It is often said that the opposing sides in the Wars of the Roses were engaged in an act of mutual destruction, and that the noble families of England were noticeably thinned as a result of the fighting. In fact the pressure of time and circumstance always worked against the survival of any noble house, and it has been calculated that in any period of twentyfive years a quarter of the nobility left no sons to inherit their titles and so lapsed into inconsequence. There must always be a steady flow of ‘new blood’ to keep the governance of the land in good health. The Wars of the Roses did not interrupt what was essentially a continuing process.
In a larger sense, too, the world went on its own way despite the immediate disturbance of the wars. The fact of conflict of course weakened the body politic, and loosened the ties between the realm and the nobility, but there is no evidence of general desolation or dislocation. Few towns or cities were affected by the disturbances, and only those in the immediate vicinity of the battles would have suffered from the factional struggle. The vast resources of the Church were not touched, and in general the clergy remained as distant observers of the conflict. The law courts at Westminster were still in session and the judges rode on circuit throughout the country. The French chronicler and historian Philippe de Commynes remarked at the time that ‘there are no buildings destroyed or demolished by war, but the calamities and misfortunes of the war fell only upon the soldiers, and especially on the nobility’.
There is also no sign of economic decline as a result of the wars. By the 1470s there was a resurgence of trade, a trend in which the king himself took an active interest. The author of the Crowland Chronicle states that Edward ‘in person, having equipped ships of burden, laded them with the very finest wools, cloths, tin and other products of his realm, and like a man living by merchandise, exchanged goods for goods …’. The appearance of a merchant king helps to disperse any notion of economic degeneracy. ‘There is no small innkeeper, however poor and humble he may be,’ an Italian observer wrote, ‘who does not serve his table with silver dishes and drinking cups …’
In any case the life of a nation is perhaps better compared to a sea than to a pond. Exhaustion and renewal, decay and growth, occur simultaneously. So it was that in 1476 William Caxton established in the almonry of Westminster Abbey the first printing press in England. Ten years later the first water-powered pump was introduced to a coalmine at Finchale near Durham. In 1496 the first blast furnace in England was operating at Buxted in Sussex. This industrial revolution was already provoking complaint. A parliamentary Bill of 1482 declared that hats, bonnets and caps made ‘by men’s strength, that is to say with hands and feet’ were infinitely superior to those ‘fulled and thicked in fulling mills’. At the same time very many humble people were still living on the land in the same conditions as their Saxon ancestors.
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The staple of life
Among the bare fields and deserted gardens of the derelict Roman villas grew wild garlic and onions. ‘I grow very erect, tall in a bed,’ runs one Anglo-Saxon riddle on the onion, ‘and bring a tear to a maiden’s eye. What am I?’ The essential ingredient on the poorer tables, however, was that derisory ‘mess of pottage’ for which birthrights could be sold. The richer Anglo-Saxons ate wheaten bread, but bread of rye or barley was more common. They also consumed vast quantities of pork, the pigs grown fat on the inexhaustible supplies of acorns and beech-nuts to be found in the woods and forests of the country. The smallholder might also have a few razor-backed pigs on the common land. Venison and poultry were popular among the more wealthy Englishmen. Supplies of fish, among them salmon and herring, were plentiful. Horse-flesh was sometimes eaten. For many centuries large knives and coarse wooden spoons were the extent of the cutlery, the meals often eaten out of communal bowls. Then ‘after the dinner they went to their cups,’ according to one chronicler, ‘to which the English were very much accustomed’. A weak ale, compounded with various spices, was the drink of choice. But the Anglo-Saxons also consumed a drink known as ‘morat’, essentially mulberry juice mingled with honey.
