Full text of "History of England and the British Empire : a record of constitutional, naval, military, political and literary events from B.C. 55 to A.D. 1890"

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ESTATE OF THE LA.TE
MAEI SINCLAIR

HANDBOUND
AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF

p/\

1065413

PREFACE.

THIS work is the outcome of a desire to furnish both general
readers and young students of British history with a record based
upon the best authorities, and written in an interesting narrative
style.

British history should be, above all, an account of the social
and political development by which a people comprising various
nationalities, characters, and creeds has acquired, in the fullest
measure ever known, the true freedom which combines liberty with
order, and makes Law, represented by the Throne, the highest
authority in the realm. Such headings in the Index as " House
of Commons," " Freedom," " House of Lords," " Charters," " Sta-
tutes," will prove the importance herein assigned to constitutional
history.

The writer has aimed at accurate, impartial, and comprehensive
treatment of his subject, and it is believed that, for the use of
learners in colleges and schools, no department has been left
unnoticed. Literature, science, art, commerce and geographical
discovery have all come under review, and the student is enabled
to trace national progress in every stage, from Eoman times to the
democratic era of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The relations of this country with Foreign Powers at every period
have been traced, and the valour which, on scenes of both foreign
and civil warfare, has been a main element in making the British
Empire, has been fully recognised.

The reign of Queen Victoria is treated on an extended scale
and India and the Colonies are separately dealt with.

iii

PREFACE.

The attention of students who may be preparing themselves
for examinations in British History is specially directed to the
technical terms marked by italics in the Index, and to such
articles as " Clergy," " Catholics, Eoman," " Declarations,"
" Dissenters," " Impeachment," " Papacy," and " Presbyterians."

A series of original maps serves to show the great territorial
changes that have occurred since earlier times, and the gradual
progress of the formation of the British Empire in later days.

It is hoped that the work will commend itself to the judgment
of instructors, and be found of essential and indispensable use in
Schools and Colleges.

TABLE OF CONTENTS AND DATES.

* Statutes, documents, and technical terms are in italics : square brackets enclose events
placed out of chronological order, and matters outside of, but bearing on, English history.

BOOK I.
Britons and Romans (B.C. 55- A. D. 450).

CHAP, I. Pre-historic People :
Ccesar in Britain , . p. i
B.C.

55 Julius Cfesar's first invasion.
54 Julius Ctesar's second invasion.

CHAP. II. Roman Conquest and
Rule . . . . p. 8

A. IX

._J Conquest begun by Aulus

M ( Plautius and Vespasian.

47 Ostorius Scapula in command.

- fl / Suetonius Paulinus in com-

08 \ mand.

Druids and Boadicea de-

stroyed.

78\Agricola's government of
84 / Britain.

gj{ j-Agricola in Caledonia.

19n / Hadrian's Wall erected (Sol-
** ( way and Tyne).
i an /Wall of Antoninus (Clyde
im \ and Forth).
3rd \Saxon pirates begin at-
cent, j" tacks.
304 St. Alban martyred.
Q/UI / Constantine the Great at
6W} { Eboracum (York),
, fin /Picts and Scots pass Had-
360 \ rian'sWall,

i Picts and Scots reach London .
/ Picts and Scots driven out
\ by Theodosius.
Roman troops withdrawn

from Britain.
Roman troops return for a

few months.
Britons vainly ask help of

Aetius.

Final severance of Britain
from Roman empire.

CHAP. III. Roman Period of
Rule (details of) , . p. 14

410 {
418 {

443 i
cir. 1
450 )

BOOK II.
Britain becomes England (450-828).

CHAP. 1. The Coming of the A.D.
English . . . p. 20

St. Aidan in Northumbria.

A.IX

4501 Jutes found kingdom of |

470 / Kent.

477 1 Saxons found kingdom of

491 / Sussex.

495 \Saxons found kingdom of

519 / Wessex.

5261 Saxons found kingdoms of

527 / Essex and Middlesex.

{Angles found kingdoms of
East Anglia, Mercia, and
Northumbria (i.e., Ber- ,
nicia + Deira).

CHAP. II. England a Christian

Country . . . p. 27

cent } tst David converts Wales.]
560 '.Ethelbert, king of Kent.
c Q7 / Augustine and his monks

*' \ land in Thanet.
r Qfi I Church of England founded

l at Canterbury.
627 ) Conversion of the north by
634 f Paulinus.

565 \ [St. Columha preaches in
597 / Scotland.]

669 ) St. Chad (Ceadda), Bishop of

672 / Mercia.

664\ St. Cuthbert works in Nor-

687 / thumbria

664 Council of Whitby.

f Theodore becomes Arch-

670

\ bishop of Canterbury.

CHAP. UI.-The Chief Early Eng-
lish Kingdoms . . p. 30
C , c /Ivent declines after death of
616 \ JSthelbert.
593 V Northumbria powerful under
617 1 ^Ethelfrith.

J j- Edwin, king of Northumbria.

ell \ Peilc ^ a ' P a an kin S of Mercia.
-.,, / Edwin defeated and slain by
633 \ Penda

CAO / Oswald of Northumbria slain
tu { by Penda.
(.,. / Penda succumbs to Oswiu
000 I (Oswy) of Northumbria.
CQK ( Northumbi-ia declines on
180 \ death of Ecgfrith.
659 ) Mercia powerful under
sqq. )" Wulfhere.
v

^Ethelbald strong in Mercia.

Mercia great under Offa.

7821 Offa's Dyke formed (Dee to
Wye).

1^1 1 Wessex powerful.
j* | Ine, king of Wessex.
|J I Egbert, king of Wessex.
goo/ Egbert supreme over all

^j | Danes first appear in force.

CHAP. IV. Early English Civi-
lisation . . . p. 36

[Literature of Period.]
cir. -\

670 > Caedmon flourished.
690 J
jjfjj 1 Bede (Baeda) flourished.

loO I

jjjjjj I Alcnin flourished.

845 1 Joaimes Scotus (Erigena)

875 / flourished.

CONTENTS.

BOOK III.
The Danes in England (830-1042).

CHAR I. The Exploits of the

Northmen

p. 4 o

A.D.
835

[Egbert
\ Britc

defeats Danes and
tons in Cornwall.
837/Ethelwulf, king of Wessex
858 1 and overlord
oec ( Danes first winter in England
55 ) (Sheppey).

anes in East Anglia and
Northumbria.

Fen country ravaged by
'\ Danes.
870 Mercia conquered by Danes.

867

(pi

id,

c _/St. Edmund, king of East

8 ' 1 \ Anglia, slain.

|Ij | Alfred, king of Wessex.

871 Danes invade Wessex.

[Danes settle on Irish coast,
Shetlands, Orkneys, and
Hebrides, by middle of gth
century.]

Q -c ( Alfred's victory over Danes

8/0 1 in Swanage Bay.

_,. / Danes under Guthorm (Guth-

87b (. rum) in Wessex.

878 Alfred retires to Athelney.

878 Alfred defeats Guthorm.

Treaty of Wedmore admits

878 {

Danes to England.
CHAP. II. England under Alfred

the Great

P- 45

878
901

Alfred's work of restoration.

. 1 Invading Danes defeated in
'f Kent.

A.D.

8 f* [Hasting the Dane repelled.
[Literature of Period.]
cir. / Asser, Bishop of Sherborne,

961 \Dunstan, Archbishop of Can-
988 / terbury.
97 ,jj j Edward the Martyr, king.
979 ) Ethelred II. (the Unready),

910 t died,
f Alfred's translations of Gre-

1016 / king.
980 Danes attack southern coasts.

878 t/ory's Pastorals, Bede's
9011 'Ecclesiastical History, Boe-

982 London burnt by Danes.
OQ , \ Norwegians land in East

V. tius, &c.
cir. f Anglo-Saxon Chronicle be-
900 I gins English prose.

991 / Anglia.
_-.) Danetjeld raised to buy off
994 / Danes.

CHAP. III. Political and Social

1 nn9 / Ethelred marries Emma of

Arrangements. , . p. s 1

llHw-^ Normandy.

CHAP. IV. England in the Tenth

Nov ) Massacre of Danes (St.
.i^k ( Brices Day).

Century . * P> 58

1002 ) *"v/*

jj5g | Edward the Elder, king.

1003 \_ Sweyn of Denmark's attacks
1009 )" on England.

_,_ ( JBthelflseda, the Lady of
*iiJ Mercia, partly subdues
920 1 Danelagh.
921 \ Edward annexes Mercia.East
924 / Anglia, and Northumbria.

1013 Sweyn drives out Ethelred.
1014 Death of Sweyn.
iniKJ Edmund Ironside, son of
1015 1 Ethelred, fights Danes.

^P 1 '") Edmund and Cnut divide

5 I Athelstan's strong rule.

1016' J kin S dom -

Q ,_/Athelstan's victory at Bru-

'* '\ nanburh.

CHAP. V. England under Danish

JU } Edmund the Elder, king.

Kings , . . . p. 66

|H JEdred, king.

1035 } Onut ' king of Engtend-

Qn 1 Dunstan "s rule as minister.

Im7 /The foir earldoms esta-
1017 1 Wished.

n 5 . 5 , j-Edwy, king.
yoy )

JJ35 j, Harold 1. (Barefoot), king.

9 !j 9 j Edgar, king.

1 (MO r -H-tircliCci iiitGj kinu.

BOOK IV.

Coming of the Normans (1042-1100).

CHAP. I. The Beginning of CHAP, II. The Fight for the

Norman Power
land

Eng

p. 69

A.D.

Jj^ J- Edward the Confessor, king.

1ftAO j Norman influence in Eng-

1042 1 land begins.

mo J [Duchy of Normandy

"* 1 founded by Hollo.]

loth \ [Normans acquire new cul-

cent. / ture and power.]

1042) Earl Godwin powerful in

1053 f England.

1051 Godwin banished.

William, Duke of Nor-
matidy, visits England.

Godwin returns from
exile.

Godwin dies: Harold be-
comes Earl of Wessex.

1051

1053

\Harold chief minister in

1066 f England.

inco/ Harold's victories in

00 ( Wales.

Jan. \ Harold chosen king bv
1068 / Witan.

English Crown

P- 79

Sep. \ Harold's victory at Stam-
1066 / ford Bridge.

Battle of Hastings.

CHAP. III. After the Battle of
Hastings . . . p. 87
Dec. 25 ) William I. crowned at
1066 / Westminster.

1071 } Com P letion of conquest.
eJ ' | Exeter taken.

o ^ s i n north subdued.

1069

( Yorkshire laid waste.
1070^ Lanfranc becomes Arch-

( bishop of Canterbury.
inn /Here ward subdued in Isle
1071 \ of Ely.

CHAP. IV. Establishment of Nor-
man Mule , . , p. 97
I/VM/ William I. refuses homage
""*! to Pope for England.

1084 ~>

infi {[Domesday Book made.]

CHAP. V. William I. and his
Successor , . .p. 109

A.D,

1075 /Earl of Hereford's revolt

IW t suppressed.
1076 Waltheof executed.
1078 / Robert (Williams eldest

(. son) revolts.
1087 -f William's war with France,

V and death.

1100 / William II. (Rufus), king.

1088/ Revolt of barons sup-
\ pressed.

1089l Lanfranc dies = see of Can-
\ terbury left vacant.

1092 ( Cumberland annexed (from
\ Scotland).

1093 ( Anselm becomes Arch-
. bishop of Canterbury.

( The First Crusade: Robert
1096 . pledges Normandy to Wil-

1097^ A selm leaves Ens-

l land.
1099^ Wffllam reduces Maine to

I. submission.
nno/ William slain in \ew

( Forest,

CONTENTS.

BOOK Y.
The Great Charter (1100-121o).

CHAP. I. The Strong Rule of
Henry the First . . p. 117
A.D.

Henry L, king.

uni / Henry gives Charter of
1101 \ Liberties.
_ nnc / Robert defeated by Henry
1108 ( at Tenchebray.

( Henry's compromise with
1107 < Pope and Anselm on in-

( restitutes.
1120 Prince William drowned.

C Matilda (Empress Maud)
1127 ( marries Geoffrey Planta-

( genet of Anjou.
., 09 / Prince Henry (Henry II.)
1133 (_ born.

gg} Henry I. dies.

CHAP. II. The Reign of Anarchy
and Civil War . . p. 123

1135 \Stephen, Count of Blois,
1154 / king.

TIQO/ Scottish invasion repelled
1148 \ at Battle of the Standard.

{Stephen quarrels with
bishops.
Matilda (Maud) and Robert,
Earl of Gloucester, in-
vade England.
/"Stephen defeated and taken

at battle of Lincoln.
1141-! Matilda in power.

I The war renewed ; Matilda
V. driven from London.
( Stephen released by ex-
1142 \ change for Earl Robert.

( Matilda besieged at Oxford.
1145 Earl of Gloucester dies.
114ft/ Matilda retires to Nor-
11 *\ mandy.

( Prince Henry rules Nor-

1151 < mandy, Anjou, Touraine,
( and Maine.

/Prince Henry marries Elea-
I nor of Guienne.

1152 / P rmce Henry invades Eng-

) Theobald, Archbishop of
\ Canterbury, intervenes.
iiK<> f Treaty of Wallingford se-
T**\ cures throne for Henry.

^ | Death of Stephen.

[Literature of the Period :

the Chroniclers.

1082 ) Florence of Worcester
111?/ wrote.

(Ordericus Vitalis wrote.
William of Malmesbury's
historical work De Gestis
Rec/um Anglorum ends.
1154 Geoffrey of Monmouth died.
1 2th ) Wace of Jersey's Brut and
cent. / Roman de Rou.
11 CA/ Henry of Huntingdon's
04 chronicle ends.

1157
1159

1162
1163

CHAP. III. The Plantagenets be-

gin to reign . . p. 131
A.D.

JJg} Henry II, king.

Thomas Becket becomes

Chancellor.
Becket with Henry in

French war.
Becket, Archbishop of Can-

terbury.
Council of prelates at West-

minster.

Jan. \ Great Council at Clarendon
1164 j (Wilts).
1164 Constitutions of Clarendon.

1164 } C Uncil f ]Srortham P ton -
iic/i / Becket' s flight to the Con-
1164 \ tinent.

Dec. \Return and murder of
1170 / Becket.

CHAP. IV. Henry's Reign after
Becket's Death . . p. 139

1 1 KK / [Ireland : Pope Hadrian
1155 ^ Iy , g bull for conquest

i -i co Invasion of Ireland from
1168 j- Waleg by Fitz . st ephen.

( Strongbow(De Clare, Earl of
1170-;. Chepstow) takes Dublin

( and Waterford.
in ( Strongbow becomes king of

1171 \ Leinster.

1172 Henry II. in Ireland.

, , - f Henry assumes lordship of

1175 { Ireland.

1177 Hugh de Lacy, lord-deputy.

1185 Prince John, lord-deputy.
( English dominion limited to
I the English Pale Dub-

1186-! lin, Waterford, Wexford,

IDrogheda, Cork, and dis-
tricts.]

--/ Queen Eleanor and the
11 '* \ princes plot agains i king.

1173 V Scottish and Flemish inva-

1174 / sions repelled.

1174 f Henry's penance at Becket's

11 '*\ tomb.

f William the Lion of Scot-
I land prisoner : does ho-

1175-; mage to Henry as liege-
lord for Scotland (Treaty
\ of Falaise).

., n / Henry's legal reforms ;

u -'\ judges of assize appointed.

,,oo f King's sons jigain rebel in

1183 1 France.

11 OK /Knights Templars es^ab-

1180 \ lished in London.

Prince Richard wars with
Henry in France.

Death of Henry II.

,.,00
ii.8

CHAP. V. Richard of the Lion
Heart . . . p< 144

Richard I , king.

/ The Jews ill-treated: the
( tragedy at York,

A.D.

{Claim to hom-'ge for Scot-
land sold.
Richard starts for Palestine.

1191 } Richard in Hol y Land.

1191 i Saladin defeated : Acre, As-
*\ calon, and Jart'a taken.
/Richard makes truce with
Saladin.

1192^ Philip Augustus of France
and Prince John plot
\. against Richard.

M93/ Richard a pri-.oner in Ger-
\ many.

Mar. \Richard arrives in Eng-

1194 / land.

1194 \ War in France agains.

1199 / Philip Augustus.

11 QO /Death of Richard I. in

1199 \ France.

Literature : Walter Map's
satires, &c. : Ranulph
(Ralph) de Glanvil's work
on English law : the
Chroniclers, William of
Newbury, Roger de
Hoveden, Gerald du Barri
(Giraldus Cambrensis);
Layamon (theBrut,a met-
rical chronicle of Britain
in early English).

CHAP. VI. The Wicked King and
the Good Charter . p. 151

1170
1220

/ War in France : John keeps

Anjou and Maine.
John defeats his nephew
Arthur in Poitou.

1203 Prince Arthur murdered.
(Philip Augustus of France

1204 ! attacks John : Normandy
( lost.

C Anjou, Maine, Touraine,

1205 4 Poitou, &c. , conquered by
( Philip.

1206 \ John's quarrel with Pope
1213 / Innocent III.

( Stephen Langton made (by
1207^ Pope's influence) Arch-

( bishop of Canterbury.
1208 \England under Papal In-
1213 / terdict.

i John's deposition pro-
claimed by Pandulf.
War with France : French
fleet partly destroyed.
John submits to Pope as
his suzerain.

/French invading fleet de-
I stroyed at Damme (Flan-

1214{ ders) -

Philip of France victorious
I over John's league at
\ Bouvines.

Jan. \Langton and the barons

1215 / meet in London.

May \Baronial army gathered

1215 / under Fitz-Walter.

June\Magna Carta signed at

1215 / Runnymede.

VI 11

CONTENTS.

A.D.
1215 {

John appeals to Pope : brings
in foreign troops.

( John victorious over barons :
'1 Prince Louis of France
( called in by barons.

^JDeath

BOOK YI.
Rise of the House of Commons (1216-1272).

CRAP. I. Henry the Third and
Simon de Montfort . p. 164
A.D.

Jf^JHenry III., king.
1216 X William Marshal, Earl of
1219 / Pembroke, chief minister.

/Battle of Lincoln: the

I French expelled from
, 017 / England.
ia -'\ French invading fleet de-

I stroyed off Sandwich.

V Charter of Forests granted.
1219 \ Hubert de Burgh, justiciary
1231 1 and chief minister.
12191 The country reduced to
1224 1 order.

1223, ), The Great Charter solemnly
1225 f confirmed by king.

1227 Henry assumes power.

1228 Cardinal Langton dies.
1231 De Burgh deprived of office.
1231 ) Peter des Roches, Bishop of
1241 f Winchester, in power.

{Henry marries Eleanor of
Provence.
Influx of Poitevin and other
French intruders.
Peter of Savoy (queen's
uncle) in power.

1253 \ The king ' s ille al exactions.
1242, \ Resistance of barons in
1248 ] Parliament.
19jl n/ Henry at war with Louis
l ^\ IX. of France.

19 . 9 / Henry defeated at Taille- !

1242 X bourg.

, 0yl _ /Pai:al exactions strongly

1245 X resisted.

1250XQ ueen Eleanor at feud with

1253 / city of London.

_-/ Simon de Montfort, Earl of
izoo ^ Leicester, heads barons.
p , (Troubles on Welsh bor-

loiw i ^ er ' Henry summons

izob ( Parliament.
June X The Mad Parliament at
1258 / Oxford.

IOKO f Provisions of Oxford reform
1258 X the mode of rule.
1 9fi3 1 ^actions among barons.

Da Montfort returns from

1263

France and takes lead.

CHAP. II. De Montfort and the
House of Commons . p. 174

1263 e } The barona> war Begins.
SA ( Tne kin and Prince Ed- |
ward swear to Provisions

1241 j

1283)

I Jan.
1264

( of Oxford.

Mise of Amiens (award of
Louis IX. of France) an-
nuls Provisions.
King and Prince Edward
May defeated at battle of

1264 Lewes.

Mise (Treaty) of Leives.
Jan. XDe Montfort summons bur-

1265 / gesses to Parliament.

A.D.

Apr. X Reaction of barons against

1265 J De Montfort.

A C Renewal of war : De Mont-
e JS- I fort defeated and slain at
1Zba ( battle of Evesham.

1272 } The rovalist reaction -

iocc / The Dictum (award) de

1266 1 KenUworth.

1266 X Prince Edward restores
1269 / order.

1271 \ Prince Edward in Palestine

1272 / (eighth and last crusade).

gg- } Henry III. dies.

CHAP. III. Learning and Reli-
gion in Thirteenth Century
p. 181

-^./Franciscan Friars come to
1224 \ England.

(The Grey Friars (Francis-
1230" cans) and Dominicans

( active in England.
1235 \ Robert Grosseteste, Bishop
1253 / of Lincoln.
1235 \Adam Marsh (de Marisco)
/ teaches at Oxford.

^ 2 ^ | Roger Bacon at Oxford.

JIJJ!! Bacon's Opus Majus.

cir. ^ Henry of Bracton's work on
1260 / English law.

J|^| | Matthew Paris, chronicler.

BOOK VII.

England conquers Wales and attacks Scotland and France (1272-1377).

CHAP. 1. England under Edward
the First ... p. 186
A.D.
J 272 1 Edward I., king.

1273 \ The king and queen (Eleanor

1274 / of Castile) in France.
Aug. X Edward and Eleanor land
1274 / at Dover.

12fi7 I [Llewellyn has title "Prince

mt \ of Wales."
1274 / Llewellyn refuses homage

lf * I to Edward.

1277
1278

Edward
Wales.

invades North

Llewellyn submits : marries
Eleanor de Monfort

David and Llewellyn of
Wales revolt.

Llewellyn killed in action :
David taken and exe-
cuted.

Statute of Wales regulates
1 the conquered territory.

( Edward of Caernarvon, first
1284 \ English "Prince" of

( Wales."]

1275 First Statute of Westminster.
The great law-courts(lfmtf's
1275 Bench, Exchequer, Com-
mon Pleas, Chancery)
finally settled.
Statute of Mortmain (De

Religiosis).
Statute of Merchants (St. of

Acton Bumel).
Statute of Winchester.
f Statute Quia Emptores deals
I with estates.
Jews, after much ill-treat-
ment, banished.
Death of Queen Eleanor.
The first complete Parlia-
ment.

[Edward does homage to
French king for Guiennp.
1286 Edward settles affairs in
France.

A.D.

1294

1297

War with France : Guienne

lost to England.
French and Scottish alliance

begins.]
Barons resist the king's

exactions.

Confirmation of the Char-
ters (statute).

The Confirmation renewed.
lo.ni / Charter of Forests enforced
1301 1 by barons.
1305 -f Gw^^rwMrtibnagain extorted

X by barons.
, / [Scottish affairs : Kenneth

M X Mac-Alpin, king,
gth, \

ioth V Danish invasions,
cent. )

cir. X Kingdom of Scotland com-
1010 / pletely formed.
1056) Malcolm III. (Canmore),
1093 / king.

i2th X Norman nobles settle in
cent. / Scotland.

CONTENTS.

1124 1 David I. establishes f euda-

1153 / lity.

116| I William the Lion, king.

1175 Treaty of Falaise.

1100 ( Treatv au nulled by Richard

cir \ Border-line settled between
1240 f England and Scotland.

'fHaco of Norway defeated
1 2 6 3 | atLargs.
. i Hebrides annexed to Scot-
1266 1 i aiu i.

( Alexander III. dies.
1286- Margaret, Maid of Norway,

( queen.

(Treaty of Brigham for

1 marriage of Margaret

i with Prince Edward.
Oct. X The young Scottish queen
1290 f dies ]

( Parliament at Norham dis-
1291 -I cusses Scottish succes-

V. sion.
( Scottish throne awarded

-? bv Edward I. to John
2 \ Baliol.
, ftftc f Edward I. quarrels with

1295 \ Baliol.

C Edward invades Scotland.
iSJi' - Capture of and massacre at

1296 ( Berwick.

1296 f Balio1 defeated at Dunbar.
June ) Edinburgh occupied.
1296 / Stirling Castle surrendered.

1296 } Balio1 dethroned -

(Scottish crown, sceptre,
1296- and "stone of destiny"

( brought to England.

Nov.
1292

,,,
1297

.
(Wallace takes the field in

\ Scotland.

Sep. 1 Defeat of English at Stir-
1297 / ling.

Edward invades Scotland.
July \ Edward defeats Wallace at
1298 f Falkirk.

( Pope Boniface VIII. claims
1300 - decision between England

( and Scotland.
,, ft ,/ English parliament rej<
WU1 \ Papal interference.
..../Stirling Castle taken bj
loUo I Scots

j Edward invades Scotlanc
1304 ( and exacts submission.
...... (Wallace taken and exe

1305 1 cuted.

Feb. 1 Robert Bruce takes the

1306 J field.

1306 } Bruce crowned at Scone.

1306 f Bruce defeated at Methven
May ) Bruce victorious at Loudoi

1307 J Hill.

.1 uly \ Edward I. dies at Burgh
1307 / on -Sands.

CHAP. II.- The Fight for Scottis
Independence . . p. 22

1327 1 Edward II., king.

lore /Edward marries Isabella o

16W I France.

1307 1 Piers de Gaveston in power
1312 / at intervals.
mo I Lwds Ordaiiiers appointed.
,,,,,( The barons cause reform of
\ government.
/ The barons in arms : Gave-
1 ston beheaded.
( [Scottish a/airs : Robert
1309- Bruce supported by

( Douglas.

1310 \ The Scots retake their towns
1312 / and fortresses.
1312 Bruce invades England.]
"ml 1 Edward invades Scotland.
June \ The Scots victorious at
1314 f Bannockburn.
1312 ) The Despensers in power at
1326 / intervals.
,, f Edward coerced by Thomas
14 1 of Lancaster.
, f Lancaster president of
316 \ Council.
318 Berwick taken by Bruce.
120) Northern counties ravaged
.321 / by Scots.

-Edward vainly invades Scot-
land.

Lancaster defeated at
Boroughbridge, and be-
headed.

The Ordinances repealed by
- Parliament at York.
^| | Truce made with Scotland.
/Isabella and Roger Morti-
X mer allied against king,
j Isabella invades England.
1(>c / The Despensers executed as
326 1 traitors.

an. X The king dethroned by
327 j Parliament.
Sep. f Edward murdered at Berke-
327 .1 ley Castle.
_-./ [Dissolution of Knights
AIA \ Templars in England.]

A.D.

Scots recover fortresses :
^ David 1 1. again on throne.]
Oct. \Edward takes title "King
1337 / of France."
...-/"France vainly invaded by
1339 1 Edward.

.._/ French fleet beaten at
1340 \ Sluys.

1344} Truce witl1

July X Ed ward invades Normandy :

1346 / Caen taken.

1346* } En lis h victol T at Crecy.
Oct. \David II. of Scotland de-
1346 f feated at Neville's Cross.
1346 \ [David II. a captive in
1357 / England.]
H|- } Calais taken by Edward.

CHAP. III. The Hundred Years'
War begins . P- 232

| 27 } Edward III., king

in
[330 / power.

C Treaty of Northampton ac
1328-^1 knowledges Scottish in

( dependence.
1329 6 1 [Death of Robert Bruce.

1329 David II. , king of Scotland.

! Edward marries Philippa
of Hainault.
Mortimer made Earl o
March.
Edward assumes power
Mortimer hanged as trai
tor.

,000 i [Scottish a/airs: Civil wa
1332 \ in Scotland.]

fWar with Scotland : Scot
.- I defeated at Halidon Hill
1333-^ Berw i c k captured by Ed
^

ward.

1333 ) [Edward Baliol vassal-kin
1339 / of Scotland

( Order of Garter instituted.
349 { The Black Death rages in
( England.

(The Statute of Labourers
passed.
Statute of Treasons.
Statute of Provisory against
Papal claims.
Further anti-Papal legisla-
! tion.

355 War with France renewed,
ept. \Black Prince victorious at

356 / Poitiers.

1CB ( French king John prisoner

357 \ in London.

360 Treaty of Bretigny.

363 Statute of Apparel.

364 French king dies in London.
367 Black Prince in Spain.

369 War in France renewed.

370 French invade Gascony.
m i Black Prince returns to

1371 1 England.
1371 X Du Guesclin in field against
1374 / English.

,0 (Spanish fleet holds sea
1372 1 against English.
._ ./Truce with France : English
I possessions mostly lost.

1370 1 Duke of Lancaster (John of
L377 f Gaunt) in power.

iom / William of Wykeham(Chan-

1371 \ cellor) driven from office.
10 _rThe Good Parliament im-
1376-1 peaches evil anmggjlers.

Black Prince dies.
July \ Alice Ferrers and Lancaster
1376 J again dominant.
Jime\ Death of E(iwa rd III.

CHAP. IV. Literature and Learn-
inci under the Three Edwards
p. 251

.- nfi /Duns Scotus, the Subtle
1308 1 Doctor, died.

._ ( William de Occam, the In-
I 347 1 vincible Doctor, died.
....(Thomas Bradwardine, the
1349 j profound Doctor, died.
f Richard de Bury, Chancel-
lor, and Bishop of DOT-
1 345 1 ham, a patron of learning,

CONTENTS.

BOOK VIII.

The Age of Wyclif and Chaucer. The Lancastrian Kings and

1381

1382
1384

CHAP. I. England under Richard
the Second . . .p. 254
A.D.
JJJJ j Richard IL, king,

( [The religious revolt : Lol-
1361 < lardry : Wyclif master of

( Balliol, Oxford.
13661 Wyclif, prominent against
1378 / Papal claims.
,of Wyclif rector of Lutter-
1375 ( worth.

,, 7ft /Wyclifs anti-Papal tract,
ld ' \ Schism of the Popes.

( Langland's Purs the Plow-
IOOAJ man's Vision.
UH) Wyclif s translation of Bible

appears.
Wyclif denounces transub-

stantiation at Oxford.
Wyclif condemned as here-
tic.

Wyclif dies.]

1378\ War with France, Spain,
1380 1 and Scotland.
1M1 /The poll-tax: Wat the
iMi \ Tyler's revolt.
1380)

1390 \ [Anti-Papal legislation.
1391)

1392 Statute of Praemunire.]
., ( Richard marries Anne of
1382 1 Bohemia.

1384 V War with Scotland : border

1387 / forays and invasions.

( Earl of Suffolk removed

1385 -j from power by Lords ai>d
( Commons.

fDe Vere, Earl of Oxford
| (king's favourite), de-
feated at Radcot Bridge.
Chief-Justice Tresilian and
others executed by Parlia-
lent as traitors.
,000 /Battle of Otterburn (Chevy

1388 \ Chase).

( Richard assumes power :
1389- William of Wykeham,

( Chancellor.

,,04 f Richard II. quells revolt in
1394 < Ireland.

( The king turns upon nobles:
1397 -N Gloucester dies in prison

( at Calais.

fRichard wields despotic

power.

1398- Dukes of Norfolk and
Hereford (Bolingbroka)

V banished.

( Duke of Lancaster's (Boling-
1399^ broke's) estates confis-

( cated.

July \Bolingbroke lands inarms
1399 / at Ravenspur.
Sept. \Richard forced to abdi-

1399 / cate.

Feb. V [Richard dies at Pontefract

1400 f Castle.]

1351 / [Literature : Gower's Vox
l03 - 1 Clamantis.

1387

France (1377-1453).

A.D.

1394 Gower's Confessio Amantis.

1386 1 Chaucer ' s earlier poems.

1373)
1400 /

Canterbury Tales written.

n f

1400 \
140li
1409 /

CHAP. II. Religious persecution
under Henry IV. . P- 275

} 39 jj Henry IV., king,

Plots for Earl of March
dealt with.

Owen Glendower's revolt in
Wales.

Sir Edmund Mortimer de-
feated by Glendower.

Scots under Earl Douglas
defeated at Homildon
Hill.

Rebellion of the Percies :
battle of Shrewsbury.

Revolt in north suppressed.

Earl of Northumberland
defeated at Bramham
Moor.

[Religious affairs: Statute
De Heretico comburendo.

Sawtrey burned at Smith-
field.

1405
1408

1401

1401
1413 j

1410 {

1370 {
1390

1398J

1402 {

1405
1424

1406
1411

1424
1413

Persecution of Lollards.

John Badby burned at

Smithfield.]
[Scottish a/airs: David II.

died.

Robert II. (Stewart) died.
Duke of Rothesay (Prince

David), regent for Robert

III.
Duke of Albany in power as

regent.
Prince James (James I.) a

prisoner in England.
James I. acknowledged as

king.
The Highland invasion de-

feated at Harlaw.
James I. crowned at Scone

on release from Eng-

land.]
Death of Henry IV.

CHAP. III. Henry V. conquers
France . . .p. 282

Henry V., king.

Sir John Oldcastle (Lord

Cobham) escapes from

Tower.

Lollard plot crushed.
[Cobham taken and executed

as traitor.]
Plot for Earl of March

crushed.

French war begins.

Harfleur surrenders to
Henry V.

Victory of Agincourt.

f
1413 -{

1414
i /it n /
1417
July
1415

Sept.
1415

Julyl Henry's second invasion of

1417 / France.

1417 Normandy towns taken.

Jan.
1419

Rouen surrenders.

Treaty of Troyes.

( Scottish army helps French.
1421 \ English defeated at Beauje

(Anjou).
e 1 He

June 1 Henry's third invasion of
1421 / France.

1/100 / Henry and his queen (Catha-
14 ^ \ rine of France) at Paris.

^1' \HenryV.diesatVincennes.

CHAP. IV. End of the Hundred
Years' War , . p. 289

| Henry VI., king.
j

1422

1423

1424
1427

[Charles VI. of France dies.

Dauphin crowned, asCharles

VII., at Poitiers.]
f Henry proclaimed "King
I of France."
Duke of Bedford commands

in France.

Earl of Salisbury defeats
French and Scots at Cre-
vant.
Bedford routs French and

Scots at Verneuil.
Bedford defeated by

French.
Oct. V Earl of Salisbury begins

1428 / siege of Orleans.

Mar. ) English win Battle of Her-

1429 / rings (Rouvrai).

Apr. 1 Jeanne Dare takes the
1429 / field.

May 2, ~\ Jeanne Dare, La Hire,
1429 / and Dunois at Orleans.
May 4, 7, \English defeated be-
1429 / fore Orleans.

^1429 8 ' I Siege of 0rleails 1-aised -
June 1 Earl of Suffolk defeated and
1429 / taken at Jargeau.

1429 6 } English defeated a <> Patay.
July 1 Charles VII. of Franco

1429 / crowned at Rheims.
May 1 Jeanne Dare defeated and

1430 / captured at Compiegne.

| Henry crowned in Paris.

May ) Jeanne Dare burnt
1431 / Rouen.
14251//om a/airs: Quarrels of
1447 / Beaufort and Gloucester.

f Restriction of county fran-
1430-! chise to forty - shilling

I freeholders.

lAAcf Henry married to Margaret
1445 1 of Anjou.

( Deaths of Duke Humphrey
1447-^ of Gloucester and Car-

I dinal Beaufort.

CONTENTS.

A.D.

1448

Dukes of .Suffolk and
Somerset in power.

Richard, Duke of York, and
Earls of Salisbury and
Warwick head other fac-
tion.
( Duke of Suffolk impeached

1450 an ^ murdered.

Rebellion of Jack Cade sup-
t pressed.

A.D.

1450 | Dukes of Somerset and

1452 / York at issue.

I '[The French war : Congress
of Arras : Duke of Bur-
j.*o-v gundy abandons English
j cause.
VDuke of Bedford dies.

i/ioc / English garrison overcome
1436 -j in parls

1437 ) Lord Talbot's successes in
1440 / France.

1448 Maine ceded to France.
1450 / Normandy lost to Eng

1^ lUlKl.

( Lord Talbot (Earl of Shrews-

1452 bury) defeated and killed
^ at Castillon (Guienne).

