Medieval panorama : the English scene from conquest to Reformation / by G.G. Coulton.

  • Coulton, G. G. (George Gordon), 1858-1947.
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Medieval panorama : the English scene from conquest to Reformation / by G.G. Coulton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/842 (page 2)
    Western folk. We must not exaggerate this; but we shall go still further astray if we ignore it. Geographically and historically, the division is real. Again, though in the mass East differs thus from West, and Past from Present, yet each has its own interior differences which cannot be ignored. While insisting that there was once a distinc¬ tively medieval civilization, and therefore a medieval mind, a medieval character, we must not forget that this medievalism had its own variations from time to time and from place to place. Especially must we bear in mind that in this far-off world nothing is for more than a moment; everything is in process of becoming. The England of Edward III differed much from that of William I; and Henry VIIFs England differed widely from both. This needs special emphasis in a volume like the present, where the necessary division into subjects rather than into periods renders it almost impossible to remind the reader of change at every turn. It is to be hoped that the constant supply of dates may enable him to trace for himself, if only roughly, both the extent to which medieval society was not static but organic, and also the actual trend of its evolution from 1066 to 1536.* Yet the matter is so important that it may be best to start here explicitly upon this note, and to sum up, in a few pages, the action of that long drama which will occupy my fifty-two formal chapters. What were the Seven Ages of this Medieval Man? Roughly speaking, the Conquest made William into the Uni¬ versal Landlord of England; the Battle of Hastings gave him the right of transferring confiscated Saxon lands to his Norman followers. But the Anglo-Saxon law, on the whole, suffered no violent interruption; though it was necessarily patched and amended and added to as time went on, yet it is still the foundation of English Common Law, upon which, again, the United States of America founded their own. Thus, when Abraham Lincoln saw that, to win the war, he must needs follow the example of the South and conscript all able-bodied men for his armies, this was done in virtue of the obligation which had been part of English Common Law from time immemorial, before the Conquest and afterwards. With such important basis of law in common, the conquering * Where dates are definite, they will be found in round brackets ( ); where they are only approximate, in square [].