Workers History of England Pre History to the End of Feudalism

A people’s history of England will cover the history of the English working person and their struggles from pre-history to the end of the feudal age. English history is obsessed with kings and queens and the schemes of the ruling classes, I hope this humble video will give people a new perspective on English history to draw inspiration and curiosity from.

Before the written records begin, we have only the archaeological record to go on which can answer where and when things happened, social archaeology and anthropology are the best tools we have to help us make assumptions about this far back into the past. These are the tools we must use to look at English society before the Roman period which is just a description we are using to define a geographical area relevant to us and would have not been familiar to the peoples living at this time.

This covers the period from the earliest settlers of England, these people would have been mobile hunter-gatherer groups made up of less than 100 people and would have been egalitarian societies with informal leadership, they would have moved around the country with the migration of animals and the changing of the seasons setting up temporary shelters and have shaman delivering religious organisation.

Society would then progress with implementing farming and herding leading to larger settled social groups of up to a few hundred and associations between tribes. This is when groups would organise co-operatively to set up things like religious monuments.

We then see the society arise that the Romans would have invaded by 55BCE. These peoples were Celts and would have organised under hereditary warrior leaders who would control the resources and redistribution centrally from often fortified centres and ritual centres such as Stonehenge. We can imagine that the normal people at this point would live in settlements at the mercy of the local warrior class who would in effect extort and enslave them for resources for protection in a kind of mafia on a huge societal scale.

The normal person during the Romano-British period would see their masters become officials and landowners of the Roman Empire which would extract value from its colonies to accumulate it in the centre as empires do. Many people would have made up the semi-slave “coloni” and actual slaves, who could cultivate land for rents and or services, setting the foundations for the feudal peasant system. 

The empire would abandon Romano-Britain by the year 407 ADE, and the people would return to the mafia style system which persisted during the Celtic period, the tribal culture never fully being forgotten during the Roman period. Landowners and the rich controlled armed bands that would extract protection in the form of resources from the people, they would be joined by migrating Germanic tribes.

The forces of Celtic, Germanic and old Romano would cause an increase in violence which leads to the rise in the power of kings and their military organisations, who could then lay claim of ownership over the land under their control. The feudal system would emerge from this militarisation and centralisation of power.

The township was an early way of feudal organisation that emerged in most of what became England. This was a village made up of mainly peasants who would cultivate one acres strips over the townships common fields. In most cases, they have found common fields to measure between 40 and 120 acres. After a harvest, all the land within the township would become common grazing land. Fields were un-fenced and divided by narrow pieces of turf. The land was the holding of a head of a family and they would have certain rights over the common meadows and township waste. The holder could not sell the land and had to provide a fully armoured man to the army in times of war.

Over time Thanes emerged, these were often professional warriors or descendants of such people granted land by the King, they would hold a much larger land and have a personal army allowing them to extract rents and services from the cultivators of the land. By the late Saxon period the continual decrease in access to common land which you would have to own an ox to help cultivate, to between 30 acres which could support 2 Ox and 15 acres which could support 1 Ox, lead to a class made up of mainly the village craftspeople. They had to cultivate small pieces of land themselves using spades or light ploughs and work for wages on the domain lands of the Thanes to survive. These people having to work for a wage to survive or wage slaves are the start of what we would see as the working class.

By the year 600, the Thanes were on their way to becoming the Feudal lords and the small landholder’s serfs and they began using land as private property as a minority took more powers for themselves over the mass of people.

This minority would include the Catholic church which from 597 would set up bishoprics and other holdings by threats of hell and forgery and use the peasantry to support itself. Having re-emerged after the departure of the Roman Empire’s influence from Britain.

After the first Viking invasions and the emergence of a more centralised English state, feudalism continued to grow with the establishment of private courts run by lords, but, the old Danelaw areas of England feudalism was slower to progress.

Around the year 1000, we have written evidence that the cultivator did not see themselves as free and were in fear of their masters. Freemen were those who paid rent in money or other services including military service, freemen could leave and go somewhere else and swear himself and his land to another lord. Serfs, however, held land only on condition he works on his lord’s land he was not free to go elsewhere but was “bound to the soil” as the saying went. The worst social strata were to be without land, neither Freeman nor serf but a slave and so a non-person.

The first taxation was to grow out of the payments needed to stop Viking raids. They called these payments Danegeld and would become a property tax which they used for hundreds of years after, this puts further pressure on the cultivator and put more power in hands of the local officials sent to gather these levies.

1066 saw the conquest of the Normans under William the Conqueror. England now enters the era of Feudalism proper. Normans replaced the old landowners within a few years of the conquest. The King would be the ultimate owner of the land and grant it to his supporters and those who would give him the highest rents. Holdings were required to give a heavily armed cavalryman for the army. William would make sure that he was always the most powerful landowner and never give too much land to one noble or faction, this cemented the feudal top-down power structure.