Oct. \ Bordeaux surrendered to

1453 f French.

1d c, r Calais sole English posses-
1453 \ sion in France.]

BOOK IX.
The Fight for the Crown (1453-1485).

I. Henri/ succumbs to
Edward of York . p. 304

ijiKJt
1454

Prince Edward born : Henry

insane for a time.
Duke of York named "Pro-
\ tector."
Feb. ) King recovers : Somerset
1455 / again in power.
May \ Wars of Roses begin : first
1455 f battle of St. Albans.
1456) Duke of York in retire-

1458 / ment.

Sept. ) The Avar renewed : battle

1459 / of Blore Heath.

f Duke of York and Earl of
Warwick win battle of
Northampton.
Oct. \Duke of York claims throne

1460 ) for his line.

TDuke of York defeated and
iffiz 1 killed at battle of Wake-
60 1 field.

/"Edward of York victorious
-., j I at Mortimer's Cross.

1461

4 Earl of Warwick defeated
St.

at second battle of
V Albans.

Mar. | Edward of York becomes
1461 f king.

CHAP. II. ~ Literature of the Lan-
castrian Period . . p. 311
cir. ^

1420 >Lydgate's satirical poems.
1440J

1505 f lhe Paston Letters written.
iin I Occleve wrote satirical
SB/ vei ' se '

1450 } 1>ecock ' s cllie * vvork (prose).
1463 Fortescue's legal works.

CHAP. III. England under Ed-
ward the Fourth . p. 314

and

Edward IV., king.

Mar. ) Edward's victory at battle

1461 f ofTowton.

June | Edward crowned at West-

1461 / minster.

y ov TActs of attainder against

Henry, Margaret,
LTOi I other Lancastrians.

1464

A.D.

1462 \ Lancastrian risings sup-
1464 / pressed.

Apr. \ Lord Montacute's victoiy
1464 J at Hedgeley Moor.
May \ Montacute again beats Lan-
1464 f castrians at Hexham.
1464 \Henry a prisoner in the
1470 / Tower.

Edward marries Lady Eliza-
beth Grey (Woodville).
Margaret of York marries

Charles of Burgundy.
Duke of Clarence marries

Isabel Neville.
""" | Warwick turns against

V Edward.
July \ Edward's army defeated at

1469 / Edgecote.

S Clarence and Warwick
driven out by king.
Warwick's league with Mar-
garet of Anjou.
Warwick and Clarence land
at Dartmouth.
Oct. V Edward flees to Flanders.

1470 / Henry again on throne.

/ '
\

ne ' ' Lord of the Isles
submits.

1431 j Highland rising suppressed.
1437 i James murdered at Perth.
James II., king.

[

Mar.
1471

Apr.
1471

May
1471

Edward and Richard of
Gloucester land with
force at Ravenspur.
Clarence joins king.
Edward enters London as

king.

Edward victorious at Bar-
net.
Edward's final victory at

Tewkesbury.
Deaths of Henry VI. and

Prince Edward.
Margaret of Anjou a pri-
soner in Tower.
f Richard of Gloucester mar-
ries Anne Neville.
Edward invades France.
, -. The ignoble Treaty of Pec-
1475 1 quigny.

...--/Margaret of Anjou released
14 '1 from Tower.
,..-/ Caxton begins printing in

1477 \ England.

Feb. ) Duke of Clarence dies for

1478 f treason.
--/Richard of Gloucester cap-

148Z 1 tures Berwick.

W83 } Death of Edward IV.
1421\[Scottish a/airs: James I.,
1437 / king.

1473

1d . ft /Earl of Douglas murdered

1 * tu \ at Edinburgh.

1443 William Douglas in power.

, ,K/ Douglas murdered (by king)

1452 \ at Stirling.

.. cft / James II. killed at siege of

1460 \ Roxburgh.

1488 f James m -> kill -

1460 1 Kennedy, Bishop of St.

1465 / Andrews, in power.

( James III. marries Nor-
lAflo ' wegian Prijicess.
j.40-j Orkney and Shetland Isles

V annexed.

1472-f -^ rcn ^i sn P r i c f St. An-
"*'( drews founded.]

CHAP. IV.- The End of the House

of York . . -p. 330

Apr.-")

June [Edward V., king.
1483 J
, o I Earl Rivers and Ed-

P ?' V ward's supporters ar-

148<J J rested.
May \ Edward accepted in London
1483 / as king.
June 13, \LordHastingsbeheaded

1483 / in Tower.
June 26, \ Richard of Gloucester

1483 ] proclaimed king.
( Edward V. and his brother

i>ioo
1483

disappear.
Richard III., king.

..../Duke of Buckingham's re-

oo-^ vo j^ am | execution.

f Richard's only Parliament :
I statutes first made in

18 1 English and printed.

t Richard's son, Edward, die?.

Mar. ) Death of Richard's queen

1485 } (Anne Neville).

Aug. 7, ) Earl of Richmond lamb
1485 / at Milford.

Aug. 22, \Richard III. killed at
1485 / Bosworth.

Xll

CONTENTS.

BOOK X.

Tudor Times. The New Learning and the New Church (1485-1558).

CHAP. I. The Aye of Henry the
Seventh . P- 339

\ Henry VII. , king

Jan. \Henry marries Elizabeth of
I486 / York.

( Lambert Simnel's impos-
Q _J ture.
148 ' Simnel's supporters routed

( [Bartholomew Diaz doubled
1487 1 Cape of Good Hope.

1497
1498

Columbus landed in West

Indies.
'John and Sebastian Cabot

reached Labrador.
Vasco da Gaina reached

India round Cape.]

CHAP. III. Englandunder Henry

the Eighth

\ j Henry VIII. , king.

P- 371

June ) Henry marries Catharine
of Aragon.

^ at Stoke, near Newark.
THenry's sham invasion of
1492^ France : Treaty of Esta-

f Pei-kin Warbeck claims j 1509 f

1193 throne as Richard of j , K , n / Empson and Dudley exe-
\ York. t cuted.

Warbeck's English suppor- j .,/ Henry joins Holy League

ters executed for treason. I "*! against France.
Sir William Stanley exe- ( Battle of the Spurs (French

cuted. 1*13' defeat near Calais).

[Ireland : Poynings (Lord i0i ~\ Battle of Flodden : James

Deputy 'ti)Law passed.] I IV. killed.

[Scotland : James III. killed 1514 Holy League dissolved

1494

119o

1513 -

at Sauchie Burn.
James IV., king.]
?Act legalising allegiance to

1502 {

nftttJ de facto sovereign.

1490 1 Warbeck welcomed in Scot-

l land by James IV,
June X Cornish insurgents de-
1497 | feated at Blackheath.

149?' I Warbeck captured.

i ion / Warbeck and Earl of War-

1as X wick executed.

K f Arthur, Prince of Wales,

i KM ' -{ marries Catharine of Ara-

1501 \ gon.

( Princess Margaret married
to James IV. of Scotland.
Apr. 1 Arthur, Prince of Wales,

1502 / dies at Ludlow.

i KM / Prince Henry becomes

1502 1 Prince of Wales.

Feb. \Elizabeth of York, the

1503 / queen, dies.

1509 } Death of Henry VIL

CHAP. II. The Days of the Re-
naissance . . . p. 357
1434 X [Cosmo de Medici rules in
1469 I Florence.

J||J } Nicholas V., pope.

1453 { Constantinople taken by

IKIK ([Francis I. becomes king of
1515 X France.]
jJJ||[&0eZaME: James V., king.

,/ Queen-mother marries Earl

: \ of Angus.

1458 {

Greek taught at University

of Paris..

1169 {Lorenzo de Medici in power
1492 / at Florence.
149l{ Grocyn tau S nt Greek at

cir. XCroke taught Greek at Cam-

1520 J bridge.]

1413 1 [Seotland : St. Andrews'

X University founded.
1449 Glasgow University founded.
1194 Aberdeen Univer. founded.]

(Ant

st
Icon

L524} Duke of Alba y'

1515 \Wolsey in power as Chan-
1529 1 cellor.

IK-IK ( Wolsey made Papal legate.

1516 j Princess Mary born.

/ League of France, Spain,
\ and England.
-IK-IO/ [Charles V. becomes em-

1519 \ peror.]

1520 Field of Cloth of Gold.

. K0 - /"Duke of Buckingham exe-

1521 \ cuted.

1520 [Luther burns Papal bull.

. ,-. / Henry's book On Seven Sac-

i0 ^\ raments.}

i coo / Wolsey's contest with House

1523 \ of Commons.

IKOK/ General resistance to illegal

1525 \ taxation.

CHAP. TV. The Great Anti-Papal
lievolt . . . . p. 383
. co-/ First application to Pope
1W 'X (Clement VII.) for divorce,
, . ( Wolsey and Campeggio con-
IKOQ^ sider divorce case in Lon-
1529 ( don.

July /The divorce case remitted
1529 I to Rome.

f Fall of Wolsey from power.
1529-! Sir Thomas More becomes

^ chancellor.

f Death of Wolsey.

I Cranmer comes into favour
1530-^ with Henry.

I Thomas Cromwell rises to

V. power.

( Clergy in convocation ad-

A.D.

nates abolished by
statute.
Convocation surrenders its

i legislative powers.
Sir Thomas More resigns
chancellorship.
Cranmer becomes Arch-
bishop of Canterbury.
Henry marries Anne Boleyn
(privately).

May X Cranmer pronounces di-
1533 / vorce from Catharine
June X Anne Boleyn crowned at
1533 / Westminster.

1533 1 1>rincess Elizabeth born.
Act of Supremacy separates
English Church from
Rome.
Other important church

legislation.
Cromwell becomes Chief

Secretary of State.
Act of Succession legalises
marriage with Anne
- Boleyn.

(Bishop Fisher and Sir
) Thomas More executed.
"] Cromwell made Vicai'-
( General.

/ Wales incorporated with
X England.

1534

1535

1536

153K

mit king
Church.

Head of

CHAP. V. Progress of the Reli-
gious Revolution . p. 402

. / Act suppressing lesser mon-
10db X asteries.

/"Execution of Queen Anne
May I Boleyn.

1536 | Henry marries Jane Sey-
V mour.

New Act of Succession bars
from throne Princesses
Mary and Elizabeth.
Bible in English admitted
from abroad.

1536 J Coverdale's Bible placed in

churches.
Parts of Liturgy used in

English.
Lincolnshire revolt and

Pilgrimage of Grace.
f Fresh risings in north sup-
mmgaj pressed.

106 ' I Birth of Prince Edward :
I, death of Queen Jane.

1537 \Greater monasteries dis-
1539 J solved.

1538 f Eelics > pilgrimages, and

1539
1539

1540

/Re

shrines suppressed and
destroyed.

Act of Six Articles.

Henry marries (and di-
vorces) Anne of Cleves.

Fall and execution of Crom-
well.

Henry marries Catharine
Howard.

Executions under Six Ar-
ticles Act.

CONTENTS.

xin

A.I).

(The Great Bible ("Cran-
mer's Bible") placed in
IX cl

1541-' churches.

I Execution of Margaret,

Countess of Salisbury.

CHAP. VI. The Last Years of the
Reign . . . . p. 421
./Execution of Queen Catha-

1542

1543

vine Howard.
The Bible removed from

churches.
Henry marries Catharine

Parr.

(Invasion of France.
Third Act of Succession
j.rti-| leaves throne to Edward
V (and heirs) and Princesses.
(Anne Askew burnt at Smith -
,-.,1 field.

P^l Chantries, chapels, &c.,
\. suppressed.

Ja i547 9 ' } Earl f Surrey execiltecl -

J 1547 8 '/ Death of Heniy VIIL
1534 ) [Ireland : Revolt of the
1536 / Geraldines suppressed.

1541
1528

1531
1538

1542

1543

1544
1544

Conquest proceeds : Henry
VIIL, "King of Ireland."]

[Scotland : James V. as-
sumes power.

Suppresses border-chiefs
and pacifies Highlands.

James marries Mary of Lor-

raine (Mary of Guise).
Scots defeated at Solway
Moss : death of James V.
Birth of Mary Stuart.
Earl of Arran becomes

regent.
English invade Scotland :

Edinburgh taken.
Cardinal Beaton in power.
\Lowlands ravaged by Eng-
1546 / lish.

izjtcl Cardinal Beaton murdered
"1 at St. Andrews.]

I [Scottish Reformation :
1408-! Reseby, a Lollard, burned
^ as "heretic."

A.D.

MM* /Scottish Parliament forbids
525 \ "Lutheranism."

. ( Patrick Hamilton burned at
( St. Andrews.

into / Priests and laymen burned
1538 ( at Edinburgh.
iK44/ George Wishart, a "here-
i(m \ tic," returns from exile,
-e^,./ Wishart burned by Beaton
1030^ a j. gf._ Andrews.]

CHAP. VII. Social and Intellec-
tual Condition of Early Tudor
Times . . . . p. 433

1514 Trinity House founded.
Jlfj'j-Vagrahcy-laws.

1*MTC (Literature and Learning:
IKOO"! Warham, Archbishop of
1533 1 Canterbury.

St. John's College, Cam-
bridge, founded.
Henry VIIL founds Regius
Professorships at Cam-
bridge.
Trinity College, Cambridge,

founded.
More's Utopia (in Latin,

1516) in English.
Lord Berners' translation of

Froissart.

f Sir Thomas Wyatt's and Earl
1557-! of Surrey's poems pub-

\ lished.

cir. \UdalFs comedy, Ralph
1540 / Roister Doister.

CHAP. VIIL- The Reformation
under Edward the Sixth p. 438

Jig 7 } Edward VI., king.

1547XI>uke of Somerset, "Pro-
1549 / tector."

1547' } Scots defeated at Piukie.
1liia ([Mary Stuart betrothed to
10*0 1 French Dauphin.]

1547 Six Articles repealed.

1548 / I ma o' es > pictures, relics, &c.,
X suppressed.

1510

1540

1546
1551

1523

First Prayer-book of King

Edward.

Act of Uniformity.
Western and Norfolk

(Kett's) rebellions.
1549 ( Lord Seymour of Sudeley

executed.

Fall of Protector Somerset.
Earl of Warwick (Duke of

Northumberland, 1551) in

power.
Hooper and Ridley made

bishops.

1550

Jan.

1552.

1552 ( ^ econ< ^ Prayer-book of King

July

^ 6 of Somerset executed.

Edward.

553 } Death of Edw ard.

CHAP. IX. The Catholic Revival
under Mary Tudor . p. 448

| Mary I., queen.

July \ Northumberland's scheme

1553 / baffled.

i KKO / Cardinal Pole made Papal

1553 \ legate.

Feb. 1 Wyatt's rebellion sup-

1554 / pressed.

f Duke of Suffolk, Lady Jane
IKKA I Grey, &c., executed.
1004 A Pl . inces s Elizabeth im-

V. prisoned.

July \Mary marries Philip of
1554 / Spain.
Nov. \ The reconciliation with

1554 / Rome.

1555 \The persecution by burn-

1557 / ing.

1555' } phili P leaves England.
Feb. \Cranmer "degraded" and

1556 / burnt.

,.__/War with France: battle
xoo '\ of St. Quentin.

! Jjgj-Lossof Calais.

; Nov. \ Deaths of Mary and Car-

1558 / dinal Pole.

BOOK XL
Elizabeth. The Fight for Religion and Life (1558-1603).

CHAP. I. The Opening Years of
the Reign . . .p. 459
A.D.

Elizabeth, queen.

15581 Sir William Cecil (Lord
1598 / Burlei;.>h, 1571) in power.

1559 \Parker, Archbishop of Can-
1575 / terbury.

'Mary Stuart claims English

crown.

New Liturgy and Act of
I Supremacy.
\Act of Uniformity.

1560 Renewal of debased coinage.
MM /Penal statute against

102 1 Catholics.

icgo/ Thirty-nine Articles settled
\ in Convocation.

BIB I

1559^ N

1569

A.D.

1<y;7/ Persecution of Puritans
I begins.

Catholic rising in northern
counties (for Mary
Stuart).
Duke of Norfolk imprisoned

in Tower.

[French Protestants(Hugue-
nots) defeated at Jarnac
and Moncontour.]
/Pope Pius V. issues Bull of
1570-J deposition against Eliza-

( beth.

, -_. / New statutes against Catho-
1571 1 lies.

Aug. / [Massacre of St. Bartho-
1572 \ lomew in France.]
- K /Duke of Norfolk executed
"*\ for treason.

A.D.

1 579 / Walsingham becomes Chief

i0 ' d X Secretary.

1573 1 Jesuits hunted down in

1586 / England.

, K01 / Further penal legislation

1581 \ against Catholics.

1583XWhitgift, Archbishop of

1604 / Canterbury.

/Renewed persecution of

| Puritans (Nonconfor-
1583^ mists).

High Commission Court

t fully established.
1 K RS /Star Chamber begins cen-

1 sorship of press.
, /Sir Philip Sidney killed at
IMJb | Zutphen.
, .... / [Scotland. The First Cove-
1557 X nant.

XIV

CONTENTS.

1559

1560

1561

John Knox returns to Scot-

land.
Popular attacks on Catholic

churches and abbeys.
Siege of French troops in

Leith.
Death of Mary of Guise

(regent).
Reformed religion estab-

lished.
Mary Stuart arrives in Scot-

land.

Earl of Moray (Protestant)
* w " I in power.
, E/ , e I Mary marries Lord Darn-

1565 \ ley.

1566 } Murder of Rizzio.

June \Birth of Mary's son (James

1566 f VI.).

Feb. \Darnley murdered by Both-

1567 / well.

1567 } Mary marries BothwelL
June \ Mary's surrender at Car-
1567 f berry Hill.
July \ Mary abdicates Scottish
1567 f throne.

James VI. (infant), king.
Earl of Moray, regent.
presby terianism established

by Parliament.
Mary's defeat at Langside.
Mary Stuart a prisoner in

England.
Regent Moray assassi-

nated.

Earl of Lennox (regent)
killed.

- ---
loo /

1568

1570

1571
Oct.

I Earl of Mar (regent) dies.

158l} Earl of Mortou ( re S ent )-
J Catholic reaction among
\ nobles.

f Earl of Morton executed.
Earls of Lennox (Esme
Stuart) and Arran in

1579

I
1

power.

James (with Arran) estab-
lishes Episcopacy. ]

CHAP. III. The Crisis of Eng-
land's Destinies . . p. 484

_ ,-Q.J / Throgmorton' s plot detected

fAct against Jesuits and
_ Q . I Catholic priests.
108 *1 "Bond and Association"

1 for Queen's protection.
Sept.\ Babington's conspiracy
1586 / crushed.
Oct. 1 Mary Stuart tried fcr share
1586 / in plot.

Nov. \Mary condemned in Purlia-
1586 / ment.

iifoi I Mary Stuart executed.
loo i I

}?J] [Drake's attacks on Spanish
i son r commerce and ports in
ll|>J America.]

^J 1 Drake's attack on Cadiz.

July ) Armada defeated and
1588 / ruined.

1590 1 English forces in France for
1591 / Henry IV.
moo/ Statute against Noncon-
105W \ formists.

15941 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Po-
1597 / lity.

ICQ/./ Essex and Lord Howard
105M) \ take Cadiz,
i coo /Deaths of Lord Burleigh
10S8 \ and Philip II.
-"" [Ireland: Shan O'Neil's re-
bellion.

Rebellion in Munster.
Risings in Ulster.

1565
1566
1569
1573
1573
1574
1575

Burke's rebellion in Con-
1577 / naught.
157 g / Spaniards help Irish re-

1 "581 / Spanish troops taken and
1081 ( massacred at Smerwick.
1591 Dublin University founded.
-1*00 /Hugh O'Neil's (Earl of
1088 \ Tyrone) rebellion.

1602

1562
1572

*"" \ rebels.

1601 Essex executed for treasoi

Ireland finally subdued
Lord Mount] oy.]

[First poor law passed.

Another Act for poor relief.
1t . Q _/ Parochial overseers ap-
103 ' { pointed.

<New poor law passed.
Parliament legislates

against monopolies.]

1603 | Death of Q ueen Elizabeth.
iQ ([Scotland: James VI. mar-
108y \ ries Anne of Denmark.
---/Scottish Parliament abo-
105W t lishes Episcopacy.

The Gowrie plot against
James.]

1600

CHAP. IV. England in the Eliza-
bethan Age . , .p. 503
, C _ A f Royal Exchange opened in
1570 \ London.

1576 \ Martin ' Frobisher's north-
1578 / west voyages.

1585 1 John Davis' voyages to

1587 / North America.

IKCA (Literature : Translations

isnnl fromGree^Lati^French, ,

lbuu i. Italian.

1570 Ascham's Schoolmaster.

1577 Holinshed's Chronicle.

nia.

1O8U ) ~

1580 Stow's Chronicle
1583 Camden's Britan
1590 Sidney's Arcadia.

1 10ft ^

1596 f ^P enser ' s Faerie Queene.

1612 f ^ acon s Essays.

r fi , / The Drama,: First English

\ tragedy (Gorboduc).
1589t Snak espeare's earlier comc-
1603 / dies and historical plays.

159o} Marlowe ' s tra g edies -
1603 / "^ en ^ onson ' s earlier pluys.

BOOK XII.
The Great Contest for Freedom (1603-1689).

CHAP. I. The Beginnings of
Stuart Rule . . p. 517
A.D.
JJJH} James I., king.

1603 The Main and Bye plots.
1603 \Sir Robert Cecil (Earl of
1612 / Salisbury) in power.
ifiAo /Millenary Petition of Puri-
' uo \ tans.

f Hampton Court conference.
1604K House of Commons asserts

t its privileges.
1605 Gunpowder Plot.
ifiin/ House of Commons again
XDAU \ asserts rights.
1611 i
1614 } No ^"M 801 ^* summoned.

1R11 /Authorised Version of Bible
1011 \ published.

[Sir Arthur Chichester, lord-
deputy in Ireland.

-Colonisation of Ulster.]

"Death of Prince Henry of

Wales.

Princess Elizabeth marries
Elector Palatine.

1603 -
ra9

1612
1613

CHAP. II. The Rising Power of
Parliament . . p. 525

ifiid/ House of Commons 'again
1614 \ resists James.

1621 / ^ P ai 'li amen t summoned.

A.D.
1613\
1616 f

1616 {

1616 I
1625 /

1618

1621

Carr, Earl of Somerset, in
power.

Chief-Justice Coke removed
from council.

Villiers, Duke of Bucking-
ham, in power.

Bacon becomes Lord Chan-
cellor.

Execution of Raleigh.

Thirty Years' War in Ger-
many begins.

Elector Palatine expelled
from Bohemia.

Parliament punishes mono-
polists and other offen-
ders.

Impeachment and ruin of
Bacon.

CONTENTS.

) House of Commons votes
/ the "Protestation."
Pym, Coke, and other mem-
bers imprisoned.
Prince Charles and Buck-
ingham at Madrid.
Earl of Middlesex, Lord
Treasurer, impeached and
524A condemned.

I Expedition to Palatinate
\ fails.

I ([Scotland: The king and
517 1 Laud in Edinburgh.
: _ / Five, Articles of Perth favour
a8 \ Episcopacy.]
6091 [Hudson's discoveries in
610 J North America.
616 Baffin explores his bay.]
6011 [Literature, Science : Shake-
608 / speare's great tragedies.
608\ Shakespeare's later come-
613 / dies.

603 1 Ben Jonson's tragedies and
.614 / comedies.
071 Beaumont and Fletchers
.616 1 plays.
jj^j | Massinger's plays.

,,./John Napier invents loga-
i rithms.

Bacon's Novum Organum
published.]

L620

7/ Hampden's case in Ex-

' ( chequer Court.
July 1 [Scotland : The Liturgy-riot
L637 / in Edinburgh.

L638 } Ilenewal of Covenant

i Scottish people renounce

.639^ Episcopacy.

( Revolt in Scotland.

CHAP. III. The House of Com-
mons groics Defiant . p. 534

jjgl Charles I., king.

OK I Charles marries Henrietta
P\ Maria of France.

1625 V Duke of Buckingham, chief
1628 f minister.

co _f House of Commons shows
( ^| distrust of king.

1626 Buckingham impeached.
June \Second Parliament dis-

1626 / solved.

1626 1 Arbitrary rule and illegal

1628 f exactions.

fWar with France: Buck-

1627 ingham's failure at La
V Rochelle.

/"Third Parliament meets :

I Petition of Right.
icno ' Buckingham murdered at
W ] Portsmouth.

I Laud becomes Bishop of

V. London.

fWentworth deserts Com-
icoo I mons for king.
>zy i Wentworth made President

[ of Council of the North.
Mar. | Third Parliament dis-

1629 / solved

CHAP. IV. The Royal Road to
Ruin . . .p. 541

1629 | The eleven years of
1640 / tyranny.

fLaud becomes Archbishop
lfi oo J of Canterbury.
f* I Prynne punished by Stai

t Chamber.

1633 | Wentworth in Ireland as
1639 f Lord Deputy.

[Treaty of Berwick.]

{Short Parliament meets
and is dissolved.

"| Riot in London against

1640 J- Laud and High Commis-
J sion Court.

/[' f Scots invade England,

LO4U J

I Treaty of Ripon.
| Long Parliament meets.
c/ii* I Straff ord impeached.

Ltnl )

May \Strafford executed under

1641 / Act of Attainder.

{High Commission, Star
Chamber, Council of
North abolished.

j Revolt in Ireland.
Nov. \ The Grand Remonstrance
1641 / voted in Commons.
Dec. \Riots against bishops in

1641 / London.

Jan. 1 The king and the Five

Members.
The king refused entrance

to Hull.
June \ Charles rejects hard terms

1642 / of Parliament.

Aug. 1 The royal standard raised

1642 / at Nottingham.

CHAP. VThe First Civil War :
Events to end of 1643 p. 561

, | Battle of Edgehill.
June ) Hampden killed at Chal-

1643 / grove

1ftl .>l Parliamentary defeats in
io* / west and south.

f Earl of Essex raises siege of
Sep. J Gloucester.
1643 1 Falkland killed at New-

l bury.

fl~jf"\Crpmwell'B Ironsides show
1643 f figllt in north -

IMS 1 063 ^ 1 of ^y 111 -

ic/io/ Westminster Assembly of

1643 \ Divines.

1643 1 English Church is Presby-
1660 / terian.

CHAP. VI. Progress and Close of
the First War . . p. 567

1644 } Battle of Maret 011 Moor.
("The Independents form the

1fi ._ I "New Model " army.
"" D 1 Royal cause ruined in Scot-
I land.

L645 ) Royal cause ruined in Eng-
L646 [ lanO.

^ Uiing with Scottish army.

1647 J

Ifi47 /Army (Independents) wins

I power over Parliament.
./Republicans subdue Royal-
\ ist reaction.

1649 } Kin S's trial and execution.

CHAP. VII. The only English Re-
public . . . , p. 585

L653 } Council of State in Power.
L649 \Subjection of Ireland com-

1650 / pleted.

June \Charles II. arrives in Scot-

1650 / land.

165o} Battle of I)unbar -

1651 Conquest of Scotland.
ijJgjPj | Battle of Worcester.
1651 Navigation Act passed.

| Naval war with Holland.

1653 (CromweH in power as Pro-
Sep. I tector.

1658

i Union Parliament at West-
/ minster.

J^l War with Spain.

,..._ f Blake's exploit at Teneriite :

1657 \ his death.

1658 English troops at Dunkirk.

^ | Death of Cromwell.

Sep. ^|

1658 I Richard Cromwell as Pro
May f tector

1659 J
Mayl

Mav (" The yeai of auarcnv -

1660 J

May 29, \Charles II. enters Lon-
1660 / don.

CHAP. VIII. England under a
Royalist Reaction . p. 605

1660

1635 < tt $2d2to imP Sed <>U IMS 6 } Battle f Naseby '

1660

1660
1667
1661
1679

1661
1665

1665
1667
1665
1666

1667

j- Charles II., king.
\Convention Parliament set-
f ties revenue.
| Lord Clarendon in power.
\First (the Cavalier) Parlia-
/ ment

{The Clarendon persecuting
Code (Act of Uniformity,
Conventicle Act, Five Milt
Act).

| Dutch war.
Plague of London.
Fire of London.

(Dutch fleet in Medway and
Thames : Peace of
Breda.
Fall of Clarendon.

XVI

CONTENTS.

CHAP. IX. The Cavalier Parlia-
ment and the Catholics p. 621

A.D.

IgS } The Cabal Ministers -

Jan. \The Triple Alliance against

1668 | Louis XIV.

1668 } peace f Aix-la-Chapelle.

' / Secret Treaty of Dover with
lb7U Louis.

1672
1672

Shutting of Exchequer.
Dutch war .

(Test Act against Catholics.
1673-J Lord Shaftesbury in opposi-

^ tion.

1674 > Earl of Danby, chief minis-
1679 / ter.

-,! The Orange marriage (Wil-
lb77 ( liam and the Lady Mary).

1678 Peace of Nimeguen,
16781 The sham Popish plot of

1679 / Gates.

"Second Parliament meets.
Danby dismissed : Temple,
Halifax, Suuderland in

1679

power.

Exclusion Bill introduced.

Habeas Corpus Act passed.

Charles dissolves the Parlia-
ment.

CHAP. X. The Rise of the Whig
Party . . . .p. 633

icon /The Exclusion BUI before

J - oau \ the country.

Nov. \ Exclusion Bill thrown out

1680 / by Lords.

Mar. \ Third Parliament sits for

1681 / a week at Oxford.

1682 Triumph of the Court party.

1682 \ Arbitrary government of
1685 / Charles.

1683 \ Municipal charters resumed

1684 / by crown.

IBM / Rve House plot : executions
1683 1 of Whigs.

IMK 1 Death of Charles II.

JLboO )

1661 ) [Scotland : Persecution of

1685 / Covenanters.

icci /Execution of Marquis of
1661 \ Argyle.

May \ Archbishop Sharp mur-
1679 / dered by Covenanters.
TmiP f Covenanters beat Graham
1R7Q 1 of Claverhouse at Drurn-
10 ' 3 t clog.

A I> | A - 1:> '

June \Monmouth defeats rebels 16601 Thomas Sydenham's n

1679 / at Bothwell Bridge.] 1680 / cal works.

1662 Royal Society founded.
CHAP. XL Intellectual Progress : | 1676 \John Ray's works

Rise of Colonies . . p. 643
1629 ) Li terature : John Milton's
1634 / earlier poems.
1633 George Herbert dies.

Chillingworth's Religion of
ants.
Browne's Reliyio

ibi8 ^ Protestants.
,_./ Thomas
1642 \ Medici.
1644 Milton's Areopagitica.
1648 Herrick's Hesperides.

1649' } The Eik n Basilike -

L/ Milton's Defence of the
IbDU | People of England.
1651 Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.
- CKO f Hi chard Baxter's Saint's
1653 \ Rest.

1656 Harrington's Oceana.
1661 Thomas Fuller dies.

jjj| | Samuel Butler's Hudibras.

.,.,, / Milton's Paradise Lost.
lbb7 \Abraham Cowley dies.

^1^1 John Dryden's plays.
- fifi _/ Dryden's Essay on Dramatic

1669 Jeremy Taylor dies.

f Milton's Samson Agonistes.
1671 -! Duke of Buckingham's R-

^ hearsal.

1 fifri I Thomas Otway's plays.
1677 Isaac Barrow dies.

f Andrew Marvell dies.

Ralph Cudworth's Intellec-
1678-J tual System.

John Bunyan's Pilgrim's

V. Progress.

1ftQ1 / Dryden's Absalom and
1681 \ AcUtopliel.
1679 \Gilbert Burnet's History of
1714 1 English Reformation.
-<,,. /Dryden's The Hind and the
1687 \ Panther.
1689 ) Dryden's translations of
1697 / Juvenal, Persius, Virgil.
-gnQ/John Locke's Essay on

\ Human Understanding.
1697 Y Dryden's Alexander's Feast,
1700 1 Fable*, &c.
1702 \Lord Clarendon's History of
1704 / Rebellion published.

(Science: William Harvey's
1628- work on Circulation of

t Blood.

1705 / Natural History.
i,_ _rSir Isaac Newton's Priri
\ 168 M cipia.

' IT, I John Wallis, nmthemaj
; 17 3 ( tician, died.

1607 Colonies : Virginia founded.
! , c<5ft / Pilgrim Fathers land ir)
I 1WU | North America.
I 1628 Massaclmsetts founded. ,
! 1633 ) Connecticut and Rhodt

1636 / Island.

1634 Maryland founded.
fCarolinas founded.

1664] New York and New Jersey!
^ annexed.

1682 Pennsylvania founded.

CHAP. XII. Freedoms Battle
Won ... p. 656

James II., king.

/ Argyle' s and Monmouth'q
\ risings suppressed.
'The king violates the Test\

Act.
James uses the " dispensing

power."
High Commission Court in

action.

Camp formed at Hounslow.
Religious persecution in

Scotland

Catholic cabal in power.
Catholics made dominant

in Ireland.
The Hydes (Clarendon and 1

Rochester) dismissed.
First Declaration of In-
dulgence.
The Universities attacked

by James.
King's effort to pack

Parliament fails.
Apr. \ Second Declaration of In-
1688 / diligence.
Tn HP f Trial of Seven Bishops,
ifiaa \ Birth of prince (elder Pre-

w I tender).
Nov. \Prince of Orange lauds in

1688 / Torbay.

16^8 /^ na ^ flight of James.
Feb.\William and Mary accept

1689 / English crown.

1687

BOOK XIII.
The Revolution. Great Britain Free and Powerful (1689-1714).

CHAP. I. The Last great King of
Great Britain . . p. 693
A.D.

1702} WilliamIIL ' kin -

1684 } Marv II>t Queen.

i8Q / Mutiny Act, Toleration Act,

189 \ Bill of Rights.
1690 Act of Grace.

A.I).
3\\\y\[Scotland: battle of Killie-
1689 / crankie.
, RQn / Final establishment of Pres-
Ib90 \ byterianism.

^ 9 2 } Ma ssacre of Glencoe.]
Aug. \[Ireland : Siege of London-
1689 / deny raised.

1690 } Ba ttle of Boyne.

A.D.
J^y} Battle of Aughrim.

6 C 9 fc j] Capture of Limerick.]

i69o e } Battle of Beach y Head -

1691 | Louis XIV. captures
1692 } Battle of La H g ue -

CONTENTS.

IB/

French take Namur.

|- 1 Battle of Steinkirk.

ly \Battle of Landen (Neer-
|g / winden).
I j British failure at Brest.
M ( Home-affairs : Marlborough
K \ dismissed.

National Debt begins.

Bank of England founded.

} Death of Mary.
Sew Coinage Act.]

IAP. II. The King's Diffictilties
at Home and Abroad p. 711

*|- 1 William captures Namur.
! ^ | Barclay plot discovered.
i P' j- Peace of Hyswick.

98 j Trade-Acts against Ireland.

97 ) [Scotland : Darien Scheme
j 00 I fails.]

; ,98 I First and Second Partition
MOO/ Treaties.
!> 01 Act of Settlement.

A.D.

Sep.f (
1701) -

Grand Alliance

France.
James II. dies.

William III. dies.

against

CHAP. III. The Contest for "Ba-
lance of Power " . .p. 723

l}Anne, queen.

May \ War of Spanish Succession

1702 I begins.

1704 Gibraltar taken.

V704 I Battle of B l en h eim -

1705 \ Earl of Peterborough's vic-

1706 / tories in Spain,
^jy | Battle of Ramillies.

, n _ f British and allies defeated
1707 1 atAlmanza.
,_ A0 r Battle of Oudenarde: cap-

1708 \ ture of Lille.

1709 Battle of Malplaquet.

; ,_../ General Stanhope sur-

1710 \ renders at Brihuega.
!._..) Marlborough deprived of
: I 711 f command.

; \Treaty of Utrecht

BOOK XIY.

A.D.

