Of Honour of the Citizens. That City is honoured by her men, adorned by her arms, populous with many inhabitants, so that in the time of slaughter of war under King Stephen, of those going out to a muster twenty thousand horsemen and sixty thousand men on foot were estimated to be fit for war. Above all other citizens, everywhere, the citizens of London are regarded as conspicuous and noteworthy for handsomeness of manners and of dress, at table, and in way of speaking. Of the Ordering of the City. London is, on the faith of the chronicles, a much older city than Rome, for by the same Trojan forefathers this was founded by Brutus1 before that by Romulus and Remus. Whence it is that they still have the same laws established in common. This city, like that, is divided into wards, has annual sheriffs for its consuls, has senatorial and lower magistrates, sewers and aqueducts in its streets, its proper places and separate courts for cases of each kind, deliberative, demonstrative, judicial, has assemblies on appointed days. I do not think there is a city with more commendable customs of church attendance, honour to God's ordinances, keeping sacred festivals, almsgiving, hospitality, confirming betrothals, contracting marriages, celebration of nuptials, preparing feasts, cheering the guests, and also in care for funerals and the interment of the dead. The only pests of London are the immoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires. To this may be added that nearly all the bishops, abbots, and magnates of England are, as it were, citizens and freemen of London; having there their own splendid houses, to which they resort, where they spend largely when summoned to great councils by the king or by their metropolitan, or drawn thither by their own private affairs. 26. THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MEDIEVAL JEW (1190). Roger of Hoveden was a clerk who served Henry II. on public business, but apparently was not employed under Richard. His chronicle, beginning with the Heptarchy, is of slight consequence till it reaches the last years of the twelfth century. It This was written in the same generation with Layamon's Brut, then becomes indispensable. Hoveden (who in turn copies much from the excellent Benedict of Peterborough) is our source for a ghastly incident in that persecution of the Jews which preceded Richard's crusade. Their maltreatment is written large in the annals of every Christian country during the Middle Ages. They were forced to wear a special dress and to live in a special quarter. The Jewish gaberdine was a badge of contempt, and what freedom from pillage the people of Israel enjoyed, was mainly secured by bribery of rulers. According to medieval views of political economy, it was a sin against nature to exact interest for the use of money, because money, unlike cattle or grain, does not reproduce itself. The Jews, undeterred by Christian scruples of this sort, took usury, and were therefore hated by their clients quite as much as by the public. Hence the cloak of a religious expedition was often thrown over a sheer repudiation of debt. SOURCE.-Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Hovedene (d. 1201?). Trans. H. T. Riley. London, 1853. P. 137. In the same month of March, on the seventeenth day before the calends of April, being the sixth day before Palm Sunday, the Jews of the city of York, in number five hundred men, besides women and children, shut themselves up in the tower of York, with the consent and sanction of the keeper of the tower, and of the sheriff, in consequence of their dread of the Christians; but when the said sheriff and the constable sought to regain possession of it, the Jews refused to deliver it up: In consequence of this, the people of the city, and the strangers who had come within the jurisdiction thereof, at the exhortation of the sheriff and the constable, with one consent made an attack upon the Jews. After they had made assaults upon the tower day and night, the Jews offered the people a large sum of money to allow them to depart with their lives; but this the others refused to receive. Upon this, one skilled in their laws arose and said: "Men of Israel, listen to my advice. It is better that we should kill one another, than fall into the hands of the enemies of our law." Accordingly, all the Jews, both men as well as women, gave their assent to his advice, and each master of a family, beginning with the chief persons of his household, with a sharp knife first cut the throats of his wife and sons and daughters, and then of all his servants, and lastly his own. Some of them also threw their slain over the walls among the people; while others shut up their slain in the king's house and burned them, as well as the king's houses. Those who had slain the others were afterwards killed by the people. In the meantime, some of the Christians set fire to the Jews' houses, and plundered them; and thus all the Jews in the city of York were destroyed, and all acknowledgments of debts due to them were burnt. 27. THE PROWESS OF CŒUR DE LION (1192). The Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi is often ascribed to Geoffrey Vinsauf, but Stubbs considers that it was written by Richard, a canon of Holy Trinity, London. The point cannot be settled with certainty. The author, whoever he was, went on the Third Crusade, and was a worshipper of the king his leader. By us Richard I. cannot, in spite of his physical courage, be greatly reverenced. He was a worthless ruler, and lacked most of the moral virtues belonging to a good knight. SOURCE.