William would commission the Doomsday book, a survey of England made to assess the wealth of the country. This valuable text shows us the makeup of England. It split the common people into classes, categorised as slaves, borders and cotters, Villeins and Freemen. Slaves were a declining class as lords found it cheaper to force labour out of serfs. 

Borders and cotters held small pieces of land outside the open field system. Borders and Cotters could be serfs, and many could pay their dues to the lords in their crafts rather than having to labour on the lord’s lands. 

Villains held between 15 and 30-acre shares in the common fields. They would commonly work three days a week, they knew this as day work. Boon work which a lord could call on at any time, would bring in the harvest and complete other seasonal activities that required more labour. Boon work was unpopular because it forced the Villain away at times of harvest. The Women and Children would have to cover for the loss of the Villain of the family.

Under the Normans freemen were also a declining class due to the change in ownership law since the conquest unless you could prove yourself free they now considered you a serf.

This was not the only change to the law. Norman feudalism would force all people who cultivated the land to the status of serfs. Serfs had no rights to protect themselves against their lords apart from protection from being killed or mutilated without a trial.

The local lord would have rights to all other local areas not used for cultivation or buildings, common land could therefore not be used for pasture or wood cutting was available to other strata of the society.

During this period Henry the 1st, who was the last son of William the Conqueror came to the throne. He introduced jury lead trials, split his council into departments and created the Exchequer to deal with the collection of revenue. All of this was the foundation of the bureaucratic system of government to come and provided the crown with more power and money.

When Henry the 1st died in 1135 a period of civil war ensued where all the peasantry suffered under the many local warlords as chaos took hold of the country until 1153 when a new succession was agreed.

After this period of instability, the lower classes would often support the king against barons as they saw an increase in power of the ruler as a counter to the barons power which had proven to be bad or the peasantry.

During the 3rd crusade, that made Richard the Lionheart famous, they robbed and murdered Jews as the crown relaxed their laws protecting Jews in 1189 to raise funds for Richard’s forces.

Pogroms against the Jews were common when rulers in this period needed funds as Jews were barred from all other economic activity apart from money lending. They used Jews as tools by the crown as the treasury made money from the Jews lending to other subjects within the kingdom, allowing the king to make money why directing the resentment to the Jewish community.

Charters would be the main form of raising funds for Richard. They sold charters to towns. This allowed the town to pay to be free of its rents, taxes and obligations to the crown in a lump sum. They would form a corporation to take responsibility for the payment of the charter.

This rise in the monetary economy within feudalism increased plurality and allowed new monied classes to become political.

You can see this in Magna Carta, created in 1215 when merchants and nobles came together against the king and forced him to define his limitations in the feudal society in the document that insisted merchants could not be subject to arbitrary taxation.

The charters would rise and fall in use depending on the price fluctuation of the goods at the time but became the norm by the fourteenth century. Feudalism was on its way out.

Buying your way out of feudal obligations proved to many that there was another way and this lead to some localised uprisings against landowners who refused to grant charters. The church was reluctant to grant these charters which lead to an armed rising in Bury in 1327. They stormed the abbey, and they set a commune up until six months later when the uprising was suppressed. Many common people rose against their overlords in this period as civil war and a weak local government provided opportunities for the lower classes to rise against their overlords.

Demands made by the people included access rights to common lands, the ability to elect their own representatives to parliament and the ability to mill their own flour. Up to this point they had taken many complaints like this up in the law courts with little effectiveness and they continued economic struggles within and between guilds which acted as cartels in their local areas. 

Following the black death that wiped out about fifty per cent of the population, the government kept wages at pre-plague levels, forced the completion of existing contracts, and restricted the purchase of luxury goods as new workers started to be able to afford them. This was an attempt to conserve the existing power base.

The ongoing 100-year war with France made the government raise the tax, which hit the poorest the hardest, many refused to pay these regressive taxes. In response, the government resorted to sending teams to interrogate local communities to route out those who refused to pay.

The economic struggles joined with the crackdown by the government and the degrading of feudal power combined in 1377 to kick start localised protests, primitive united workers organisation and workers’ strikes. 

A so-called “Great Society” had arisen that covered all of England, it collected money to pay for members fines and activities and formed demands, for the workers. They also backed this up with poor priests who had seen none of the churches great wealth and preached, all men were equal and that all should be in common.

They brought demands to the crowns law courts and the king but to no avail. In 1380 and 81 the tensions increased with disturbances, uprisings and riots in towns and cities including the removal of a mayor in York.

1381 would see the so-called Peasants revolt take place. The crown had sent an investigator into Essex to demand local towns account for their underpayment of taxes. The representatives that were summoned came armed and when questions refused to pay any more than they already had, this resulted in the attempted arrest of one representative, violence broke out and the investigator had to beat a hasty retreat.

Some rebels dispersed to raise support from the surrounding areas. Rochester and Canterbury castles were taken and suspected supporters of the royal courts executed and the archbishop deposed. Some rebels then moved on London.

In response, the king sent a representative to negotiate with the rebels. The representative’s order that the rebels return home was ignored, and they continued onto London. Following an abortive attempt by the king to negotiate with the rebels just before they got onto the city the gates were opened and the rebels swept through London.