Nov. '

[Home a/airs: The Great

1703

I" Storm.'

1704

Act of Security (Scotland).

1705
1707

Whigs in power.
Act of Union,

1708 /Harley (Tory) dismissed

from office.

TDr. Sacheverell impeached.
1710K Tory ministers (Harley, St.

^ John, &c.).]

1714 } Death of Queen Anne -

1691)

[Literature : Congreve s

1700

plays.

1697
1700

Vanbrugh's plays.

1698
1707

Farquhar's plays.

f Jeremy Collier's Short

1704

Swift's Tale of a Tub.

i The Tatler (Steele and Ad-

1709

dison) begins.

,_, ) The Spectator (Addison and
1711 f Steele) begins.
,_, ( Swift's Conduct of the
1711 1 Allies.

1712

Swift's Barrier Treaty.
( Arbuthuot's History of John

1713

L Bull.

1714

Pope's Rape of the Lock.]

The Eighteenth Century (1714-1802).

HAP. I. England comes under
Whig Rule . . . p. 742
.D.

y\ George L, king.
714 | Lord Townshend, chief
716 f minister.

(Riot Act passed.

__
715

I Jacobite rebellion (Earl of

1 Mar's).

I Death of Louis XIV.

716 Septennial Act passed.
717) General (Earl) Stanhope,
721 f chief minister.

H -\ Triple Alliance (Great Bri-

717 / tain, France, Holland).

{Quadruple Alliance (by ad-
dition of German Empire).
Spanish fleet destroyed off
Cape Passaro.

_ / Jacobite invasion of Scot-
ris \ land foiled.
.720 South Sea Scheme.
.721 1 Robert Walpole, chief mini-
.742 / ster.

L723 Bishop Atterbury banished.
L723 ) The Drapier's Letters (Dean
1724 f Swift's).

(Earl of Macclesfleld (Chan-
cellor) condemned.
Treaty of Hanover (Great
Britain, France, Prussia).

CHAP. II. Sir Robert Walpole as
Chief Minister . . p. 750

George 1L, king.

rWalpole's Excise Bill fails.
1733 [ Bourbon Family Compact
\ (France and Spain).

_ /Porteous Riots at Edin-
I7db 1 burgh.
1737 Queen Caroline dies.
1739 War with Spain.
1740\Anson's voyage round
1744 / world.

/War of Austrian Succession
174U \ begins.

1742 Walpole resigns office.
1742 ) Lord Carteret, chief mini-

1744 / ster.

1743 Second Family Compact.

Battle of Dettingen.

Battle of Fontenoy.

1745 \Jacobite rebellion (Yoxing

1746 / Pretender's).

CHAP. III. Great Britain finds a
Man at Need . . p. 761

1744 \Henry Pelham, chief minis-
1754 f ter.

. f William Pitt (the elder) in
1746 \ office.

1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
,, f Frederick, Prince of Wales,

1751 \ dies.

1752 New Style adopted.

1753 Marriage Act passed.

. /Duke of Newcastle, chief

1754 \ minister.

.,__,. \Braddock's defeat in
1/DO| America.

{Seven Years' War begins.
Admiral Byng's failure off
Minorca.
JjjJ- 1 Pitt in chief power.

,.. i Duke of Cumberland's sur-
1787-5 render at Klosterseven.
Louisburg (Cape Breton

Island) captured.
Battle of Minden.
W T olfe's victory at Quebec.
Admiral Hawke's victory at
v Quiberon Bay.

1760 Conquest of Canada.
Opg- \George II. dies.

CHAP. IV. Regal Power and its
Effects. ... p. 769

JJU I George III., king.

l 7 g\Earl of Bute in power.
, f Third Family Compact (of

1761 \ Bourbons).

? \Pitt resigns office.
17bl }

1762 } War with s P ain -

May \Duke of Newcastle resigns

1762 / office.

,_( Havana and Manilla cap-

1762 \ tured.

11(8 } peace of Paris<

1763 \George Grenville, prime
1765 ] minister.

1763 I wilkes Prosecuted for libel.
Jan. { Wilkes expelled from House

1764 f of Commons.
,'^JGrenville's Stamp, Act for
1765 1 American colonies.

CONTENTS.

A.Lf.

fjjjj?\Marquis of Rockingham,

1766 I Pri' lie minister.

1766 Sta ip A ct repealed.

1766 ) Earl of Chatham (William

1768 / Pitt) in office.

| 7 g 7 / Charles Townshend taxes,

X American colonies
ITBSnVilkes 1 elections for Mid-
1769 / dlesex.

1768 1 Duke of Graf ton, prime
1770 ) minister.
1769 t Letters of Juniits pub-
1772 / lished.

Sept. X British troops quartered in |
1768 / Boston.

1768 X Massachusetts and Virginia
1770 / resist taxation.
1770

1782

Lord North, prime minister

1771 / Right of reporting debates

I acquired.

177 ,/Tea riots at Boston (Massa-
F 1 ! chusetts).
.ept. \Congress meets at Phila-

1774 / delphia.

CHAP. V.ReVf>lt and Loss of
American Colonies . p. 781

Apr. X American war of independ-

1775 / ence begins.

1775 e } Battle of Bunker's Hill.
i77fi/ British troops evacuate

76 \ Boston.
July 4, ) American Declaration of

1776 / Independence.
Oct.XBurgoyne's capitulation at

1777 / Saratoga.

1770 /France and Spain in alliance
1 " X with United States.

1778 } Death of Lord Chatham.
Jan f Ro( liiey defeats Spanish
1780 il fleet off Ca P e St. Vin-

t cent.

l^} ^ge of Gibraltar.
1780 6 } Gordon riots in London.

A.1J.

Apr. -"I Duke of Portland's coali

Bee. J- tion ministry (Fox ant

1783 J Lord North).

1783 X William Pitt, prime minis

1801 / ter.

.-gfj [Ireland: Flood and Grat

( tan demand reforms.
1779 Irish volunteers raised.
i7an/ Partial freedom for Irish
1780 1 trade.

/"Partial removal of Catholic
I disabilities.
The congress of volunteer::

at Dungannon.
Irish free Parliament (Grat -
tan's) begins.]

CHAP. VI. Social Condition* in
Eighteenth Century . p. 790
:-ir. XThe Wesleyan movement

9
l l

ork On

cir. .. _

1740 1 begins.

1719 X Great London

1746 / founded.

- 777 / John Howard's w

1777 X Prisons.

17R1 / Robert Raikes founds first

1/JU \ Sunday-school.

17fil / Brindley's Bridgewater
*X canal opened.

JgQQJ Turnpike-roads made.

1784 Mail-coaches established.

,/ James Hargreaves invents

I spinning-jenny.
( / Richard Arkwright's spin-

\ ning-frame.

1774 /Samuel Crompton's mule-
'1 jenny.

1 785 / Edm undCartwright'spower-
X loom.

I7f50/ Dr - Roebuck founds Can-on

UDU X ironworks.

cir. X James Watt improves

1769 / steam-engine.

1760) Wedgwood's improved pot-

1795 / tery.

A.I).

1789 } French Revolution begin*
17Qn J Burke's Reflections onM
1IW ( Revolution in FrancM

1791 Tory riots at Birmingham

1792 Fox's Libel Act.

Feb. ) France declares war wi!

1793 I England.

Dec. | British forces driven fro
1793 / Toulon.
1793 Scottisl) trials for sedition
June i, ) LordHowe's great victo:
1794 / near Ushant.

'British troops driven out<

Holland.

Habeas Corpus Act m
pended.

1794
17 J ]

~\ p.

Hardy, Home Tooke,
V T

Apr. "(Rodney's great victory in

1782 / West Indies.

Sept. \Final repulse of enemy at

1782 / Gibraltar.

Oct. X Cornwallis' capitulation at

1781 / Yorktown.

July l Lord ^ckingham, prime

1782 /
July')

1782 I Earl of Shelburne. prime
Feb. f minister.

1783 J

1700 / William Pitt, Chancellor of

(. Exchequer.
1783 Treaty of Versailles.

i William Hogarth's work in

J art.

\ Sir Robert Strange as en-

as en-

1720

1764

1751

1792 / graver.

1760 X William Woollett

1785 / graver.

' 1768 , S oyal Academy founded.
i i c ^'xl g - li , sh 8cul Ptre begins
! 1780 / with Thomas Banks.

1800 John Flaxman chosen R.A.

CHA T P i> -7"'~ Great Sr *tam under
William Pitt . . p 802
fWilliam Pitt triumphs at
1784^ general election.

t Pitt's financial reforms
1788 ( Ge r e m -'s first insanity :
88 I the Regency Bill.

. Thelwall acquitted.
/Prince of Wales marrit
hospitals , ..- * ,, Caroline of BnmswicE

1796 | Buonaparte's victories i

1797 / Italy.

17QC /'Spain declares wai- amiim

17yb t England.

f British naval victories
I Camperdown and St. Vir

1797- cent.

Naval mutinies at Snithe
I and Nore.

w^ir victoiT at th

I Income-tax first levied. *,
Buonaparte's repulse a

Acre.
French armies defeated 1

Italy.
Buonaparte becomes firs

Consul.
Duke of York again drivei

from Holland.

^ French again victorious li
Italy (Marengo).
Moreau beats Austrians a
Hohenlinden.

feb. X Peace of Luneville : Rhhn
1801 / the boundary of France.
1790 i ^- 1) ' el . and ' Society of Uiiite<
X Irishmen founded.

1792 I Some Catholic disalMlitie

1793 / removed.

1795/ Lord Fttzwilliam appointee

\ and recalled.
1796( French invading fleet dis

[ persed.
1797 / State of siege proclaimed ii

I Ireland.

1798 Rebellion suppressed

1801 ACt f Union carried -]

' 1304/ Addin ton > Prime mini

( French troops in Egypt ;
1301 J render.

I Nelson's success at Copea

I hagen.

18D2 ( Pe , ace of Amiens : Napoleoi
t Consul for life.

CONTENTS.

xix

BOOK XV.
The Great War for British Commerce and for Europe.

("'II A i'. I. The Re viral of the
Strife . . . . p. 823

1803 } War declared with France -
May^j

Jan* ritt again P rime minister.

1806 J

May \ Buonaparte becomes Em-

1804 J peror Napoleon.

lint f- French forces at Boulogne.

loUO )

Oct )

1805 )

Dec. \ Napoleon's victory at Aus-

1805 J terlitz.

& 1 Death of William Pitt.
loUO )
Feb. "j

1806 [Lord Grenville (with Fox)
Mar. f in power.

1807 )

Sep. ~| Death of Charles James
1806 / Fox.

1806 }^ a P leon 's Berlin decree.

( British orders in council.
ion 7 J Napoleon's Milan decree.

British slave-trade abo-

I Br

[ lished.

Mar. \

1807 ! Duke of Portland, prime

Oct. f minister.

1809 J

(' Treaty of Tilsit (France and
Russia).
Danish fleet and stores
seized at Copenhagen.

CHAP. II.- -Wellington and the
Peninsular Wat-. . p. 829

A.D.

i afta / French occupation of Por-

18U8 ( tugal and Spain.

Aug. ) Sir Arthur Wellesley's first

1808 / victories.

iana / Convention of Cintra (Sir
U8 \ Hew Dalrymple).

1809 I Battle of Corunna -
1ftfJQ /Lord Cochrane's exploit in

>m \ Aix (Basque) Roads.
July \ Napoleon victorious over
1809 / Austria (Wagram).

T Ij ^'\ Wellesley's victories at
1809 j P rto and Talavera.
ionn / Failure of Walcheren expe-
1809 1 dition.
Oct. ^

1809 I Mr. Perceval, prime minis-
May j ter.

1812 J

Nov. \Massena's retreat from

1810 / Torres Vedras lines.
Feb. \Prince of Wales becomes

1811 / regent.

IQII /Battles of Fuentes d'Onoro

1811 1 andAlbuera.

May ij Mr. Perceval's assassina-

1812 / tion.

1812 \ Earl of Liverpool, prime
1827 / minister.

1815 } War with United states -

1812.

June
1812

; ^ Wellington captures Ciudad
,' / Rodrigo and Badajoz.

V Napoleon i

invades Russia.

BOOK XVI.

July) Wellington's victory at
1812 J Salamanca.

1812 American naval successes.

CHAP. III. Wellington's Inva-
sion of France . . p. 839

181 / Napoleon's defeats in Ger-

1813 \ many

June \ Wellington's success at
1813 / Vittoria.
1813 The battles of the Pyrenees.
Nov. "| Wellington's victories in

1813 I France (Nivelle, Nive,
Feb f St. Pierre, Orthes, Tou-

1814 J louse).

1814 } Na P leon ' s nrst abdication.
June ) Shannon frigate takes

1813 / Chesapeake.

101/1 / British force captures Wash -

1814 \ ingtou.

Dec. \Treaty of Ghent ends Ame-

1814 / rican war.

Jan. \ British repulse at New Or-

1815 / leans.

Mar. \ Napoleon returns from
1815 / Elba.

June 16 \Battles of Ligny and
1815 I QuatreBras.

Jl i^ c l8 i
iolO J

1815 1 ^ a P oleonsentto Sfc - Helena.
1815 New Corn Law passed.

Battle of Waterloo.

Nov.

Peace of Paris.

1815 ,

1815 } The Holy Alliance -

Aug. \Lord Exmouth's victory at

1816 f Algiers,

After the Struggle. Parliamentary Reform.

CHAP. I. The EC flu Movements

towards Reform . p. 847 ,
A.D.

Nov. \Death of Princess Char-
1817 / lotte.

.-( Habeas Corpus Act sus-
1817 1 pended.

Dec. ) William Hone tried and
1817 f acquitted.
Aug. ) The ' ' Peterloo " trouble at
1819 f Manchester.

1819 \ Lord Sidmouth ' s Six Acts -

1820 } I)eath of Geoi 'S e m -

( 'HAP. II. England under George
the Fourth . . . p. 859

7 PT) ^ eor e I^"- > king.
Feb. \ Cato Street conspiracy
1820 / crashed.

1001 / Proceedings against Queen
K!i l Caroline foiled.

A.D.

1000 ( Canning takes Foreign
1822 -j Office _

( Peel's new London police.
1829 : Catholic Emancipation Act

1823 ) Huskisson's free trade re-

V. passed.

1824 f forms.

' * .

1826 \ Commercial P an ic and ruin.

CHAP. III. The First Reform

Act . . . .p. 870

Dec. ) Canning's prompt inter-
1826 / ference for Portugal.

J 8 || William IV., king.

Apr. ^
Aug. V Canning, prime minister.

1830 } Second Fre nch Revolution.

1827 J

Nov. \Belgium becomes inde-

Sep. "|

1830 f pendent.

1827 1 Viscount Goderich (Earl of

.--./Manchester and Liverpool

Jan. f Ripon), prime minister.

-uwu| Railway.

1828 J

Nov.^j

g 2 ^| Battle of Navarino.

1830 L Earl Grey, prime minister,
j my i

Jan. ^

1834 J

1828 1 Duke of Wellington, prime
Nov. f minister.

Mar. 1 Lord John Russell intro-
1831 / duces Reform Bill.

1831 )

Sept. \Reform Bill rejected in

-goo /'Test and Corporation Acts
( repealed.

1831 f Lords.
Oct. \ Riotsat Derby, Nottingham,

1831 / and Bristol.

CONTENTS.

A.D.
1832 6 } Reform Bill carried.

A.D.
Dec.^
1834 ( Sir Robert Peel, prim

A.D.

1835 Municipal Reform Act.

Aug. "i Slavery abolished ii
1834 f colonies.

i Apr. f minister.
1835 J

IQOC/ Civil Marriage and Regi
1836 X trationActs.

ui/~ \Lord Melbourne, prim
jgj J minister.

, Apr. ^
1835 (Lord Melbourne, prim

3 1837 Victoria, queen.

Sept f minister

1834 New poor law.

1841 J

BOOK XVII.

Victorian Age of Progress.

CHAP. I. Early Days of Vi
toria's Reign , . p. 88

A.D,

gg^lilau, Balaklava, Inkei

A.D.
1866 X Fenian conspiracy in lit
1868 f land.

A.D.
1838 ( Anti " Corn ^ aw Lfi agu

1854 / man '
Oct.^j

1867 X Second Franchise Reforr
1868 / Acts.

1 formed.
18 , q / Education Committee o

Serf f Sie e of Sebastopol.

1868 Abyssinian war.

"1 Council appointed.
1839 (Chartist troubles.

\855j

Dec. j-Mr. Disrael's first ministry.

1842 /First China war.

1855 [Lord Palmerston, prim
Feb. f minister.

1868 J
1868 / Church Rates Abolitioi

CHAP. 11. The Free Trade Battl

1858 J

^Stamp-duty on newspaper
1855-! abolished.

Dec.\ ACt>
1868 (Mr. Gladstone's first mini
Feb. f strv

To* . . p. 89

j Civil Service Commissioi

1874 J

1841 X Sir Robert Peel, prime
1846 / minister.
1842 I ncorne tax revived: Peel's
free-trade budget.
'O'Connell's agitation for
1040 repeal of union.
** Free Church (Scotland)

I, appointed.
1855 1 Capture of Sebastopol.

CHAP. V.Lord Palmerston' s
Period of Power. . p. 947

18fiq / Irish Church Disestablish
""H mentAct.
4 Irish Land Act.
Franco-German war : Rome
capital of Italy.
Elementary Education Act.
Third French Republic

, established
iQdc Peel's further steps towards
w free trade.

1856 X Treaty of Paris enfls ^"s
I sian war.
.856 X (Second) Chinese and Per-

founded,
f Army-purchase abolished.
Religious tests in universi.

jglY | Potato famine in Ireland.

.857 / sian wars.

, 871 J ties abolished.
1871 1 Trade Union Act.

1846 Corn Laws repealed.
1846 X Lord John Russell, prime

858 I Lord Derby's second mini-
June j stry.

Treaty of Washington (.4 fa-
V bama claims).

1852 / minister.

859 J

f Agricultural Labourers

1847 Ten Hours (Factory) Act,
1848 Third French Revolution.

une')
859 (Lord Palmerstons second

1872 K Lnion.
I Licensing Act : Ballot Act.

CHAP. III. Lord John Russell's
First Ministry . . p. 915

>ct. i ministry,
360 } -^hi r< l Chinese war.

CHAP / VII. Disraeli become*
Lord Beaconsfield . p. 068
/"Employers and Workmen

1849 Navigation Laws repealed.

iQ*ft/ lmerston>s great foreign
1850-^ policy speech.
I Death of Sir Robert Peel.

1851 } " Pa P al Aggression " stir.
1851 /Great Exhibition in Hyde

860 T Mr< Gladstone's second
DU l great Budget.
f Italy united under Victor
obis Emanuel.
^ I Repeal of the paper-duty.
161 } Death of Prince Consort.
161 1 Cotton famine in Lanca

| Act.
875^ Suez Canal shares pur-
chased.
I Eastern question revived.
gj j- Russo-Turkish war.

8^| | Treaty of Berlin.

Dec. j Louis Napoleon supreme in

864 / shire.

579 Zulu war.

Feb.-^j
Dec. V Lord Derby's first ministry.

1852 Duke of Wellington died.

fifiJ M p laclstone rejected by
1865-^ Oxford University. ,
I Death of Lord Palmerston.
1856-! Pl l lssia becomes leading
L German power.

879 1 Gladstone's "Mid-Lothian
880 / campaigns."
pr. ]
L880 (Gladstone's second mini-

.885 e J S ly '

'iHon^y deen ' S C alitioU

J.OOO J

CHAP. VI.-A Neio Period of Re- ;

Jorms - P. 957 :

Vov ~\

.880 X Mr. Fawcett's post-office
.833 f reforms.

HJ } Boer war in South Africa,

CH ^l'Hns~\Var Emstern *** 3

m 1 L,,M Eussel , s second mini . f F1 Sf h "y an<! navy

1853 P 1 ''; . Gladstone's great \
1 Budget.

ace: y>

ODD /

ruly^j

** Second Irish Land Act.
I Death of Lord Be aeon sfi eld.
BM/ Phoenix Park murder.* i.

i&ffi} TI w- P ' Ilssian ^ 01 ' ^ rimean ) -

W>. [Sly Berl ' y S thirtl mini ' lu " k Dublin.

1885J Egyptian ancl Soudan wars.

CONTENTS.

xxi

1883 \ Dynamiters at work in Lon-

,000 / Bribery Act : Bankruptcy
1883 1 Act

1884 ) Third Franchise Reform
1885 / Acts.

CHAP. I. DeginniiKjs of British

India , . . P- 99 1

ICftn /East India Company
lbuy \ founded.

1612 \ " Factories " established at
1616 / Surat, <tc.

,-. I Presidency of Madras esta-
1654 \ blished.

_ a . f Bombay bestowed by
1668 \ Charles II.
__ A _ ( Presidency of Calcutta (Bea-

1707 \ gal) began.

1708 Presidency of Bombay.
1741 1 [War of Austrian Succes-
1748 / sion.]

17^6 Madras taken by French.
,_.-< Madras restored (Treaty of
1748 \ Aix-la-Chapelle).

_ ( Clive's seizure and defence
1751 \ ofArcot-

June) The "Black Hole" of Cal-
1756 / cutta.
Jan : j Clive retakes Calcutta.

A.D.

1885 I Lord Salisbury's first mini-
Feb. f stry.

1886 *

* Mr. Gladstone's third mini-
stry.

1886.

BOOK XVIII.

Our Empire in Asia.

1757
June
1757

Clive s victory at Plassey.

1763 ! [Seven Years ' War -l

J Eyre Coote defeats French
bu 1 at Wandewaah.

i>y

.
L IDA

at Wandewash.

I Pondicherry captured
- Coote from French.

785 {

Warren Hastings leave
. India.

788 ) [Impeachment and trial of
795 / Hastings.]
CHAP. III. Cornwall!*, Wellesley,
Bentinck . . P- 10 8
786 \Lord Cornwallis, governor-
793 ) general.

789 \ War with Tippoo Sahib of
.792 J Mysore.

^of Tippoo cedes much terri-
792 \ tory.

1793 \ Sir John Shore (Lord Teign-
sneral.
arquis
governor-

798 f mouth),governor-ge
_ Qe TLord Mornington (M
an^k Wellesley), gov

I. general.
O j Tippoo renews war in Car-
175)8 \ natic.

f Capture of Seringapatam :
death of Tippoo.

17 9 9 1 Canara coast", 'Coimbatore,

&c., annexed.
}Sr \ Mahratta war.

Arthur Wellesley's victories

CHAP. II. India under Warier,
Hastiiujs ... p. 997
/Munro's victory over Nabob

17t "\ of Bengal at Buxar.

I | Clive, governor of Bengal.

.__/' Bengal, Behar, Orissa cede

17b l to Company.

1760 \Hyder Ali strong in Car

1781 1 natic.

iT7o_f Warren Hastings, governo

17 1 \ of Bengal.

._-. j Regulating Act makes Has

'*\ ings governor-general.
,_.- f Nanda-Kumar (Nuncomar)
1775 1 executed.
I-/ Hastings supreme in Coun-
1776 1 cil.

^ Hyder Ali takes the field in
Carnatic.
Colonel Baillie defeated at
Conjeveram.
Arcot taken by Hyder.
Eyre Coote victorious at
Porto Novo (Cuddalore),
&c.
1782 Hyder Ali dies.

f British power supreme in
.--.I Carnatic.
8 *} Pitt's India Act establishes
Board of Control

(Assaye, Argaum).
J Lake's victory at Laswaree,
\ and capture of Delhi.

Delhi, Agra (provinces), &c.,
V_ annexed.

1805 \ Sir George Barlow, governor-

1806 f general.

1806 Sepoy mutiny at Vellore.

1807 \Lord Minto, governor-
1813 / general.

Q1 _ I Company's charter renewed :
18iiJ 1 India trade thrown open.
'Lord Moira (Marquis of

A.D.
Jnlj r> |

1885 I Lord Salisbury's second mi-
July f nistry.
1892 J

June \ Queen's Jubilee celebra-
1887 / tion.

War with Afghanistan.
British and sepoy troops in

Cabul.
The Khoord-Cabul Passdis-

as'er.

Sale's defence of Jellalu-
bad.

1842 I Lord Ellenborough, gover-

1844 / nor-general.

Sept. \ British troops victorious at

1842 / Cabul.

{Sir Charles Napier's con-
quest of Scinde.
Mahratta power finally sup-
pressed.

18441 Sir H. Hardinge, governor-
1848 / general.

.,. f First Sikh war (Moodkee,
JofcS Ferozeshah, Aliwal, So-
1846 ( braon).

18 18 \Lord Dalhousie, governor-
1856 / general.

/Second Sikh war (Ramnug-
gur, Chillianwallah, Goo-
(jerat).
Annexation of Punjab.
/Second Burmese war: an-
\ nexation of Pegu.
1854 Annexation of Nagpur.
1856 Annexation of Oude.

J5JJ-I Hastings), governor-gen-
134<J V. eral.

1816 VPiudarees and Mahrattas
1818 / conquered.
1823 \ Lord Amherst, governor-
general.

First Burmese war.
? Assam, Aracan, Tenasserim,

1826 \ LoTcombermere captures ! J^ 6 '! 8 ^!^

^ Bhurtpore.
18281 Lord William Bentinck,

1849-

CHAP. V.Tle Mutiny and
Change of Rule . p. 1029

1856 \Lord Canning, governor-
1858 ) general.

1857 \Indian (sepoy) mutiny or

1858 / war.

1826

c _ \ The rising at Meerut.

loui )

May ^L Uc ij now an d Delhi seized

18W I 1)y mutineers -

June 27, \ First massacre at Cawn-

1857 / pore.

^ ul ?"\Havelock's march to Cawn-
18.?7 f pore and Lncknow.

' " ' massacre at

1835 / governor-general.

1833 \Macanlay frames the Crimi-

1834 / nal Code.

Outrun
1857 enter Lucknow.

Sept. - British siege of Delhi.

1781
1782

( Company s charter renewed. JJJ^ Colin Campbell lands
1857 j at Calcutta.
Nov. 1 Campbell relieves resi-
1857 / dency at Lucknow.

I China trade thrown open.
L96i-( N or th- Western Provinces

^ separated from Bengal.
CHAP. IV. The Afghans and the
Sikhs. ... p. 1017
1836 \Lord Auckland, governor-
1842 / general.

Nov. ^
37 I

1837
Mar
1858

Campbell's general opera-

Mar j" tions against rebels.

XX11

CONTENTS.

M ar. I Campbell captures Luck-
1858 / now.

, a ,. a / Lord StrathnairnXSirllugh
1808 I Hose's) campaign.

f Campbell (Lord Clyde) re-
ioco'-i ports suppression of re-
1858 \ volt.

Aug. X Act transfers Indian gov-
1858 / eminent to Crown.
_ - /East India Company (as
1808 X political power) ceases.
1858 fLord Canning, "viceroy"

1862 / of India.

J 8 ^ 2 , JEarl of Elgin, viceroy.

1863 X Sir John (Lord) Lawrence
1368 / in power.

A.I>.

A.I).

J^IJLord Mayo, viceroy.

1880
1884

1876/ Lord Xorthbrook in offlce -

Nov.
1835

1875 Prince of Wales visits India.

1886

188o} Lord L ytt n > viceroy.

1796

1880 / ^ econ ^ Afghan war.

1796
1800

a f ( Sir Louis Cavagnari (Bri-
iQ7o \\ tish resident) and suite

1815
1824

18 iy { murdered at Cabul.

1839

July \British troops defeated at

1846

1880 / Maiwand.

1857

A f SirFrederick(Lord)Roberts'

laanl march from Cabul to

iOOU 1 n or ,,q v, OT , I

1 Marquis of Ripon, viceroy.

I Third Burmese war.

Upper Burmah annexed.
/[Ceylon coasts taken from
\ Dutch.

V Malacca provinces (Straits
/ Settlements) annexed.

Ceylon fully occupied.

Singapore acquired.

Aden occupied

Labuan ceded to British.

Perim occupied.]

BOOK XIX.
Colonial Empire in Africa, America, and Australasia

CHAP. I. British Dominions in

Africa . .p. 1039

AD.
1 700 / New South Wales colonised
1/88 X by convicts.

A.D.
17AO / Halifax (Nova Scotia)
1TW 1 founded.

A.D.

(a.) West Coast.

1803 Tasmania first settled.

i7*fl/Cape Breton Island cou-

British traders settle on

IQOO/ Western Australia colo-

1758 \ quered.

1591

Gambia.

1829 \ nised.

17R , Prince Edward Island ac-

1661

First British possessions on
Gold Coast.
Sierra Leone a British

1836 South Australia settled.
1851 f Victoria a separate colony.
( Gold discovered in VL toria.

1763 quired.
,,, Q [Hudson Bay Territory
lo 8 settled.

1787

colony.

ia c Q / Queensland a separate

, fi7n Hudson Bay Company

1821
1823

Gold Coast a crown colony.

1859 i colony.
, o 79 /Overland telegraph esta-

1670 formed
- Q/ , Q Territory joins Dominion of

1826,

f '*\ Wished.

1809 Canada.

1831, VWars with Ashantees.
1863
1866J
1Rfi , /Lagos ceded by native
roi \ ruler.
1074 / Ashantees finally dealt with
1874 X byWolseley.

(b.) New Zealand, &c.

la-is /New Zealand first settled
1815 I by British.
IQ,M/ New Zealand a separate
1841 I British colony.

10 /Fiji Islands ceded to Bri-
1874 1 ain

T Red River insurrection sup-
1870 { pressed,
V Manitoba joins Dominion ]
( [Vancouver's Island and
1858^ British Columbia become
t colonies.
1871 /Vancouver and British
10/1 \ Columbia join Dominion.]

1673

(b.) Inlands.
r St. Helena occupied by East

1885 i -British New Guinea ac-
X quired.

in / Newfoundland finally ac-
1713 \ quired.

India Comnanv

182l} Napoleon at St - Helena.

CHAP. III. British Rule in North

CHAP. IV. West Indies and South
America . . .p. io5o

1833
1816

St. Helena a crown colony.
Ascension occupied.

America . , . p. 1052

1612 Bermudas first settled.

r Mauritius taken from

(a.) Canada.

1R9 o/ British colonists at St.

X. France.
(c.) Cape and East Coast.
1306{ Ca ^ t( olon y taken from
1834^1

1 7c / Canada conquered by Bri-
1763 X tain.
17qi / Representative government
l57J -\ granted.

Igfjj} Rebellion in Canada,

1623 \ Kitt's.
T fi oc / Bridgetown (Barbados)
1625 1 founded.
ifidi /Sugar-cans brought to Bar-
**\ badoes.
1655 Jamaica taken from Spain.

1835,
1346;

VWars with Kaffirs.

1839/ Lor(1 Durnani > governor.

[For other dates see text,

1850

(Upper and Lower Canada

pp. 1061-1062.]

1852 j
1851 1 Cape Colony receives repre-
" X sentative rule.

united, with responsible
government

17QI7 Trinidad conquered from
1/3 ' Spain.

1856 Natal a separate colony.
1871 | Griqualand, West and East
1874 / annexed.
1890 } Bri - tish P r tectorate at Zan-

1854 f ^" a1 ^ ^ ^^Sin in power.
1843 1 Montreal riots.

1858 / Ottawa made seat of govern-
X ment.

ieqd Slave emancipation in West
18<i * Indies
1842 Lord Elgin, governor of
1846 Jamaica.
ia<w Negro insurrection in Ja-

CHAP. II. _ The Australasian
Colonies . . . p . I043

1867/ Conf ederation of Canadian
\ Dominion begins.

18W) maica.
17a , British Honduras (Belize)
1783 acquired.

(a.) Australia.

(b.) Other American colonies.

J30 3 / British Guiana (Demerara,

1770)

.Xsft i tan < l3taNe

rm /^ew Brunswick and Nova
40 I Scotia acquired.

i &c.) ciCQiiirecl.
iQoo/ Falkland Islands become
100 X crown-colony.

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

TABLE I. THE HOUSE OF CERDIC.

Egbert to Matilda of Scotland.

Double Line, shows Succession of Kings.

EGBERT

(800-837).

.ETHELWULF

(837-858).

Had

/ETHELBALD -ETHELBERHT ^ETHELRED I. ALFRED THE GREAT

(858-860). (860-866). (866-871). (871-901),

in. Ealhswyth.

Had son

EDWARD THE ELDER
(901-925).

Had

ATHELSTAN
(925-940).

EDMUND THE ELDER

(040-94-),
?. ^Ifgifu (Elgiva).

Had sons

EDRED

(946-955).

EDWY

(955-959)-

EDWARD THE MARTYR
(975-978).

EDGAR
(959-975)-
Had II sot

ETHELRED II.
(978-1016).

Had son (by
first wife)

Had son (by
Emma of Normandy)

EDMUND IRONSIDE
(April-Nov. 1016).

Had son, Edward
had

the Outlaw, who
children

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
(1042-1066).

Edgar Atheling
(last of Saxon male line).

Margaret (m. MALCOLM III. of Scotland).
Had daughter

Matilda (in. HENRY I., uniting English and
Norman lines).

Note. Danish Kings reigned from 1016-1042.
xxiii

XXIV

GENEALOGICAL TABLES,

TABLE II. NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS.
William I. to John.

Roberl
Duke of Nori

WILLIAM I.

(1066-1087),
in. Matilda of Flanders.

Had 1 1 sous

His daughter

II "II

WILLIAM II. HENRY I.
uandy. (1087-1100). (1100-1135),
in. Matilda of Scotland.

Had issue

Adela
(in. Count of Blois),

had 1 1 son
STEPHEN
(1135-1154).

William MATILDA (MAUD),

(drowned, 1120). in. (i.) HENEY V., Emperor.

(2.) Geoffrey, Count of Anjou and Maine.

Had son 1 1 (by Geoffrey)
HENEY II.
(1154-1189),
i. Eleanor of Poitou and Aquitaine.

Had sons who reigned

RICHARD I.

(1189-1199).

JOHN
(1199-1216).

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

XXV

TABLE III. HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET (PROPER), (1154-1399).
(a.) Henry II. to Edward I. (1154-1272).

MATILDA (daughter of HENRY I. and MATILDA of Scotland,

see Tables I. and II.), ? (as second husband)

GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET,

Count of Anjou and Maine,

and 1 1 had son
HENRY II.

(1154-1189),
in. Eleanor of Poitou.

Had

issue

Henry
(crowned as Co-Kin^',
d. n8 3 ).

RICHARD I.
(1189-1199),
in. Berengaria of
Navarre. No children.

Had son

Geof
(d. i
m. Cons
Britt

frey

1 86),
;ance of
any.

JOHN

(1199-1216),

in. (secondly) Isabella

of Angouleme.

Arthur,

Duke of Brittany ;
probably murdered by John.

Had" issue

HENRY III.

Richard,

Joan, Eleanor,

(1216-1272),

Earl of Cornwall,

m. Alexander II. in. Simon de Montfort,

in. Eleanor of

d. 1272.

of Scotland. Earl of Leicester.

Provence.

Had son

Had 1 1 issue

Alexander III. of Scotland.

He m. Margaret,

daughter of Henry III.

EDWARD I.
(1272-1307).

Margaret,
in. Alexander III.
of Scotland.

Had daughter
Margaret,
in. Eric of Norway.

Had daughter

Margaret, "Maid of Norway,''

whose death (1290) caused disputed

succession to Scottish crown.

Note. HENRY III. had also a son. EDMUND (Crouchback), Earl of Lancaster, who had issue

(i) THOMAS, Earl of Lancaster, &c.,
who was executed by his cousin,
Edward II., atPontefract(Pom-
fret) in 1322,

(2) HENRY, who had a son Henry,
Duke of Lancaster, whose
daughter, Blanche, co-heiress
of Lancaster, in. John of Gaunt
(see &.). and so made him Duke
of Lancaster.

