June 3rd, 2010
A MEDIEVAL YEAR IN ENGLAND:
JUNE This
is the Summer month, with trees at their fullest and the flowers most
fair. On the land, where most of medieval England’s population’s
concerns were centered, the summer work began to intensify, with
sheep-shearing at the beginning of the month, followed by one of the
quarter days of the year when rents came due, after which there was an
increase in the work days that lords received by right from their
landholders. Because sheep’s wool was the basis for much of
England’s wealth at every level of society, shearing time was a vital
time for the economy. The sheep were not simply dipped but thoroughly
washed and foul wool removed before shearing. Afterward, the husbandman
or lord was expected to give a dinner for those who had helped with his
flock, and the sheared fleeces were prepared and sacked in readiness
for when the wool merchants and their agents would tour the country
purchasing it for the foreign trade. Households would keep enough wool
for its own clothing needs, with the carding, spinning, dyeing,
weaving, and sewing needed for clothing a year-round concern for
housewives. Ideally, the shearing would be done before St. John
the Baptist day, June 24. This was one of the four quarter days of each
year, when the rents came due and contracts might be renewed. It was
also the last holiday before the long stretch of haying and harvest
work began. On its eve, bonfires and the gathering of green boughs to
decorate homes and churches was traditional, with dancing around the
bonfires and often a town watch parading all night with torches and
merriment. In London a Watch of 2,000 men would parade the streets on
Midsummer’s Eve and again five days later on the eve of St. Peter and
Paul. The hunting season for hare ended now (since Michaelmas in
last September), and although the roebuck continued in season there was
usually a ‘time of grace’ from Midsummer to Holyrood Day (September
14). For farmers, field work became the over-riding concern.
Depending on the year’s weather and local climate some haying might be
started in late May but usually sufficient dry weather could not be
counted on until June, and even then
When the wind goes to the west early in June,
Expect wet weather till the end of the moon.
Wet
weather could be a disaster to a hay crop, and disaster to the hay crop
meant fewer animals could be kept through the coming winter so that the
next spring there would be fewer animals for breeding, milk, cheese,
and wool – a disaster for everyone. The haying was spread out through
June and July. It had to be timed not only to the weather but to when
the meadows were ready to be cut and dried, and even then only some of
the meadows could be cut at one time to better the chances of getting
enough good hay to last the whole year. Meanwhile, weeding of
crops and all the dairy work went on. Because of the increase in the
number of work days that a worker owed his lord after Midsummer, there
was even less time for someone to do his own work just when he needed
it most. The constant tug-of-war between the workers, wanting to work
their own land, and the lord’s clerks, trying to keep track of who owed
what work when and seeing to it that the work got done, was probably a
major factor in those work-days gradually being commuted to money
payments, freeing the workers to their own work and simplifying the
lord’s business since he could then simply hire workers without all the
bureaucratic interfacing that complicated everyone’s life. This
was also the time for repairing mills (necessary to grind grain to make
bread that was a staple of everyone’s life) and setting up pens for
animals on new-mowed land, placing weirs in streams to catch fish, and
doing last minute planting. For those less tied to the land, the
expectation of good weather made this a likely time for travel, for
merchanting or pilgrimages, and such aristocratic games as tournaments.
Between the cool of Spring and the heat of Summer, warm June could be
the most pleasant time of the year – for those with the leisure to
enjoy it. - Margaret |
