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Е. В. Воевода английский язык великобритания: история и культура Great Britain: Culture across History Учебное пособие

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Agriculture and industry
Wool trade
European contacts
From S.D. Zaitseva. Early Britain.
Free towns
From S.D. Zaitseva, Early Britain
C 7. Pre-renaissance in England hurch and religion
Rebirth of English literature
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Agriculture and industry


In the late Middle Ages, England’s wealth was its land. Farming and cattle breeding were the main rural occupations. Corn and dairy goods were the main articles of agricultural produce.

England’s most important industry, textiles, was also based on the land, producing the finest wool in Europe. By 1300 the total number of sheep in England is thought to have been between 15 to 18 million.

As the demand for wool and cloth rose, Britain began to export woollen cloth produced by the first big enterprises – the manufactures. Landowners evicted peasants and enclosed their lands with ditches and fences, turning them into vast pastures. Later, Thomas More wrote about the sheep on pastures: ‘They become so great devourers and so wylde that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves’. (The phrase is often quoted in Russian as “овцы съели людей”.) In English history this policy is known as the policy of enclosures.

Other industries were less significant in creating wealth and employing labour, although tin-mining in Cornwall was internationally famous.

The new nobility, who traded in wool, merged with the rich burgesses to form a new class, the bourgeoisie, while the evicted landless farmers, poor artisans and monastic servants turned into farm laborers and wage workers or remained unemployed and joined the ranks of paupers, vagrants and highway robbers.

  • Wool trade

Trade extended beyond the local boundaries. The burgesses (the future bourgeoisie) became rich through trading with Flanders, the present-day Belgium. The English shipped wool to Flanders where it was sold as raw material. Flanders had the busiest towns and ports in Europe and Flemish weavers produced the finest cloth. Flemish weavers were often invited to England to teach the English their trade. However, it was raw wool rather than finished cloth that remained the main article of export. All through the period Flanders remained England’s commercial rival.

As the European demand for wool stood high, and since no other country could match the high quality of English wool, English merchants could charge a price twice as high as in the home market. In his turn, the king taxed the export of wool as a means of increasing his own income. Wool trade was England’s most profitable business. A wool sack has remained in the House of Lords ever since that time as a symbol of England’s source of wealth.

  • European contacts

London merchants derived great incomes from trade with European countries, as London was one of the most important trading centres in Europe. It had commercial ties with the Mediterranean countries as well as the countries of Northern Europe. (See Map 8.) With the beginning of crusades the demand for oriental goods increased. Every year Venetian ships loaded with spices and silks sailed through the Straight of Gibraltar and up to the English Channel on their way to Flanders. But before they reached Flanders, they always called at ports on the southern coast of England. English merchants bought luxurious oriental goods and sold them again at a high profit. Particularly profitable was the trade in spices, which often cost their weight in gold.

As England traded with the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, an important sea route ran across the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Hull, Boston, Dover, Newcastle, Ipswich had long been important trade centres.

The merchants of the Hanseatic League as well as traders from the Baltic states and Flanders settled in London, Hull and other English ports. Closer contacts with the Continent meant more goods available for exchange. In the 14th century, the list of imports was considerably increased. From France England imported wines, salt and building stone for castles and churches; a greater quantity and variety

Map 8

( From S.D. Zaitseva. Early Britain. Moscow, 1975.)





of cloths and spices was brought from the East. In its turn, England exported wool, tin, cattle and lead. At first, the bulk of the export trade was in the hands of the Venetian and Flemish merchants, but with the growth of trade at the beginning of the 14th century, more than half the trade fell into the hands of English merchants.

During the 14th century English merchants began to establish trading stations called ‘factories’ in different places in Europe. Often they replaced the old town guilds as powerful trading institutions. In 1363 a group of 26 English merchants who called themselves the Merchant Staplers, were granted the royal authority to export wool to the Continent through the French port of Calais. In return, they promised to lend money to English monarchs. The word ‘staple’ became an international term used by merchants to denote that certain goods could be sold only in particular places. Calais became the staple for English wool and defeated rival English factories in other foreign cities. The staple was a convenient arrangement for the established merchants, as it prevented competition and was a safe source of income for the Crown, which could tax exports more easily.