XXVI

GENEALOGICAL TABLES,

114

^3 ^ ^

5 1

W2
P
O

I 5

5-2

-II
i tt

ii 11

llB|l ? =

UiiliJll

o - I'

33 g ^.

ift

5aS '-=

A - ft
W^:3

a S

W 3^*

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

xx vn

^ ,=e. S

" ''

rchduke o
f Emperor
nd Mary,
urgundy).

llc

s
SI

JL3
11

H ft

rv. .j

O CD

ij 03

C (-H O

I sj

? 43 W

- I

St*-^

~tz r>-S'

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

03 . g

2 "^^

.g d P si^s

^c .. C S

a If % s~ * ^C* s

* s.Sl 'ii?IIlc I

^w >-'

. 01-1

s l|

~*2.i~tii s^yj -

sf^lFlapp"-

-M? s -3'g B SBM-a 9
=2 23- Sfc.? 1

"as

13 B

H
I

* in

sU I'glS

r SE OF LANCAST:

Swynford (declare

OHN OF GAUNT,

Duke of Lancaster,
i this | line issue

(2.) Henry Beaufort
(Cardinal, Bishop o
Winchester), d. 144;

-I'll .
JF

*^ ""*

Isabella,
i/?.. George, Duke of Clare
(brother of Edward IV.

Had issue
(i.) Edward, Earl of Warv
executed (1499) by Henry
) Margaret, Cquntess of Sa!
beheaded (1541) by Henry "*

P
o

to *-> .5

^1 1 *

1 S

3 q ^^2
| S^ a rtS g

i i

~MSii{

|| |

ji^lll' 3

3 I

R a J."S

QJ W ei_,

2 1

H Jj

** *S *"* tiJ
M ^H

a ^

p o

s ..s
-"S " 2 g'^'e

||.J f gSs^

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

xxix

I? . gffi

c^ w ?

-PM'G ? "3 rT

-g-6 ip^5

_! 58

S -
M CM

b 2

is s if iysi i

d of Langle
TO-. Isabella

IfJ

III

O*^
^ W

"*-*
58 ?? ro

f M

98.

hter

O .

>! 5 '

; ^l

iS2

I 2 - 1 "

,s *!! -I

s-si-|

c S a *>
o re- 1 oj c

ra "S-rt " C

S^cjO

?lsS,

: ?^ "
!^ w

harine.
Willi

rtenay

1 1 1 II

'ils

' y
(5

2 a

c 1

XXX

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

1* ?

iir !| i

3 -^

* a s

8 -a

-- O D

l>1h

EDWA
(1547

JZA

158-1

2 3'

GENEALOGICAL TABLES,

TABLE VII UNION GF TUDOR AND STUART LUTES.

by James IV.

Henry VII.'s elder daughter,
MARGARET TUDOR,

r .) James IV. of Scotland.
.) Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus,

and had issue by Earl of Angus

JAMES V. of Scotland ;
he in. Mary of Guise.

Had I daughter

MARY STUART, Queen of Scots ;

shew, (i.) Dauphin, afterwards

Francis II. of France.

(2.) Lord Darn ley.

Had

(by Lord

son
Darnley)

James VI. of Scotland
and I. of England.

Margaret Douglas ;

she m. Matthew Stuart,

Earl of Lennox.

Had sons

Henry Stuart,
Lord Darnley ;

m. Mary,
Queen of Scots.

Charles Stuart,
Earl of Lennox.

His I daughter

Lady Arabella Stuart,
in. William Seymour

(see Table VI.),

and was imprisoned by

James I. of England ;

died 1615.

XXXI 1

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

S *A

3 3^3

M S^ wg'g

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

il -'

^of 2 ^

is;

P Hi

j||

|la||

rH
CD

f-l
tf

1
f

ill

73 SO
S cs"2 -

.' "Ill

^Ji

iVo^. George III.
Gloucester, mar
grave, and anc
of Cumberland,
these matches t
Royal Marriage

LS mother of (i.) Duke
e of George, Prince of

c a

"7 ^

ii C5 p

5 j

1-1 -Sj

^rl

BRUNSWICK OR

To George III. (17

James I. 's daughter
ELIZABETH
(Table VIII.),
Frederick, Elector Palatine
(the "Winter-King" of Bo

They had issue

Rupert,
Prince Rupert of
Civil War.

ill 1

== 3 ^i~

O H *2 '

oi| a

O p^

s |
^

William Augustus,
Duke of Cumberland
E Fontenoy and Cullodeu fai

d. 1765.

; she m. Duke of Bruuswic
Bras ; (2.) Caroline of Brims

^~> =

v6_fcp

JI ^5 CD

3 C3

^ _

"^^"gV

M pq cs

^S'

w,_i W

. !

I I

M"?

xxxiv

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

_f c

*<-o

-KM

III

GENEALOGICAL TABLES.

XXXV

TABLE X. DESCENT OF VICTORIA FROM EGBERT.

EGBERT. 2. ^THELWULF. 3. ALFRED THE GREAT. 4. EDWARD THE ELDER. 5 . EDMUND
THE ELDER. 6. EDGAR. 7. ETHELRED II. 8. EDMUND IRONSIDE. 9. Edward the Outlaw.
10. Margaret, wife of Malcolm III. of Scotland, n. Matilda, wife of HENRY I. 12. Matilda
(Empress Maud of Germany), wife of Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou. 13. HENRY II. 14.
JOHN. 15. HENRY III. 16. EDWARD I. 17. EDWARD II. 18. EDWARD III.

EDWARD III.

The legitimate line (York).

The illegitimate line (Lancaster).

19. Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Edmund,

Duke of York.

20. Philippa,
in, Edward Mortimer, Earl of March.

21. Roger Mortimer, Earl of March.

I i

22. Anne Mortimer, *- married > Richard,

Earl of Cambridge.

had issue

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
had son by Catharine

Swynford
John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset.

John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.

Margaret,
w. Edmund Tudor,
Earl of Richmond.

I, Dul

23. Richard, Duke of York.
24. EDWARD IV.

25. Elizabeth of York, <- married -
(lines of York and Lancaster united).

Their | daughter,

26. Margaret Tudor,
married

HENRY VII.

(a.) James IV. of Scotland.

27. James V. of Scotland.

28. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, < married
Their

(b.) Archibald Douglas,
Earl of Angus.

Margaret Douglas,
m. Earl of Lennox.

Lord Darnley.

29. JAMES VI. of Scotland, I. of England.
30. Elizabeth, m. Frederick, Elector Palatine.

31. Sophia, m. Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick and Elector of Hanover.

32. GEORGE I.

33. GEORGE II.

34. Frederick, Prince of Wales.

35. GEORGE III.

36. Edward, Duke of Kent, m. Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeiu.
37. VICTORIA.

SANDERSON'S

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

BOOK I.

BRITONS AND ROMANS (E.G. 55 A.D. 450.)
CHAPTEE I.

PRE-HISTORIC PEOPLE : C^SAR IN BRITAIN.

Meaning of 'history.' Development of English freedom. Beginning of Britain.
Early names of islands and people. The Britons in time of Julius Caesar.

A HIGH authority tells us that "history is the investigation of how
that which is comes to be what it is." A real English or what
British history should tell the people, the commons of these ^Jfjjfy
realms, in a faithful and unbiassed narrative of public affairs, means,
how they have grown out of slavery, out of feudal wrong, out of
regal despotism, into constitutional liberty. We shall see in the history
of England emphatically the history of progress. We shall see a great
society of men and women, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in
a miserable and degraded state. They are subject to the tyranny of a
handful of armed foreigners. A strong distinction of caste divides the
victor from the vanquished. The great body of the people live in a
state of personal slavery and are sunk in brutal ignorance, while the
studious few are engaged in acquiring what hardly merits the name of
knowledge. Seven centuries pass away. "The wretched and degraded
race have become the greatest and most highly civilised people that the
world ever saw, have spread their dominion over every quarter of the
globe, have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over
vast continents of which no dim intimation had ever reached the old
geographers Ptolemy and Strabo. They have created a maritime power
which would annihilate in a quarter of an hour the navies of Tyre,
Athens, Carthage, Venice and Genoa together ; have carried the science
of healing, the means of locomotion and correspondence, every mechani-
cal art, every manufacture, every thing that promotes the convenience

2 GROWTH OF NATIONAL FREEDOM.

of life, to a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical.
They have produced a literature which may boast of works not inferior
to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us ; they have discovered
the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, have
speculated with exquisite subtlety on the operations of the human
mind, have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the
career of political improvement. The history of England is the history
of this great change in the moral, intellectual, and physical state of the
inhabitants of our own islands." In these words of one of the greatest
of our historians we have set before us the noble task which awaits the
writer of British history.

We shall fail to grasp the true meaning of this great subject unless
. . we observe that the history of every nation has been, in the
oPgrowth main, a chain of cause and effect. Each of its phases has been
in nations. ^ e conse q ue nce of some prior phase, and the natural pre-
lude of that which succeeded it. All that upon which we justly pride
ourselves, whether in our institutions or our national character, has
resulted from the principle of growth, and not of creation. This great
principle must especially be borne in mind with regard to English
history. The Roman, the Saxon, the Norman, did not each of them,
without interference of the other, mix their blood with the old British
stock, nor did any of them alone bequeath to us our political constitu-
tion. To the Roman we may distinctly trace our municipal institutions,
in obedience to, or in connection with, a central authority, which rode
supreme over the rights of individuals. To the Saxon we owe that
principle of personal liberty which has survived, through twelve hun-
dred years, every attempt to merge the freedom of the governed in
the absolute control of the governors. From the feudal system of the
Norman we derive those appropriations of territory which, however
liable to abuses in their extent and their transmission, have afforded
security to all property, during many generations, by their unassailable
permanency. Amidst these influences, the power of the Church was
sustaining the moral and spiritual elements of society, and was the
parent and conservator of literature and art. It is not to any one
particular epoch of this history of nineteen hundred years that we can
point for the establishment of any one common privilege or immunity.
We associate Magna Charta with King John, and the Bill of Rights
with William III., but in the intermediate struggles of five centuries
we must look for the true growth of constitutional government. It is
only in following out the great law of progress that we can properly
appreciate what we are, by comprehending what we have been. Nor
must the observance of this law of progress be confined to the acts of
kings and parliaments. The gradual emancipation of the serf, the
assertion of the independence of the burgher, the submission of the
priests to the civil law, the legal control of the baron in the castle by
the resistance of the craftsman in the town, the right of the whole

SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF GROWTH. 3

body of the people to be taxed only by their representatives are each
intimately associated with the universal progress in industry and
knowledge. Upon the Roman and early English civilisation were
founded many of the great principles of government which have pre-
served their vitality amongst us during the lapse of fifteen centuries.
The Norman feudality could not destroy municipal institutions, nor the
spirit of personal freedom. The Norman despotism was absorbed by
the English liberty, a,nd feudality could only maintain itself by the
recognition, however incomplete, of the equal rights of all men before
the law.

From the deposition of Richard the Second to the virtual abdication
of James the Second, every act of national resistance was accomplished
by the union of classes, and was founded upon some principle of legal
right for which there was legal precedent. Out of the traditional and
almost instinctive assertion of the popular privileges have come new
developments of particular reforms, each adapted to its own age, but
all springing out of that historical experience which we recognise as
Constitutional. In the words of Macaulay, we are, in the history of
England, "to contemplate the steps by which the England of Domes-
day Book, the England of the Curfew and the Forest Laws, the England
of crusaders, monks, schoolmen, astrologers, serfs, and outlaws, became
the England which we know and love, the classic ground of liberty and
philosophy, the school of all knowledge, the mart of all trade. The
charter of Henry Beauclerc, the Great Charter, the first assembling of
the House of Commons, the extinction of personal slavery, the separa-
tion from the See of Rome, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus
Act, the Revolution of 1688, the establishment of the liberty of un-
licensed printing, the abolition of religious disabilities, the reform of
the representative system, all these seem to be the successive stages of
one great revolution ; nor can we fully comprehend any one of these
memorable events unless we look at it in connection with those which
preceded, and with those which followed it. Each of those great and
ever-memorable struggles, Saxon against Norman, villein against lord,
Roundhead against Cavalier, Dissenter against Churchman, Manchester
against Old Sarum, was, in its own order and season, a struggle, on the
result of which were staked the dearest interests of the human race."

All the historical inhabitants of the British Isles, Celts, Romans,
Teutons of Germany, Danes, and Normans, were men of the Earliest

great Aryan race. Still existing remains show that there once dwellers
P. , . J . , , ,, in the

lived in our islands a non- Aryan people, a race or mere savages, Britisli

who lived wholly by hunting and fishing. The contents of old Isle3 '
graves and other deposits prove that these people had spear-heads and
arrows of flint, and axes and hammers of stone. Of the use of metal
they knew nothing. To them w 7 e may probably attribute the old
sepulchral monuments, called cromlechs, found in all parts of the
British Islands. In these relics we see three or more columns of

i ARRIVAL OF BRITONS.

unhewn stone supporting a large tabular block, so as to form with it
a rectangular chamber, beneath the floor of which is generally found
a sepulchral chamber or cist enclosing a skeleton, with arms, stone
implements, and other ancient remains. A well-known instance of such
a monument is that called Kit's Coty House, near Aylesford, in Kent.

When the veil is lifted and historical knowledge begins, we find
Earliest the British Isles inhabited by men of Celtic race. The Celts
inha>4- Cal appear to have been among the earliest of the comers from
tants. Asia into Europe in the period of the great Aryan immigra-
tions. There were two branches of this Celtic race. The Cimmerian
or Cymric Celts settled first to the north of the Black Sea, between
the Danube and the Don. East of the Don were the Scythian or
Gaelic Celts, who afterwards pushed to the w r est and forced the Cymry
before them. Both were, in turn, driven westwards by Slavonian and
Teutonic immigrants. In the end, the Celts occupied in strength the
coasts of what are now France and Spain, and it seems that these
islands were first thinly peopled by Celts of the Gaelic branch, who
came from Spain to the western coast of Ireland and the south-western
shores of Britain. Cymric Celts, driven across the Channel by Teuton
tribes who pressed on them, landed 011 the eastern part of our south
coast, and then forced the Gaels to the westward. Thus it was that
the Manxmen, Highlanders of Scotland, and Irish belonged to the Gaelic
branch, while Britain was mainly peopled by Celts from Gaul, belong-
ing to the Cymric branch of the race, now represented in blood and
language by the Welsh. Belgae from Gaul, a people of German origin,
also settled on the south and east coasts.

The word Britain appears to come from a Celtic word brifh or brit,
Earliest meaning painted, with a reference to the people's custom
aifdnames of stainin their bodies blue with the juice of a plant called
of British 'ii'oatL The Gaelic name for the inhabitants is JBrython, the
Roman names for the country and people being 'Britannia
and Britanni. The name Albion, or white-land, is probably derived
from the chalky cliffs of the coast. The Roman name, Caledonia, for
the northern part of the chief island, is supposed to be formed from
the British caoill daoin, ' people of the woods.' The name Scotland is
from the Scoti, a tribe who emigrated from the north of Ireland. The
A\ 7 elsh have always called themselves Cymry, whence the Roman name
for Wales, Cambria; and Wales, Welsh, are old English f or foreign land,
foreigners, the term applied by our Teutonic forefathers to those who
spoke a language not understood by themselves. The native name
for Ireland was Erin; the Greek, used by Aristotle, was I erne ; the
Romans called it Hibernia, and Iverna or Juverna. It seems likely
that in early times the Phrenician traders visited the Scilly Islands
and the coast of Cornwall for the purpose of obtaining tin; and
Herodotus refers to the Cassiterides or Tin Islands, in the north parts
of the ocean. The first certain knowledge which the Greeks obtained

55 B.C.] INVASION OF CAESAR. 5

of Britain was from the merchants of Massilia (Marseilles) about tho
time of Alexander the Great, and soon after that period the Greek
navigator Pytheas of Massilia sailed round a great part of Britain.

The real history of these islands begins with the great Roman Caius
Julius Caesar, the conqueror and governor of Gaul, who has left his own
written account of what he saw and did in two invasions of the land,
and of what he learnt from others as to the state and char- First in-
acter of the people. On a day towards the end of the month cafsa? f
of August B.C. 55, a gazer from the cliffs near Dover would B.C. 55!
have seen a large fleet of war-galleys and ships of burden making its
way across the narrow sea from a port between Calais and Boulogne.
A Roman force was coming to punish the Britons for sending help in
ships and men to one of the Gaelic tribes, the Veneti^ then at war with
Csesar. The alarm spread inland. The Cantii, or men of what is now
called Kent, gathered in arms upon the cliffs, and their numbers and
position caused the Roman leader to turn northwards for the open
beach near Deal. The defenders of the soil of Britain had followed
the invaders, and when Caesar's men prepared to land, they saw the
beach crowded with horses and chariots, and skin-clad, blue-dyed in-
fantry, armed with great pointless swords, and uttering shouts of
defiance. The Romans leaped into the water from their galleys at
the bidding of the standard-bearer of the famous Tenth Legion, and
Roman discipline and courage, after a fierce combat, drove off the
natives. An advance of a few miles inland was then made by the
Romans, and the usual fortified camp was formed, while cavalry from
Gaul were awaited. A storm arose which scattered the horse-transports,
and the rough weather, with a heavy spring-tide, greatly damaged the
fleet lying off shore. Many vessels were swamped or broken up, and
the Romans had to turn to the work of repairs. The Britons broke
the truce and attacked their enemy again, but were soundly beaten.
Caesar then returned to Gaul, after an absence of only seventeen
days.

Early the next year, Caesar crossed again with a force of five legions,
or about thirty thousand men, and now landed without re- Second in-
sistance. On the march inland, his cavalry fought the natives cafsa? f
and drove them into the woods. The damage caused by B.C. 54.
another storm brought Csesar back to the coast, and during this time a
British leader named Cassibelan or Caswallon in Latin, Cassivelaunus
gathered a great force. He was driven back to the Thames near
Walton, where the place called Cowey-stakes is believed to mark the
spot at which the Britons fenced the bank of the river, and the ford
below the water, with sharp-pointed young oaks. The Romans forced
their way across, and the brief campaign ended with the storming of
Caswallon's forest-fortress at Verulam, near the place now called St.
Al ban's. Caesar gives us the names of the tribes whom he encountered
in this march. There were the Cantii (Kent), Trinobaivtes (Middlesex

C BRITAIN IN EARLY DAYS. [55 B.C.

:vml JOssox), Cenimagni (or Iceni), of the country now called Norfolk,
Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, the Set/out iaci and Ancalites, of some
part between the Upper Thames and the Channel, the Bibrod of
Hampshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire, and the Cassi of Hertfordshire.
The Britons now gave hostages and promised to pay tribute, and the
Romans quitted the country after a stay of a few weeks, to appear no
more as invaders for nearly a hundred years. As Tacitus says, Csesar
did not conquer Britain, but only showed it to the Romans.

From this time forward, peaceful intercourse with Rome and various
parts of her empire went on. Blocks of lead and tin from the mines
of the south-west were exchanged, as of old, with the Phoenician traders
State of and Greek merchants from Massilia and Narbo (Narlonne), for
Britain, brass, salt, and earthenware, and the Britons also exported
slaves, hunting-dogs, and skins. The epicures of Rome had a great
liking for the oysters of Kutupise, the place now called Richborough,
in Kent, lying two miles inland. In forming a picture to the mind's
eye of the appearance of the country, we must banish from the view
nearly all that we now see around us. The north and east and west
and centre of the land were still covered by forest and by marsh. The
British roads were rough tracks that followed the windings of the hills,
with here and there a descent to the plain, and a way cut through the
woods, or passing by a clearing made for corn. The towns were mere
gatherings of wattled or timbered huts, placed in a tract of woody
country, and surrounded by a deep trench, with a further defence of
felled trees. The tilling of the soil, in the more civilised south-eastern
district, the pasturing of cattle, and the hunting of the abundant game,
were the chief means of living. The deer, the wolf, the boar, the bear,
the badger were all tenants of the forest; on the plains large flocks of
bustards could be seen ; the beaver built his home in the streams. The
fisher had his coracle of skins stretched tightly over wicker work, as it
may be seen to this day on the river Wye. A certain skill both in
mechanics and in the art of war is proved by the construction and the
use of the scythed chariots described by Caesar. The drivers went at
speed down steep descents, and charged the enemy with a fighting man
iipon the pole, who would alight and join the combat upon foot, using
the car for his retreat in case of need. The contents of the sepulchral
mounds or barrows tell us nearly all that we know of the artistic skill
of the people. In the north of Wiltshire stands Silbury Hill, the
largest artificial mound in Europe. There and in other tombs have
been dug up arrow-heads and spear-heads of bronze, bodkins, necklaces,
and beads, drinking-cups and urns. The rule of the people at the time
of Caesar's visits was in the hands of many petty chieftains, often at
war with each other. At a later period, but before the Roman conquest
of the land, we find that this separate dominion of many kinglets had
been merged in that of kings, each ruling over large parts of the island.
Cunobelin, king of the Trinobantes, ruled a territory which included

55 B.C.] THE DRUIDS AND THE BARDS. 7

much of South Britain. His capital, Camalodunum, is represented
either by Colchester or Maldon. Progress made in civilisation has
been inferred from the fact that we have many coins of his reign,
probably of British workmanship, and showing an acquaintance with
Roman deities and customs.

The religion of the ancient Britons at this time was the mysterious
and gloomy form of pagan worship known as Druidism. Caesar
tells us that ' this system is thought to have been formed in
Britain, and to have been carried over thence into Gaul, and now those
who wish to be more accurately versed in it go to Britain in order to
become acquainted with it.' The Druids were the priests, the arbiters of
disputes, and the judges of crime. Men placed under their interdict were
held accursed, and were banished from human intercourse. Over this
body of men one chief Druid presided. They were all exempt from service
in war, and from payment of taxes. They believed in the immortality
of the soul, and in the doctrine of transmigration. They made human
sacrifices to their gods, offering up as victims either criminals or
prisoners taken in war. The teaching of the Druids was not confined
to matters of religion. They M 7 ere the instructors in all the rude
knowledge of the time, save in matters of war. They held sacred the
oak and the mistletoe, and it was in groves of oak that they practised
their religious rites.

The Gaelic nature was, at its best, that of an artist. The Gael was
gifted with a bold and active fancy, skill in music, delight in
vivid colour, a sense of honour, and a taste for literature.
The Irish, Scottish, and Welsh Celts alike, the Gaels and Cymry too,
are men who still delight in olden song that tells the glories of a
legendary past. The instinctive wants of such a people were met by
the attainments and performances of the class of men called Bards.
Their task and their delight it was to act as the chroniclers, poets, and
musicians of their tribe. To the strains of a rude harp they sang the
genealogies and exploits of chiefs, the wonders of nature, and the
praises of the gods, in lyric, epic, and didactic verse rich in simile and
metaphor.

It has been shown that the early inhabitants of Britain were far re-
moved from a merely savage state. The Britons, as known to Summary
the Romans, were a people of high courage, subject to authority f v nisa- S]1
and discipline, and yet impatient of subjection. They were tion
acquainted with some important arts of life. They mined and smelted
their native tin, and were not unskilled in the tillage of the soil.
They were a warlike people, possessed of swords and shields and
cars that could not be fabricated without some mechanical skill. They
were a religious people, whose priests were their lawgivers and their
teachers in whatever moral and mental training they possessed. They
were lovers of instrumental music and song. They took an interest in
the records of the past, and believed in another life after death.

CLAUDIUS AND VESPASIAN. [_ 43 A - D -

CHAPTER II.

ROMAN CONQUEST AND RULE.

Roman and British leaders. Stout resistance of natives. Agricola in power.
Hadrian and Severus in Britain. Early Christianity. Picts and Scots. With-
drawal of Romans.

THE Emperor Claudius was the ruler who first resolved to make Britain
The a province of Rome. The man chosen to attack the country

Roman from Gaul with his legions was Aulus Plautius. In A.J>.
begins S 43 he landed without opposition. The Britons had retired
Claudius to the marshes and woods, hoping to wear out the invader
A.D. 43. by delay, and thinking that, like Caesar, he would withdraw
from the country after a brief stay. At this time, Caractacus, son of
Cunobelin, was the chief ruler in the south of the island. Plautius
marched against him, and, with much loss to the Romans in the marshes
and woods, drove the Britons away to the west. Then Claudius came
in person with great reinforcements, and the capital, Camalodunum,
was taken. The Emperor remained but sixteen days in the island, was
saluted by the army as Iinperator, and then returned to Rome, to assume
the name of Britannicus, and to be worshipped as a god. The memory
of his Britannic triumph is preserved upon his coinage.

The Britons met their formidable foes with a most tenacious and
Obstinate determined opposition. That brave and rugged soldier,
resistance Vespasian, born and bred a peasant in the Sabine Hills, and
afterwards Emperor of Rome, was in high command under
Plautius. He and his son Titus had all they could do to win for Rome,
after many battles, the territory now forming Hampshire and the Isle
of Wight. The Romans, however, kept pouring in fresh troops along
the whole line of the southern coast, and by the estuaries of the Thames
and the Colne, and thus, slowly but surely, the southern and south-eastern
parts of the land were won. In the west and centre and east the natives
maintained a fierce resistance. Their great leader was Caractacus or
Caradoc, king of the Silures, a powerful tribe of South Wales. In A.D.
47, Plautius and Vespasian, returning to Italy with well-won honours,
were succeeded in the British command by Ostorius Scapula. Roman
skill and discipline won their way in the east, and the Iceni were for a
time overcome. Ostorius then marched west, and advanced as far as
the Avon and the Severn. He next broke up the levies of the
powerful tribe of the north, the Brigantes, who dwelt between the
Humber and the Tyne. Caradoc himself was then brought to bay at the
lofty hill in Shropshire which still bears the name of Caer- Caradoc,
the town of Caradoc. The British forces were on a mountain-ridge'

BRITAIN
ROMAK TIMES

58-61 A.D.] BOADICEA.

with a wall of stone for a rampart. At the foot of the hill flowed a
river hard to ford, and when the hill was mounted, hosts of men
guarded the intrenched position. The British arrows shot down the
Romans by hundreds as they scaled the mountain-side. A terrible
fight hand-to-hand ensued, as the legionaries advanced to the storming.
The Roman discipline and short pointed two-edged sword prevailed at
last against all the efforts of tumultuous valour. The position was
taken, and Caradoc fled for refuge to Cartismandua, queen of the
Brigantes. By her he was betrayed to the Romans, and after his
nine years' resistance went as a captive to Rome in A.r>. 51. The
noble bearing of the fallen chief of a warlike people induced Claudius,
with a rare clemency, to spare his prisoner's life. Even the loss of
Caractacus did not end the resistance made by the brave Silures. The
Roman general Scapula died, worn out with the toil and trouble of a
war that seemed endless.

A few years roll on, and Nero wears the imperial purple. In A.D.
58, Suetonius Paulinus took the command in Britain. There Suetpnius
was at this time a female ruler in the eastern district, Boadi- and^ nUS
cea, queen of the Iceni. The Roman officials and settlers Boadicea.
had roused the wrath of the natives by extortions, licentiousness, and
insult to the national worship. The British queen had bled under the
rods of Roman lictors. Wrath and shame roused her and her people
to plan a deadly revenge. The Romans held many of the towns, in-
cluding London, even then a place of much trade, Verulam, and Cama-
lodunum. The absence of the Roman governor in the north-west
offered a great chance of success for a rising. A great host of natives,
led by the queen in person, took the field in A.D. 61, and attacked
the three chief towns. The ninth legion was destroyed at Camalo-
dunurn, and many thousands of Roman settlers perished there, and in
London and at Verulam. The British were for the time triumphant,
and there for the moment we leave them. Suetonius had marched into
North Wales with the fixed purpose of assailing Druidism in one of its
principal seats. The religious system of the Britons was held to be
one of the chief causes of their enduring hostility to Rome. TheDruiclical
faith was deep-rooted, long-established, and universal, and to its votaries
the mythology of Rome was at once hateful and contemptible. Their
solemn superstition gave them daring courage and a fanatical spirit of
revenge. It was the knowledge of this fact that led Suetonius to attack
the stronghold of the Druids in Mona, now the Isle of Anglesey. He
crossed the Menai Strait, and there encountered a strange host of foes.
The shore was covered with armed men in dense array, and women with
loose hair ran about with furious cries, clothed in dark attire, and
waving lighted torches. Around stood bands of Druids, lifting hands
of prayer to heaven, and by turns enkindling a desperate valour by
frantic words arid gestures. The hardy Romans stood still at first,
struck with unwonted awe. Then discipline came to their aid, and

10 AGRICOLA AS GOVERNOR. [78-83 A.D.

they dosed with the foe in the onslaught that hardly ever failed.
Suetonius did his work well. The sacred groves of oak were cut down,
the Druids were burned in their own wicker- idols, and a garrison was
left amongst the remnant spared by fire and sword. Then came the
terrible news from the south, and the Romans hurried back to the
rescue. The exact spot of the decisive battle that ensued has never
been determined. What is certain is, that the tumultuous hordes
under Boadicea were utterly routed by Roman tactics directing the
disciplined valour of ten thousand Roman legionaries. The revolt was
ended at a blow. Boadicea died by poison. Unrelenting pursuit de-
stroyed all chance of a rally, and the power of the natives in South
Britain was thus broken for ever by A.D. 62.

It would seem that scant justice has hitherto been rendered by
modern historians to the character of these ancient Britons.
British The great Roman writer, Tacitus, tells us that they were by
character. nature f ierce an( j resolute; that they would pay tribute to
their conquerors and submit to the Roman levies of men to serve in
the legions, but would bear no insult or wrong ; they would obey, in
short, but would not be treated as mere slaves. The bare, facts of the
narrative amply refute the common opinion of the low state of civilisa-
tion amongst a people who thus contended with one of the greatest
military powers of all time. What must the spirit of the Britons
have been, which, in a fierce and determined resistance, and in constant
revolt after seeming subjection, could give the Romans twenty y,ears of
work to subdue but the southern part of the island ?

For sixteen years after the death of Boadicea little advance was
The gov- made by the Romans in the secure possession of the country.
Aico?a 0f -A-* l en g fc h> with a g& emperor, Vespasian, in supreme power,
A.D. 78-84. a great man was placed at the head of affairs in Britain. Julius
Agricola, father-in-law of Tacitus, whose eloquent eulogy is one of the
finest things in literature, was both a great and a good man. He had
already served in Britain under Suetonius Paulinus, and in A.D. 69 he was
there in command of the twentieth legion. When he arrived in Britain
as governor in the summer of 78, he found work ready to his hands.
The Ordovices, a powerful tribe in North Wales, were in arms among
the strongholds of the hills, after their sudden slaughter of a band of
Roman horse in garrison on the borders. Agricola at once marched
against them, gathered the scattered troops, routed the enemy in their
fastnesses, and overran the old scene of conflict, Anglesey. The next
year, 79, saw him again in the field, and waging war with a skill and
energy that nothing could resist. He knew the country well, and
could choose the proper lines of march and the places for effective
attack. All that was won was firmly held by the planting of forts
and garrisons at every strategic point. He welcomed as friends of
Rome all that were ready to submit, and allured the chiefs into the
towns to learn the Roman arts of life. In a few years the country

84-120 A.D.] HADRIAN IN BRITAIN. 11

was peacefully held from the mouth of the Thames to the Severn, and
from the Humber across to the Dee. In the third and fourth summers
of his command, the years 80 and Si, Agricola was engaged against foes
in the north. He secured the territory south of the Clyde and the Forth
by a line of armed posts extending between the estuaries. In 82 he
made his way to the western coast, and in 83 marched to the north
towards the Grampians. The Caledonian tribes were in arms, and
made a daring attack on the camp of a Roman legion, which was barelv
saved by Agricola's arrival. In 84 came the final conflict with the
mountaineers, at the foot of the Grampian Hills. Thirty thousand
warriors were in arms under Galgacus, and fought the Romans with
the usual result. Ten thousand clansmen fell in the plain and on the
hillside, and only night put an end to the slaughter. When morning
dawned, not a foeinan was to be seen: all had vanished to a far distance,
and the Romans marched back to winter quarters. Agricola was much
more than a mere conqueror. Under his government was shown the
tranquillising force of the ruler who can civilise and colonise as well as
subdue. In his time Roman ships first sailed round the chief island,
and proved to the world its geographical shape. He rescued the
natives from official rapacity, and made a just and equal distribution of
the burden of tribute. He taught the conquered people to build houses,
temples, galleries, and baths in the Roman style. The sons of the
chief men were taught the Roman language and the liberal sciences, and
the scattered people were encouraged to congregate in towns, and live
the life of citizens under municipal rule, The Britons had ample
reason to mourn his loss when he was recalled in 84 by the jealous
tyrant Domitian.

For over three hundred years Britain remained a province of the
Roman Empire. In the year 120 we find the Emperor Hadrian's
Hadrian in the land, as he was carrying out his purpose of WalL
visiting in person every portion of the vast dominion of Rome. The
Britons had now fully submitted to conquest, and we hear nothing
more of revolt, in the southern part of the island, against the ruling
power. The chief trouble to the land for two centuries was caused by
the incursions of the fierce predatory tribes in the north. We have
seen that Agricola's conquest had stopped at the Firths of Clyde and
Forth. Beyond this line were the hilly abodes of the unsubdued Picts
and Scots. The Scots are known to be Gaelic immigrants from Ireland,
the language spoken by some of the Scotch Highlanders to this day
being the same tongue as the Erse spoken by the Irish. The Picts
have been always a puzzle to ethnologists. They were probably of
Celtic race, but their language differed from that of the British and
Irish. The country between the -Tyne and the Forth was inhabited by
restless tribes, and Hadrian found it needful to raise a strong inner
line of defence. This was the origin of the famous Roman wall between
the Solway Firth and the Tyne, of which many remains still exist. It

12 SEVERUS AND CONSTANTINE. [140-314 A.D.

consisted of a stone wall and an earthen rampart, in some places doubled
and tripled, with the further defence of a ditch. Along the lines great
camps of earthwork were formed, and the whole construction was meant
not as a mere defence, but as a military base for operations on both
sides of it. The castles along the works had gates opening to the
north, and the coins found there prove that the ground north of the
wall was held down to the end of the third century.

Under Antoninus Pius, the successor of Hadrian, the line of forts
Antoninus raised by Agricola between the Clyde and the Forth was
JjdSeve- strengthened in 140, by a turf rampart known as the Wall of
140-211. ' Antoninus. In 208, the warlike Emperor Severus came to
visit his distant province, with his sons Caracalla and Geta. He soon
found that there was work for his soldiers in the northern parts of
the land. The wall of Hadrian, between Sol way and Tyne, was not
only a rampart of defence against hostile incursions from the north, but
a barrier to intercept dangerous friendships. The Brigantes, dwelling
in what are now Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumberland, and Durham,
amidst marshy valleys and barren hills, had been restless under the
Roman yoke. The Meatse, a people in the south of Scotland, were
ready to join with them in revolt. Driven back in the time of Anto-
ninus, they often renewed attacks on the Roman military posts. The
Picts and Scots also needed repression, and against all these foes Severus
marched with a great army. The Roman forces had much toil in
cutting down woods, making marshes passable, and building bridges,
and even then they could not get to fair fight with the enemy. The
warfare was one of ambuscades, and the Emperor himself was failing
in health. We are told that he was carried to the far north of Cale-
donia in the midst of his army on a litter, and that he returned after
making a treaty with the chiefs. He then repaired Hadrian's wall,
and died at Eboracum (York) in the year 211.

