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 THE 
 
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 THE MAmER-mm^ 
 
 PEOPLE OFENGLANp}^ 
 LIVED DURING THE miQI^. 
 OF WILLIAM TmCOI(0mf(. 
 BYMISS CORNitR. 
 
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 iS^s^^ '-ANGUAGE, FOR YOUNG CH 
 
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 LONDON. 
 THOMAS DEAN AND SON, 
 
 THREADNEEDLE STREET. 
 
AND 
 
 THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND LIVED 
 
 DURING THE REIGN OF 
 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 "^HE Norman Conquest was the 
 
 .f m Conquest of England and its 
 
 inhabitants, by William, Duke of 
 
 ^ Normandy, whom we call William 
 
 the Conqueror. At the time of 
 his invasion, the English, or Anglo 
 Saxons, were, according to the ideas of 
 those barbarous times, a free people, al- 
 though two-thirds of them were really in 
 bondage ; for the farmers and mechanics 
 were mostly ceorls, or vassals of the great 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 men; and the servants and labourers were 
 serfs, or slaves, who wore iron collars 
 round their necks ; and neither ceorls nor 
 serfs could marry out of their own class. 
 
 The ceorls, however, were in general 
 pretty well off, being in fact small farmers, 
 living under the protection of the lord of 
 the soil. They enjoyed many comforts in 
 their rude cottages, for every one had a 
 portion of land, and when he had paid 
 in produce and labour what was due to his 
 lord, by way of rent, all the rest was his 
 own. Besides these small farmers, the 
 lord of the domain had other ceorls, or 
 vassals, who worked at different trades, 
 such as smiths, carpenters, &c., many of 
 -whom lived in the villages, or small towns, 
 in the neighbourhood of his dwelling, and 
 it was their duty to supply him with a cer- 
 tain cjuantity of the articles they made, or 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 to work at their trades for him a certain 
 number of days in every year. 
 
 The larger towns were called Burghs, 
 a term used by the Romans for a mili- 
 tary station ; many of the inhabitants in 
 these burghs were free tradesmen and 
 mechanics, who had gained their freedom 
 for particular services, or by paying a sum 
 of money to their lords, and some had 
 been children of the smaller land-owners, 
 called Franklins, or freemen. 
 
 The Saxons were not such good hus- 
 bandmen as the Romans, so that com was 
 not so plentiful, and the common people 
 usually made their bread of barley ; but 
 they had plenty of meat, for pasture land 
 to feed cattle was cheap, or was in com- 
 mon, and quantities of pigs were fed on 
 acorns in the forests. Sheep were reared 
 chiefly for their wool, of which every 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 family required a supply, as the clothing 
 of all but the very highest classes was 
 manufactured at home ; so that all Saxon 
 women, whatever their station in life 
 might be, were constantly employed in 
 spinning, knitting, weaving, and sewing. 
 
 The monasteries were very numerous 
 at the time of the Norman invasion, and 
 it is stated that the number of parish 
 churches and villages was greater than at 
 the present day; but whether this be true 
 or not, most of the towns and villages in 
 this country existed in the Saxon times, 
 and were called by the same names as 
 they are now, although they were then 
 much smaller and the houses little better 
 than sheds. And now for the story of 
 the Norman Conquest. 
 
 When Edward the Confessor was king 
 of England, his cousin William, Dake of 
 
5icye of londcn gc DesTruclt On of its SahurbM 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 Normandy, came on a visit to his court. 
 Edward had been brought up in Norman- 
 dy, and liked the Normans very much ; so 
 he entertained the Duke and his followers 
 very sumptuously, to the great discon- 
 tent of the English nobles, who did not 
 like them. But more than this, Edward 
 made a will, leaving his crown to Duke 
 William, who returned to Normandy well 
 contented. 
 
 The succession to the English crown was 
 not then exactly regulated by law. The 
 eldest son of the king often succeeded ; 
 but sometimes the nobles elected a king, 
 and sometimes the sovereign appointed his 
 own successor ; but, in either case, it was 
 necessary that the choice should be ap- 
 proved by the Wit-en-age-mote, or Parlia- 
 ment, otherwise it was void; and this was 
 the reason William's claim was disputed. 
 
