Mediaeval Socialism | Page 9

the various trades regulated the hours of labour, the quality of the
work, and the rate of remuneration. Yet, on the other hand, it is
undoubted that, once the squalor of the earlier stages of urban life had
been removed or at least improved, the social condition of the poor,
from the fourteenth century onwards, was immeasurably superior in the
towns to what it was in the country districts.
The quickening influence of trade was making itself felt everywhere. In
1331 the cloth trade was introduced at Bristol, and settled down then

definitely in the west of England. In the north we notice the beginnings
of the coal trade. Licence was given to the burgesses of Newcastle to
dig for coal in 1351; and in 1368 two merchants of the same city had
applied for and obtained royal permission to send that precious
commodity "to any part of the kingdom, either by land or water." Even
vast speculations were opening up for English commercial enterprise,
when, by cornering the wool and bribing the King, a ring of merchants
were able to break the Italian banking houses, and disorganise the
European money market, for on the Continent all this energy in trade
was already old. The house of Anjou, for example, had made the
kingdom of Naples a great trading centre. Its corn and cattle were
famous the world over. But in Naples it was the sovereigns (like
Edward III and Edward IV in England) who patronised the commercial
instincts of their people. By the indefatigable genius of the royal house,
industry was stimulated, and private enterprise encouraged. By wise
legislation the interests of the merchants were safeguarded; and by the
personal supervision of Government, fiscal duties were moderated, the
currency kept pure and stable, weights and measures reduced to
uniformity, the ease and security of communications secured.
No doubt trade not seldom, even in that age, led to much evil.
Parliament in England raised its voice against the trickery and deceit
practised by the greater merchants towards the small shopkeepers, and
complained bitterly of the growing custom of the King to farm out to
the wealthier among them the subsidies and port-duties of the kingdom.
For the whole force of the break-up of feudal conditions was to turn the
direction of power into the hands of a small, but moneyed class. Under
Edward III there is a distinct appearance of a set of nouveaux riches,
who rise to great prominence and take their places beside the old
landed nobility. De la Pole, the man who did most to establish the
prosperity of Hull, is an excellent example of what is often thought to
be a decidedly modern type. He introduced bricks from the Low
Countries, and apparently by this means and some curious banking
speculations of very doubtful honesty achieved a great fortune. The
King paid a visit to his country house, and made him Chief Baron of
the Exchequer, in which office he was strongly suspected of not always
passing to the right quarter some of the royal moneys. His son became

Earl of Suffolk and Lord Chancellor; and a marriage with royalty made
descendants of the family on more than one occasion heirs-at-law of the
Crown.
Even the peasant was beginning to feel the amelioration of his lot,
found life easy, and work something to be shirked. In his food, he was
starting to be delicate. Says Langland in his "Vision of Piers
Plowman":
"Then labourers landless that lived by their hands, Would deign not to
dine upon worts a day old. No penny-ale pleased them, no piece of
good bacon, Only fresh flesh or fish, well-fried or well-baked, Ever hot
and still hotter to heat well their maw."
And he speaks elsewhere of their laziness:
"Bewailing his lot as a workman to live, He grumbles against God and
grieves without reason, And curses the king and his council after Who
licence the laws that the labourers grieve."
That the poor could thus become fastidious was a good sign of the
rising standard of comfort.
But for all that life was hard, and much at the mercy of the weather, and
of the assaults of man's own fellows. The houses of the better folk were
of brick and stone, and glass windows were just becoming known,
whereas the substitute of oiled paper had been neither cheerful nor of
very much protection. But the huts of the poor were of plastered mud;
and even the walls of a quite respectable man's abode, we know from
one court summons to have been pierced by arrows shot at him by a
pugnacious neighbour. The plaintiff offered to take judge and jury then
and there and show them these "horrid weapons" still sticking to the
exterior. In the larger houses the hall had branched