For seventy years after the death of Severus, history is nearly silent
Britain on ^ e affairs of Britain. During the third century the south -
from A.D. eastern coasts began to be troubled by the descents of Saxon

450 ' pirates. An incident of the time was the usurpation of sove-
reign power in Britain by a man named Carausius. A Gaul by birth,
appointed by the Emperor Maximian to command a fleet for the pro-
tection of the Gallic and British coasts, he revolted in fear of punish-
ment for misconduct in his command. In 287 he assumed in Britain the
imperial purple, with the title of Augustus, and defied the co-emperors,
Diocletian and Maximian. After vain attempts against him, which
were repelled by his powerful fleet, he was acknowledged as colleague
in the empire, and reigned till 293. Carausius was then murdered by
his chief officer, Allectus, who ruled for three years, and then submitted
to the imperial power of Constantius Chlorus. In 306 this emperor
died at Eboracum, on an expedition against the Picts, and was there
succeeded by his son Constantine, afterwards called " the Great," who

360-453 A.D.] DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS. 13

was the first Christian emperor. We know not the precise date when
the new religion was first brought into Britain. The Emperor Diocletian
began his great persecution of the Christians throughout the empire in
303, and in the following year the British martyr St. Alban died for
his faith at "Veriilamiuin, close to the site of the town now called by his
name. At the first Council of Aries, in the south of Gaul, held in 314,
there were three British bishops, who presided over sees at York,
London, and Caerleon. The heretic Pelagius, who lived a century
later, is said to have been a Briton, whose real name was Morgan.
St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, went forth from a monk's cell in
France to preach the faith in the "Isle of Saints " about the year 430.
There, and in Wales, the religion of the old British Church survived,
when it was almost destroyed in England by our heathen forefathers.

In the year 360, the warlike tribes of the north made their way in
force within the wall of Hadrian. The hold of the Romans Renewed
upon Britain had been gradually weakened by the withdrawal pjjts and f
of troops to other parts of the empire, and by 368 the invading Scots,
tribes had carried their ravages as far as London. A great general,
named Theodosius, came over from Gaul with a large army, and drove
the enemy back beyond the wall of Antoninus. The garrisons were
re-established, the civil administration was reformed, and the country
seemed likely to return to a period of safety and peace. The Roman
legions, however, were again partly withdrawn, and the Picts, the Scots,
and the Saxon pirates invaded the land anew.

The Roman power went fast to decay, and by the year 410, all the
troops had quitted the island. Britain was thus severed from End of
the empire, though a Roman force came again in 418, and Roman
gave the people some help against the northern invaders.
They then quitted the country, and thirty years of confusion and
misery, under the name of independence, followed their departure. In
443 the unhappy people sent a letter, known as The Groans of the
Britons, to the great Roman general Aetius. They begged for help
against their cruel foes. "The barbarians," they wrote, "chase us
into the sea; the sea flings us back on the barbarians; the only choice
left us is to die by the sword or by the waves." Aetius, hard pressed
as he was to defend the Western empire against the attacks of Conti-
nental barbarians, was quite unable to help them. It would seem
that the old British courage had somewhat decayed under Roman rule,
and that the national spirit of combination in self-defence had lost
much of its power. The withdrawal of the Romans from Britain had
left the way open for the coming of the race who were to stamp a
lasting character upon the language, the name, and the whole future
of the land.

11 ROMAN FORTRESSES. [410 A.D.

CHAPTER III.
ROMAN PlSUOD OF RULE.

Roman provinces, garrisons, towns, and roads. Prosperity of country in Roman
times. Tokens of Roman presence. System of rule.

BRITAIN, like the other distant provinces of the empire, was under
Britain the control of the emperor, and not of the senate. It was
under therefore ruled by successive legates of consular rank, ap-
nile? n pointed by the emperor, and holding office for several years
divisions toge ther. It was divided in the fourth century into five
country, provinces. Of these, Britannia Prima extended south of the
Thames and the Bristol Channel, from the North Foreland to Land's
End; Wales formed Britannia Secunda ; Flavia Ccesariemi* included
the whole territory between the Thames and a line from the Humber
across to the Mersey; Maxima Ctvsarie?isis was composed of all the
northern district from the Mersey and the Humber to Hadrian's wall,
and beyond that Valentia reached to the rampart of Antoiiine. All
beyond that was the unsubdued Caledonia.

From the Notitia Imperil, a work compiled early in the fifth cen-
Military tui 7 we learn that ^e re o u l ar Roman army then consisted
arrange- of about twenty thousand men. There was a permanent
ments. f orce of three legions, with their contingents of auxiliary
troops, including natives from, all parts of the empire Spaniards,
Gauls, Batavians, Dacians, and even Asiatics. We hear of a body of
Parthian cavalry posted on the Severn. The military stations were
selected with all the skill that economises military power. Fortresses
were built on the coast, the great navigable rivers, and on all the
chief roads. One legion, with a large force of auxiliaries, was always
stationed at York for the defence of the northern frontier. When
the Saxon pirates began to give trouble on the south-eastern coast, a
special officer was appointed to meet the emergency. This was the
Comes Littoris Saxonici, or Count of the Saxon Shore, which seems
really to mean Director of coast-defence against the Saxon*. The
district under his command extended from the north of Norfolk round
to the middle of the coast of Sussex. On this line there were nine
great castles held by Roman troops. The first was at Branodunum,
now Brancaster, in Norfolk: then came Garianonum (Burgli Castle)
on the Yare, Othona (Ithancester, just below the Blackwater), Ptegul-
bium (Reculver, on the north coast of Kent), RutupisB (Richborough,
near Sandwich), Portus Dubris (Dover), Portus Lemanis (Lymne),
Andfirida (Pevensey), and Portus Adurni, which may be Aldrington, on

410 A.D.] ROMAN ROADS. 15

the Sussex coast, at the mouth of the Adur. The fortresses at Roul-
Ijium and Rutnpise were built to guard tlie two mouths of the estuary
which then cut off the north-east of Kent from the mainland, and
made it in fact, and not, as now, in name alone, the Isle of Thanet.
The names on the map of England suffice to show the positions of
many of the fortified camps by which the Romans held the land
against revolt of the natives or attack by foreign foes. The English
conquerors changed many of the Roman names for others containing a
corrupt form of the word castra. Hence come the present names of
Chester, on the Dee, Castor, on the Nen, and Caistor, near Norwich,
which represents the Roman town of Venta Icenorum. The termina-
tions caster, Chester, cester, tell the same tale of Roman military occupa-
tion. The important western city of Isca became Exan-ceaster, Ex-
ceaster, and lastly Exeter, an instance of similar corruption being found
in Uttoxeter, and in Wroxeter, on the Severn, where stood the ancient
Uriconium.

There were in Britain nine towns which ranked as colonial, where
Romans were settled as possessors of the land, and the Roman institu-
tions were adopted without any change in the forms or princi- Roman
pies of local government. These were Londinium (London), towns.
Camalodunum (Colchester), Rutupise (Ricliborougli), Aquae Solis (Batli),
Isca Silurum (Caerleon, in Monmouthshire), 13eva (Chester), Glevum
(Gloucester), Lindum (Lincoln), and Chesterford, near Cambridge.
Verulamium (St. Albans) and Eboracum (York) were municipal cities,
with special rights and privileges for the citizens. Venta Belgarum
( Winchester) was also an important town. London, as the residence of
the governor, was the seat of rule for the whole province, but York
was, in this respect, of almost equal rank, as the centre of military
command for the dangerous and restless North.

The Romans, great in all the practical arts of life, are famous as
constructors of straight and durable roads. Their highways Roman
in Britain reached to the most distant parts of the province, roads.
and there is hardly a county of England and Wales in which traces of
them are not to be seen. A Roman road of the best kind was a paved
causeway, formed by successive layers of earth, stones, and mortar,
the whole topped either by stone or by a firm bed of lime and gravel.
It was generally raised above the level of the ground on either side.
Many of our Lest highroads run still on the solid foundation afforded
by the lasting work of the Roman conquerors, and the perfect straight-
ness of the course taken is a ready means of identification. In other
cases, remains of their old roads may be seen as wide grass-grown
tracks leading off our present highways, and sometimes serving as
cart-roads from farm to farm. The makers of these roads rarely
avoided a hill, but went straight from point to point. If a marsh
came in the way, the engineers would drain it or fill it up, and no
natural difficulties were allowed to interfere with the plan. The

10 PROGRESS UNDER ROMANS. [410 A.D.

mountain called High Street in Westmoreland is so named from the
fact that a Roman road ran along its summit at a height of nearly
2000 feet above the sea. This network of solid road, with bold
cuttings and firm terraces, just as the nature of the ground required,
made the island one whole, according to the wants of the time. By
these ways the Roman legions marched up and down the land, through
all the five provinces, wherever there was a revolt to be subdued or
payment of tribute to be enforced. They were also the means of com-
munication used by a large population, who had not been without
roads and towns in what was called their uncivilised state. Each of
the great lines of highway was called a strata (for strata via, paved
way), and the word street, adopted by the early English conquerors,
is still found in the composition of the names of many places situated
on these old lines of road. Hence came such words as Streatham,
Stratton, and Stratford. In the city of London, just east of St. Paul's
Cathedral, is a narrow way called Wailing Street, and here we have
the survival of the name of one of the great and historical Roman
roads. The Watliiig Street, as the English named it, ran from
Rutupise through Canterbury and London, and then to Verulamium
across the island to Chester, and along the coast of North Wales.
We shall see that it formed afterwards, in Alfred's day, a main part
of the boundary between the Saxon and the Dane. Eormen Street
(Irmine or Ermin Street) was the name given to the great highway
leading from Pevensey and Regnum (Chichester), through London, Lin-
coln, and York to Scotland. The Fosse Wai/, said to be so called because
it was ditched on both sides, ran through Ilchester, Bath, Cirencester,
and so through Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincoln to the
eastern coast. The Icknild Way or Street went from the Yare in
Norfolk to the Tamar in Cornwall, crossing the Fosse Way in Devon-
shire. Parallel to the Fosse Way was Rykenild Street, extending from
north-east to south-west between Tynemouth and St. David's.

There seems to be little doubt that the state of peace, law, and
Increase order maintained by the Romans caused a great increase
of wealth. o f material prosperity. The population largely grew by the
influx of settlers and traders from Gaul and other provinces, and
there is good reason to believe that, in the south-eastern parts of the
island, a considerable English element was found among the people
for a long period before the final retirement of the Romans. The
land became so rich in corn as not only to supply its own wants, but
to have an abundance for exportation. In the middle of the fourth
century the Emperor Julian built warehouses in his Continental
dominions to receive corn from Britain. The amount of supply in
one season is shown by the fact that six hundred large vessels, as
ships went in that day, built from the wood of the Ardennes Forest,
made several voyages to the coast of Britain, and supplied the starving
Jlhine provinces, desolated by war, from the stores of the fertile island.

410A.D.] ROMAN REMAINS. 17

The Romans had doubtless improved the methods of agriculture, and
the abundance of corn raised proves the existence of a large rural
population. The mines were also vigorously worked. The tin-mines
of Cornwall and the lead-mines of Somerset gave a rich produce for
Roman use, and the pigs of lead in the British Museum, bearing the
stamp of Domitian and Hadrian, confirm the words of Tacitus as to
the mineral wealth of Britain. The mining and smelting of iron were
also carried on by the Romans to a large extent. An iron district was
then worked in the Forest of Dean, and within the last forty years
Roman coins have been found in the pits from which the ore was dug.
Besides the earthworks of camps and roads, there are still many

visible si^ns of the presence and work of Romans in our _,

11 mi n -r n r j . . Koman

island. The remains or Koman walls are irom time to time buildings

found in London, and are seen above ground at Lincoln, ^ Britain -
York, Chichester, and Colchester. At Richborough, once the great
military settlement Rutupise, walls yet stand in their lonely grandeur
as they have stood for seventeen hundred years. They are nearly
twelve feet thick at the base, and from twenty to thirty feet in height,
and their outer masonry is in many places as perfect as when their
alternate courses of stone and tile were first laid. The sea has with-
drawn two miles from their base ; the estuary over which they once
kept guard is but a broad dry ditch ; the area within them is now five
acres of cornfield ; but they still tell something of a great age in tho
life of the past, whose influence will abide when even these mighty
ruins shall be gone. Another splendid example of Roman work is
Burgh Castle, in Suffolk, at the junction of the Waveney with the
Yare. Fifteen hundred years ago this great fortress was the station
of the squadrons of the Stabulesian cavalry, a corps of Gallic horse
whose duty it was to watch and curb the unruly Iceni dwelling near tho
mouth of the Yare. The ivy-covered walls are very strongly built in
deep courses of flints set in cement, alternating with thin layers of red
tilework. They are about fourteen feet in height, and are probably
the finest Roman work of the kind to be seen. In the long eastern
wall are four solid circular towers, detached from the wall in most of
their height, and only united at the top. The structure of the wall is
nine feet thick, and the length of the eastern rampart is about 215 yards.
The London of those times is supposed to have reached from Black-
friars to the Tower, on the bank of the river, and in an otlier
irregular shape from the river as far as Bishopsgate. In Roman
digging for foundations deep below the present surface, the remams<
workmen have found tesselated pavements, remains of baths, broken
pottery and glass, worn-out soles of sandals, waxen tablets with the
styles or pens of bone and wood, gouges, augers, saws, knives with
the makers' names upon them, weaving-bobbins, and coins. In our
museums may be seen the pins of bronze with which the Roman ladies
and the British dames who followed their fashions fastened up the

18 ROMAN INFLUENCE ON BRITAIN. [410 A.L>.

knots and plaits of their hair. At Bignor, in^Sussex, have been un-
earthed the little-injured remains of a Roman villa, probably once the
country-house of some important official of the neighbouring city of
Chichester, the Reynum of the Romans! Here were found mosaic
pavements and painted walls of bold and elegant designs, with colours
still fresh. The plan of the house and its surroundings shows that a
rich man dwelt there, with numerous chambers and spacious courts,
baths, colonnades, and gardens. From the bed of the Thames have
been taken small images of silver and bronze, supposed to have been
the Penates or household gods of some Roman or Romanised family.
One of the most remarkable discoveries of old Roman towns was made
about thirty years ago at Wroxeter, in Shropshire. The excavations
there made disinterred a large part of the ancient Uriconium. There
were remains of streets, public buildings, and private houses; coins,
objects in bronze, and stucco with fresco -pain tings of wonderful fresh-
ness and tasteful pattern.

There are good reasons for believing that the population of Britain,
The popu= in the later times of Roman occupation, was of a very mixed
Eoman m character. Not only did the Roman legions include large
times. numbers of German soldiers, but the Roman government
encouraged immigration from Germany, and it may be supposed that
this element prepared the way for the subsequent inroads of our Teu-
tonic forefathers.

The government of Rome was essentially municipal, and the inhn-
Roman hitants of the towns had important powers and privileges,
govern- It is clear, however, that the Roman rule laid heavy fiscal
burdens on the people. The procurator or revenue officer
of the province had his subordinates in every city, to secure the rigid
collection of the poll-tax, the funeral-tax, the legacy-duty, the auction-
tax, the tax on the sale of slaves, the tithe of mining produce, and the
tribute cf corn, hay, and cattle. There was a class of free artisans in
the towns, and a large class of slaves. The municipal organisation
included the mixed population above mentioned Romans, Britons,
Germans, and Gauls. Over all was the great centralising power of
Rome itself, suspicious, exclusive, rapacious, and selfish. It was a
system of colonial oppression which outraged nationality, disarmed
and fettered the people, and prevented the resources of the land from'
being fully developed. With all this, we may remember that, amongst
the elements of modern civilisation, the spirit of legality, of regular
association, was derived from the Roman municipalities and the R,oman
laws. When the Teutonic race came in and blended therewith the
spirit of personal freedom, then we had the mingling of the two great
elements in the political institutions of modern Britain and in the
character of the British people the union of reverence for law and
order with the utmost regard for personal rights and liberties.

It seems that Britain received from her first conquerors only a faint

410 A. i).] SURVIVALS OF ROMAN USAGE. 19

tincture of Roman arts and letters. No writer of British birth is found
among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is not Extent of
likely that the people were ever generally familiar with the Roman
Latin tongue. Over large tracts of country the Britons spoke ^British
their own language, and the native tongue was only laid aside civilisa-
by dwellers in the towns and by the small class of wealthy
British landowners who dwelt in rural districts. While Latin drove out
the original tongues of Gaul and Spain, and is at this day the basis of
French, Spanish, and Portuguese, in this island it never won its way
against the British, and could not stand its ground against the English
of the new-comers. The words street and candle, and a few Latin words
taken into the Welsh language, are almost the only words due to the
Roman period in Britain. The names of our months are exceptions to
this rule, and it was in vain that the English conquerors tried to change
January for wolj '-month , and July into Itaij-monili. It is trivial yet
interesting to notice Roman influence upon our traditionary customs
and superstitions. Our parochial perambulations the "beating of the
parish-bounds" recall the Roman festival Terminalia, in honour of
Terminus, the god of limits and boundary marks. Our Mayday is the
festival of Mora. Our marriage ceremonies are all Roman the ring,
the veil, the wedding-gifts, the groomsmen, the bridesmaids, the cake.
Our funeral symbols and customs are Roman the cypress and the yew,
the sprinkling of dust on coffins, the flowers strewn on graves, the black
for mourning. The lucky and unlucky days of a superstition now
almost dead amongst us were the white and black days dies albi and
dies atri of the Romans. If we have any faith in odd numbers, so had
they. The dread once caused by the screech-owl's cry at night had the
same source. The civilisation derived by the Britons from their Roman
masters was. upon the whole view, scanty and superficial, and was
nearly effaced by those who, in the fifth and following centuries,
stepped into their place as masters of the soil.

BOOK II.

BRITAIN BECOMES ENGLAND (450-828.)
CHAPTEK I.

THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH.

Our English ancestors. Their religious and social state. Heal cause of invasion.
Historic doubts as to details. The certainties of the matter. Nature of con-
quest. The parts left to Britons.

THE greatest ancestor of the English race is the German hero Irmin or
Our fore- Arminius, who in A.D. 9 made Augustus wail for the legions
fathers. destroyed under the command of Yarns. It was that great
and decisive victory that kept Germany free from the domination of
Rome and made an England possible. The Romanised Celts whom
our Teutonic forefathers found in the land did indeed influence the
character of our nation, but the main stream of our people was and is
Germanic. Arminius was the leader of the people called the Cherusci,
who were of the race called Old Saxons, or Saxons of the interior of
Germany. Closely akin to these were the Saxons of the coasts of the
North Sea and the Baltic, from the Rhine to the mouth of the Oder.
The Saxons, who were in a large measure our forefathers, dwelt amid
woods and marshes on the lower courses of the Elbe, the Weser, and
the Ems, and in the southern and narrower part of the peninsula
which divides the North Sea from the Baltic. They belonged to the
Low German race, as the people near the coast have been called, in
distinction from the High Germans of the interior and hilly parts of
the land. The name Saxon is supposed to come from that of the large
knife or short sword, seax or sex, which they carried. A people called
the Frisians, dwelling along the coast from the mouths of the Rhine to
the Elbe, were absorbed by these Saxons, and the old Frisian tongue,
a sister language of the modern Flemish and Dutch, was the Continental
dialect which approached most nearly to the old English of our ancestors.
The Angles may be identical with the powerful tribe called the Angri-
varii (i.e., Angre or Angle-ware, the Angle people), whom Tacitus places
on the Weser and the Elbe, in the rear of the Frisians and Saxons. It
has been thought that they formed a more numerous and powerful part
of the invaders of Britain, from the facts of their having peopled a

450 A.D.] THE EARLY GERMAN TRIBES. 21

larger district of the country, and having at last given their name
to the whole. The Jutes came from the peninsula called after them,
Jutland, and were also of Low Germanic race. These three peoples,
the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, were the chief makers and
founders of England in blood, language, law, and freedom.

While the Roman Empire had been converted to Christianity, the
free German tribes had clung to their old Pagan faith. The R * .
names of some of their chief gods are contained in our present of the
names for the days of the week. Thus Thursday is the day race>
of Thor, the god of thunder, air, and rain. He was a kind of Northern
Jupiter, who smote down his foes with a hammer instead of a thunderbolt.
Sunday and Monday were named after the two great lights of the sky.
Tuesday comes from Tiw, the Taisco named by Tacitus as the national
deity of the Teuton race, who has been compared to the Roman god
Mars. Wednesday is the day of Woden or Odin, the god of war, but
also inventor of letters and guardian of bounds and roads. His worship
was common to all the Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples. He was
held to be ancestor of the kings or chiefs of every tribe, and was, in
fact, a deified hero. Friday means FreycCs day, named after a goddess
who was the Northern Venus and wife of Woden. Saturday is so
called either from Saturn, or from a water-god named Saetere. There
were many minor deities, perhaps relics of a still more ancient mytho-
logy, such as Eostre, the goddess of spring or of morning, whence is
derived the name of Easter as a church festival. The "weird sisters"
of Macbeth come from Wyrd, the goddess of death, who wove the web
of destiny. There were in this religion glimpses of a belief in a future
life, and of a state of rewards and punishments. The heaven of war-
riors who fell in battle was a bright palace called Valhalla, where they
should lie on couches, quaffing ale or mead from the skulls of foemen
who had fallen by their hand.

The people dwelling on the German coast were a bold and hardy race of
mariners, who lived by fishing and by piracy. They launched social and
their ships or keels, and went forth to plunder commerce on political
the sea or to harry the coasts of Gaul arid Britain. A Latin and cha-
poet and bishop of the fifth century describes them as the racter -
fiercest, most cunning, and most dangerous of foes. They feared no
peril of shipwreck, storm, or war, and were ever ready to get booty at
the risk of life. The inland folk were farmers, living by the use of
pasture and the plough in little settlements called townships, from the
tun, or hedge and ditch that formed its outer bulwark. They too were
of a warlike spirit, and very jealous of their independence, both as
regards the men of their own settlement and those who dwelt outside
their borders. The arms for warfare were swords, spears, bows and
arrows, battle-axes, heavy clubs with iron spikes, and a shield or target
worn on the left arm. The great fact to be noted in the early political
condition of our forefathers is that of their personal freedom. There

22 CAUSES OF INVASION. [450 A.D.

were the eorlas (earls), men of high birth, the nobles of the community,
from whom were freely chosen, by the mass of the people, those who
should rule in time of peace or lead out to conflict in time of war.
The main body of freemen were the ceorlas (churls), which simply
meant "the men," as opposed to slaves. The usage of the freemen
meeting from time to time at the mote-Mil of the township is worthy
of special note. There disputes were settled, justice was rendered, and
appointments made of men to serve the little state in offices of peace
or war. It was a rude and early form of parliament, where self-
government was carried on by the freemen in person instead of by
their chosen representatives.

The usual statement made is, that the Britons paved the way for
their own subjugation by the German tribes beyond the North
English Sea when they called on them for help against the Picts and
invasion. g cots> ^hj s a pp ears to be a partial and superficial view of
the subject. We have already seen that the Saxons had to some extent
become peaceful settlers in Britain before the Roman legions were
withdrawn. In. the south-eastern part of the island Roman and
Saxon were dwellers side by side. The truth is that these invasions
by successive bodies of Jutes, Saxons, and Angles formed a part of a
great general movement. In the middle of the fifth century, the time
at which we have now arrived, the Roman Empire was breaking up in
all directions. The Goths and Yandals, the Franks, the Suevi, and the
Huns were pressing in from north and east. Rome itself had been
taken in 410 by the West Goths under Alaric. Our Teutonic fathers
were only following the fashion. They already knew from previous
settlers of their race in Britain that it was a fertile and a goodly land
to conquer and possess. They were, perhaps, feeling at home the pres-
sure of increasing population and the failure of old resources of plunder
on the sea and on the coasts of Gaul.

The story of the English conquest involves an account of victories
The con- anc ^ defeats extending over a period of more than a hundred
quest: years from 450 onwards. No more perplexing subject could
of the fall to the lot of the historian. Macaulay holds that "in Britain
subject. an a g e O f fable ( a t the time of the conquest) completely
separates two ages of truth/'' and that "Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern
and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred, are mythical persons, whose very
existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must be classed
with those of Hercules and Romulus." Authorities so high as Lappen-
berg, Palgrave, and Kemble also regard the whole account of the English
conquest as of no historical value, and maintain that M 7 e have no real
history of the English conquerors until their conversion to Christianity
at the end of the sixth century. In reply to this, a most able and learned
critic can only say that "there are good reasons for believing that the
commonly received account of the conquest is based upon historical facts.'*
The truth is that there are two sets of traditions, those of the British,

450-520 A.D.] THE JUTES AND THE SAXONS. 23

and those of the early English writers, and that their accounts vary in
many important points. Under these circumstances, we can only decline
to be drawn into a maze of difficulty, and must confine ourselves to tracing
the main course of events. The great fact is that Germanic tribes by
slow degrees possessed themselves of the greater part of Britain.

In the year 450 a body of Jutes landed in Kent, in what was then
the Isle of Thanet. At that time, and for long afterwards, Course of
it was divided from the mainland by a broad strait. The (i ^^
Stour, now but a narrow stream, was then a wide river, Jutes,
opening into an estuary between Sandwich and Ramsgate, in the
direction of Peg well Bay. Ships from France and Germany used to
sail up this estuary and through the river into the Thames by Re-
culver. The Jutes, whether they came as friends to help the fight
against the Picts, or as foes to help themselves, came ashore at a spot
called Ebbes Fleet, a name now given to a farmhouse on a strip of high
ground rising out of Minster Marsh. They are said to have driven off
the Picts with ease, and then, determined to conquer for themselves
and stay in their new quarters, to have sent for fresh forces of their
own tribe, and of their Angle and Saxon friends. A great victory
over the islanders was won at ^glesford (now Aylesford), on the
Medwjiv. A massacre followed, and, as a rule, the pagan conquerors
waged at first a war of extermination. The churches were burnt, the
priests slain, and the few peasants who escaped the sword became the
slaves of the conquerors. All this, however, was the work of more
than twenty years. The Britons made a stubborn resistance, and rallied
again and again. At last the work was done, and the Jutish kingdom
of Kent was founded. It is the only part of the east of Britain which
has kept the old British names. By a process often repeated during
the conquest, the name of the capital, called by the Romans Durovernuw,
was changed into Cant-wara-byrig, or Kent-mens-borougli, since shortened
into Canterbury.

The Saxons now appear upon the scene as conquerors and as founders
of kingdoms of their own. In the year 477, a body of that ( 2 .) The
people led by Ella landed at the place which they called Saxons.
Shoreham, on the southern coast. Many battles followed, and it was
not till 491 that they succeeded in taking the fortress of Anderida, the
Roman walls of which are still to be seen near Pevensey. They slew
the defenders, according to the chronicle, to the last man, and thus
was founded the kingdom of the South Saxons, which maintains its
name as the county of Sussex. The Roman town Regnum became the
capital under the name of Gissan-ceasler, the camp or city of Cissa,
who was son of Ella. It is, of course, the modern Chichester. This
new dominion included a large part of Surrey. The third kingdom
was also founded by Saxons led by Cerdic and his son Cynric ; they
landed in 495 on the shore of Southampton Water. Slowly, in years
of stubborn conflict, the invaders won their way. We hear of a great

04 ARRIVAL OF ANGLES. [450-600 A.D.

victory over the Britons at Cerdices-ford (Charford, in Hampshire),
and that in 519 Cerdic took the title of king of the West Saxons or
Wessex. The progress of these Saxons to the west is said to have been
checked for many years by a great defeat from the Britons in 520.
The scene of conflict was at Mount Badon, which was perhaps Badbury,
in Dorset, and the British leader was the semi-fabulous King Arthur.
After more than thirty years, the work of conquest M^as continued by
Cynric, and in 577, under his son Ceawlin, the cities of Gloucester,
Bath, and Cirencester became the prizes of war. Under later rulers
Wessex lost all territory north of the Thames. The capital of this
kingdom was Wintan-ceaster (Winchester), the Venta Belgarum of the
Roman time. A fourth settlement of Saxon invaders had founded
joint-kingdoms of the East Saxons or Essex, and of the Middle Saxons
or Middlesex, in the year 526, with capitals at Colchester and London.

As the Jutes and Saxons had possessed themselves of much of the
(3 ) The southern part of the island, so the Angles came over in their
Angles. ships and established themselves in the north, centre, and east.
At an unknown date towards the end of the sixth century, invading
bodies of Angles founded the kingdom of East Anglia, comprising the
territory of Norfolk, Suffolk, and parts of Cambridgeshire and Hunting-
donshire. Other Angles made their way by the rivers, as will be shown
hereafter, into the centre of the land, which we now call the Midland
Counties. This country got afterwards the name of Mercia, as being on
the March or border between Englishmen and the Britons on the west.
We know little of the details of conquest in the north. In Roman times
the district from the Humber to the Tees was known as Deira. Then
came a mass of forest between the Tees and the Tyne, in what became
the county of Durham. The land from the Tyne to the Forth was
called Bernida. This great territory was assailed by English invaders
some time in the sixth century, both from the north, after landings in
the Forth and on the coast, and from the south by those who made
their way inland through the Humber and the Yorkshire Ouse and its
tributaries. York and other towns were taken and burnt, and fire and
slaughter sped through the land, amongst the villas of British land-
owners and the flocks that fed on the wolds. Thus was founded the
kingdom of Bernida, under a leader named Ida, with its capital at
Bamborough, the impregnable rock-fortress whose ruins still frown
from the steeps that face the Fame Isles. The kingdom of Deira had
its centre at York. Towards the close of the sixth century these two
were united to form the kingdom of Nortlmmbria.

Such were the events which, in a struggle of nearly a century and a
Nature of talf ' made Brifcain in to England. It was the most complete
the con- of all the conquests effected by the German tribes who so
largely shared in the breaking-up of the Roman Empire. In
other lands, the conquerors adopted the language, the laws, the social
life, and the religion of the conquered race. The followers of Cerdic

450-600 A.D.] DIFFICULTIES OF SUBJUGATION. 25

and Ida brought with them to their settlements in Britain all the
superstitions of the Elbe, and were still offering worship in the temples
of Thor and Woden while the German princes ruling in France, Italy,
and Spain were adoring the relics of Christian martyrs and discussing
with bishops and councils points of Christian theology. In the Eng-
land which thus arose on the ruins of Roman Britain the faith of
Christ, so far as the sword of the conquerors was carried, vanished for
a time from the earth. The name of the country was changed. The
language of the new-comers, while adopting a few Celtic words from
the Britons who survived as the hewers of wood and drawers of water,
swept away all the Latin tongue of the dwellers in towns and the
British dialects of the country parts.

We have seen that the conquest of Britain by the Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes was thorough, within limits to be hereafter noted. cir cuni _
Yet the acquirement of not more than two-thirds of the land stances
from the Channel to the Forth needed nearly a hundred and con- 6
fifty years. Some account of the reasons both for the com- Quest,
pleteness and length of the work should be given. W^e may notice,
first, the stubborn resistance made by the defenders of the soil, and
the merciless dealing of the victors with the vanquished. The one
caused the other, and the free use of fire and sword in one region,
goaded in turn the dwellers in another to hold out to the last. Such
a struggle ended either in annihilation of the British or in their flight,
without hope of return, to the fastnesses of the north and west. A
contest of such a kind could not but be protracted. The Romanised
Britons, as well as the purely Celtic population, showed the same
tenacious courage to the German invaders as their fathers had dis-
played, four or five centuries earlier, in their contests with the legions
of Rome. The resistance to conquest was also much aided by the
possession, on the part of the Britons, of fortified strongholds and towns,
left in their hands by the Romans. The semi- barbarian invaders
had no siege-apparatus, and the solid walls erected by Roman or
native hands under the direction of Roman builders and engineers
could and did defy for years all attempts at capture by assault. The
fortress of Lymne. near Hythe, was not taken until 473 by the Jutish
invaders, who landed in 450. Anderida was only captured in 491 by
the Saxons, who had arrived in 477. We must also consider the nature
of the country with which the advance of the conquerors had to deal.
It was, to an extent which we can hardly now conceive, of a woody and
marshy character. The invaders had no corps of engineers, such as the
Roman armies included in their ranks, to make firm causeways over
marshes, to bridge streams, and clear a path through woods. Where
the great roads' ran they could make a rapid march, but elsewhere their
progress was slow. Thus it was that, though by the year 500 the coast
from Hampshire to Lincolnshire was in the power of the new-comers,
they could not for a long time, in many quarters, make their way

20 PROGRESS OF THE INVADERS. [450-600 A.I >.

inland. They were hemmed in by great masses of woodland and fen.
Near the southern coast there was the great Andreds-weald, extending
for over a hundred miles from Kent far into Hampshire, and north-
wards almost to the Thames. It was a very difficult piece of country
for the invaders to master, consisting of bush, moor and forest, which
afforded excellent cover for those who were resisting an advance into
the interior. On the other hand, the progress of the invaders was
easy, in the ships of that age, wherever there were rivers flowing from
far inland. Their way up the Thames had been barred at first by the
fortress of London, but up the rivers which unite to form the Humber
a way lay open to the heart of the country. As they passed up the
Trent beyond Nottingham, they would come, near what is now called
Kegworth, to the place where the Trent receives, at two miles apart, the
waters of the Derwent and the Soar. The adventurous occupants of
the barks would, if they took the northward turn, come by the Derwent
to Derby and the country beyond. If their fancy led them south, the
Soar would give them a road to Leicester. Those who kept up the larger
stream, the Trent, would move 011 to the capture of Repton, and then
a stream on the right, the Dove, might tempt them on to Uttoxeter and
Rocester, If they still bore away up Trent, they would come within
striking distance of Lichfield, and then, on re-embarking, could make
their way through the heart of Staffordshire.

The old Celtic inhabitants, when driven away to the west and north,
Country f rme d several small states. A considerable part of England,
retained the whole of Wales, and most of the Scotch lowlands, lay
by B r ri- beyond the earlier limits of English dominion. From the
tons. Clyde to the Land's End, the whole western side of the island

remained yet unsubdued. This large tract of country was, from its
hilly nature, best suited to afford a stronghold of independence to those
who had lost the plains. In the south-west, by slow degrees, the con-
querors who had settled in Wessex advanced from the Salisbury Avon
first to the Exe, and then to the Tamar, but it was nearly two hundred
years after the landing of Cerdic in Hampshire that the men of Wessex
made their way into Devonshire. There was the British kingdom of
Devon and Cornwall, which bore the name of Damnoma, or of West
Wales, A large native population also remained in Somersetshire,
Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire. In Cambria or Wales, still wholly British,
there were several distinct petty kingdoms. From the Sol way to
the estuary of the Clyde was the British kingdom of Strath-Clyde^
with its capital at Al-cluyd, now called Dumbarton. The kingdom of
Cumbria included Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, ex-
tending from the Solway to the Mersey, and from the sea to the
Pennine Hills. Its chief city was Caerleol, now Carlisle,

StanforcCt 3-eogJ Efttib* LcmAcm..

597 A.D.] INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER IT.
ENGLAND A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY.

Augustine and ^Ethelberht. First English bishops. The missionary-monks. Church
of England begins. Archbishop Theodore. Advance of civilisation.

IN the last years of the sixth century, Gregory I., or Gregory the Great,

was Pope, and a powerful king named ^Ethelberht ruled in ,, .

