The Middle Ages are a fascinating period of our history and have produced some outstanding archaeology. The times were filled with intrigue, war, famine and political wrangling. We know a great deal about this period because royalty, government and the church were great record keepers and many records still survive today. Of course, there are gaps in our knowledge that archaeology strives to fill, but generally speaking we know more about daily life in the Middle Ages than any other period before this time.
Following the departure of the Romans in the early fifth century, Britain was governed by a variety of small chiefdoms led by both indigenous and invading peoples. By the seventh century, larger kingdoms emerged that were the basis for the medieval kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales. During this Anglo-Saxon period, the larger kingdoms provided some inspiring kings, such as Offa of Mercia and Alfred, who created the strong West Saxon kingdoms south of the Thames.
As the Saxons gradually converted to Christianity, the landscape was divided into parishes administered by the church. Towns started to develop, and throughout this period we see strong links being built between Britain and the rest of the continent.
The period known today as the Middle Ages start at the time of the Norman invasion of Britain by William the Conqueror in 1066, and last for some 450 years. A feudal system of military law was established at the beginning of this period and many Saxon kings had their lands transferred to Norman barons. By the time of the Domesday Book, the first national survey of the country, in 1086, 50 per cent of land was owned by barons. The rest was divided between the church and the king (William was acclaimed king on Christmas Day 1066 in Westminster Abbey). The Middle Ages also saw the construction of castles, towns and rural manors. Many of these had associated priories and abbeys as the church became more and more powerful.
The Early Middle Ages saw the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy replaced by a Norman elite. Once its own state, Britain became part of a larger political map and was encompassed by Normandy, where many of the barons still held estates. England and the principality of Normandy were now interwoven. This meant that English politics were now a part of French concerns.
In 1087 William died and his youngest son, William Rufus, inherited the throne. The eldest son Robert gained the estates in France. This division of the estate of William the Conqueror could indicate that customs governing succession to the throne were flexible at this time.
Many of the records from this period were compiled by the church. It seems monks didn’t like William II very much, so we get a bit of a biased picture. Apparently he followed fashion too closely, wearing his hair long like a lady, and lived an extravagant lifestyle. However, William II was an able statesman and held up well in comparison with his brother in Normandy, especially as Robert headed to the east to fight in the crusades.
A hunting accident ended William II’s life in 1100. Without an heir, the job of king fell to his younger brother, Henry. More trouble ensued when Robert returned from the Holy City and the tension mounted as each party vied for control of as much land as possible.
At this early stage of the Middle Ages, political life and the wrangling of the aristocracy were as intriguing as any news item today, but what was life like for the average person in the lane?
The Normans established life on a feudal basis, one of the main principals of which was the grant to freemen, under a lord, of definite rights in the use of land in return for specified services. These services were usually a call to arms in times of crisis and shares in agricultural production.
The economy was such that people could work in different skills and live in towns or the countryside, using markets and trade to obtain the items they could not produce. The rule of the day was through lord, church and king, with the average peasant holding little influence. In village life, freemen were allotted pieces of ground to work (allotments) and these were often sown with rotational crops to preserve the fertility of the soil. Each Sunday the villagers would go to the church of their parish. The church would also take one tenth of everything produced on their smallholdings (a tithe).
The church was very influential and powerful during this time. The Normans brought with them the fully developed monastic plan and many monasteries incorporated different industries and skills to enhance their income. They also developed the landscape in such a way that many earthworks from the Middle Ages are still evident today.
Most medieval monastic Orders were originally founded on the continent and then imported to Britain as religious blueprints for people to follow. Gilbertines were a bit different and actually started in England. Gilbert, the son of a Norman knight and Saxon mother, was born around 1083. Considered unsuitable to be a knight like his father, due to some disability, he travelled to France and later returned to teach religion to local children, many of whom were girls.
Though Gilbert would have had relatively rich parents it appears that he gave most of his wealth to the poor. When his father died he became both squire and priest. He built lodgings next to a parish church for the girls (who wanted to become nuns and follow the rule of St Benedict) and soon established a thriving community with lay-brothers brought in to work the land.
By 1139 Gilbert had been given land on which to build a new monastery and soon inherited another from an abandoned Cistercian Order. In 1147 he travelled to Citeaux in France to try to get the Cistercians to take on his Order, which was now becoming quite large. Pope Eugenius III was not interested in this extra responsibility and took the unusual step of granting Gilbert control of his own Order.
Gilbert employed Augustinian canons to act as priests to his nuns and this started the characteristic Gilbertine system of having both sexes based at the same monastery. The basic plan was to have the nuns and canons separated within the complex. A church for worship was to have a high wall so that neither sex could see each other but both could hear the preaching. The men and women were to live in separate houses and there was to be no contact between them.
After a hard life of wearing hair shirts, working long hours and eating little, Gilbert himself died in 1189 at the grand old age of 106. His system still worked well for some time after that but by 1534 one of Henry VIII’s commissioners visited this site and found evidence for some nuns being ‘heavy with child’. As you can imagine, this would have caused a fair scandal in its day.