6i4
Constitutional History.
[chap.
exponents of any element of the national will. And this con-
sideration will account in great measure for their insignificance
in action and their obscurity in history.
Sociallifeof 491. Of the social life and habits of the citizen and burgher
man. we have more distinct ideas than of his political action. Social
habits no doubt tended to the formation of political habits then
as now. Except for the purposes of trade, the townsman seldom
went far from his borough ; there he found all his kinsmen, his
company, and his customers; his ambition was gratified by
election to municipal office; the local courts could settle most
of his legal business ; in the neighbouring villages he could
invest the money which he cared to invest in land ; once a year,
for a few years, he might bear a share in the armed contingent
of his town to the shire force or militia; once in his life he
might go up, if he lived in a parliamentary borough, to parlia-
ment. There was not much in his life to widen his sympathies ;
there were no newspapers, and few books ; there was not enough
local distress for charity to find interest in relieving it ; there were
many local festivities, and time and means for cultivating comfort
at home. The burgher had pride in his house, and still more
perhaps in his furniture ; for although, in the splendid panorama
of medieval architecture, the great houses of the merchants
contribute a distinct element of magnificence to the general
picture, such houses as Crosby Hall and the Hall of John Hall
of Salisbury must always, in the walled towns, have been ex-
ceptions to the rule, and far beyond the aspirations of the
Comfort and ordinary tradesman ; but the smallest house could be made
burgher. comfortable and even elegant by the appliances which his trade
connexion brought within the reach of the master. Hence the
riches of the inventories attached to the wills of medieval
townsmen, and many of the most prized relics of medieval
handicraft. Somewhat of the pains, for which the private
house afforded no scope, was spent on the churches and public
Town buildings of the town. The numerous churches of York and
rhurches. .
Norwich, poorly endowed, but nobly built and furnished, speak
very clearly not only of the devotion, but of the artistic culture,
of the burghers of those towns. The crafts vied with one
XXi.] Town Life. 61.5
another in the elaborate ornamentation of their churches, their
chantries, and. their halls of meeting ; and of the later religious
guilds some seem to have been founded for the express purpose
of combining splendid religious services and processions with
the work of charity. Such was one of the better results of a
confined local sympathy. But the burgher did not either in Country
life or in death forget his friends outside the walls. His will
generally contained directions for small payments to the country
churches where his ancestors lay buried. Strongly as his
affections were localised, he was not a mere townsman. Nine
tenths of the cities of medieval England would now be regarded
as mere country towns, and they were country towns even then.
They drew in all their new blood from the country ; they were
the centres for village trade ; the neighbouring villages were
the play-ground and sporting-ground of the townsmen, who
had, in many cases, rights of common pasture, and in some
cases rights of hunting, far outside the walls. The great ReiigiouB
religious guilds, just referred to, answered, like race meetings
at a later period, the end of bringing even the higher class of
the country population into close acquaintance with the towns-
men, in ways more likely to be developed into social intercourse
than the market or the muster in arms. Before the close of the
middle ages the rich townsmen had begun to intermarry with
the knights and gentry, and many of the noble families of the
present day trace the foundation of their fortunes to a lord
mayor of London or York, or a mayor of some provincial town.
These intermarriages, it is true, became more common after the Intermar-
fall of the elder baronage and the great expansion of trade tιie°country
under the Tudors, but the fashion was set two centuries earlier.
If the adventurous and tragic history of the house of De la
Pole shone as a warning light for rash ambition, it stood by no
means alone. It is probable that there was no period in No barrier
. . . .1 η ∙ τι ±ιτ*τιτ τ between
English history at which the barrier between the knightly and trade and
mercantile class was regarded as insuperable, since the days of gentry'
Athelstan, when the merchant who had made his three voyages
over the sea and made his fortune, became worthy of thegn-
right ; even the higher grades of chivalry were not beyond his