TT- T-T- i j > i i ,1 i i < i hstaDiisn-

Kent. His sway extended tar beyond the borders or the ment of

original Jutish kingdom, and included Middlesex and Essex, anity* 1 "
and much of Mercia and East Anglia. He still held the faith Augustine,
of his fathers, but he was no bigoted adherent of paganism.
At this time friendship and intercourse had begun between southern
England and northern Gaul or France. We hear of English traders
with Rouen making their way to the great fair of St. Denis near Paris.
The English monarch had formed a very close tie with the Franks in
marrying Bertha, daughter of their King Charibert of Paris. By the
terms of her marriage-contract she enjoyed the exercise of her Christian
worship in a little church near Canterbury, called St. Martin's, built
in the Roman times. She had brought with her a Frankish bishop
named Luidhard, and he may have asked Gregory to send men from
Rome to preach the Gospel in Britain. A Roman abbot, named Aug-
ustine, was despatched with a body of about forty monks as mission-
aries. As the only language of these men was Latin, they took with
them interpreters from France, and landed in the Isle of Thanet in
the year 597. The superstition of the English pagan of that age is
shown by the fact that King ^Ethelberht took the precaution of admit-
ting them to an interview only in the open air, where the charms or
spells of those who might, for all he knew, be wizards, would have less
power over him. The Christian visitors advanced, bearing a silver cross
and a painted image of Christ, singing the litany, and offering up
prayer for the success of their efforts. After hearing the discourse
translated to him, he declared that their words were good, but that he
could not give up the faith of his fathers. He allowed them, however,
publicly to teach and preach their religion, and gave them a dwelling-
place in his city of Canterbury. In the course of a year the king
embraced the new faith, and many of his subjects were also baptized.
Thus was laid the foundation of the Church of England. Augustine
became in due time the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and built a
church on the site where now stands the metropolitan cathedral of
England. Some time afterwards the new faith spread over the kingdom
of Essex, and its chief preacher there, Mellitus, became Bishop of

28 PAULINUS. [627 A.D.

London. A Christian church was built on the hill now crowned by
St. Paul's Cathedral, and in Thorney Island, to the west, a church
dedicated to St. Peter arose on the spot where we now see Westminster
Abbey. In Kent the see of Rochester was founded by Augustine.
This conversion of the English settlers to Christianity was a great and
salutary revolution. Western Europe was at that time a great spiritual
commonwealth united under the supremacy claimed by the Pope. Into
this federation our ancestors were now admitted. The land was re-
united with Western civilisation, and Latin became once more the
tongue used in its religion and its literature.

Early in the seventh century Edwin was king of Northumbria.
Convert H ^ s voutn had been one of exile and suffering, but he had
sionofthe regained his kingdom, and was married to ^Ethelburga, the
Paulinus, Christian daughter of JEthelberht of Kent. The young wife
627> had brought with her to her new country one of the companions

of Augustine, a bishop named Paulinus. His efforts to convert the
king met at first with no success, but at last Edwin called his council
together, and the question was there discussed. We are told that the
chief heathen priest, named Coin, declared himself against the old
religion, on the ground that, in spite of all his devotion, the gods had
not given him the worldly prosperity to which he thought himself
entitled. An aged layman then stood up and complained that the
priests of their present faith could tell them nothing of the future life.
Might it not, he urged, be worth while to pay heed to a new doctrine
which brought them something more certain 1 The discourse of Paulinus
ended in the conversion of the king and the priest, and Coifi him-
self went forth to hurl his lance at the chief idol and to set fire to
the heathen temple. Edwin was baptized at York on Easter Day,
627, in a wooden church erected for the purpose, and dedicated to
St. Peter. Paulinus became the first Archbishop of York, and a stone
cathedral arose on the spot now ennobled by the magnificent York
Minster.

St. David, the apostle of Wales, was a priest of the school of the
St. David, Egyptian monks and son of a Cymric prince. He worked
tury C6n " as a missionary in the sixth century, and became Bishop of
Caerleon, and then of Menevia, afterwards St. David's.

Even before this time the Christian faith had been preached in the
St. Col- North. St. Columba, a native of Ireland, set up his famous
umba, 565. school for priests at the island of lona in 565. He worked
as a missionary among the wild Pictish tribes beyond the Forth.

St. Aidan, a monk of lona, was an apostle, after Paulinus, of the
St. Aidan, kingdom of Northumbria. The downfall of Edwin at the
circa 640. hands of a heathen king named Penda brought with it, for a
time, an eclipse of the Christian faith. A new king, named Oswald,
sent to lona for missionaries, and Aidan had great success in his
preaching. He became Abbot of Lindisfarne, as head of the monastery

670 A.D.] ST. 'CUTHBERT. 29

there, which gave the place its name of Holy Island. From this head-
quarters of the faith, preachers went forth through the wilds of the
northern region, zealously helped by the power and influence of the
pious king. Aidan is regarded as the first of the line of the bishops
of Durham.

Ceadda, or St. Chad, Bishop of Mercia, is regarded as the founder of
the see of Lichfield. He was a monk of Lindisfarne, who gt. Chad
traversed the land on foot to preach the faith of Christ. circa 67 -

St. Cuthbert, a famous father of the early English Church, is said
to have been born near Melrose about 635. Brought up as a gt Cuth .
shepherd in the land of the Teviot and the Tweed, he was bert
inspired with longings for a religious life, and made his way to 6f
some monks of Lindisfarne who had set up a mission-station at Melrose.
He had many gifts which fitted him for success as a preacher among
the peasants of North umbria and the Lowlands a hardy frame, a
pleasant manner, sound sense, humour, patience, real piety, and faith.
In 664 he became Prior of Melrose, and then took charge of the
monastery at Lindisfarne. After this he withdrew as a hermit to
the desolate isle of Farne, and was only drawn thence by the earnest
entreaties of the king of Northumbria. Grievous trouble came on the
land in a contest with the Picts of the north, and, after vain efforts for
peace, Cuthbert gave up his post as Bishop of Lindisfarne, and retired
once more to his hermitage at the islet, where he died in 687, in his
hut amid the gulls and the seals. His body was buried, at his own
request, in the monastery of Lindisfarne, but found its last resting-
place, three hundred years later, in the Cathedral of Durham. This
greatest of the Northern saints was held in deep reverence by the early
English Church. Pilgrimages were made to his shrine, and a cloth
which he had used at mass was formed into a standard borne by
Northern armies when they went forth to fight the Scots. It waved
over English heads at Flodden, and perished by a bigot's hands when
it was burnt by Calvin's sister, wife of the first Protestant Dean of
Durham.

The Church of England was first organised in its present shape by
a Greek monk called Theodore of Tarsus. A synod had been Theodore
held at Whitby to decide a question of some importance which of Tarsus,
had arisen in the Church of Northumbria. That Church 670 '
mainly owed its existence to the labours of the monks of Lindisfarne,
who looked to lona as their spiritual metropolis. lona, again, looked
to Ireland as the source of her Christianity, since her school of preachers
was founded by St. Columba, an apostle of the Church of Ireland.
On the other hand, there were those who claimed Northumbria for the
see of Rome, on the ground that Paulinus, a colleague of Augustine,
had been the founder of the see of York. At the Council of Whitby in
664 a decision was given in favour of Rome, and the Pope in 669 sent
Theodore as Archbishop of Canterbury to secure the newly- con verted

30 CIVILISING INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. [670 A.I>.

land to his spiritual control. The new primate set himself to the work
of setting in order existing dioceses and of forming new ones, all de-
pendent on Canterbury as the mother-church. In due time, after
Theodore's age, the parish system became established, the Jewish
system of tithes provided a regular income for the clergy, and the
Church was fairly started on its eventful, and, on the whole, beneficent
career.

In the train of Christianity came the learning which, at that time,
Cliristia- belonged to the clergy alone. The poetry and eloquence
civSisa- d of the Augustan age of Rome were studied in the religious
tion. houses of the land. A school was founded by Archbishop

Theodore at Canterbury, and it was there that the learned Bede or
Beeda gained his knowledge of Greek, which few men in Western
Europe then included in their range of study. Benedict, surnamed
Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, did much to improve the art of building,
and was the first glazier of English windows. Settlements of monks in
the wilder parts of the land led the way in the clearing of forests and
draining of marshes, and new towns arose around the religious houses.
In the Fen country of the east, amid a reedy and misty wilderness,
where the only dwellers were wild ducks "and moorhens, the cathedral
and abbey of Medesh am stead gathered round them the houses which
in a later age were called the city of Peterborough. Not far away
were the abbeys of Ely and Crowland, whose monks also toiled at the
reclaiming of the fen. All over the country the preachers and teachers
of the Christian faith were almost the sole promoters of physical and
intellectual good.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHIEF EARLY ENGLISH KINGDOMS.

Rise and fall of ^Northurnbria. Penda of Mercia. Offa of Mercia. Offa's Dyke.
Rise of Wessex. Egbert unites the Kingdoms. The Celtic element.

WHEN the conquerors had fairly settled down in that portion of the
The kmd which they had won, they began to turn their arms in

kSfg^ Sh J ealous rivalry against each other. For over two hundred
doms: years we have a chronicle of fierce hostilities and treacherous
Jnt - alliances, which Milton declared to have no more interest or
value for the moderns than the "strife of kites and crows." It is not
needful to take a view so extreme or contemptuous as this, but the
full tale is wearisome, and we here give only the chief events of a
struggle for supremacy, which was to end in bringing all the kingdoms
under the control of the king of Wessex. The kingdom of Kent, as we

613-675 A.D.] PAGAN REACTION. ;M

have seen, had risen into greatness under King ./Ethelberht, who died
in 616. Besides the part which he had played in the introduction
of the Christian religion, he was distinguished in enacting the first
written laws put forth by any of the conquering people. He followed
in this the advice of his council of wise men, and his ordinances were in
force, with variations of form, for several hundred years. They were,
in fact, the common law of the Germanic tribes reduced to a statutory
form. Soon after the death of ^Ethelberht the power of Kent passed
away in a revolt of the people of the Midlands, and Esedwald, king of
East Anglia, for a time was supreme to the south of the Humber.

Northumbria became powerful under ^Ethelfrith, who began to rule
in 593. In 613 he attacked the city of Chester, and by its . .
capture divided the British kingdoms of Cumbria and Strath- uinbria,
clyde from the kindred states in Wales. It was in this 588 ~ 685 -
contest that occurred the slaughter of over a thousand monks of
Bangor, a monastery in Flintshire. The Northumbrian king was a
heathen, and as he was fighting with the Welsh near Chester, he saw
many monks praying. Then he cried, "If these men pray to their
God that we may be beaten, it is all one as if they were fighting
against us," and so, at his command, they were smitten with the edge
of the sword. He died himself, four years later, in fighting against
Usedwald, king of the East Angles. We have seen how Edwin, king
of Northumbria, welcomed the Christian faith to his land. He was
an able and vigorous ruler, and under him the power of the Northern
kingdom reached its highest point. The southern bank of the Forth
was guarded by the city which he founded and called by his own name
as Eadwine's burgh, now Edinburgh. He was loved and feared alike
by those under his rule, and so strong were the law and order that
prevailed, that men declared in his day that "a woman with her bairn
could go safe on foot from sea to sea."

In Kent, on the death of ^thelberht, a feeling in favour of the old
religion had begun to have some power. The kings of East p
Anglia and Essex became semi-pagans, but Penda, a powerful reaction:
king of Mercia, was an open champion of heathenism, and fcUgo'f
used his sword freely against the Christian kings. He Mercia,
formed an alliance with a Welsh king, and in 633 defeated
and slew Edwin of Northumbria. Cadwallon the Welshman captured
York, but was defeated and killed near Hexham by Oswald of North-
umbria, a son of the former King -<3th el frith. Oswald then, as we
have seen, revived the Christian faith in Northumbria by the help of
missionaries from lona, and for seven years ruled in power. In 642
he, too, was defeated and slain by Penda, who was supreme over
Wessex and Mercia, and most of the north, but could never capture
the fortress of Bam borough. At last the powerful Pagan met his own
doom. He had never, perhaps, been so much the foe of the Cross as
of Northumbrian supremacy, and at one time he allowed preachers

32 NORTHUMBRIA AND MERCIA. [685-796 A.D.

from Lindisfarne to carry the Gospel again among the Mercians. In
655 there came the end of heathendom in the land when Penda was
defeated and killed in battle with Oswin or Oswy of Nortlmmbria.

In 670 Ecgfrith succeeded his father Oswy, and turned his arms
End of with success against his British neighbours. He drove them
North- first from Cumbria, and then attacked the kingdom of Strath-
power 3 ' 11 clyde. Marching even beyond the Forth, he subdued some of
685 - the southern Picts, and a few years later the bishopric of

Abercorn was founded to the north of the Firth. In 675 he came
south and routed the king of Mercia, and took from him the pro-
vince of Lindiswaras or Lincolnshire. In 685 his life, and with it
the power of Northumbria, came to an end at the hands of the Picts.
A rising drew Ecgfrith again beyond the Forth, and at the moor of
Nectansmere, in Fifeshire, he and most of his nobles fell in a lost
battle. The fallen kingdom had done good work in the spreading of
the Christian faith, and its monasteries became, for the ages to come,
centres of both religious and intellectual life.

We have seen that the pagan Penda had allowed his Mercian subjects
(3) Mercia, ^ receive the Christian faith from the monks of Lindisfarne.
659-828. Jn 659 Wulfhere became king of "Mercia, and ruled for sixteen
years in energy and strength. He carried his arms with success to the
Severn and the Wye, and in 66 1 severely defeated the men of Wessex.
The kingdoms of Essex and Sussex acknowledged him as over-lord, and
Mercia became supreme over all the centre of the land. Another king
of Mercia brought Kent under his sway, and in 726 ^Ethelbald, a
powerful monarch, who ruled for nearly forty years (716-755), began
a long struggle with Wessex. In 733 he captured the royal town of
Somerton in Oxfordshire, and became master of all England south of
the Humber. In a charter of the year 736 he signs himself as " King
of Britain." In 754 his power came to an end in a desperate battle
with the West Saxons at Burford. Kent, Essex, and East Anglia thus
became free from the power of Mercia, and Wessex resumed her lord-
ship over the territory south of the Thames. The Mercian power re-
vived under the great King Offa, whose reign takes us on from 758
to 796. In 775 he gained a victory at Otford, in the now fertile vale
bright with hops and corn near the town of Sevenoaks. He became
master of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Essex, and then turned his forces
against the Welsh. About 780 he crossed the Severn, and took from
the king of Powys, on the eastern side of North Wales, his capital,
Pengwyrn. The rough state of the country in those days is shown by
the change of the town's name to Scrdlibes-lbyrig, the town in the scrub
or bush, now known as Shrewsbury. He then planted English settle-
ments to the west of the Severn, between the river and the mountains,
and secured his new frontier by the famous 0/a's Dyke. This was a
rampart and ditch along the whole length of the Welsh border, from
the mouth of the Dee to that of the Wye. When the Welsh broke

688 A.D.] INA, KING OF WESSEX. 33

through, the Mercian king drove them back and routed them with
fearful slaughter near Rhyddlan, in Flintshire. In his reign and
person we find an English king, for the first time in our history,
entering into friendly relations with a Continental monarch. The
English Church had sent forth missionaries to preach the Gospel to
their German kinsmen, who still remained heathens. Bishop Wilfrith
taught the faith among the Frisians, and "Winfrith, known as St.
Boniface and as the Apostle of Germany, became the first Archbishop
of Mainz. It was through these men that a friendship was brought
about between Offa and Charles the Great, king of the Franks, and
afterwards Roman emperor, wrongly known as Charlemagne. Letters
and gifts were exchanged, and Offa, at his friend's request, sent to his
court the scholar Alcuin, a Northumbrian monk of great fame for his
learning. This excellent man became chief teacher or professor at the
school founded by Charles for himself, his sons, his female relatives,
his nobles, and his clergy. The murder of ^Ethelberht, king of East
Anglia, when he was a guest at his court in 792, and the seizure of
the dead king's realm, are stains on the memory of this greatest of
Mercian kings. According to the fashion of the time, he strove to
make amends by gifts to the Church. The monastery of St. Alban's
claims Offa as its founder, and he paid the Pope a yearly sum for the
support of an English school at Rome. A tax of a silver penny was
laid for the purpose on each household. Being paid at Rome on the
feast of Saint Peter, the contribution became famous under the name
of Peters-pence^ and was claimed as a tribute by the Pope, which was
generally paid until its final abolition under Elizabeth. After the
death of Offa in 796, internal strife swiftly caused the ruin of Mercian
power.

Some of the people of Wessex had received the Christian religion
early in the seventh century from a preacher named Birinus, ( 4 ) wessex,
who came over from Gaul, and much more was done there 688-802.
for the new faith under the supremacy of Oswald, the pious king of
Northumbria. The king of Wessex was baptized, and a bishopric was
founded at the city of Dorchester, now an obscure village in the south
of Oxfordshire, but then an important place and royal town. After -a
long period of weakness largely caused by internal strife, Wessex re-
vived in power in the latter half of the seventh century. Her people
forced back the Britons far into Somersetshire, and also conquered
Sussex. Ine or Ina, who was king from 688 to 726, was a wise and
just ruler, who treated with kindness the Britons whom he subdued
in the west. He allowed them to keep their lands, and encouraged
marriages between his Celtic and Saxon subjects. He is famous for
his code of the laws of the West-Saxons, and founded a bishopric at
Sherborne, to divide the work of the Church with the see of Win-
chester. He was also founder of the church which became the
cathedral of Wells, and of the great Abbey of Glastonbury. This

34 EGBERT, "REX ANGLORUM." [802 A. D.

greatest of the Wessex kings showed no less vigour in maintaining
his position by force of arms. He became master of Kent, Essex, and
London, and, in order to guard his conquests in the west, he built a
fortress on the Tone which became the town of Taunton. In 715 he
had a great battle with the men of Mercia, in which he at least held
his own. The end of his reign was troubled by civil strife and re-
bellion, and Ina gave up his royal power, and went as a pilgrim to
Rome, where he died in 728. At a later period the power of Wessex
was extended over Devon, and then a time of civil strife brings us
to the days of Egbert. He was of the royal line of Cerdic, and had
claimed the crown of Wessex, but was driven into exile, first with Offa
of Mercia, and then at the court of Charles the Great, king of the
Franks. As the friend and follower of this ablest monarch of his age,
one of the great men of Christendom, Egbert learnt the military and
political lessons which fitted him for the part he was to play in the
history of England. He was for thirteen years under the training
of a great conqueror, administrator, and civiliser of mankind. He
inarched with his armies against Lombards and Huns, and took part
with great hosts who swept the countries from the Rhone to the
Danube, and came down in conquering force from the Alps on the
plains of Lombardy. When peace came after victory, Egbert was
doubtless a learner in the school founded by the great king who, as
we have seen, borrowed Alcuin from Offa of Mercia. At last the
exile's day arrived, and, recalled by the nobles of Wessex, he ascended
the throne of his ancestors, in the year 802.

The new king of Wessex had before him the task of reducing many
Egbert, discordant elements to a state of harmony and order, and
802-828. bringing all to submit to one dominant power. In 815 and
following years he was at war with the Britons of Cornwall and
Wales, and the rule of Wessex w r as extended in name to the Land's
End, but the country was not occupied in force, and the people of
Cornwall kept their Celtic tongue for centuries. In Mercia, a state
of anarchy existed, and Egbert seized the chance presented. In 823,
he defeated a Mercian army at Ellandun (Wilton) in Wiltshire, and
became virtual master of the centre of the land. In 828 Northumbria
yielded to him without a struggle, and East Anglia also was helpless
against his arms. He was already ruler of all the south, by annexa-
tion of Kent, Sussex, and Essex, and thus, for the first time, we have
something like the reduction of the whole land from the Channel to
the Forth under the power of one ruler. East Anglia, Mercia, and
Northumbria were allowed to elect tributary kings, who were vassals
to Egbert as their overlord. In some of his charters he styled
himself simply "king of the W^est Saxons," but in others he claimed,
as Rex Anr/lorum, to be ruler of all the English.

^The common belief that the Celtic population of Britain was exter-
minated, or driven into Wales and Brittany by the Angles and Saxons,

828 A.D.] THE CELTIC ELEMENT IN ENGLAND, 35

has no historical basis. Some fanciful writers, and many credulous
readers, have held that the conquerors made an end of all c er ti c
the Britons, slaying man, woman, and child, and carrying element
on throughout the land a work of havoc and desola- English
tion. Our Teuton forefathers, with all their fierceness, were Cation,
not so reckless, foolish, and cruel as this belief would imply. We
hear, indeed, of great slaughter on fields of battle where the Britons
were stricken by the invaders, but no massacres, after the fight was
clone, are recorded, except in the single case of Anderida, when it was
stormed by the Saxons in 491. The people who had come to possess, if
they could, and to settle down in the land, were not likely to make it
a desert. It is probable that, from the first, they made wives of many
British women. It is certain that, as the work of conquest proceeded,
large numbers of Britons remained among the conquerors, at the
least as slaves and drudges, and it has been thought that many of
these, who held the Christian faith, made it known in some measure
to the women and children of their masters, and so prepared the
way for the teaching of Augustine and his colleagues and successors.
When the British kingdoms of West Wales, Cumbria, and Stratli-
clyde were, in the later period of the English conquest, incorporated
with Wessex and Northumbria, the result was, in the end, a consider-
able admixture of Celtic with English blood. The Celt is still amongst
us, unextinguished, not destroyed, in spite of the pressure and domina-
tion of the stronger race. The blending of the Celt and Teuton began,
from an early date in the north. The Britons of Northurnbria were
not driven wholly away into Wales and the north-west. Bede, who
wrote early in the eighth century, and is a writer to be fully trusted
for matters within his own knowledge, describes the Britons of Nor-
thumberland, where he lived all his life, as being in his day partly
free and partly subject to the Angles. The legends, the language,
the customs, the fairy tales, in many parts of England, prove the
large Celtic admixture. In the hills of Cumberland and Westmore-
land, and in the five south-western counties, Britons remained, for
centuries after the conquest, the more numerous dwellers in the land.
We are told that in the time of Athelstane, in the first half of the
tenth century, Celts and Teutons, Britons and Englishmen, held
divided and equal rule in Exeter. In the west and in the north, it
does not appear that the Britons, though subdued, were enslaved.
They accepted the fact of conquest, and lived as fellow-citizens with
those who had won the day. If we come to the test of language, we
lind that we still retain a large number of Celtic words, not only in
the local names of natural features of the country, but also for things
belonging to the ordinary arts of life, such as agriculture, carpentry,
and general indoor and outdoor service. When we look at the intel-
lectual and moral side of this matter, we shall find the Celtic element
still at work in our midst. An eminent writer has declared that "the

3G AN EARLY ENGLISH HOME.

true glory of the Celt in Europe is his artistic eminence/' and that, with-
out his intervention, we might not have had in modern times a church
worthy of admiration or a picture or a statue that we could look at
without shame. As the Teuton was practical and political, so the Celt
was, above all, poetical. In the fusion of the two races he brought
to the common stock the gift of genius. Stories borrowed from the
Celtic times still hold their place in the most popular forms of English
literature. By the Celt the poetical imagination of the English race
was fired, and to Celtic influence is due some of the best matter in
our literature.

CHAPTER IV.

EARLY ENGLISH CIVILISATION.

The home-life of our ancestors. The social system. The clergy and the monks.
Literature and learning.

BUDE simplicity marked the English way of life in the ninth century.
The land was the great source of wealth, and few of the
lisn way necessities or luxuries of life were obtained, as now, by trade
of life. w ith other lands or districts. The cups of silver and gold,
the furs and the silks of kingly houses, would be mostly presents from
abroad. Every great household, whether of king or noble, was de-
pendent on itself for what its people ate and drank, and wore. Thus
the life even of the highest would not be free from cares and labour,
but it called forth human ingenuity in many forms not thought of in
states of society where every want is commercially supplied, where
stores are abundant, and communication ready and rapid. Let us
take as a sample the home of a Wessex noble (or eorl or eatdorman)
in some fertile valley lying south of the Thames. The rich arable land
yields ample store of wheat and barley, and the green slopes of the
chalk-downs maintain the flocks and herds. The surrounding woods
give the needful fuel, and food from oak and beech to the lord's herds
of swine. Forest and moorland are rich in game, and here the noble
and his sons and servants chase the deer and the wild-boar with trusty
hound and spear, or hunt down the wolf that preys upon the lambs.
The chief dwelling, mainly of wood, bears little likeness to the splendid
modern house. It is a series of low buildings, extended from time to
time, according to the wants of the family, and with nothing grand
or beautiful about it. No well-tended lawns or picturesque trees, in
avenues and clumps, give to its surrounding pastures the charm of our
parks. Every arrangement is marked by a rough utility. The cattle
feed in stalls close to the house ; and the dogs and the hawks have their

EARLY ENGLISH MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 37

kennels and their mews hard by the ladies' bower and the priest's
chapel. The grinding-slaves at their hand-mills are working near the
bakery, and the fragrant wort of the brewery mingles its steam with
the thin blue smoke of the wood-fire in the hall. In huts round about
are the rude tables, stools, arid pallets of the serfs who till the ground
and tend the flocks, and work at handicrafts to meet the wants of all.
There dwell the ploughmen, woodmen, herdsmen and shepherds, and
there are the forge of the smith and the carpenter's bench. The
women ply the spindle and throw the shuttle, making the yarn and
weaving the cloth for the coarse garments of the household. Adjoining
lands belonging to the lord are leased out on a tenure of rent-dues or
of service. Rents come in, not in coin, but as flitches of bacon, barn-
door fowls, geese, cheese, eggs, honey, and casks of ale. Hedging and
ditching, ploughing and shearing, road-making and fishing, are done for
service. The chief fare of the workers of the household consists of
pork, fish, and game, eaten with barley-bread, and washed down with
draughts of ale or of mead, a drink fermented with honey and water,
and flavoured with the juice of fruits. Only the richest nobles and the
king indulged in beef or mutton, wine and wheaten bread. That there
were vineyards once in England is proved both by the names that
linger yet in some cathedral- towns, and by the early English name for
October, which was wyn-monat, or wine-month. The cultivation of the
vine came to an end when commerce brought, at a cheap rate, the
produce of lands better fitted than our own for such a tillage. Our
ancestors were fond of hospitality and feasting, and the banquet was
enlivened by singing and the music of the harp, which was handed
round the board for each to take his turn. The refinements of more
modern days were quite unknown. No forks were used, and servants
carried round the roasted joints for every guest to cut his portion for
himself with his own knife, and lay it on the wooden platter that stood
on the bare board. Manners were rough, and, in the lack of the re-
sources of the modern drawing-room, the drinking was prolonged, often
until deep draughts caused loud brawls, and knives were drawn and
blood was spilt upon the rush-strewn floor. The ladies of the house-
hold used much time in embroidery and in spinning, and we find king
Alfred calling the female part of his family " the spindle-side," in dis-
tinction from the spear or male side of the house.

In Alfred's translation of Boetius we have an interesting passage of
his own, in which the good king writes thus: "These are D ev elop-
the materials of a king's work, and his tools to govern with ^ n f a ^
that he have his land fully peopled, that he should have prayer- The
men, and army-men, and workmen." With the workmen we Church,
have dealt above, and the "army-men" will be hereafter noticed. The
peopling of the land went on by natural increase and systematic occupa-
tion. The hide of land was the estate of one family, but we find the
amount of this to have varied locally from thirty to one hundred acres.

38 C^:DMON AND BEDE. [672 A .n.

As families multiplied, generation after generation, the enclosed land
grew by degrees on every side. With regard to the " prayer-men,"
there were not only the monastic establishments and parish churches
in large number, but resident priests in the houses of the rich and
powerful. The services of the clergy were, in that age, essential to the
temporal welfare and preservation of the state. The Church kept the
island in touch with the European community under the ecclesiastical
authority of Rome, and thus prevented it from halting while other
lands were advancing. In their own localities, the monks did much
for the practical arts of life. It was they who kept alive the emulation
of tillers of the soil. They had the trimmest gardens and the most
productive orchards. Their ponds were stored v ^th the choicest fish.
They practised the healing arts before medicine and surgery were pro-
fessions. They were the transcribers of books, and their breviaries and
chronicles were adorned with illuminations and pictures, often more
powerful than words. They were the musicians, the architects, and
the only teachers of the time. From the Abbey of Whitby, on the cliffs
that frown above the North Sea. where Hilda had ruled in strength
and wisdom the house that she had founded, and from the cells of
Jarrow, with its six hundred monks, the light of learning streamed
forth upon the darkness of the age.

The early English poet named Cssdinon was a tenant on the abbey-
Litera- lands of Whitby, who became a lay-brother in the monastery,
Caedinon a ^ *^ e ^ me f Hilda's rule as abbess. He had the inborn
circa 660! gift of song, and in hie Paraphrase, as it is called, he turned
into rude verse the Biblical accounts of the Creation and the Fall, the
Exodus from Egypt, the story of Daniel, the incarnation of Christ,
and other like subjects. In thought and in expression some passages
resemble parts of Paradise Lo*t, for which they are supposed to have
been the rough model.

Bede, or Bseda, known as the Venerable Bede, and justly called by Burke
Bed e> "the father of English learning," studied from the age of ten at
G72-735. the monastery of Jarrow. There he passed his whole life of
youth and manhood, for over fifty years, in what to him was the delightful
work of ever learning, teaching, writing. He was our earliest theo-
logian, scholar, and historian, and may be regarded as the pioneer of
English education, as the instructor of six hundred learners whom his
fame drew to the southern bank of the Tyne. He was possessor of all
the knowledge of the time, including Greek and Latin, and every kind
of scientific lore. The language in which he, like all the men of learn-
ing of his day, expressed his thoughts, was Latin, and in this he wrote
text-books on every subject for the monastery school. The most im-
portant of his works is his Ecclesiastical History of Enaland, written in
easy Latin. It is a book of great research, authority, and value, and
tells us nearly all we really know of the history of England for about
one hundred and fifty years before the date of its completion in 732,

735-886 A.D.] ALCUIN AND ERIGENA. 39

Bede was a man as good as he was clever, and not less modest than he was
learned. He would never leave the abbey and his scholars ; he refused
the dignity of abbot at Jarrow itself because, as he said, " household
care would hinder the pursuit of learning," and he died, as he had lived,
a simple unbeneficed priest, still learning and still writing, engaged on
a translation into English of the Gospel of St. John.

We have already seen something of the great scholar Alcuin, who
maintained the fame of his country for learning after the Alcuin
death of Bede. Alcuin was brought up in the monastery at 735-804.'
York, and became there head of the school whose renown spread to the
court of Charles the Great at Aachen (Aix-la,-Chapelle). Under the
fostering care of Alcuin and his friends, the Archbishops Egbert and
Albert, the library and school both grew in value and repute. On his
return from a journey to Rome in 781, the English scholar met the
Frank king in Italy, and in 782 he quitted York to become Charles
the Great's minister of public instruction. He had charge of several
monasteries, in which he caused the sciences to be taught, and was the
founder or improver of most of the schools in France. One of the best
known of these was the school in the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours,
where Alcuin himself was chief instructor. He was the most learned
man of his time, and understood Greek and Hebrew, and he rendered
special service to literature by his efforts to increase the production of
good books. The scriptorium, or writing- room, of the monastery was
the printing-office of that age. In order to get skins for parchment,
monks who were fond of hunting were allowed by Alcuin to go to the
chase until the supply met the demand. He was great rather as a
teacher and organiser than as an author, but, in addition to his many
theological writings, he left behind him letters describing great events
of his day and the inner life of the court of Charles.

Joannes Scotus, known also as Ericjena (which is variously explained
as a native of Erin or of Ayrshire), was of Celtic blood and ^
birth, either in Scotland or Ireland. He is remarkable as a circa
learned layman in an age when few indeed but monks could 801 ~ 886<
read, and as a good scholar in Greek, which was then known to few
men in the Western world. He was a writer of originality and power-
on the subjects of reason and revelation, which he strove to harmonise,
thereby incurring the charge of heresy. For thirty years onwards from
845 he lived at the court of Charles the Bald of France, as head of the
palace school. The man's bold nature and fearless wit, as well as the
manners of the time, are shown by his reply to a jest of his royal master.
The scholar sat at table opposite the king, and was asked, on breaking
some rule of etiquette, " the difference between a Scot (then meaning a
native of Ireland) and a sot ? " " Just the breadth of the table," cried
Erigena.

BOOK III.

THE DANES IN ENGLAND (832-1042.)

CHAPTEE I.
THE EXPLOITS OF THE NORTHMEN.

The northern Teutons. Attacks on England. Conquest and settlement. Alfred
and the Danes. Treaty of Wedmore.

EGBERT of Wessex had scarcely brought the land under a fair semblance of
The Danes unitv ^ n submission to a single ruler, when his work was broken
or North- up by the last great migration of the barbarians of Northern
men ' Europe. These were the Danes, whose name was one of terror

for many years to peaceful dwellers in. the north. In the year 830,
Egbert had marched in victory as far as Snowdon, and had subdued the
men of Anglesey. His power seemed complete and secure, but in 832
the Northmen or Danes appeared in the land, and the fair prospect
was shrouded in gloom. It is in Norway as well as in Denmark that
we must look for the Danes of that age. They were the dwellers in
Scandinavia and on the northern Baltic coasts. All the territories now
called Denmark, Sweden, and Norway supplied these dreaded invaders,
but England was chiefly assailed by men from Denmark, and the Nor-
wegians made their descents mainly on Scotland and Ireland. The
Danes were closely akin in race and language to the English and Saxon
conquerors of these isles. They were sea-warriors and pirates, distin-
guished by strength, courage, merciless ferocity, and hatred of the
Christian name and religion. England, from her position, was the
chief sufferer, as her coasts lay near to the ports whence they sailed,
nor was any part of the land so far distant from the sea as to be secure
from attack. They had pillaged the coasts of France even during the
lifetime of the great Charles, and once, in the south of his empire, as
he gazed from a port on the Mediterranean upon some Norman cruisers,
he had shed prophetic tears over the coming fate of his peoples. This
formidable foe, destined to make two successive conquests of England,
came at first for pillage only to the estuaries of France and the British
Isles. In a few years, the Dane or Northman came to both lands for
territory, and in both lands his efforts were crowned with success. The

832-866 A.D.] LANDING OF THE DANES. 41

great point of difference between the English and their invaders lay in
the maritime skill of the Danes. It is believed that the younger sons
of the Scandinavian chiefs were driven to sea-robbery for a livelihood by
the law of primogeniture, under which the eldest son inherited all the
land and other family property. The term Viking or Wilting, applied to
the leaders of the pirates or to the whole body, means men of the bays
and creeks, in reference to the countless fiords or inlets on the west
coast of Norway. The English had by this time, in their devotion to a
life of tillage and pasture, lost their olden love for maritime pursuits,
and were thus unprepared with a fleet to meet their foes on the seas.
The pirates bore, as their national flag, the effigy of a black raven
woven on a blood-red ground, and were armed with long heavy swords
and battle-axes of formidable keenness and weight. The Danes, havin
kept both to the worship of Odin and to their life of roving and robbery,
felt a bitter contempt and hatred for the men of their own kin who had
deserted the gods once worshipped in common by the race, and had
quitted the free and independent life of sea-pirates for the growing of
corn and breeding of cattle.

We hear of ravages of the sea-robbers in Northumbria even before
the end of the eighth century, but the first attack of the First
Danes in the south occurred when, in 832, a body of rovers doings of
came up the estuary of the Thames, plundered the Isle of Engfand^
Sheppey, and went off again in their ships with their booty. 832-858.
In the following year, they landed on the coast of Dorset, and in 834 a
great danger came when they joined the Britons of Cornwall. Egbert
was equal to the crisis, and routed the allies with great slaughter at
the battle of Hengestendun, now Kingston Down, to the west of the
Tamar. The English ruler died in 837, and left the care of the country
to his son Ethelwulf, who reigned till 858. The new king fought hard
against the foe with varied success, and also drove back the Britons of
North AVales, but the danger and mischief increased yearly. The
coasts of Wessex and Kent were ravaged, and London, Rochester, and
Canterbury suffered from pillage. In 855 a body of Danes, for the
first time, wintered in the land, within a strong fort which they made
in the Isle of Sheppey. In their hatred of the Christian faith, and their
desire for plunder, they made the churches and abbeys special objects
of attack. The priests were slain at the altar, and the rich vestments
and vessels of silver and gold were carried off. The danger to religion
roused some of the bishops to take up the sword, and lead armies
against the ferocious pagans.