4. Growth of towns


  • Free towns

The changes in the economic and social conditions were accompanied by the intermixture of people coming from different regions, the growth of towns with a mixed population, and the strengthening of social ties between the various regions.

The growth of trade promoted the growth of towns. (See Map 9) London, the residence of the Norman kings, became the most populous town of England. Two centuries before, kings had realised that towns could become effective centres of royal authority and balance the power of the local nobility. As a result, many towns got ‘charters of freedom’ which freed them from feudal duties to the local lord. These charters, however, had to be paid for, but they were worth the money. Towns could then raise their own taxes on coming goods. They could also have their own courts, controlled by the town merchants, on condition that they paid an annual tax to the king. People who lived inside the town walls were practically free from feudal rule. It was the beginning of a middle class and a capitalist economy.

Map 9

( From S.D. Zaitseva, Early Britain, Moscow, 1975.)



  • Guilds

In towns, the central role was played by guilds. These were brotherhoods of merchants or artisans. The word ‘guild’ came from the Saxon word ‘gildan’ which meant ‘to pay’, as members of guilds had to pay towards the cost of the brotherhood. The right to form a guild was sometimes included in a town’s charter of freedom. It was from the members of the guild that the town’s leaders were usually chosen. The guilds defended the rights of their members and saw to the high standards of the trade.

During the 14th century, as larger towns continued to grow, there appeared craft guilds: all members of each of the guilds belonged to the same trade or craft. The earliest craft guilds were those of weavers in London and Oxford. Each guild tried to protect its own trade interests. Members of the guilds had the right to produce, buy or sell their particular goods without paying special town taxes. But they also had to make sure their goods were of a certain quality, and had to keep to agreed prices so as not to undermine the trade of other members of the guild.

In London the development of craft guilds went further than elsewhere. The rich upper part of the craft community, the so-called livery companies, developed into large financial institutions. Today they pay an important role in the government of the City of London, and the yearly choice of the Lord Mayor of London.

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    5. The Hundred Years War

    auses of the war

The 14th and 15th centuries were also marked by the Hundred Years War which lasted from 1337 to 1453. The causes of the war were both political and economic. Politically, King Edward III of England claimed the French throne and wanted to get back the English possessions in France which had already been lost. It was a good enough reason for starting a war. But there were far more important reasons. The king of France, who ceased Gascony and Burgundy, and the French feudal lords who wanted to better themselves by seizing the free towns of Flanders, deprived England of its traditional wool market. England could not afford the destruction of overseas trade. The threat to their trade with Flanders persuaded the English merchants that war against France was inevitable. In 1337 Edward III declared war on France.

The beginning of the campaign was rather successful for England because of its military supremacy. Due to the newly invented cannons the English defeated the French army in several battles, the most important of which were the battles at Crecy in 1346 and at Poitiers in 1356. By 1360, the English had regained their lands on the Continent. But then the tide of war turned and the territories gained at the beginning of the war were lost in the next fifteen years. At the beginning of the 15th century, Henry V, who is remembered as the most heroic of English kings, undertook successful military campaigns in France. In 1415 he won the battle of Agincourt, in which the French outnumbered the English by more than three to one. In accordance with the Treaty of Troyes (1420), Henry V of England was recognized as heir to the French king. Moreover, Henry married the French king’s daughter Katherine of Valois. But Henry V never took the French throne as he died a few months before the French monarch. His nine-month-old son inherited the crowns of England and France.

  • Joan of Arc

After Henry V’s death in 1422, Joan of Arc rallied the French and had Charles II of France crowned as the lawful King of France. The English were gradually expelled from France, until only Calais remained in their possession.

Joan of Arc, or the Maid of Orleans, is the French national heroine. She claimed to hear voices urging her to help the dauphin, Charles II, to regain the French crown from the English. Joan convinced Charles of her mission, and led a large army to raise the siege of Orleans in 1429. Charles was crowned in Reims the same year. In 1430 Joan was captured by the Burgundians who sold her to the English. Joan was tried for heresy and sorcery by an ecclesiastical court at Rouen. She was condemned and burned at stake. King Charles II of France, who could have saved her, turned a blind eye on the trial and the execution. He was evidently frightened that he had been assisted by a witch. Joan’s condemnation was annulled in 1456 and she was canonized in the 20th century, in 1920. The feast is celebrated on May 30.


