History of Childhood: Early British History

The tother eild, I understand
Is fra three year to 7 leastand
Sa lang havis child wyl alwaye
With flouris for to Jape and playe
With stikis, and with spalys small
To byge up chalmer, spens and hall;
To make a wickt hort of a wand
Or brokin breid a schip saland
A bunwed tyll a burly spere
And of a feg a swerd of were
A comly lady of a clout
And be rycht besy thar about
  Ratis Raving (13th century)  EETS original series Vol. 43 ed. J. Rawson Lumby, 1870.p.56


Children are just shadowy figures in early British history, not surprising since much of the early history of the British Isles before the Norman Conquest is obscure.  During the Roman occupation hitherto unheard of standards of civilisation and literacy were brought to the remote islands at the furthest edge of their empire and we know a little of the lives of the people living here.  After the Romans withdrew in AD 410 there followed a long period of chaos, civil war, invasion and settlement by the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings and the Danes.

All the pagan people who settled these islands were extremely warlike.  Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Danes, all admired and cultivated above all other virtues courage, endurance and skill in fighting.  Life for small vulnerable children in such societies must have been extremely hazardous and tough.

It seems likely that the invaders would have imported the customs of their native lands. In Lloyd deMause introduction to the History of Childhood (1974)  he tells us that in the pagan societies of Northern Europe it was customary to harden infants by bathing them in icy water or rolling them naked in the snow, which sounds a bit like Scandanavian post-sauna.  Pagan societies commonly abandoned unwanted infants to die of exposure or be eaten by wild animals.  Examples of this are found in pagan myths and legends, usually telling how the child surviving against the odds to fulfil whatever prophecy led to the child being abandoned.  In fact exposure may have been regarded as an efficient method of family planning.

All these societies were patriarchial and the choice of whether or not an infant would be brought normally lay with the father.  Male children were more highly valued than females , among the Vikings, for instance, it was apparently usual for only one female to be reared in a family.

Human sacrifice was practised by at least some of the pagan settlers of Britain, and is recorded in the accounts of the Roman conquerors.  Captives, slaves and children made excellent, disposable, sacrificial victims.   For instance, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of England, attributed to the time of Vortigern, about the 6th century BC, the sacrifice of a motherless boy is required to strengthen the foundations of a bridge.  The same story appears in Nennius' Chronicle c.828.

Infanticide and human sacrifice were suppressed by the Christian church but with great difficulty.  Infanticide was only legally defined as murder in 374 AD but although no longer legal almost certainly continued to be common while the care of abandoned children became one of the traditional offices of the Church.

Christianity was less quick to condemn slavery, endemic in pagan Europe, especially in the Mediterranean regions where the new religion first spread.  Captives and children were particularly vulnerable.  It was Pope Gregory's admiration of some handsome fair-haired youths from remote Britain in the Roman slave market which is said to have led to his sending the first Christian missionaries to the island. Giraldus Cambrensis records that Anglo Saxon children were carried into Ireland by robbers and sold there. (The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, or, The Topography of Ireland, 1187, ed. Thomas Wright, London, 1863 p. 215-6)

The landing of St. Augustine in 597 is a major landmark in British cultural history; Christianity brought new moral values to bear on a pagan way of life and the conflict between the two dominated cultural life.  The impact of Christian philosophy on pagan culture must have been quite extraordinary, bringing entirely new values; 'Blessed are the merciful', 'Turn the other cheek', 'Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth','Suffer little children to come unto me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven'.  These warlike people treated such sentiments with derision and incomprehension, mixed with admiration for the personal bravery of Christians facing imminent death.  The mix of the 'Might is right' philosophy with Christian values produced modifications of both viewpoints, and uneasy compromises.

Christian religion also brought new concepts of 'sin' and 'innocence'.  Pagan tribes in northern Europe had acknowledged that children too young to carry arms were 'innocent' and not acceptable victims in the formalised blood feuds which decimated some noble families. Christianity, however, created the image of 'pure and innocent' children.  Youthful martyrs were particularly popular figures and the 14th century miracle plays developed the apocryphal Massacre of the Innocents into an important episode in the early life of Christ.

 This attitude was often in conflict with the actual treatment of children and, too, with the concept of original sin.  The point at which 'innocent' children became sinful was generally held to be about the time they became sexually aware; considered to be about the age of seven.  To Christians, of course, sexual pleasure was associated with the original sin which lost mankind the Garden of Eden.  Marriage and procreation were, at least theologically, seen as considerably less desirable than celibacy and dedication to God.  The 13th century homily Hali Meidenhead, a piece of propaganda for recruiting virgins to convent life, represents motherhood and children as the unpleasing alternative.  If she failed produce sons, she would be considered a failure by her husband and his family.  If she succeeded:

'In the gestation is heaviness and hard pain every hour; in the actual birth is of all pains the strongest, and occasionally death; in the nourishing the child many a miserable moment.  As soon as it appears in this life, it brings with it more care than joy, namely, to its mother: for if it is a misshapen birth, as often happens...it is a sorrow to her...If it is well shaped and seems likely to live, a fear of losing it is instantly born along with it...and often it occurs that the child most loved and most bitterly purchased, sorrows most and disturbs his parents last.  Now, what joy had the mother?  She had from the misshapen child sad care and shame, both, and from the thriving one, fear till she lose it for good...And what are the other nasty offices and matters about the bosom?  To swaddle and to feed the child for so many unhappy moments...Thou shalt be rich and have a nurse, thou must as a mother care too if akk that the nurse belongeth to be done...Little knows a maiden...of the pain nor of the foul incidents in the gestation and parturition of a child nor of a nurse's watches, nor of her sad trials in the feeding and fostering....'
       Hali Meidenhead.  13th century, MS Cotton Titus DXVIII Fol 112c.  Ed. Oswald Cockayne EETS original series no. 18, 1886

There is a pleasanter picture of the 13th century mother with her child in the Ancren Riwle'...the mother with her young darling: she flies from him, and hides herself, and lets him sit alone, and look anxiously round, and call Dame! Dame and weep a while, and then leapeth forth laughing, with outspread arms, and embraceth and kisseth him, and wipeth his eyes.'
    Ancren Riwle ed. James Morton, early 13th century, Camden Society 1st series vol. 57, 1853 p. 231.

Most of the extremely scanty evidence for the period relates to the upbringing of upper class children.  the basic pattern of their lives, and of adult attitudes to them, does not seem to have changed radically from the establishment of Christianity to the Renaissance.  The same is probably true of the children of commoners.