Under three sons of Ethelwulf the Danes came over in greater force.
The time of mere forays was over, and great hosts arrived of Ethelwulf
men resolved to settle in the land. In 866 they came to East to Alfred,
Anglia, and in the next year, after a victory under the walls 8 "
of York, they overran Northumbria. The monastery once ruled by
Hilda was burnt at Streoneshalh, and then the place, becoming a

42 CONFLICTS WITH THE DANES. [870 A.D.

Danish settlement, received its present name of Whitby. JEthelred,
the third son of Ethelwulf, reigned from 866 to 871. The Danes
marched down from the north, and in the country of the fens the rich
abbeys of Crowland, Peterborough, and Ely were plundered and burnt
in 868. They then turned on East Anglia, and made a conquest of the
country. The king, Edmund, who ranks as a martyr for the faith,
was shot to death with arrows when lie refused to turn pagan, and the
place of his interment has the name of Bury St. Edmunds, or the
town of St. Edmund. An abbey was afterwards built over his
remains, and his name was long revered in the region where he
fell. In 870 Mercia submitted to the invaders, and consented to pay
tribute. The whole of England north of the Thames had thus fallen
under their power. At last, in the year 871, Wessex itself was in
clanger. The invaders made their way up the Thames to Reading,
and then pushed forward into the Vale of the White Horse. The king
and his younger brother, Alfred, met them in a fierce battle at Aesces-
dun, or Ash-tree hill, a place not clearly known, in Berkshire, and,
in the greatest conflict yet fought, the Danes suffered defeat. They
could only, however, be driven back to the river; and the arrival
of fresh forces up the Thames made their position stronger than
ever. At this juncture yEthelred died, and the rule of W T essex came
to Alfred.

Before this time, bodies of Norwegians and Danes had occupied the
Other Shetland Isles, the Orkneys, and the Hebrides, and had made
conquests settlements on the coast of Ireland. In 852 a Danish chief
and D Nor- ruled in Dublin, and others held sway in the south and west,
wegians. j n g6 o one o f the Vikings discovered Iceland, and ten years
later it began to be colonised by exiles from Norway.

Alfred, justly named the Great, stands first for real merit and glory
Reign of in the line of English kings. He had not the large arena in
Great* (if which to play his part that has been the lot of those who are
871-878. held to be the foremost of the great men of history. No
grand career of conquest gives him fame, nor did his policy and per-
formances, as if with superhuman power, "shape the ends" and decide
the future of any large part of the human race. It is in moral great-
ness that, after the lapse of a thousand years, he stands without a peer
in all our history. He ruled for thirty years without a thought of
self, wholly and solely for the good of others the people whom he
loved, the land which he rescued and restored. He was a warrior who
fought always on the right side. His noble equanimity never left him
in the hour of his darkest or his brightest fortune. No word or deed
of pride, or cruelty, or injustice, has left a stain upon his memory.
His calm and steadfast energy of will and work were shown as a ruler,
a lawgiver, a scholar, a writer, a promoter of enterprise and trade, a
doer of all good, a queller of all evil, that came within his reach and
ken. In his relations with others as a, private man, he comes before

871-878 A.D.] ALFRED THE GREAT. 43

the view as spotless. He declared towards the end of life that "he
had ever striven to live worthily," and that his great ambition was " to
be remembered for good works." it is for his good works that his
name is still held in the highest reverence by his countrymen, as that
of a Christian hero of the noblest and purest kind. This good and
great king was born at Wantage in 849, the youngest son, as we have
seen, of Ethel wulf. In boyhood he passed some time at Home, and
beheld the glories of that city in the ninth century, when the Coliseum
yet stood whole, and many of the other noble monuments which
have since been destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine
magnificence. Of his early youth and education we know little, and
here, as throughout his life, we have to reject many legendary stories
which the admiration and affection of his own and later ages have
gathered round his name. Much has been ascribed to him. which had
either long existed when he came to power or had its birth in a later
age than his; and we must never, if we wish to be historical, regard
him as the founder of the University of Oxford, or the divider of
England into shires, or the inventor of trial by jury. He returned to
England from Rome while yet a boy, to live with his reigning brother,
Ethelbert. We are told that the lad was devoted to the work of self-
improvement, and sought the knowledge of all arts of life. His weak
health was not allowed to keep him, who was learning to be a king,
from hunting, reading, working as a craftsman in gold and wood and
iron, and getting skill in management of dogs and horses. At twenty
years of a^e, in 869, he married Ealhswyth or Elswitha, the daughter
of an Ealdorman of Lincolnshire, and of a lady of the royal house
of Mercia. In 871 he took the throne, in the hour of his country's
darkest fortune. The Danes had now wintered seven years in England,
and held by far the larger part of the country. From his brother's
grave at Wimborne in Dorsetshire, Alfred marched to attack the
enemy at Wilton, and an indecisive battle, with some payment of
a tribute, caused the Danes to leave Wessex for a time. For some
years the south was at peace, but in 875 Alfred won, against some
Danish pirates, what is believed to be the first of our long and glorious
roll of naval battles. In Swanage Bay "he fought seven ships, and
one of them he took, and put the rest to flight." In. 876 the Danes
marched again into Wessex, headed by Guthorm or Guthrum, king of
East Anglia. The chronicle is obscure as to the events which followed,
but we find that early in the year 878 the king had been driven to
seek safety in the spot called by himself ^Etl^elinga-eigc^ or Isle of
Princes. The modern Atlielney shows us, from the line of railway, a
region of fertile meadows dotted over with thriving homesteads, and
crossed by roads which join the villages and towns of West Somerset.
In Alfred's age, it was a tract of fen-land, formed by the inundations
of the rivers Parret and Tone, and surrounded by forest that made
all access most intricate and difficult. In the centre of this solitary

44 SETTLEMENT OF THE DANES. [878 A.D.

place the king and a small band of followers fortified a little piece of
firm ground, and for some months carried on a war of sallies and sur-
prises against the foemen, who were masters of the open country. We
must suppose that meanwhile his friends and subjects were gathering
themselves up for a great effort, provoked by the rapacity and insolence
of the Danes. Seven weeks after Easter, Alfred came forth to meet
the men of Somerset and Wiltshire, and a part of Hampshire, at a
place called Egbert's stone, near Warminster. He then suddenly
attacked the enemy in their camp at Ethandun, which has been probably
identified with Edington, near Westbury, in Wiltshire. The Danes
were utterly defeated in the open field, and fleeing to their fortress,
were hemmed in for fourteen days and starved into submission. It
was now that the king showed the wisdom of a statesman in knowing
what it was possible to do. The Danes, he felt, were far too strong
to be expelled from England. Let them remain in peace as perma-
nent possessors of a portion of the land. Already they were becom-
ing settlers and cultivators, and were beginning to be a part of the
nationality of the country. It was likely that, with possession of the
land secured by treaty, they would not be tenacious of their pagan
faith. The result of his proposals was that Guthruni, with Alfred for
his sponsor, and many of his chief men were baptized, and in becoming
Christians, they were but following the example set them by many
of the Danes of East Anglia.

The treaty of peace made at Wedmore, near Athelney, between the
Treaty of king ^ Wessex and the Danes " Alfred's and Guthrum's
Wedmore, Peace" was a full recognition of Danish equality with English-
men as possessors of a large part of the land. They had for
some time already occupied the towns of Derby, Leicester, Stamford,
Lincoln, and Nottingham, under the name of the " Five Boroughs" each
town being ruled by its own earl, with an armed force, and each having
Danish law administered by twelve judges, with a common court of
justice for the whole. By the Peace of Wedmore they became in-
dependent dwellers, with their own laws, usages, and institutions, in
the great tract of country embracing all the east side of England from
the Thames to the Tweed, and stretching far into the Midlands. Alfred,
as king of Wessex, kept the south and west. The Danelagh, as the
Danish portion of the land was called, meaning Dane's Law or com-
munity, thus lay to the east and north of Watling Street.

878 A.D.] LEGISLATION OF ALFRED, 45

CHAPTEB II.

ENGLAND UNDER ALFRED THE GREAT.

Restoration after ruin. Legislation, learning, progress, peace. Alfred and Hasting
the Dane. The good king's example to Englishmen of all time. Literature.
Alfred's own books.

AFTER the making of the treaty of Wedmore, England was, in the main,
at peace for about fifteen years. The task which Alfred now ^fr.^^
had before him comprised the most arduous, glorious, and bene- reign, (2)
ficial work which could fall to the lot of a ruler. The land 878 ~ 893 '
had been sorely troubled for many years. Provinces had been wasted,
churches and convents plundered and burnt, whole towns razed to the
ground. Amid the conflicts of the time, peaceful industry had gone to
decay, law and justice had been driven from their seats, and the only
light of learning and the higher civilisation had suffered eclipse in the
dispersion of the monks and the burning of the libraries. The repose
which the king had won by his courage and policy was devoted by him
to two great objects, the establishment of order and the enlightenment
of ignorance. The first matter, however, was to provide for the safety
of the realm. After rebuilding some of the ruined cities, among which
London had been destroyed by the Danes in the time of his father
/Ethel wulf, he took measures to establish both an army and a navy. A
militia was obtained by the division of the country into districts, each
required to send its supply of men for the king's service, on the king's
summons, duly equipped with arms, and furnished with food and pay.
He also, towards the end of his reign, reinforced his fleet by vessels far
superior to the Danish craft in size and stability and speed, and trained
the crews in all the work of sailing, rowing, and effective movement for
naval warfare. The coast was guarded by 120 ships of war, furnished
with the rude artillery of the age, and the number and power of the
vessels, and the expertness of the crews, outmatched all efforts of the
roving squadrons from the North and Baltic Seas who had so long kept
the seaboard in alarm. In the work of legislation, and the administra-
tion of justice, he took and made the best of what he found ready to his
hand. His code of laws was a selection of what seemed good to him
in those "which our forefathers held," whereby is meant, as he declares,
the laws of Ina of Wessex, Offa of Mercia, and ^Ethelberht of Kent.
To these were added many of the enactments of the law of Moses, and
the precepts of Christ. In the religious sanctions of these laws of Alfred
some have seen the beginnings of the union of Church and State, and
in the increased importance given to the person of the king we find
that a real monarchical power had grown out of the mere chieftain-

46 ALFRED'S DEVOTION TO WORK. [886 A.D.

ship of earlier rulers. The work of the judges in the courts was watched
by Alfred with unceasing vigilance, and sharp rebuke and punishment
were given to those who failed in knowledge of the law or in its just
administration. In 885 the peace was broken for a time by a body of
rovers from the ports of northern France, who sailed up the Thames
and passed up the Medway to Rochester. Some of the Danes in
Guthrum's kingdom helped their kinsmen, but Alfred handled the
invaders and their allies with such vigour, that a peace made in 886
gave him fresh territory in southern Mercia and half of the old king-
dom of Essex. He then resumed his work of restoration. He had
already sent for scholars from all parts of the land and from abroad to
teach himself and others, that they in turn might give instruction to
the people. His literary work will be hereafter noticed. He set up
schools, encouraged all the arts and manufactures of the time, invited
from abroad men of industry to work at and to teach their trades,
rewarded all inventors and improvers, and prompted men to travel far
and near by sea and land in search of wealth to be won by way of
commerce. Bands of workmen were maintained, largely at his own
cost, to rebuild the ruined towns arid abbeys. The restless activity of
his intellect, and of his Christian care for others, are shown in the
eager ear which he would ever lend to the accounts of travel, and in
the despatch of envoys taking presents to the churches of Palestine
and India. Add to all this the building of fortresses, the repair of
roads, his private devotions and studies, and we wonder how such toil
could be accomplished by a single man. It was by method arid a strict
economy of time. Every hour, every minute, had its allotted labour.
Ingenuity came to the aid of industry. In his famous lantern-clocks,
whose sides of horn screened the flame from wasting gusts of air, he
burnt wax candles made of equal weight and size, so that six would
burn for four-and-twenty hours. The half and quarter hours were
marked upon each candle, and thus the time was measured with a
fair degee of accuracy.

A remarkable specimen of the goldsmith's work of that age has been
Alfred's preserved to the present day, and it gives a very favourable
impression of the state of art at that period, and of the skill
and ability of the artist. The beautiful relic called Alfred's jewel
was discovered in the year 1693, at Newton Park, in the lowlands of
Somersetshire, near the river Parret, somewhat to the north of the
spot where the island and fortress of Athelney were formerly situated.
There the king, in perhaps the most sorrowful days of his life, lost
this token of his sovereignty, and it remained hidden in the marshes
for over eight hundred years, until it was accidentally brought to light
once more. It is now preserved in the Ashrnolean Museum at Oxford
as a most precious memorial of the olden time and of the good king.
It consists of a polished crystal of an oval form, rather more than two
inches in length and half an inch thick, inlaid with a mosaic enamel

893 A.D.] LANDING OF HASTING. 47

of green and yellow. The enamel represents the outline of a human
figure, which seems to be seated, and holds in each hand a sort of
lily-branch in blossom. It may perhaps represent a king in his state
attire. The reverse is covered by a plate of fine gold, on which a
flower is engraved. The oval sides are bordered by beaten gold of
admirable workmanship, and bear around them words showing, be-
yond all doubt, who was the former possessor of the jewel : AELFIIED
MEG HEHT GEWYRCAx, i.e., Alfred had rue made. The form of the
letters entirely agrees with that of the capitals in the authentic
manuscripts of Alfred's time, and the form of the two middle words,
in their primitive orthography, bears witness to the age claimed by
the motto. At the lower end, where the crystal and its border join
the gold, is a well-worked dolphin's head in gold, whose empty eye-
sockets must have once contained precious stones, while from the open
jaws a small golden pin protrudes, which probably served as a fasten-
ing to some beautiful staff, possibly Alfred's sceptre, on the point of
which the jewel was placed.

Thus passed, in peace and progress and incessant labour for his
country, the life of Alfred from his thirtieth to his forty-
fourth year. He had married young, and his elder children reign, (3)
were by this time men and women. His eldest daughter, 893 - 901 -
^Ethelflseda, was married to the Ealdorman or Earl of western Mercia,
a portion of his realm which Alfred had placed in charge of an able
and courageous deputy. Some of the closing years of his reign were
now to be disturbed by attacks of the old foe. During the years of
rest which England had won by Alfred's efforts, France had been
buying off the Danes by paying tribute. The countries of the Rhine,
the Scheldt, and the Meuse were overrun. Treves, Cologne, Maes-
tricht, Liege, Aix-la-Chapelle, and many other strong and wealthy
cities, that had flourished since the Roman times, were sacked and
burnt. In 893 the northern provinces of France were suffering from
famine, and a Danish leader named Hasting, who had made his way
thither, turned his thoughts to England. He sailed with a fleet and
army from Boulogne, and landed near to Romney Marsh, at the
eastern end of the wild district called Andreades-wald. Wide-spreading
ruin again threatened the land, but Alfred was, as ever, at his post.
There was an end for him of quiet studies and of conference with
Asser upon literary topics. The king took the field, and for a year
the Danes in vain tried to force the strong position in which Alfred
barred their way into Wessex. They then marched north across the
Thames, and in the course of a further struggle of two years, they
were defeated in the east in Essex, where their camp was stormed,
upon the Severn in the west, and at Exeter in the south. By the
year 896 the spirit of the invaders was broken, and Hasting left the
country. The strengthened fleet of Alfred swept the coast, and a just
severity was exercised against the pirates who were taken. The crews

48 DEATH OF ALFRED. [901 A.D.

of two ships were brought to Winchester and hanged. The Danish
flag, with the dreaded raven, was seen no more in Alfred's time upon
our shores. The remaining four years of the reign were spent in peace,
and Alfred died in 901, at the age of fifty- two, and was buried at Win-
chester. The character of one ruler never influenced more strongly
the position of his country. He saved England from foreign domina-
tion, raised her in the scale of nations, and- maintained her in the
fellowship of Christian peoples. He was the first monarch in the land
who clearly saw that there was a people to be civilised and taught.
His exertions had a far-reaching effect. True that, in three genera-
tions after his death, the English people were subdued by succes-
sors of the men whom he had mastered. True that, in a century
more, a kindred people came and made a yet greater conquest and
imposed a yet heavier yoke. None the less had Alfred, in delivering
Wessex from the Dane, rescued an England for the glories of the
future. The indomitable courage, the religious endurance, the heart
and hope of this great man, proved by every kind of trial, were a
precious bequest to the crown and to the nation. He presented to
his own age, and to all coming time, a model of our national character
in its union of reflection with action. The world of thought and the
world of deed are, in a high degree, combined in the achievements of
our race. The leading principle of duty as the end of life, which was
so strong in Alfred, survives amongst us still. No more vivid or more
engaging personality than his, bright as it was and frank in feature
and expression, dignified in form and in demeanour, kindly, humorous,
truthful, simple, and at all points noble, ever won the affection and
esteem of posterity.

We learn from Alfred's own words what was the state of iritellec-
Literature, tual darkness in Wessex when he came to the throne. He
laments that "aforetime people came hither to this land in
search of wisdom and teaching, and we must now obtain them from
without, if we are to have them." He declares that there were very
few priests on his side the Humber who could understand their daily
prayers (i.e., explain their breviaries or service-books in English) or
translate any writing from the Latin. The king sent for some learned
men from among the Franks, and also sought the help of a Welsh
churchman named Asser, who became Bishop of Sherborne, and died
there about 910. Asser tells us that "he came into Saxony (as he
calls Wessex) from the extreme limits of Western Britain (St. David's),
summoned by the king." " After I had set out, I arrived in the country
of ^ the South Saxons, which is called in Saxon Sufhseaxe (Sussex),
guided by some of that nation. There I first saw him in the royal
rill (villa) called Dene. After being kindly received by him he
earnestly entreated me to devote myself to his service, and for his love
to relinquish all my possessions on the other side of the Severn. He
promised to compensate me richly, as he actually did." The learned

880 A.D.] EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 49

Welshman would not forego his native cloister, but he promised to
return, and give half his time to the king's companionship. A Life of
Alfred from the pen of Asser is one of the results of this acquaintance
formed between the king and scholar. With Asser as his guide and
instructor, Alfred first improved and extended his own knowledge, and
then, with pen in hand, became the diligent teacher of his people.
He translated from Latin into the English of his day a book called
Gregory's Pastorals. The author was Pope Gregory the Great. The
object of the book was to show what the mind of a true spiritual
pastor ought to be. A copy of this was sent to each bishop, with the
injunction that it should remain in the minster, unless the bishop took
it with him on his journeys, " or it be lent somewhere until somebody
write another copy." In his preface he tells Bishop Wulsige his wish
that "all the youth that is now in the English nation of free men,
such as have wealth to maintain themselves, may be put to learning
till at first they can read well English writing." He then urges
strongly the further instruction of priests and others in the Latin
tongue. By his own hand, and by others at his order, translations
were made and published of the best existing works on history. It
was thus that Bede's Ecclesiastical History was first made known to
those who could not read it in the Latin, and then a work on general
history was taken in hand. The manual used in the monastery
schools, which had almost ceased to exist during the Danish incur-
sions, had been the Universal History of Paulus Orosius. This Spanish
priest, a native of Tarragona, and a friend of St. Augustine (of Hippo)
and St. Jerome, wrote a book against the pagans in which he traced
the history of the world from the creation down to A.D. 417. Modern
criticism would make havoc of the work, but it was the best thing of
the kind in that age. The controversial parts were omitted in Alfred's
edition, and it was greatly altered and improved in order to provide a
good summary of history and geography. Two northern navigators,
from their personal narratives, enabled Alfred to prepare a clear and
concise account of the parts of Europe which were the homes of the
Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples. One of these men was Ohthere, a
rich Norwegian, who made voyages for the love of discovery and adven-
ture, not without an eye to the profits of the capture of the whale and
walrus in the northern seas. From his account of voyages round the
North Cape into the White Sea and on the southern coast of Norway,
much interesting matter was obtained about the Lapps and their rein
deer, and the natural wonders of the farthest regions of the north
of Europe. From Wulfstan (or Wulstan), who travelled in the Baltic
Sea and on its coasts, sailing from Schleswig to a place called Truso,
probably in modern Prussia, Alfred heard of the Finns who lived by
hunting and by fishing, and of the manners of the people of Eastland
or Esthonia, where there were many towns, and the rich drank mare's
milk, while the poor and the slaves quaffed mead. The chief historical

50 THE ANGLO SAXON CHRONICLE. [380 A.T..

monument of the time is the national record, which was continued
down to a later age. known as the English or An<il>-Sa.r<t Chruniclf.
it is through this valuable book, either in his own person, or by his
inspiration of others, that Alfred ranks as the creator of English
prose-writing. The ballads and the songs of battle had now for their
competitor a narrative of originality and vigour in another style. The
Chronicle includes a set of seven parallel records, kept in different
monasteries, of which three were at Canterbury, while the others were
the work of monks at Abingdon, Worcester, Winchester, and Peter-
borough. This last comes down to the year 1154. Most of the
records begin with the landing of Csesar, and, after the time of Bede,
the document becomes one of the great sources of knowledge for the
early history of England. It is at the year 851 that we have the
beginning of original contemporary authorship in the use of the first
person, and of the phrase "the present day." Alfred appeal s to have
gathered the different accounts into the one book, which was published
by authority at Winchester, and ''fastened by a chain, for all who
wished to read it." The account of his own reign was added in the
lively narrative which showed that the language had gained a new
power of expression. For the moral instruction of his people the king
turned into English the famous Latin book of Boetius, entitled De
Contolatione Philosophice. This Roman statesman, early in the sixth
century, was imprisoned by the Emperor Theodoric the Great for his
resistance to oppression, and it was in his dungeon that he wrote, in
five books of prose, intermingled with verse, the noble work which has
given him a lasting renown. The author was the latest Roman of any
note who understood the language and studied the literature of Greece.
The work translated by Alfred is pure in style and of a high tone of
thought. No allusion is made to Christianity, but the writer had a
real belief in Providence and prayer. He was executed by Theodoric
about 525, and the Church claimed him as a Christian martyr, and
canonised him as a saint in the eighth century. Through this book,
rendered into English, the king taught his people to recognise a wise
God as ruler of the world, to fix their minds and hearts upon what
does not fade and die, and to remember that, as viewed from above,
only the good are happy.

LAWS AND CUSTOMS. r,|

CHAPTER, III.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ARRANGEMENTS.

The landed system. Origin of towns. Orders of society. The early form of Parlia-
ment. The courts. Criminal law. Civil officers. The army. The poor.

THE laws and customs, like the language and people of England, were
mainly of Teutonic origin. The germ of all was the family Early Eng-
bond. In the early times, each family had a hide of land, i isn ; insti-

j c ^1 / j. .,-11 mi I tutions:

supposed to consist or thirty acres fit tor tillage. This private a.) The

property in land was called boc-land or book-land, because its * and -
possession was secured by a writing or deed. It was free from all public
burdens except liability to military service and to the repair of bridges
and fortresses. Part of the land remained the property of the state, and
was called folc-land, land of the folk or people. It was either common
land, or might be assigned to individuals for a term, at the end of which
it reverted to the state. The tithing is supposed to have been a cluster
of ten families, and the hundred a community of a hundred free families,
sending a hundred fighting-men for the militia, and a hundred men to
sit in a court presided over by the Ealdorman. There was a system of
surety, for the securing of justice against an offender, which was known
as fas peace-pledge. By an early mistake of one Saxon word for another,
the name became corrupted into frank-pledge or free pledge. A body
of ten neighbours guaranteed to bring to justice any one of their
number who should break the law. If he fled, compensation for the
wrong was made, first out of his property, and then, if needful, out of
that of the guarantors. Thus each member of a community had an
interest in the due administration of justice, and in this system we see
the origin of the modern statute by which the hundreds are made liable
for damage done by rioters acting feloniously. The division into shires
or counties is certainly older than the time of Alfred, as we find it in
connection with Wessex and the laws of King Ina. The smaller king-
doms became shires as Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Essex, and Middlesex.
In part of the Saxon period there were, it seems, but thirty-two counties
in England ; but the present number existed at the time of the Norman
Conquest. The county of York had three divisions called trithings,
still existing under the name of ridings. The division of Wales into
counties only began under Edward I., and was completed in the reign
of Henry VIII.

A cluster of homesteads formed a village (mcus, iviclc), and, with
regard to its enclosure, the toicn or township. Townships seem to corre-
spond to what, after the Norman Conquest, were called manors. The early

B3 TOWNSHIPS AND BOROUGHS.

English if/nan meant, to enclose, and fun was originally the enclosure or
(2.). Town- hedge, whether of the single farm or of the enclosed village.
(3 h )*Bor- The terminations -ham and -by contain the same idea. The
ough. term was gradually extended to the whole of the land which
formed the domain ; and out of these townships, when an increasing
population gathered, grew the towns of later date. The word burli
meant at first the fortified house of the powerful man, and was then
used for the fortified town in the form of burgh, borough. A high
authority holds that "the basis of our political organisation must be
sought in the township. The historical township is the body of allodial
(freehold) owners who have advanced beyond the stage of land com-
munity ; or the body of tenants of a lord, who rules them, or allows
them to rule themselves, on principles derived from that stage of social
existence." The towns of England of a later date arose from the
gathering of numerous poor settlers around the dwelling of a great
landowner. These people obtained a living by work upon the land.
Then came the idlers who were attracted by his luxury, ostentation,
and ambition. These were followed by the craftsmen who supplied
the wants of the lord and his family and friends, and then by slow
degrees found a new market for their wares at a distance. In like
manner, around the cathedral and the abbey, bodies of men gathered
who were glad to claim the protection of the religious corporation, to
share in their charities, and aid in supplying their wants. It is pro-
bable that when the town grew in size and importance, different trades
occupied different portions of the area, named from the occupations of
their inhabitants. In the earlier times, these several parts of the
town or city were often fortified, and served as strongholds, "behind
whose defences, or sallying forth from which, the craftsmen fought
the battle of democracy against the burgesses or the neighbouring
lords.

In crossing the sea from Germany to his new home in the Britain
(4.) The which he was about to make an England, the Angle or Saxon
kins- chieftain became a king. The word is a corruption of cyning,
and means " Father of the Family." The old Teutonic chief, elected
by the tribe as a leader in war, now presents himself to view as in-
vested with a higher and more exclusive power. Although chosen
from a royal race, the sovereign was of old little raised above his
ealdormen. It was as ealdormen, indeed, that Cerdic and his son
Cynric came in 495 ; but in 519 Cerdic erected the rice or kingdom of
the West Saxons, and became king of Wessex. Moreover, the office
now received a certain hereditary character, with which it had not once
been invested. If it was nominally still elective, the crown was kept
in the royal house, though with no fixed rule of succession. If the
eldest son were the fittest to rule, he would be chosen by the great
council or Witan: if not, he might be set aside, and another choice
made from among his brothers or other kinsmen. The "hallowin<?"

THE KING AND THE NOBLES. 53

of the king gave a religious sanction to his office and authority, and
included coronation and unction, performed by bishops of the Church.
The king took an oath to govern rightly, and at a later date, as the
royal power grew, an oath of allegiance was taken by the people. The
king, like the great body of the freemen, was a landowner. He had
larger hereditary possessions than others, and was at the head of the
state, as highest of the nobles and as the chief magistrate. Under
the system of tcer-gifd, to be noticed hereafter, meaning man-money or
man-payment, the king, 'like his subjects, had a fixed price for his life.
This was put at a higher value than any other, and Alfred increased
the payment for the king's life, and made the compassing of his death
a capital offence, attended with confiscation. The royal princes, or the
next heirs, were called cvthdings, or nobles. The king's consort was
called cwen (queen), meaning the wife, or was styled hlaefdicje, the lady.

The royal revenue was derived from tolls upon markets and dues
upon mines ; also from voluntary gifts, and a portion of the fines
levied upon offenders. The crown-lands which he held were, of course,
distinct from any private estates which he might purchase for himself.
His duties lay in presiding over public deliberations, calling out the
militia or national levies for attack or defence, and calling together
the Witan and laying before them measures concerning the welfare of
the state. His privileges included a distinction of dress in wearing his
golden circlet or crown, and the right of maintaining a force of house-
hold troops.

The ealdorman (alderman) was originally the elder of the Teutonic
tribe, and so the title meant chief. He ranked, in our early (5.)Ealdor-
monarchy, next to the king. He was the leading man or gov- men -
ernor of the shire, invested with both judicial and executive authority.
The title corresponds to the dux (duke) of the Latin chroniclers
and the comes (count) of the Normans. One of his most important
functions was that of leading the armed force of the county. His
chief civil duty was that of holding a shire-moot (shire-court, county-
court] twice in a year, and presiding therein along with the bishop. We
may notice here, in anticipation, that under the Danish kings in the
eleventh century, the word eorl lost its former sense of good birth, and
became an official title, equivalent to ealdorman, applied to the governor
of a shire or province. The word eorl and the Danish jarl both were
lost in earl, and earl, as a title of nobility, was supplanted by thane, so
that thane became opposed to ceorl, as eorl had been opposed in earlier
times. The modern sense of the word alderman, as magistrate of a city
or borough, came after the Norman Conquest.

The thane came next in degree to the ealdorman. The name has
been derived from thegnian, to serve, as if it meant the king's / 6 N Tlianes
servant. Others give the sense as warrior, and then, as the
king's attendants in war, the idea of service conies in. Both ealdorman
and king had thanes in attendance, the Idng^s thanes being the highest

64 LANDHOLDERS AND LABOURERS.

class. The lowest class of thanes possessed, as a qualification for the
rank, some hundreds of acres (the number is not certain) of land. This
class of minor nobles was one arising from office or service, but at
last property alone qualified, and a ceorl became a thane if he had
the needful amount of land, and a dwelling-house duly supplied with
chapel, hall, kitchen, and bell. The thane was liable to military service,
in which he would rank as an eques or knight. His duties also lay in
the king's personal service and in the administration of justice.

The ceorl (Norman-French, villain) was a freeman who came in rank
(7 ) Ceorls between the thane and the serf or slave. Such a man was,
of churls. i n general, not an independent freeholder, but under the
protection of a large landholder, whose ground he helped to till, not
in the state of a labourer, but as a kind of tenant-farmer. He was
obliged, however, to remain on the estate. A ceorl might acquire land,
and by becoming owner of the legal number of acres, he would rise
to the position of a thane. If a ceorl obtained possession of a smaller
amount of land, and became an independent freeholder, he was in
the rank of those called &ocmen in Domesday Book. These men are
regarded as the social ancestors of the English yeomanry, or class of
farmers tilling their own land, a body of men whose independence has
stamped with peculiar features both our constitution and our national
character.

The serfs (theowas) or slaves were of two classes penal and hereditary.
The larger number were probably Celts taken in war, or their
descendants ; the free Angle or Saxon could only become a
slave by the commission of crime or by default in paying the money
penalty of crime. The serf had no redress against his master for any
violence, including injuries causing death, but his master could exact a
money penalty from another man who had injured his " property " or
" chattel." The work of the country was almost wholly done by serfs.
The ploughman was the highest labourer on the soil; the smith was
the most valued craftsman. The Church stepped in to soften the hard
lot of the slave, and often maintained old and outworn men whom their
masters had set free when they became useless. The Christian day of
rest was another boon procured for this class of men by the authority
of the clergy. On the whole, it is not probable that the lot of the serfs
was so bad as it might appear. They were often set free by the will
of their master at his death, and were allowed to make savings by
working for other masters, so as to be able to buy freedom for them-
selves or their children.

The influence and power of the clergy were very great in an age of
(9.) The ignorance, when they were almost sole possessors of knowledge,
clergy. anc [ the veneration paid to their priestly character and office
was heightened by superstition. The higher clergy had a share, as
now, in the deliberations of the national council, and the bishop took
part with the ealdorman and thane in the administration of justice.

THE WITENAGEMOTE. 5.1

This Wisc-ineib'is OHtembly, as the name means, was the great national
council. It had no representative character, in the modern (10.) The
sense, as its members were not elected, but became such by SnStfor
blood, rank, and office. Its members comprised the sethelings Witan.
or royal princes, the ealdormen, the bishops and abbots, the king's
thanes, and perhaps the sheriffs. It is quite certain that, in the earlier
time of our monarchy, before the Norman Conquest, the Witan possessed
an elective power as regarded the king, and that, in consequence of
the use of this power, the strict hereditary succession to the crown
was not always kept. The Witan had a consultative and advising
voice with the king in great public questions, such as peace or war,
making new laws, levying taxes, raising armaments, making grants of
land, and in civil and criminal jurisdiction. In these and other affairs,
they had, as a deliberative body, a concurrent authority with the king.
It would seem that the assembly was of small number, and that the
time and place of meeting depended on the king's pleasure. It is
obvious that the power wielded by such a body would vary-greatly with
the force of character and the ability of the sovereign.

The highest court, apart from the Witan, which was a high court
of appeal, was the shire-mote (shire-court, county-court), held ( U ) ^Q
twice a year, in May arid October. In this all the thanes had courts,
a seat and a vote. Its duties were judicial, and it was presided .over
by the ealdorman. or earl and by the bishop, the dioceses at that time
being of the same area as the counties. The hundred-court had monthly
meetings as a court of justice for the settlement of minor causes. It
was held under the writ of the sheriff, and was for suitors who lived
within the limits of the hundred. Its duties became at last confined
to dealing with small offences and the maintenance of the peace by a
system of local police. As to the methods adopted for the administra-
tion of justice, we find that in the county-court the finding of a verdict
was intrusted to a committee of thanes, consisting usually of twelve, but
sometimes of twenty-four or thirty-six, and the verdict of two-thirds of
the number sufiiced. Their decisions were revised by the whole court.
There was nothing that at all resembled a modern jury, an institution of
much later date. There was no evidence, circumstantial or direct, for the
jurors to balance. The accused person, if he chose to rest his case upon
testimony to character, made oath as to his innocence, and called upon
a certain number of neighbours, whose worth, or money-value, was duly
assessed, to give the like testimony. These persons were called his
compurgators, or fellow-clearers, and if a certain number made oath of
their belief in the innocence of the accused, he was acquitted of the
charge. The accuser also produced compurgators to swear that he did
not prosecute from vindictive or interested motives. Trial by ordeal,
which was held to be a Divine judgment in the case, was resorted to
when the accused could not produce compurgators or when his previous
character was against him. There were many kinds of ordeal In

56 ORDEALS AND PUNISHMENTS.

that by boiling water, the accused had to plunge his naked arm into it,
and if the wound were perfectly healed by the third day, he was pro-
nounced innocent; if not, guilty. In that by fire, the decision as to
innocence or guilt rested upon the accused being able to walk with bare
feet, uninjured, over red-hot ploughshares, or to carry for nine paces
a red -hot bar of iron. It is hard to see how any person could escape,
except by collusion of his judges, and the whole system seems to be one
open to the grossest frauds.