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6. Wars of the Roses
fter the end of the Hundred Years War, the feudal lords and their hired armies came home from France, and life in England became more turbulent than ever. The baronial families at the king’s court, the House of York and the House of Lancaster started a series of wars fighting for possession of the throne. In the 19th century the novelist Walter Scott named them the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) after their emblems – the white rose, which was the emblem of the House of York, and the red rose, which symbolized the House of Lancaster. During the wars, more than sixty aristocratic families controlling England divided into the Yorkists and the Lancastrians. Many of them were related by marriage. Most noblemen still kept their private armies after returning from the war in France and subdued the local population into obeying them. Thus the struggle for the throne turned into a civil war.

King Henry VI, who was the founder of Eaton college (1440) and King’s College at Cambridge, was a scholarly man but suffered from insanity. Thus true power was in the hands of rival ministers of the Houses of York and Lancaster, notably Richard, Duke of York, and Edmund Beaufort, the Second Duke of Somerset, both descendants of Edward III.

The war began when Richard, Duke of York, claimed the protectorship of the crown after the mental breakdown of King Henry in 1454. In 1455 Richard defeated the King’s army at St. Albans, the first battle in the Wars of the Roses, and in 1460 claimed the throne to himself. As for Henry VI, he was murdered in the Tower in 1471.

After Richard’s death in battle, the throne went to his son Edward IV. When Edward IV died, his two young sons were put in the Tower by their uncle Richard who took the crown as Richard III. The two princes were never heard of again. Richard III was unpopular both with the Yorkists and the Lancastrians that is why when in 1485 Henry Tudor, a challenger with a very distant claim to royal blood landed in England with Breton soldiers to claim the throne, he was joined by many Lancastrians and Yorkists. Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth and was crowned king in the battlefield.

The Wars of the Roses lasted thirty years and ended with the establishment of a stronger royal power under Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty. In 1486 Henry VII married the daughter of Edward IV of the York house, thus uniting the rival houses. The wars demonstrated the danger of allowing powerful nobles to build up private armies. As a reminder of the war, today the floral symbol of England is the red Tudor rose.


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    7. Pre-renaissance in England
    hurch and religion

A popular discontent with the Catholic church went side by side with the Lollard movement which opposed the traditional doctrine of the English clergy. The word ‘lollard’ was probably derived from lollaer, ‘a mumbler of prayers’. It was a nickname given to the poorer priests who travelled from place to place propagating the ideas of John Wycliff, the only university intellectual in the history of medieval heresy and a forerunner of the English Reformation. Wycliff gained reputation and support among noblemen, courtiers and scholars for his criticism of the Church’s wealth and the unworthiness of too many of its clergy. His increasingly radical ideas led to his condemnation and withdrawal from Oxford. Wycliff was the first priest to deny the basic principle of the Roman Catholic Church – the miraculous change of things from one substance into another, particularly the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. After Wycliff’s death, the Pope ordered his works to be destroyed, his body to be dug out and burnt, and the ashes to be thrown into the river.

  • Rebirth of English literature

One of the most famous Lollard priests was William Langland (1334-1400) who is remembered for his poem The Visions of William Concerning Piers the Ploughman (now known as Piers Plowman), a dream allegory popular in the Middle Ages. The poem deals with the vision of a peasant, Piers Ploughman, who describes the hard life of the common people. He explains that it is the peasant who works to keep the lord and the monks in comfort. The author stresses the idea that every person is obliged to work – be it a peasant, a lord or a priest. Every now and then the author suddenly darts from allegory to real history. The main characters of the poem are human qualities, such as Virtue, Truth and Greed. The written text of the poem is dated 1362. Before and during the revolt of 1381 the text of the poem was used in proclamations which easily spread among the peasants and townspeople.

Another follower of Wycliff was John Ball, one of the leaders of the peasants’ revolt. He is best remembered for his proclamations in which he used quotations from ‘Piers Ploughman’ and Wycliff’s works. He often ended his speeches with Wycliff’s famous words which then turned into a saying:

When Adam delved and Eve span

who was then the Gentleman?