No barriers
between
classes.
Blending
of society
by inter-
mediate
classes.
Education
the best
means for
rising.
626 Constitutional IIistori/. ∣c∏-U,.
the lord whom he paid or maintained by a similar allotment of
land ; that the former class could not be alienated without the
land which they occupied, but were in most other respects free
whilst the latter might be sold from one manor to another, a∏Q
were by reason of villein blood incapable of most legal acts ;
that the condition of the former was ameliorated and perhaps
altogether made free by the substitution of rents for services
from the tenant, and by the institution of copyhold titles, in
which the custom of the manor fettered the will of the lord ;
whilst the lot of the latter remained unimproved, except by
separate manumissions, until the country was ashamed of such
servitude, and thought it best to forget that it had ever existed.
But, as has been already said, the obscurity of the question,
and the certain diversities of usage,—the conflict between legal
dicta and extant record—prevent us from offering any mere
conjecture like this as a possible solution of the difficulty.
496. Whatever theoretical conclusion may be drawn touching
the condition of the poor, and there is no occasion that either
way it should be exaggerated by false sentiment, there is very
little evidence to show that our forefathers, in the middle ranks
of life, desired to set any impassable boundary between class
and class. The great barons would probably, at any period,
have shown a disinclination to admit new men on terms of
equality to their own order, but this disinclination was over-
borne by the royal policy of promoting useful servants, and the
baronage was recruited by lawyers, ministers, and warriors, who
in the next generation stood as stiffly on their privilege as their
companions had ever done. The country knight was always re-
garded as a member of the noble class, and his position was
continually strengthened by intermarriage with the baronage.
The city magnate again formed a link between the country
squire and the tradesman ; and the tradesman and the yeoman
were in position and in blood close akin. Even the villein
might, by learning a craft, set his foot on the ladder of pro-
motion. But the most certain way to rise was furnished by
education. Over against the many grievances which modern
thought has alleged against the unlearned ages which passed
XXi.] Popular Education. 627
before the invention of printing, it ought to be set to the credit
of medieval society that clerkship was never despised or made
unnecessarily difficult of acquisition. The sneer of Walter Map,
who declared that in his days the villeins were attempting to
educate their ignoble and degenerate offspring in the liberal
arts, proves that even in the twelfth century the way was open.
Richard II rejected the proposition that the villeins should be Education
forbidden to send their children to the schools to learn ‘clergie’; Strictedby
1 ιji1 legislation.
and, even at a time when the supply ot labour ran so low that
no man who was not worth twenty shillings a year in land or
rent was allowed to apprentice his child to a craft, a full and
liberal exception was made in favour of learning ; ‘ every man
or woman ’—the words occur in the petition and statute of
artificers passed in 1406,—-‘of what state or condition that he
be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at
any school that pleaseth them within the realm1.’ What, it
may be asked, was the supply that answered to a demand so
large as this I It would be very unfair to underrate the debt
which England owes to the statesmen who, after the dissolution
of monasteries, obtained in the foundation of grammar schools
a permanent, free, and to some extent independent, source of
liberal education for the people, or to object to the claim made
by that liberal education to have been higher in character and
value than anything that had preceded it. Yet it must be Education
. ττ τ∙τ furnished
remembered that the want which ɪt supplied iras one which by the
τιτ i τ τ . - , monastic
had been to a great extent created by the destruction of the and other
religious houses and other foundations in which the middle
ages had cultivated a modicum of useful learning. In a former
chapter attention has been called to the fact that absolutely
unlettered ignorance ought not to be alleged against the middle
and lower classes of these ages ; that in every village reading
and writing must have been not unknown accomplishments,
even if books and papers were so scarce as to confine these
accomplishments practically to the mere uses of business.
Schools were by no means uncommon things ; there were
schools in all cathedrals ; monasteries and colleges were every-
1 Kot. Parl. ɪɪɪ. 602 ; Statutes, iɪ. 158.
S S 2