THE NOEMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 When Edward died, his wife's brother 
 Harold was elected King, being a brave 
 chief, and much beloved by the people. 
 Then William, Duke of Normandy, laid 
 claim to the crown, and invaded England 
 w^ith a large army. He landed near Hast- 
 ingS;, in Sussex^ where he set up a fortified 
 camp ; and as Harold did not come for 
 sixteen days to oppose him, he suffered 
 his soldiers to plunder the surrounding 
 country, and burn down many of the 
 villages, so that the terrified people shut 
 themselves up in the churches for safety. 
 
 At length, King Harold, who had been 
 in the north of England to subdue an in- 
 surrection of the Danes, arrived at the 
 head of his army, and the famous battle 
 of Hastings was fought on the 14th of 
 October, 1066, which proved an unfortu- 
 nate day for the English^ who not only 
 
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 THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 lost the battle, but their valiant king also, 
 he being shot in the eye with an arrow. 
 
 But this was only the beginning of the 
 Conquest, for the Anglo-Saxons were too 
 brave to submit without a hard struggle 
 to a foreign ruler ; so the Normans had 
 to fight many more battles, and it was 
 seven years before William was fully ac- 
 knowledged as King of England. During 
 that period the English suffered all kinds 
 of misery. Their towns were burned ; — 
 their houses, lands, and money taken from 
 them ; — and many thousands were killed 
 by the invaders. 
 
 Soon after the victory at Hastings, the 
 Conqueror marched his troops to Dover, 
 where he took possession of the castle, and 
 set fire to the town. He had been opposed 
 on his way, and had committed dreadful 
 ravages in consequence ; but it is said, that 
 
THE NOKMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 as he returned through Kent, a body of 
 Kentish men, headed by the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, suddenly issued from a 
 forest, and offered to acknowledge him as 
 king, provided they might enjoy the same 
 freedom as before. It is added, that he 
 granted a charter, or written promise, to 
 that effect ; but there is nothing on record 
 to shew that he kept his word. 
 
 He next laid siege to London, and sta- 
 tioned his soldiers round the city, so that 
 no provisions could be carried in ; and he 
 burned down all the houses outside the 
 walls, and killed or drove away the people 
 for miles around. The citizens made a 
 brave defence; but at last, fearing they 
 should die of famine, they agreed to re- 
 ceive him for their king, and opened the 
 gates of the city. He did not enter then, 
 but sent part of his army, to prepare for 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 him a safe abode; and they built a for- 
 tress, which was enlarged in after times 
 and is now the Tower of London. William 
 was crowned in the Abbey of Westminster 
 on Christmas day, 1066; and many Saxon 
 or English chiefs, seeing it was in vain to 
 resist, went to do him homage ; and those 
 who did so were promised full possession 
 of their lands and honours ; but the wily 
 Conqueror meant to dispossess them of 
 those lands and honors as soon as his 
 power was sufficiently established. 
 
 Meantime, the estates of the English 
 nobles, who had not submitted, were given 
 to Normans, who took possession of them 
 by force ; while others gained lands by 
 compelling the widow^s and heiresses of 
 those who had fallen in the battle of Hast- 
 ings, or who had been killed elsewhere, to 
 marry them. In short, every one who had 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 followed William to England^ expected to 
 be made rich and great out of the spoils of 
 the conquered people, and he was willing 
 to gratify them. 
 
 The Enoiish monks were driven from 
 
 c> 
 
 their nionasteries, to make room for Nor- 
 man monks. The English bishops, too, 
 were deprived of their benefices ; so that 
 even the church and abbey lands, with 
 the ceorls and serfs who cultivated them, 
 passed, like the estates of the Saxon nobles, 
 into the hands of the Normans. Then 
 Norman castles were erected upon most 
 of the large estates, and houses were pulled 
 down in the towns, to make room for them, 
 the inmates being turned out to find homes 
 where they could. The serfs and peasants, 
 botii men and women, were compelled to 
 labour at these works, while the Norman 
 soldiers urged them on with their staves. 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 The forcible impressment of these labour- 
 ers to build castles was the origin of the 
 press-gangs of modern times. 
 
 Thousands upon thousands of warlike 
 Normans pouring into England, William 
 gradually became master of the whole 
 country ; but every step he gained was 
 marked by violence and bloodshed, and 
 his soldiers were permitted to rob and ill- 
 treat the English with impunity. Some of 
 them were quartered in every land-owner's 
 house, where they took what they pleased, 
 without paying for it, and made it their 
 sport to insult the family, who dared not 
 resent their insolence; but were often too 
 glad to give up to them the best part of 
 their possessions that they might keep the 
 remainder in peace. 
 