They opened prisons up and official buildings were burned, demolished and records especially financial ones that could link people to their serfdom were destroyed. They killed Flemish immigrant weavers and their property burned. After the first day, the king left the tower of London to negotiate with the rebels.

The rebels had always said they supported the king and wanted his advisors executed for their bad council; they wanted amnesty for any of those who had rebelled, the abolition of serfdom, the reduction of land rents, the right to sell their products wherever they saw fit and the right to police their own communities. While the negotiations were going on a contingent of the rebels took the tower of London and hunted down and killed their political targets as well as looting the fortress. The king made promises to abolish serfdom and said he would dispense justice to his advisers rather than handing them over.

Some rebels then went home, while the others continued to hunt down foreigners, law officials and other political enemies and execute them, the king withdrew to south-west London where he appointed a commander and planned to overcome the rebels.

The following day the remaining rebels and the King with a small force met at Smithfield’s, the rebels demanded further concessions, and the leader of the rebels Watt Tyler met with the king and his entourage. Events are unclear but it would appear that there was an argument with the king’s entourage and they killed Tyler. The king persuaded the remaining rebels to move elsewhere which gave the Mayor of London time to raise the London militia and start regaining control of the city, the rebellion in London soon fell apart.

The king now sent out forces to put down the rest of the rebellions throughout the country. These other rebellions had been like the one in London with rebels demanding an end to serfdom as they destroyed prisons and local merchants and rulers property as well as records. He denied that any concessions had been made, and they put many rebels to death.

Parliament placed the blame on the king’s council which was reshuffled and knew they did not impose new taxes as the government was still wary of rebellion. They granted no other concessions but there is evidence serfs would use the threat of violence like that of the rebellion to dissuade landlords from putting up rents.

The rebellion had mostly failed as it tried to negotiate with the existing power structure which allowed it to recover and take back control and carry out reprisals. However, it had worked as a warning to the feudal classes about how far they could push the lower classes.

Due to the economic changes already in motion serfdom was decreasing slowly. Wage slavery would replace it. The rise of merchants and guilds acted as monopolies and controlled prices and production. 

The Lollards who were a religious sect were an early version of Protestants, became influential during this time. To start with they were used by the ruling class against the clergy who syphoned off money to the pope. But, when the Lollards teachings of equality were being applied to the general society, this led to persecutions.

In 1414 an attempted Lollard uprising failed with its leader being burned. It drove the movement underground but would persist to rise in the protestant reformation around 100 years later.

Rare instances of strike action can be found between apprentices and their masters in the guilds in the records of the courts. These documents have shown us struggles for working hours, pay and days off and rioting and demands for electoral representation by the lower class craftsman in the 1440s the more senior and richer guild members and merchants would repress these early working class struggles. Guild masters would repress the apprentices and journeymen barring them from voting for representatives within the guilds resulting in the rise of an oligarchy.

As we only know about these events through records from the courts, the level of discontent between masters and workers is probably under-represented in the historical record. Little to no records exist of the unskilled non-guild, non-merchant class who would have had to rely on casual labour work and must have lived in extreme poverty and degradation.

The new emerging class of merchants and peasant farmers would accumulate wealth and using the systems of law and lending money, which was not as stigmatised as it was before, began to replace the feudal lords, which would lead to the crown and monied classes emerging as a much stronger force by the end of the medieval, feudal age.

In conclusion, we can see that as you might have expected the lot of the lower classes from prehistory to the end of the feudal age was one of mostly servitude to the power structures of the time.

The lower classes were formed with the foundation of agriculture which led to static settlements allowing those willing to use violence to enslave the majority. A crisis such as war, plague and famine, made conditions worse and drove the populations if the time into the largest protests that could be violent. 

The crisis provided a gap in ruling power popular movements could exploit that to enforce demands. However, as many of these revolts seek religious approval, they believe in the monarchy’s institution which leads them to negotiate with the existing power structure which would always merge and push back the gains of popular movements. 

Those with political and economic interests would also hijack the movements, for example, there is speculation that during the peasants’ revolt guild members targeted foreign tradespeople and killed them to remove competition. The nobles and the monarchy to reduce the church’s power could support revolts that were in churches holdings to reduce the monastic power but as soon as the revolt became more widespread and the demands more extensive these protests were violently put down as the Lollards were. 

Waves of protest, reform and counter-reform came but each time the society edged towards increasing plurality, which is the basis for a more sustainable society. We can learn and take inspiration from these struggles, even then people could organise and support one another. Small dedicated groups, often offering a counter-narrative to the dominant one, could make all the difference. However, they suffered from infiltration and hijacking of the establishment and movements suffered from fatigue which did not allow for the oversight of demands negotiated with that establishment to be implemented fully.

Normal people’s struggles would continue as the nobility was replaced by the oligarchy, and feudalism with capitalism. The effort for a fairer society continues as no less than the future of humanity is at stake.