In our age of the world, so many trades, arts, professions, and objects, and channels of occupation exist, that, in the ordinary course of life, every member of our population may obtain, without a crime, if he seek with moderate assiduity, the supplies that are necessary both to his wants and his pleasures. It was not so in the Anglo-Saxon times. The trades and arts were few, and foreign commerce was inconsiderable. Invention had not found out conveniences of life sufficient to employ many mechanics or manufacturers, or to give much diversity of employment. The land and its produce were in the hands of a few, and it was difficult for the rest to get any property by honourable or peaceful means. Our Alfred intimates this, for he says, "Now thou canst not obtain money unless thou steal it, or plunder it, or discover some hidden treasure; and thus when you acquire it to yourself you lessen it to others." Violence and rapine were the usual means of acquiring property among that part of the better classes who happened to be unprovided with it. Hence the exhortations of the clergy, and the laws are so full of denunciations against these popular depredators. It is declared to be the duty of an earl to hate thieves and public robbers: to destroy plunderers and spoilers, unless they would amend and abstain from such unrighteous actions. Tradesmen and merchants are often spoken of as poor and humble men. The great sources of property were from land and war, and from the liberality of the great. It was by slow degrees that trades multiplied, and the productions of the arts and manufactures increased so as to furnish subsistence and wealth to those who wished to be peaceable and domestic.

a

In the present state, and under the fortunate constitution of the British islands, our tradesmen and manufacturers are an order of men who contribute essentially to uphold our national rank and character, and form a class of actual personal distinction superior to what the same order has in any age or country possessed, except in the middle ages of Italy. They are not only the fountains of that commerce which rewards us with the wealth of the world, but they are perpetually supplying the other classes and professions of society with new means of improvement and comfort; and with those new accessions of persons and property, which keep the great machine of our political greatness in constant strength and activity.

Some proportion of these advantages, gradually increasing, has been reaped by England, from the trading part of its community, in every stage of its commercial progression. But the farther we go back into antiquity, the pursuit was less reputable, b Wilk. Leg. Sax. 149.

Alf. Boet. p. 69,

and the benefits more rare. This class of society in the remote ages was neither numerous, opulent, nor civilized. Our earlier ancestors had neither learnt the utility of dividing labour, nor acquired the faculty of varying its productions. They had neither invention, taste, enterprise, respectability, influence, or wealth. The tradesmen of the Anglo-Saxons were, for the most part, men in a servile state. The clergy, the rich, and the great, had domestic servants, who were qualified to supply them with those articles of trade and manufacture which were in common use. Hence, in monasteries, we find smiths, carpenters, millers, illuminators, architects, agriculturists, fishermen. Thus a monk is described as well skilled in smith-craft. Thus Wynfleda, in her will, mentions the servants she employed in weaving and sewing; and there are many grants of land remaining, in which men of landed property rewarded their servants who excelled in different trades. In one grant, the brother of Godwin gives to a monastery a manor, with appendages; that is, his overseer and all his chattels, his smith, carpenter, fisherman, miller; all these servants, and all their goods and chattels,

The habits of life were too uniform; its luxuries too few; its property too small; its wants too numerous; and the spirit of the great mass too servile and dull, to have that collection of ingenious, active, respected, and inventive men, who make and circulate our internal and external commerce, with eager, but not illiberal competition; or to have those accomplished artificers and manufacturers, whose taste in execution equals that of the most elegant fancy in its inventions. Neither the workmen nor their customers, however elevated in society, had those faculties of taste and imagination which now accompany the fabrication of every luxury, and almost of every comfort with which mechanical labour surrounds us. Utility, glaring gaudiness, and material value were the chief criterions of the general estimation. The delicacy and ingenuity of the workmanship were not yet allowed to be able to surpass the substantial worth. No commendation called them into existence; none sought to acquire them; none seemed to anticipate the possibility of their attainment. Hence all were satisfied with the coarse and clumsy, if it had that show which strikes an undiscriminating eye, that sterling value which announced the wealth of its possessor, and that serviceableness for which alone he required it. The AngloSaxon artificers and manufacturers were therefore for some time no more than what real necessity put in action. The productions were few, inartificial, and unvaried. They lived and died poor, unhonoured, and unimproved. But by degrees, the manumission of slaves increased the numbers of the independent part of the

Bede, v. c. 14, and p. 634.

d 1 Dug. Mon. 306.

lower orders. Some of the emancipated became agricultural labourers, and took land of the clergy and the great, paying them an annual gafol, or rent; but many went to the burgs and towns, and as the king was the lord of the free, they resided in these under his protection, and became free burghers or burgesses. In these burgs and towns they appear to have occupied houses, paying him rent, or other occasional compensations, and sometimes performing services for him. Thus, in Canterbury, Edward had fifty-one burghers paying him gafol, or rent, and over two hundred and twelve others he had the legal jurisdiction. In Bath, the king had sixty-four burghers, who yielded four pounds. In Exeter, the king had two hundred and eighty-five houses, paying eighteen pounds a year. In some other places we find such compensations as these mentioned: "Twelve sheep and lambs, and one bloom of iron, from every freeman." These individuals and all such were so many men released from the tyranny of the great. For toll, gafol, and all customs, Oxford paid the king twenty pounds a year, and six sextaria of honey.i At Dover, when the king's messenger arrived, the burghers had to pay three-pence for transporting his horse in winter, and twopence in summer. They also provided a steersman and helper.j In the burgs, some of the inhabitants were still under other lords. Thus in Romenel twenty-five burghers belonged to the archbishop. In Bath, after the king's burghers are mentioned, it is said that ninety burghers of other men yielded sixty shillings. In the same place, the church of Saint Peter had thirty-four burghers, who paid twenty shillings. At Romenel, besides those who were under the archbishop, one Robert is stated to have had fifty burghers, of whom the king had every service; but they were freed, on account of their service at sea, from every custom except robbery, breach of the peace, and forestel.'