 At length the king declared his inten- 
 tion of reducing all the English nobles to a 
 
THE NOHMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 state of bondage, and giving all the landed 
 property in the coimtr}^ to Norman nobles. 
 Then many men of rank, despoiled of their 
 estates, fled with their families and ceorls 
 to the woods, to live by plunder ; and the 
 many bands of robbers, thus formed, were 
 not suppressed for several reigns. 
 
 Among these dispossessed nobles was 
 one named Here ward, lord of a large 
 domain in Lincolnshire. This brave chief 
 resolved to make an effort to restore his 
 countrymen to freedom : so he established 
 a fortified camp in the Isle of Ely, among 
 the lakes sind fens of Cambridgeshire, 
 which was then marshy land, half covered 
 with water, and it became a place of refuge 
 for men of all classes; bishops, abbots, and 
 nobles; who, with the peasants of Ely, most 
 of whom were vassals on the abbey-lands 
 of Ely and Croyland, formed quite an 
 
T^le. Curfew J3e>l 
 

f^f^t^ f SPBI!mea*tiilx»xtJLVkj.i.m 
 
 THE NOUMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 army. The heavily-armed Normans could 
 not find their way through these fens, so 
 that the English often way-laid and cut 
 off parties of them, and made good their 
 retreat to the camp of refuge, by paths 
 known only to themselves. 
 
 William long tried to destroy this camp, 
 but in vain ; at last he blockaded the Isle 
 of Ely with boats, filled with soldiers, and 
 began to build causeways, to enable the 
 Normans to get into it; but Hereward 
 repeatedly surprised the guards, and at- 
 tacked and destroyed the works. 
 
 At last, provisions grew scarce in the 
 camp, and some of the monks of Ely, de- 
 spairing of success, sent privately to the 
 Norman castle, which had been erected at 
 Cam bridge, offering to guide the Normans 
 into the island, provided they would pro- 
 mise not to take their abbey. The camp 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 was thus surprised and taken, and the Eng- 
 lish treated with shocking barbarity ; but 
 the monks who betrayed them were justly 
 punished, by meeting with all kinds of rob- 
 bery and ill usage from the Norman sol- 
 diers, who were quartered in the abbey. 
 
 The English had now been fighting for 
 their liberty upwards of six years, but, 
 after this event, they gave up the contest, 
 and William became absolute king of 
 England, and a great tyrant he was. One 
 of his early acts was to destroy upwards 
 of sixty parishes and thirty churches in 
 Hampshire, under pretence of making a 
 forest for hunting, but, in reality, to keep 
 the city of Winchester, where he resided, 
 with the port of Southampton, clear of 
 Saxons; and he made no compensation to 
 either poor or rich, whom he thus cruelly 
 turned out of their lands and homes. 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 He then made laws which deprived the 
 people of their ancient right of hunting 
 and killing game in the forests ; and these 
 new laws were so severe, that no Saxon 
 was allowed to enter within the boundary 
 of any of the forests and chases, of which 
 there were then more than eighty in Eng- 
 land. It was made a greater crime to kill 
 a deer than to kill a fellow-creature ; for 
 the murderer was only punished by a fine, 
 but the deer-slayer had his eyes torn out. 
 Such was the origin of our game laws. 
 
 The other institutions of the country 
 were not materially altered. There were 
 still three distinct classes of society ; the 
 nobles, the vassals, and the serfs. The 
 latter could not be worse off than they 
 were before; but the vassals, who were 
 called villeins by the Normans, instead of 
 ceorls, were greatly oppressed by their new 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 masters, who exacted from them much 
 more than their Saxon lords had done, 
 and treated them besides with scorn. 
 The Curfew-bell, which was rung at sun- 
 set, to warn the people to cover or put 
 out their fires, was established in this 
 reign, and surnames were first used. 
 
 Some of the great Saxon families were 
 afterwards restored to a part of their for- 
 mer possessions, and in course of time the 
 distinction between the Norman and Sax- 
 on races wore away among the higher 
 classes ; but the lower orders were all of 
 Saxon origin, for many centuries. How 
 they gradually became a free and wealthy 
 people, will be seen in the following parts 
 of our History, wherein we shall next 
 show what came to pass in England in 
 
 THE FEUDAL TIMES. 
 
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