-Itinerarium Perigrinorum. Anonymously translated in Chronicles of the Crusades. London (Bell), 1882. P. 316. Of the Fierce Conflict by which the King recovered the Castle Joppa, and Liberated the Besieged. The Turks discovering the arrival of the king's fleet, sallied down to the seaside with sword and shield, and sent forth showers of arrows: the shore was so thronged with their multitude that there was hardly a foot of ground to spare. Neither did they confine themselves to acting on the defensive, for they shot their arrows at the crews of the ships, and the cavalry spurred their horses into the sea to prevent the king's men from landing. The king, gathering his ships together, consulted with his officers what was the best step to take. "Shall we," said he, "push on against this rabble multitude who occupy the shore, or shall we value our lives more than the lives of those poor fellows who are exposed to destruction for want of our assistance?" Some of them replied that further any attempts were useless, for it was by no means certain that one remained alive to be saved, and how could they land in the face of so large a multitude? The king looked around thoughtfully, and at that moment saw a priest plunge into the water and swim towards the royal galley. When he was received on board, he addressed the king with palpitating heart and spirits almost failing him. "Most noble king, the remnant of our people, waiting for your arrival, are exposed like sheep to be slain, unless the divine grace shall bring you to their rescue." "Are any of them still alive, then?" asked the king, "and if so, where are they?" "There are still some of them alive," said the priest, "and hemmed in and at the last extremity in front of yonder tower." "Please God, then,' replied the king, "by whose guidance we have come, we will die with our brave brothers in arms, and a curse light on him who hesitates." The word was forthwith given, the galleys were pushed to land; the king dashed forward into the waves with his thighs unprotected by armour, and up to his middle in the water; he soon gained firm footing on the dry strand: behind him followed Geoffrey du Bois and Peter de Pratelles, and in the rear came all the others rushing through the waves. The Turks stood to defend the shore, which was covered with their numerous troops. The king, with an arbalest [cross-bow], which he held in his hand, drove them back right and left; his companions pressed upon the recoiling enemy, whose courage quailed when they saw it was the king, and they no longer dared to meet him. The king brandished his fierce sword, which allowed them no time to resist, but they yield before his fiery blows, and are driven in confusion with blood and havoc by the king's men until the shore was entirely cleared of them. They then brought together beams, poles, and wood, from the old ships and galleys to make a barricade; and the king placed there some knights, servants, and arbalesters to keep guard and to dislodge the Turks, who, seeing that they could no longer oppose our troops, dispersed themselves on the shore with cries and howlings in one general flight. The king then, by a winding stair, which he had remarked in the house of the Templars, was the first to enter the town, where he found more than 3000 of the Turks turning over everything in the houses, and carrying away the spoil. The brave king had no sooner entered the town, than he caused his banners to be hoisted on an eminence, that they might be seen by the Christians in the tower, who taking courage at the sight, rushed forth in arms from the tower to meet the king, and at the The report thereof the Turks were thrown into confusion. king, meanwhile, with brandished sword, still pursued and slaughtered the enemy, who were thus enclosed between the two bodies of the Christians, and filled the streets with their slain. Why need I say more? All were slain, except such as took to flight in time; and thus those who had before been victorious were now defeated and received condign punishment, whilst the king still continued the pursuit, showing no mercy to the enemies of Christ's Cross, whom God had given into his hands; for there never was a man on earth who so abominated cowardice as he. 28. A TOWN CHARTER (1200). English towns developed more slowly than those of the continent, and never reached the same relative importance. When the communes of northern France were asserting their independence of feudal lord and bishop, Winchester, Lincoln and Nottingham were too unimportant to think of rebelling against their superiors. This was during the reigns of William the Conqueror and William Rufus. A little more than fifty years later the towns had gained an improved status, but one vainly looks in England for such commercial, political and artistic centres as Dijon and Toulouse, Hildesheim and Nuremberg, Venice and Florence. For one reason, royal ascendency was more complete than on the continent, and then, too, the towns themselves had a peculiar character. The typical Italian city owned its campagna, or surrounding and subject region. Florence--and even Siena—was the head of a tiny state. The English town, on the other hand, was not necessarily supreme in its immediate district, but was merely a section of a district where people dwelt together more compactly than elsewhere. It was not a civitas in the Roman sense, but rather a Saxon hundred, small and thickly settled. This distinction is evident in John's Charter to Dunwich, where the town is at length, in 1200, given exemption from the shiremoot and hundredmoot. |