In these places, the services and charges were sometimes most rigorously exacted. It is stated of Hereford, that if any one wished to retire from the city, he might, with leave of the gerefa, sell his house, if he found a purchaser who was willing to perform in his stead the accustomed services; and in this event the gerefa had the third penny of the sale. But if any one, from his poverty, could not do the regular service, he was compelled to abandon his house to the gerefa without any consideration. The gerefa had then to take care that the house did not remain empty, that the king might not lose his dues."

In some burgs, the members had been so wealthy as to have acquired themselves a property in the burg. Thus, at Canter

* Ibid. fo. 10.

1 Ibid. fo. 87.

Ibid. p. 100. j Ibid. fo. 1.

"These customs are excerpted by Gale out of Domesday-book. Hist. iii. p. 768.

bury, the burghers had forty-five mansuras without the city, of which they took the gafol and the custom, while the king retained the legal jurisdiction. They also held of the king thirty-three acres of land in their gild."

But this state of subjection to gafols, customs, and services, under which the people of the burgs and towns continued, had this great advantage over the condition of the servile, that the exacted burdens were definite and certain, and though sometimes expensive, were never oppressive. Such a state was indeed an independence, compared with the degradation of a theow; and we probably see in these burghers the condition of the free part of the community, who were not actually freeholders of land, or who, though freed, had not wholly left the domestic service of their masters.

By slow degrees the increasing numbers of society, or their augmented activity, produced a surplus property beyond the daily consumption, which acquired a permanent state in the country in some form or other, and then constituted its wealth. Every house began to have some article of lasting furniture or convenience which it had not before; as well as every tradesman goods laid in store, and every farmer corn, or cattle, or implements of tillage more numerous than he once possessed. When this stage of surplus produce occurs, property begins to multiply; the bonds of stern necessity relax; civilization emerges; leisure increases, and a great number share it. Other employments than those of subsistence are sought for. Amusement begins to be a study, and to desire a class of society to provide it. The grosser gratifications then verge towards the refinements of future luxury. The mind awakens from the lethargy of sense, and a new spirit, and new objects of industry, invention, and pursuit, gradually arise in the advancing population. All these successions of improvement become slowly visible to the antiquarian observer as he approaches the latter periods of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty. But they were not the accompaniments of its first state; or, if they at all existed, they were confined to the court, the castle, and the monastery; and were not indeed to be found among the inferior thegns or the poorer cloisters. Some of these had so little property that they could not afford to allow meat, and others not wheaten bread, as an article of their food. In such miserable abodes the comforts of surplus property could not be obtained; and where these are not general, the nation is poor. This epithet was long applicable to the Anglo-Saxon octarchy.

Both war and agriculture want the smith. Hence one of the most important trades of the Anglo-Saxons was the smith, who is very frequently mentioned. Aldhelm takes the trouble to de

Domesday-book, fo. 2,

scribe the "convenience of the anvil, the rigid hardness of the beating hammer, and the tenacity of the glowing tongs;" and to remark, that the "gem-bearing belts, and diadems of kings, and various instruments of glory, were made from the tools of iron." The smiths who worked in iron were called isernsmithas. They had also the goldsmith, the seolfersmith (silversmith,) and the arsmith or coppersmith. In the dialogues before quoted, the smith says, "Whence the share to the ploughman, or the goad, but from my art? whence to the fisherman an angle, or to the shoe-wyrhta an awl, or to the sempstress a needle, but from my art?" The other replies, "Those in thy smithery only give us iron fire-sparks, the noise of beating hammers, and blowing bellows." Smiths are frequently mentioned in Domesday. In the city of Hereford there were six smiths, who paid each one penny for his forge, and who made one hundred and twenty pieces of iron from the king's ore. To each of them, three-pence was paid as a custom, and they were freed from all other services. In a district of Somerset, it is twice stated, that a mill yielded two plumbas of iron. Gloucester paid to the king thirty-six dicras of iron, and one hundred ductile rods, to make nails for the king's ships.

The treow-wyrhta, literally tree or wood-workman; or, in modern phrase, the carpenter, was an occupation as important as the smith's. In the dialogues above mentioned, he says he makes houses, and various vessels and ships.

The shoemaker and salter appear also in the dialogues: the sceowyrhta, or shoemaker, seems to have been a comprehensive trade, and to have united some that are now very distinct businesses. He says, "My craft is very useful and necessary to you. I buy hides and skins, and prepare them by my art, and make of them shoes of various kinds; and none of you can winter without my craft." He subjoins a list of the articles which he fabricates: viz.

The salter, baker, cook, and fisherman have been described before.

Besides the persons who made those trades their business, some of the clergy, as we advance to the age preceding the Norman conquest, appear to us as labouring to excel in the mechanical