied on herbal remedies or petitioned the saints whose relics were venerated at healing shrines, often located in abbeys or cathedrals. Many shrines drew pilgrims only from their own region and their popularity often varied a few generations after the cult was promoted, but following the canonisation of Thomas Becket in 1173 pilgrims front all over Britain and the Continent converged on Canterbury.
Records kept of healings reported at the shrines indicate that most of' the ailments of the poorer people stemmed from malnutrition, which led to deformed or crippled limbs, impaired eyesight or skin diseases which were exacerbated by poor hygiene. ln addition, exposure to the wet and cold, from travelling, working in the open air, or through inadequate housing, explains the prevalence of rheumatic and arthritic disease found in the archaeological remains of medieval people.
Meat, chiefly pork, was eaten regularly only by the better-off. Venison was available to the privileged, and also to country dwellers who incurred the savage forest laws if they were caught poaching. Manorial lords maintained rabbit warrens and dovecotes; monastic proprietors had their fishponds. Vineyards were established on some estates in southern England. The peasantry, though, mainly lived on black bread - with occasional vegetable stews - and weak ale. They kept poultry, and their sheep (cows were comparatively rare) produced milk, enabling cheese to be made. Peasants ate little dairy produce since they sold most of their eggs, cheese and butter in local markets to earn vital cash to buy cooking pots and other metal utensils, harnesses for the plough-beasts, and salt. A little money was also needed for any money-rents, or amercements (fines) which might fall due.
As the population rose, the unploughed common land of the villages came under increased pressure for corn production, and peasants had progressively less grazing available for their livestock. In good arable areas, cultivation was usually in big open fields, ploughed communally, as individual peasant households contributed one or two beasts to an eight-oxen plough team. Within each field, every peasant householder had several allocations of ploughlands (strips of land). ln other areas, fields were smaller and enclosures were worked by a plough pulled by only one beast.
The lord had his castle, the squire his fortified manor house and the richest peasants might boast a two-roomed stone farmhouse, although this was often shared with livestock and essential stores. Most peasants, though, lived in rudimentary hovels, which were frequently rebuilt on different parts of' their crofts (small allocations of fenced-off land). Living space was mostly one cramped, damp, draughty and smoke-filled room. Even in towns most of the population lived in timber-hung lathe-and-plaster houses, although in London a regulation of John's reign required dwellings to have stone dividing walls, to reduce the fire-hazard. The urban rich sometimes had houses built entirely of stone. Household furnishings were sparse among townspeople, and even more so in peasant households, which perhaps possessed only a rough trestle table, a bench or two, cooking pots, bowls and dishes of earthenware and wood. Peasants and urban wage-labourers probably had only the homespun clothes they stood up in.
Most country dwellers normally travelled no further than their nearest market. Those employed in agriculture (which included women, particularly at harvest time) worked within the limits of the open fields of their village. Some, though, travelled further afield. Sons of peasant families might be recruited to swell the ranks of their lord's retinue, both in war and in peacetime, providing personal protection on the roads arid indicating social status. A lord acquiring land in the Marches might relocate his landless villeins hundreds of miles from their original home. Conversely, those whose business took them to remote corners of the kingdom might attract recruits to their home localities. More in Part C....