castle in East Yorkshire. The tower shown here was sans roof. Shoddy workmanship is probably the main cause, well that and the English Revolution. There were also a number of stone canon balls lying around, sort of thing a person might stub their toe on. These ancient types had no sense of health and safety what with all their garroting and slaughter and torture and gutting and gizzards and innards. Life in those days was a messy business and sticky too what with all that blood lying around.
8 comments:
No running water, no sewers... the middle ages sure are one time in history where I wouldn't want to travel, had I a time machine that is.
D,
I believe they all suffered from scurvey and scrofula (whatever that is) and lice and ticks, and other skins bothering things. Plus they died on average at the age of ooohhh 11. And they didn't have a proper sewerage system. Life was mean brutish and short. Lucky they also fought to free up the world for the likes of us, won democracy (of sorts) and toppled kings (chopped the heads off a few of them along the way, Louis XVI in France, Charles Ist in England). Lets hear it for the peasants, weh hey! England had a peasants revolt in the 1381 led by a chap called Wat Tyler. In the mid 1300's Bubonic Plague hit England and killed 15% of the population. All sorts of restrictive laws were then made up by Edward III and his cronies to control the movement of the peasants because of the labour shortage. A revolt began from below. A disaffected priest called John Ball asked this important question which I think is brilliant today let alone in the 1300's. In arguing that equality rather than inequality was natural he said 'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?' Inequality therefore is not natural but historical. Pretty impressive, despite the constipation and other horrible conditions him and his kind suffered from. Let's hear it for the 1300's! Hurrah! Still prefer now though.
now where, in this merry tale of borders and restrictions, do the enclosures fit in? My understand is that they did more than the plague to put people out on the road.
knowlege of history is so crucial, and underappreciated. at least in US anything less than perfect is excoriated. No points given for progress measured in decades, generations, centuries...
Hayden,
You're right about the Enclosure Acts being designed to drive people off the land. The main purpose was to captilise land, where production under the old feudal strip system was mainly for immediate consumption under the new capitalist system the main purpose of production was for exchange, ie to make profits. The new system as it developed was much more efficient and technology and technique improved enormously so by the early 1800's Britain had a surplus of grain which it was then able to export. In terms of demographics it is striking that in 1780 80% of the population of Britain lived in rural areas however the census of 1881 showed that by then 80% of the population was urban. An astonishing transfer of peoples from one type of life to another.
Plus industrialisation no doubt killed more than the black death ever did, but the population was also much larger than in the 1300's.
And to think I used to teach this stuff at university in the 1980's, ah it's all coming back...
omg, then I'm asking the right guy. GRAIN? I thought it was about sheep and the wool trade, and I thought it was earlier, like the 1400's or 1500's or something. enlighten me!
didn't know that the population move to the cities happened so quickly. 100 years, that's amazing.
of course, there were only 3 people, right?
Hayden,
Where to begin. You are right about enclosures beginning much earlier than the mid 1700's which was when the first Enclosure Act was made by Parliament. Initial enclosures during Elizabethan times was to enclosed land for sheep. I think modern management of the land, ie a move from strip farming to larger fields happened from the 12C onwards.
It was in the 14-1500's that land use changed again from solely farming to include animal husbandry on a large scale via sheep.
The matter of corn became important when in 1804 the first Corn Law was established that put a duty on imported corn as a means of protecting home producers. This law was enacted when Landowners were the most powerful class in the land however when it was repealed in 1846 the most powerful class were Industrial Free Traders.
The demographic stuff is true, and in just 100 years an incredible movement of the population. In 1780 there were approx 7.5 million in GB, only 20% of whom were urban, the 1881 census shows this figure to be 35 million, only 20% of which were rural.
There are both political and economic arguments over both the shape and details of such incredible changes, plus over what drove those changes but however that change did happen is fairly obvious.
the first Corn Law? I thought that was an anti-comedy ruling... something about laugh tracks and third-rate tv shows.
thanks for taking time with the detail. sheesh. It proves that I need to go back to school.
wait. I am back in school. well, when I finish I need to go back all over again. damn ignorant yankees.
Hayden,
There should be a modern Corn Law passed against all the crap we're forced to listen to when it comes to comedy on the UK airwaves. However speaking of damn Yankees, BBC radio has a series called Old Harry's Game that is about to restart that's set in Baltimore in the period before the American Revolution which is quite funny. When they post the times I'll let you know as all the beeb's stuff can be heard online these days. Also they podcast virtually everything as well so you can download whilst you blog. Hurrah.
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