The Henson Journals
Tue 5 January 1926
Volume 40, Pages 64 to 65
[64]
Tuesday, January 5th, 1926.
I should say that the average medieval peasant lived a life not very dissimilar, in essence, from that of the modern French peasant–proprietor and the English village–labourer of eighty years ago. Nine–tenth of the conditions, perhaps, are much the same for all these three classes, just able to maintain themselves & their families by hard and unremitting work……
As compared with the modern French peasantry, the medieval labourer had distinctly less chance of rising. And, as compared with both English & French, his want of legal freedom put him at a decided disadvantage. Therefore, even when we are have made ample allowance for the quiet but enormous economic pressure of the modern world…. I cannot help concluding that there is, to put it roughly, 90 per cent common to these three classes which we are considering, but that the 10 per cent of differences weights very decidedly in favour of modern times.
v. Coulton. "The Medieval Village" p.32.
[65]
I spent most part of the day in reading through a volume of lectures "delivered in the Universities of Oxford & London by P.S. Allen, M.A. Fellow of Morton College, Oxford," published by the Clarendon Press under the title, "The Age of Erasmus." It is full of information & suggestiveness. The 3 volumes here named suffice to give a very fair picture of medieval society upon which the storm of the Reformation broke viz:– 1. Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages. 2. Coulton's "The Medieval Village: 3. Allen's "The Age of Erasmus.
I walked round the Park with Ernest in the afternoon Trotman arrived in order to enter on his duties as my chaplain. Jimmie came to see me. He seems keen & determined, but he has much to learn before Ordination will be possible.
The Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich has a letter on the front page of the Times. dealing with the insolent pronouncement of the E.C.U.
I paid the household accounts for December. The big elm which was cut down in the inner Park for provision of fire–wood for the Castle proves a very tough proposition for splitting up, transport, and sawing. It will cost me a pretty penny!