A peculiar feature of these early times in England was the wer-gild,
or life-price, which was established for the settling of feuds.
punish- 6 A sum, paid either in kind or in money, was placed upon the
ments. jjf e o f ev ery freeman, according to his rank in the state, his
birth, or his office. A corresponding sum was fixed for every wound
that could be inflicted on his person; for nearly every injury that
could be done to his civil rights, his honour, or his domestic peace,
and greater or lesser fines were appointed according to aggravating or
extenuating circumstances in the offence. From the operation of this
principle no one was exempt, and the king as well as the peasant was
protected by a wer-gild, payable to his kinsmen and his people. The
sum paid in amends was called bot, whence our phrase to boot. In all
cases of default of payment the remedy was prompt and effective. The
offender became a penal slave. By this principle of compensation for
all offences, however rude it may seem, society was preserved from the
evils of private feud, which may be seen still existing in Corsica and
Albania. The wer-gild was a substitute for personal vengeance by
members of the family of the slain or injured man or woman. As
to the value put upon the lives of different classes of men, we find
in one code of early English laws that the ceorl's life was estimated
at 200 shillings (a sum equal at least to .200 now) ; for the smaller
thane the wer-gild was 600 shillings, for the royal thane 1200, for the
ealdorman double this last sum ; for an setheling, three times, and for
the king six times the price of the royal thane. The value of a man's
oath was in accordance with that of his property. The evidence of a
thane in a court of justice was equal to that of twelve ceorls, and that
of an ealdorman counterbalanced the oaths of six thanes. In cases of
wilful murder, arson, and theft, capital punishment might be inflicted,
if the relatives of the slain person, or the injured person himself,
declined to accept the wer-gild. The punishment for treason was death,
and banishment was a punishment for great crimes. The person so
punished became an outlaw, and was said to have a wolf's head; he
could be killed by any one with impunity if he returned from exile.
One cruel punishment for theft was the amputation of hand or foot.
The scir-(jerefa (shire-reeve, sheriff) was, in a great degree, the deputy
(13.) f the ealdorman or county governor, and he was also subject
Officials, to the control of the bishop. He was the executive officer and
fiscal officer of his shire, and his duties were to carry out the decisions

THE ARMY. 57

of the county court, levy fines, and collect taxes. In virtue of bis office,
he had a portion of land allotted to him, known as reeve-land. The
sheriff was in that age a very important official, as presiding in the
shire-court along with the ealdorman and bishop, or alone, in their
absence, and he was, practically, the shire-court judge. He was ap-
pointed by the king, and was subject to his removal. The chief magis-
trate of a town was the town-reeve, and we hear also of burgh-reeves and
port-reeves

The only regular army known to the early English times was the
militia referred to above as organised by King Alfred. It / 14 \
was a development of the posse-comitatus, or power of the The army.
county, the body of citizens summoned to assist in suppressing a riot
or executing any legal process. The national levies were headed by
the king, his ealdormen, and the thanes. The freemen, as a body,
constituted the armed force of the shire, and the ealdorman of the
shire was their chief. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we constantly
read of the ealdorman winning or losing a battle, of the ealdorman
being slain, or of the king and the ealdormen being engaged in warfare
with each other. The divisions of the country into shires, hundreds,
and tithings, made the calling out of these levies a matter of well-
ordered arrangement. During a period of alarm, such as existed in
Danish times, every town and village must have had its band of army-
men organised and disciplined, ready to follow the summons of their
legal chief. The burghers were associated in their guilds under their
port-reeve or their bishop.

There was no poor-law in England until the time of Henry VIII.
As the serf was obliged to remain in one place and one ( 15- )
service, his lord was also obliged to provide for him. All The poor,
other persons who had no resources of their own depended on private
benevolence. There was, indeed, a fund for the poor which was a part
of the tithe of the Church, and there were the oblations at the altar.
The Church, by food given at the doors of the monasteries, played a
large part in the relief of the indigent. In times of general or local
distress, the lord and the lady distributed alms at the hall-door. An
old illumination, rude in style but of undoubted authenticity, shows
us a royal or noble house, with its attendant warriors, its priests,
and its chapel, with the poor receiving food from the heads of the
household.

EDWARD THE ELDER. [901 A.D.

CHAPTEK IV.

ENGLAND IN THE TENTH CENTURY.

in-

The Lady of Mercia. Power of Edward the Elder. Athelstau's strong rule. D
stan great in Church and State. Edgar's rule. Ethelred and the Dane*. The
Danes again strong in England.

EDWARD, the eldest son of Alfred, succeeded to bis father's power and
Alfred's office. He is known as Edtcard tho Elder, by way of distinc-
successors, tion from kings of the same name who came at a later period
Edward of our history. The new king had been carefully trained for
the Elder. his high position, and was as good a soldier, though not so
good a scholar, as his illustrious sire. He had already won distinction
in battle against the Danes, and was readily chosen by the Witan to
hold the royal dignity. His cousin, Ethelwald, son of his father's elder
brother, Ethelred, claimed the throne, and gave trouble in a civil war
for some years, but fell at last in a battle in East Anglia. King
Edward then set himself to the work of bringing the whole country
under his sway, and herein he had the able and vigorous help of his
sister, ^Ethelflseda, who had been left a widow by the death of her
husband, the Ealdorman of Mercia. An innovation, probably due to
the energy, wisdom, and courage which she was known to possess, left
her the holder of an ealdorman's authority, and she takes a place in
history as "The Lady of Mercia." She ruled her land in perfect
accord with her brother, and furthered his plans by the erection of
fortresses at various points. The city of Chester, which had been left
desolate for three hundred years, became again a place of strength to
guard the north-west. Bridgenorth, Stamford, Tamworth, Warwick,
Hertford, Withaiu (in Essex), and other points were fortified with
works of stone; and not only were Danish risings quelled;, but the
king and his sister made steady encroachments on the dominion of the
Danelagh. In 917 the Lady took Derby, and in 918 she forced tho
garrison of Leicester to surrender. In 920 her death came at Tam-
worth, and Mercia was then annexed to Edward's kingdom of Wessex.
The king had already gained the towns of Bedford, Huntingdon, and
Northampton, and after reducing East Anglia, he became master of
Nottingham and Lincoln. The whole of the Five Boroughs and their
territory were thus in his hands, and, as he advanced to attack Nor-
th umbria, a conflict was made needless by the willing submission to
his power of all the Northumbrians and the Britons (Welsh) and the
Scots of Strathclyde. Edward the Elder died in 925, and the kings
who came after him took the title either of King of the Angles or King

925 A.D.] ATHELSTAN. 59

of Britain, or assumed some style which implied the lordship of all
the land.

Athelstan, son of Edward, had been a pet of his grandfather, Alfred,
who dedicated him, as it were, to war and dominion, by bestowing
011 the handsome boy a scarlet cloak, a diamond- studded
belt, and a Saxon sword in a golden scabbard. He reigned
for fifteen years (925-940), and was an able and vigorous ruler. The
glory and power of England under native rulers before the Norman
Conquest now reached their highest point. Athelstan had a name
across the seas, and appears, in the earlier part of his reign, as the
protector and defender of deposed and exiled princes from. Brittany,
Norway, and France. A treaty of alliance between France and Eng-
land is a remarkable fact in the history of the two countries. Foreign
potentates approached the king with splendid presents, amongst which
we read of perfumes, jewels, caparisoned horses, and a ship from
Norway with golden beak, purple sail, and gilded shields. A con-
federacy was formed against him of some peoples who had felt or were
jealous of his power, and in 937 the English king had to meet the
united forces of the Danes, the Strathclyde Britons, and the Scots.
The great battle of Brunanburh, fought at an unknown spot in Nor-
thumberland, was a complete victory for Athelstan, and his success
was sung in a poem to be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He
also waged vigorous war with the Welsh of Wales and Cornwall, forcing
the princes to do homage at Hereford, and to pay a tribute of gold,
silver, hunting- dogs, hawks, and oxen, and fixing the Wye as the
boundary between England and Wales. Ho drove the men of West
Wales out of Exeter, and made the Tamar the boundary between them
and the English. Among his many laws was one which gave the rank
of thane to any merchant who had made three lengthy voyages as a
trader on his own account. Athelstan died in 940, and was buried in
the Abbey of Malmesbury, where his memory even now lingers as the
giver of the common rights of pasture and the founder of the town-
school. A copy of the Gospels in Latin which he presented to Canter-
bury Cathedral is to be seen in the British Museum.

Athelstan's half-brother Edmund, surnamed the Elder, reigned from
940 to 946. He had much trouble with the revolted Danes Edmund
of Mercia and Northumbria, but had the better of them in t&e Elder.
the end. The circumstances of the young king's death give a picture
of an age of physical force. He is keeping in his hall at Puckle-
chiirch, in Gloucestershire, the festival of St. Augustine. An outlaw
whom he had banished dares to come and seat himself among the
guests. The wine-cup goes round ; Edmund espies the intruder and
orders his removal. The man resists ; the king rushes at him, seizes
him by the hair and flings him to the ground. The outlaw draws a
dagger and stabs Edmund to the heart. The bystanders draw, and
hack the assassin, whose name was Liofa, to death. The murdered

GO DUNSTAN. [ 925 A.D.

king was buried in the Abbey of Glastonbury by the care of Abbot
Dunstan.

The mention of this canonised saint, around whose name so many

Wends gathered, presents us with the greatest man of the aee.
Dunstan . -, i i j. TIM

lived circa Dunstan was an able statesman and ecclesiastic, who, like

925-988. Becket and Wolsey, Lanfranc and Laud, played a great part
in the events of his time. Born at Grlastonbury and educated in
the famous abbey, he became a man of learning in theology and philo-
sophy, and an artist skilled in music, painting, carving, and working
in metals. He made a figure at the court of Athelstan as a precocious
youth of noble birth, and then embraced a monastic life, and took the
vows at Glastonbury. He lived, according to some stories, an ascetic
life in a wretched hut near the abbey, and at an early age for such a
charge, became head of the house by the appointment of K-ing Edmund.
He had many of the gifts of a courtier in a quick wit, a strong memory,
a pleasant address, and ready and fluent speech. For thirty years he
was virtual ruler of England. Edred, the brother of Edmund, became
king in 946, and Dunstan was appointed his chief minister in affairs
both of church and state. There was much trouble with the Danes of
jSTorthumbria and other parts, but they were finally subdued by the
year 954. The vigour of the administration of affairs was shown in
the imprisonment of Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, who had taken
part in a rising, and Northumbria was placed in charge of a governor,
with the Danish title of Earl. Edred died in 955, leaving infant
children, and the Wit an chose his nephew, Edwy, son of Edmund, as
his successor. Dunstan had already planned, and begun to carry into
effect, a revolution in the affairs of the Church. His object was to
establish in England the full strictness of the monastic rule and the
concurrent supremacy of the power of the Pope. The celibacy of the
clergy was the leading principle to be striven for in making the
Church Romish instead of national. Dunstan strove to enforce celi-
bacy on the secular or non -monastic clergy, and also to get the cathe-
drals and other great churches into the hands of monks, instead of
secular priests or canons, who had taken no monastic vows. His
object was to reform the lives of the priests, and to raise the power of
the monks, or regular clergy, as they were called from the strict rules
of life laid down by their founder, St. Benedict. Such a policy as this
could not but raise up many foes for the active reformer of abuses.
;md Dunstan was banished by Edwy. A revolt in Mercia and Nor-
thumbria followed, and at this juncture the king died in 959, and was
succeeded by his brother Edgar.

Under King Edgar the power of Dunstan was at its height. The

Edgar, new sovereign gave him the sees of Worcester and London,

9 ' 975 - and in 96 1 he became head of the Church as Archbishop of

Canterbury. Whatever may be thought of his policy in replacing the

married parish priest by the monk from his cloister, there can be no

059 A.D.] SOCIAL CHANGES UNDER EDGAR. 61

doubt as to the services rendered by Dunstan in civil affairs. During
the sixteen years of Edgar's reign, he kept the country free from
external attacks and from domestic disturbance. It was a time of
peaceful supremacy for the king, who is said to have caused eight
vassal princes of Wales to row him in his barge on the river Dee,
The rovers of the sea were kept at bay by a fleet of armed cruisers.
The Danes in the land were settling down to a life of quiet industry,
and Dunstan gave some of them, high posts in the service of the king
and the Church. Laws were enacted for the settlement of weights,
measures, and coinage, and the growth of trade made the streets of
London busy with traffickers from Germany and France. Edgar gave
his minister a zealous support in all his measures for the revival of
monasticism, in which one of the chief objects of Dunstan was the
promotion of literature and learning. The favour shown by Edgar to
the monks, who were then the only historians, has been thought to
have secured for the king too high a meed of praise for his share in
the good work of the reign.

It is of more moment to notice two facts of the time. These are
the decline of slavery through the influence of the Church, ^ ^
and the increase of the power of the king. Many of the The
higher clergy, by precept and example, brought about the slaves -
manumission of slaves on a large scale. The wider dominion which
had come to the ruler of England in the person of Egbert had, in
succeeding reigns, raised the sovereign far above the nobles, who had
once been nearly on a level with him.

The old nobility of blood, in the persons of the ealdormen, was being
fast pushed aside by the new nobility of thanes, who held other
office about the king's person, and were rewarded with high changes,
posts in civil and ecclesiastical affairs. At the same time, the old
English freedom and independence were dying out for the bulk of the
smaller landowners and free tillers of the soil. The days of Norman
feudalism were being, in a measure, forestalled when the free farmer,
in order to live safe amid troubles caused by the Danes, gave up his
freehold to some lord, and received it again as a feud or fief, with
service to be rendered in place of rent. Edgar died in 975, leaving
two sons by different wives. He was succeeded by the elder, named
Edward, then aged thirteen.

Edgar had left a younger son, Ethelred, and a strong party of the
nobles demanded that the choice between him and Edward Edward
should be determined by election. Dunstan, by one of his Martyr,
vigorous movements, quelled the dispute, and presenting 975-979.
Edward to the assembled thanes and ecclesiastics at Winchester,
consecrated him on the spot. The question for Dunstan, between
Edward and Ethelred, was the question, not of one brother or the
other, but of a secular or monastic Church. A reaction in favour of
the married priests began. The Benedictines had expelled the secular

( )L > EDWARD THE MARTYR. [975 A.D.

clergy from the conventual churches, arid the married priests had
been driven from their parishes. Now one caldoriimii expelled the
monks from the monasteries, whilst another upheld them in their
possessions. Many of the secular clergy returned from exile in
Scotland. At Calne, in Wiltshire, a Witan was assembled in 978
to debate the points which divided the Church and threatened
the kingdom with civil war. An accident occurred to the room of
assembly. The floor gave way, and many of the opponents of
Dunstan were killed and injured. The Archbishop was left safe,
standing on a beam which kept its place, and all his friends cried
out that a miracle had been wrought in his favour. In that age
superstition gave great weight to such an occurrence, and the enemies
of Dunstan's reforms were driven to desperation. It was determined
to attack the young king, who was under the minister's control. The
opponents of monastic domination applied to his step-mother, Elfrida,
who hated him for standing in the way of her son's elevation. He
was murdered in 979 by her orders at Corfe Castle, in Dorsetshire,
a royal manor, where she and her son resided. It was his youth,
innocence, and cruel death that procured for him the surname of
Martyr.

With the death of the young king the career of the great Archbishop
Ethelred came to an enc ^ ^-is enemies were now triumphant, and
II., 979- Dunstan, after placing the crown on the new sovereign's head
1016 ' at Kingston, retired to Canterbury, and died there nine years

later. Ethelred II. , who now came to the throne at the age of ten,
has been the victim of an attempt at wit made by some of his later
historians. His name means nolle in counsel, and in his policy as
regards the Danes he has been accused of ruining the country by
unraed want of counsel or evil counsel. Hence comes the epithet of the
Unready, meaning counselled or of bad counsel. Certain it is that his
reign was a time of disaster and disgrace which might well arouse the
anger and shame of those who had to record its troubles. The realm
raised to greatness by the wisdom and energy of Alfred, Edward the
Elder, Athelstan, Edgar, and Dunstan was now to be assailed, and in
the end subdued, by the old foes of the land. The Danish troubles
since the days of Alfred had been mainly caused by the restless spirit
of Danes long settled in England, or, at the worst, by inroads of their
kinsmen who came over from Ireland. The time had now come for the
Northmen to appear again from over the North Sea in ever- increasing
force. The Scandinavian peoples had been lately growing in political
strength and cohesion. The subjects of many petty chiefs had settled
down into the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
New strength begat new ambition and restlessness, and the rovers
were once more abroad. In 980 Southampton was "ravaged by a
ship-force, and the most part of the townsmen slain and led captive."
In 981 "was much havoc done everywhere by the sea-coast, as well

932. \.n.~) KTHELRED THE UNREADY. 60

amongst the men of Devon as amongst the Welsh." Thus far the
Chronicle. In 982 three ships of pirates landed among the men of
Dorset and ravaged the Isle of Portland. In the same year London
itself was burnt. No effective resistance was made, for the men of
Dorset, like the men in other parts of the unhappy country, were
quarrelling about the occupation of the monasteries, instead of arming
for the defence of their homes. The invaders took back news of the
defenceless state of England, and in 991 a body of Norwegians landed
in East Anglia. There a sturdy resistance \vas made, but the invaders
Avon a battle fought at Maldon, and the town of Ipswich was plundered.
The cowardly device was adopted of paying the Northmen to go away,
or, if they pleased, to settle quietly in the land. Ten thousand pounds
of silver bought a respite, and then, in 993, S \veyn, king of Denmark,
and Anlaf or Olaf of Norway came in great force up the Humber,
and ravaged on every side. The next year London was assailed by a
fleet sailing up the Thames; but the citizens were united, and their
brave defence drove off the enemy. Attacks in other quarters were
bought off by payment of larger sums, and the price of redemption was
ever rising. It was the payment of this shameful tribute that gave
rise to the tax called Dane-geld or Dane-money, which became a source
of revenue to reckless kings long after the Danish period. For a
quarter of a century, the history of England becomes one of treachery,
cowardice, imbecility, and bloodshed. The truth is, that the energies
of a martial race were paralysed by national discord, by treachery
and rivalry in court and camp, and by the failure of discipline in the
army. The impoverishment of the land by the payment of tribute to
the invaders may be seen when we contrast the old with the present
value of money. In twenty years one hundred and thirty-four thousand
pounds of silver were paid to the Danes. A pound of silver then
would purchase eight oxen or fifty sheep. The Danish tribute was
equal in value to the fee-simple, at the prices of that day, of
nearly-one tenth of the whole acreage of England, This enormous
charge represents, of course, but a part of the loss sustained. The
invaders, wherever they went, lived at free quarters, and famine
followed their steps. In the year 1002, Ethelred was threatened
with a new invasion by Svveyn, who was now ruler of both Norway
and Denmark. The English king sought help in a marriage alliance
with Normandy, and wedded Emma, sister of Duke Richard the Good.
8he was a beautiful and clever woman, who was to take an active part
in the next fifty years of our history. With this notable marriage
Norman influence in England began. The Norman- French tongue
was first used at court, and the friends of Emma were put into high
civil and ecclesiastical posts. The king of England was now to resort
to a method of defence against his foes more shameful than the weak-
ness of paying tribute or the cowardice of fleeing from battle. There
were many of the old Danish settlers who had become a part of the

64 MASSACRE OF ST. BRICE. [1002 A.D.

nation, and had intermarried with the English. It ^vould seem that
the Danish element, in the new successes of their kinsmen from
abroad, had become insolent and overbearing, so that, as a chronicle
declares " the common people were so oppressed, that for fear and
dread they called them, in every house as they had rule of, Lord
Dane." There were also Danish mercenaries whom our kings had long
had in their pay, and these men were guilty of many acts of violence
near their quarters up and down the country. A feeling of strong
resentment had been roused in the breasts of the English, and
Ethelred took advantage of this to give secret advice or orders for
a general slaughter of the Danes in Wessex. The perpetration of
the crime began in November, on the feast-day of St. Brice. The
extent of the murders committed has been grossly exaggerated by
the writers who represent the massacre as carried through England.
In Northumbria and East Anglia, to say nothing of Mercia, the
Danes were in far too great numbers for such a thing to be possible.
In Wessex, some thousands of Danes may have perished, and amongst
the victims was Gunhilda, sister of Sweyn of Norway and Denmark.
She had become a Christian, but this did not save her from seeing
her husband, who was a Danish earl, and her little children, butchered
before her face. With her dying words she warned her murderers of
vengeance to come from over the seas for this great national crime. One
form of retribution came on our forefathers in the fact that, when
William the Conqueror wished to rouse Normans against Saxons, his
frequent cry was "Remember St. Brice's day." Sweyn swore, when
he heard of the terrible event, that he would make himself master of
England. The retaliation denounced by Gunhilda was being wreaked
from the year 1003 to 1007. One ravaging followed another, and
tribute after tribute was exacted. At last the people would pay no
more Dane-geld to buy off the hosts sent and led by Sweyn. Some
attempt at armed resistance was made, and a soldier was to be fur-
nished for every eight hides of land, and a vessel for each three
hundred and ten hides. The claim for ship-money in later days,
which became so prominent under Charles I., is held to have had
its precedent in the latter contribution. But men and ships are of
no avail without faithful hearts and able leaders, and the king and
his people were ruined by incapacity and treachery on every hand.
One of the few brave and loyal subjects in high place was ^Elfheah,
Archbishop of Canterbury, commonly known as St. Alphege. He
encouraged the people of the episcopal city to make a good defence
for twenty days ; but treachery was again at work. The gates were
opened to the enemy. Many people were slain, the city was plundered
and the minster was burnt. Ransom was demanded for the life of
the primate, but he nobly said that he had no goods of his own to
offer for ransom, and that the goods of the Church should not be
given up for his own life. He was dragged from his prison, and done

1014 A. i).] CANUTE. 05

to death by drunken Danish revellers, who pelted him with stones
and with the bones and ox-horns of their coarse banquet, and then
finished the work with the stroke of an axe. The Church of St.
Alphege at Greenwich, where this cruel deed was done, is the memo-
rial of the event. At last, in 1013, the king of Denmark and Nor-
way sailed up the Humber, not only to plunder and destroy, but
to conquer and to hold. Ethelred drove him off from London, with
the help of his Danish officer, Thurkill, and Sweyii retired to Bath.
All the Danish part of England, however, to the north and east of
Watling Street, had already submitted, and Ethelred found himself
helpless. He fled first to the Isle of Wight, and then over to Richard
of Normandy. The thanes of Wessex submitted to the conqueror,
and then London opened her gates. Winchester and Oxford were in.
Danish hands, and the efforts of Wessex, like those of Mercia and
Northumbria, to form a united England under the sway of a Wessex
king, had finally and signally failed. Sweyn of Denmark died a few
weeks later, in 1014, before he could be crowned, and he is not reckoned
among the Danish kings of England, being called by the Chronicle
Siceyn the Tyrant or the Usurper. His army proclaimed his son Cnut
(Canute) as king, but Ethelred was recalled by the Witan, and pro-
mises of good behaviour were exchanged by king and people. Cnut
was in possession of a large part of the land, and the only real helper
for the English king was his son Edmund, surnamed Ironside for his
bodily strength and his courage and energy. Cnut sailed away for a
time to Denmark, but treachery was again at work in the person of
Edric, an old betrayer of his partial master, Ethelred. In 1015 Cnut
returned with a large force, and ravaged much of Wessex, being
joined now by Edric. In April 1016 King Ethelred died, leaving the
country forlorn.

The citizens of London at once proclaimed Edmund king, and a
council at Southampton took the oaths to Cnut. Edmund Edmund
fought hard, and with no small success, but the Danish and J^f d '
English nobles caused the rivals to divide the kingdom. November
Cnut was to keep Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia, and 1016 -
Edmund take the rest. A month later the brave Edmund died, through
foul play, it is said, at the hands of Edric. Cnut was thus left in sole
possession of the long-harassed land.

66 GOVERNMENT OF CANUTE. [1016 A.D.

CHAPTEE V.

ENGLAND UNDEll DANISH KINGS.

The good rule of Cnut. The influence of the Danes on English nationality and
character. The last Danish king.

THE Witan were induced by Cnut to annul the division of the kingdom

Danish anc * se ^ as ^ e ^ ne infant sons of Edmund Ironside, who were
kings in named Edmund and Edward. The Danish king tried to get
Crnuf me- rid of them, but in the end they reached a safe asylum in
1035. ' Hungary, and both grew to manhood. Edmund became the
father of the prince whom we shall see hereafter as Edgar Atheling,
and of Margaret, the queen of Malcolm of Scotland. There were two
other claimants in the persons of Edward and Alfred, sons of Ethelred
by his wife Emma of Normandy. Duke Richard asserted their lights,
but Cnut settled the dispute by marrying their mother with Richard's
consent. The new king wielded his power at first with a masterful hand.
His Danish followers were rewarded with the lands of proscribed Eng-
lishmen, and severe measures were used to prevent the assassination
of Danes by the English, who were now under their yoke. Cnut soon
showed, however, the policy of a statesman, and of a king who knew that
solid strength for a ruler lies in the attachment of the governed people.
One of his first measures was to make a new division of the country
for administrative purposes. He divided the whole into four great
earldoms. Leofwine became ruler of Mercia, Eric the Dane was Earl
of Northumberland, Thurkill, also a Dane, of East Anglia, and in 1020
Godwin, an Englishman, was made Earl of Wessex. Cnut had already
become by profession a Christian, and he now sought to conciliate the
clergy by liberal gifts to minsters and by showing favour to monks.
He made at least one pilgrimage to Rome, with staff in hand and wallet
on back, and was diligent in enforcing payment of Peter's pence and
other dues of the Church to the Pope. In a remarkable letter addressed
from Denmark to his English subjects, he declares that he is resolved
" to govern his kingdoms with justice, and to observe the right in all
things. Therefore I beg and command those unto whom I have in-
trusted the government, as they wish to preserve my good-will and
save their own souls, to do no injustice either to poor or rich. Let
those who are noble, and those who are not, equally obtain their rights,
according to the laws, from which no deviation shall be allowed, either
from fear of me, or through favour to the powerful, or for the purpose
of supplying my treasury ; I want no money raised by injustice." Cnut
ruled England with a firm hand, and the country, after the long arid

1035 A.D.] DANISH ELEMENT IN ENGLAND. . 07

terrible troubles of tho past, gained much from internal peace. Towards
the end of the Danish king's reign, Malcolm II., king of Scots, invaded
Northumberland and won a battle, but Cnut marched north and brought
him to thorough submission. He died in 1035 at Shaftesbury, leaving
three sons, among whom his dominions in Norway, Denmark, and Eng-
land were divided.

In writing of the time when we find Danish kings ruling in England,
we are led to inquire into the probable extent of the Danish D^^ in
element in our composite race. There can be little doubt that, fluence on
in order to give the constituent parts of the English nation in En ^ land -
their due order of importance, the poet's line should run "Saxon, and
Dane and Celt are we." Beyond all question, the main bulk and body
of our nation is English and Saxon. At the period which we have now
reached, the contest of two centuries between Saxon and Dane has come
to an end, and the Danish population may be regarded as a part of the
great English or Anglo-Saxon family. In blood and language, the
Danes had been kinsmen from the first of those whom they had sub-
dued, and were now by degrees becoming identical, in intermarriage
ever growing more frequent, and in the possession of a common country
and a common religion. Yet the local nomenclature of England bears
very strong marks of the presence of the Dane in every region in
which he settled. At the end of Alfred's reign, the Danish or Scan-
dinavian immigrants, as we have seen, had full possession of a large
tract in the north and north-east of England. Even as late as the twelfth
century, the language of laws shows the difference of this district from
the rest of England in respect of dialect, law, and nationality. A statute
of Henry I. says that "all England is divided into three parts, Wessex,
Merda, and the province of the Danes," In the north and north-east,
we have words and endings of words which are almost unknown in the
southern and south-western parts of England. The terminations -&?/,
meaning first a farm, and then a town or village; -tJiorpe, a village;
-thwaite, a cleared spot; -ness, -e//, an island; holme, beck, dale, &ndfoss
(or force), a waterfall, are all Danish ; and a common map shows nearly
three hundred such names in Lincolnshire alone, and above four hundred
in Yorkshire. The fact is good evidence of there having been a consider-
able proportion of Danish inhabitants in the neighbourhood of such
places at the time when the names were bestowed. The strength of the
Danes in East Aiiglia is proved by the number of Danish names in Nor-
folk. Derby and Rugby show the Dane in the Midlands, Denbigh in
North Wales, and Tenby in South Wales. In Cumberland and West-
moreland the like evidence proves Danish settlement in great force.
Dale, the Scandinavian daal or dal, is found throughout the Scotch

>wlands. The result of such an examination of the map shows that the
idinavian area includes the eastern coast district from the Wash
lorthwards, and the western side of the country from the Dee to the

)lway Firth, with the greater part of lowland Scotland, and a narrow

68 CANUTE'S SUCCESSORS. [1035 A.D.

strip along the east, between the hills and the sea, northwards to the ex-
tremity of the island. The Danish element of the nation is also found,
as a main constituent, in the Orkneys and Shetlands, the southern
Hebrides, the islands in the Firth of Clyde, and parts of the Welsh
coast. It is a more difficult task to attempt to decide what the moral
influence of our Danish ancestors has been upon our race. If to the
Angle and the Saxon we owe quiet energy, a spirit of stubborn resist-
ance to wrong, love of freedom and of monarchy, and respect for law,
it may well be that to the Dane are due a fierceness of courage in o ( ir
soldiers as assailants, and an enterprise, a daring, and an adaptation to
their element, the sea, in our sailors, which have contributed not a little
to the extension and maintenance of the empire.

The successors of Cnut did not sustain the repute of their father.
Harold I. ^ ne TFVte decided that Harold, surnamed Harefoot, should
1035-1039. have Mercia and Northuinbria, with London, and that Hardi-
canute (or Harthacnut) should take Wessex. Edward, son of Ethelred,
came over with a Norman force, but was soon glad to retire, and his
brother Alfred was enticed over by a forged letter, and then seized and
murdered. Harold's character and reign are without significance, and
he died in 1039.

Hardicanute now became king of all England. He was a mere
Hardi- ty rant > w hc- began his reign by disinterring the body of his
Canute, half-brother Harold, and then having it beheaded and flung
1039-1042. -J^Q fa e r j; names n e behaved, however, with some kindness
and courtesy to his half-brother Ethelred. His chief vice was that of
drunkenness, and he died soon after a heavy bout of drinking at a
marriage-feast in Lambeth. The bride was the daughter of one of his
chief thanes, Osgod Clapa.

1042 A.D.]

BOOK IV,

COMING OF THE NORMANS (1042-1100.)
CHAPTEE I.

THE BEGINNING OF NORMAN POWER IN ENGLAND.

Early history of Normans. Norman character. Earl Godwin and Edward the
Confessor. Their quarrel. William of Normandy. Harold, son of Godwin.
His oath to William examined.

AT the death of Hardicaimte the English people had been under
foreign domination for a quarter of a century. The glories Edward
of the race of Cerdio had vanished amid intestine conflicts, f^ s e s ^ on "
exhausting war, payment of tribute to rapacious foes, and 1042-1066.
subjection to Danish rulers. There was still, however, a people with
the memories of Alfred, and the first Edward, and Athelstan, preserved
in their national traditions and songs. A man of the race of Cerdic
was at hand, and by the general voice, backed by the powerful influ-
ence of Godwin, the old line of English monarchs was restored in the
person of Edward the Confessor. The distinctive name is derived from
his mild religious character. He was the second son of Ethelred and
his second wife, Emma, the Norman princess. If strict hereditary rule
had been followed, the new king would have been Edward, the son of
Edmund Ironside, who was an elder son of Ethelred ; but he was away
in Hungary, and Emma's son was chosen at once in London. The
choice was confirmed at a meeting of the Witan held at Gillingham,
in Dorsetshire, early in 1043, and at Easter the new king was crowned
at Winchester, the capital of Wessex. His chief adviser and minister
was the eloquent and powerful Earl Godwin, who in January 1045
became also the king's father-in-law by the marriage of his daughter
Edith to Edward. Little love existed between Edward and his mother,
Emma, who had always shown a preference for the children of her
second husband, Cnut, and one of the first acts of the new king was to
make her powerless for harm. A meeting of the Witan was held at
Gloucester in November 1043, and then the king and his three great
earls, Godwin of Wessex, Leofric of Mercia, and Siward of North-
umbria, rode to Winchester and seized her treasures of gold, silver, and
jewels. She lived on at Winchester in a kind of honourable captivity
until her death in 1052.

6 9

70 EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. [1050 A.D.

The people of England had chosen an English king in blood, at least
Norman on his father's side, but the man of their choice was really a
mSer nC8 foreigner in language, tastes, and policy. The repute of this
Edward, last king of the old English stock gained much in after time
by contrast of his day with the period of Norman domination and the
harsh rule of the two Williams. Men talked of the "good old times
of Edward the Confessor," and told stories of his piety and meekness
until they fancied him a saint, and made his tomb within the walls of
his abbey-church of St. Peter at Westminster into a shrine for pilgrim-
age and prayer. For twenty-seven years Edward had lived in exile
among his mother's relations in Normandy. He had no vigour of
character, and his training had been rather that of a monk than one
fitted for the descendant of a long line of kings who was himself to
reign. He was a stranger now among his English people, a man
familiar with other customs and another language than theirs. In his
mind the great idea of nationality had but little place. There was,
however, at his side an Englishman of high ability and of almost
supreme power, who had an intensely national feeling. Earl Godwin
knew that on the opposite shores there had grown up a nation that
would be a more formidable enemy to England than any of the Scan-
dinavian peoples. He knew that the conquest of England had long
been the secret aspiration of the Norman. He saw his royal master,
who spoke the Norman-French tongue and was a Norman in ideas and
sympathies, putting Norman favourites on every occasion into high
places in Church and state. English sees and English estates were
bestowed on Normans. The court at Westminster was full of Norman
speech and Norman fashions, and the court of Rouen became to the
court of Edward the Confessor what the court of Versailles was, over
six centuries later, to that of Charles the Second. The conquest of
England by the Normans had begun in the holding of place and power
by men of Norman race.

The Northmen or Normans were the very pick and flower of the
Who were Scandinavian peoples. What the Aryans were to the primitive
the^Nor- races of mankind in the plateau of Central Asia, what the
Hellenes were to the Pelasgic tribes who came into the olden
land of Greece, that were the Normans to their brethren on the coasts
of the northern sea. They had in their highest form all the best
qualities that were inherent in the race. They were the foremost in
courage, military discipline and skill, and in the power of embracing
and improving on the culture with which their conquests soon made
them familiar. They had now become the foremost people in Chris-
tendom. Towards the close of the ninth century, a party of Northern
rovers, led by their chieftain Eollo, had sailed up the river Seine. In
the Latin of the Chronicles, Hollo is the form of the Danish name Rolf,
and this man was called fiolf the Ganger, that is, the Goer or Walter,
because he was too tall to ride the small steeds of his country. The

913-1050 A.D.] ORIGIN OF THE NORMANS. 71

invaders carried their arms even as far as Paris, but they were unable
at first to get a firm footing in the land which they coveted. At last
one of the feeble heirs of Charles the Great made a compact with Hollo.
The rover was to settle down in the province called Neustria, a land of
fertile soil, watered by a noble river, and with an extensive coast on
the favourite element of his people. He was also to become a Christian
and cease to ravage the country. In return for these concessions, Hollo
should marry the daughter of the French king, Charles the Simple,
and hold the province in fief of him, by homage done to Charles. Thus
was founded, in 913, the Duchy of Normandy, and it soon became a
powerful state. Its influence was spread by degrees over the neigh-
bouring principalities of Maine and Brittany. Hollo obtained fresh
grants of land from his suzerain, and, on his death in 931, he had
firmly settled his people in the country. The hardy Northmen, estab-
lished in a fertile region, under a warmer sky than that of their former
home, adopted at last the speech, usages, and faith of those whom they
had subdued. They did not lay aside the dauntless valour which had
made them the terror of their foes on every coast from the Baltic to
the Mediterranean. They gained and absorbed all the knowledge and
the culture which they found existing in their new home. They were
safe by their courage and arms from all foreign assailants, and they
brought peace and order to the land of the Franks. They became
almost fanatical holders of their new faith, and they improved and
polished their new language, called from them the Norman-French,
into the most refined tongue of the age, well adapted for high uses in
legislation, poetry, and romance. The chief delight of their fathers,
next to the conflicts of war, had lain in deep potations. The new
Frenchmen of Normandy exchanged a coarse intemperance in meat
and drink for the refined luxury of delicate banquets, where the
products of skilled cookery were seasoned by the flavour of exquisite
wines. A tribe of pirates became a nation of civilised people, devoted
to tillage, handicrafts, trade, letters, and arts, but skilled also and
courageous in war, and full of the chivalrous spirit which has worked
with such power and effect 011 the morals, manners, and politics of the
chief nations of Europe. The pride and magnificence of life in this
formidable nation were shown by their nobles in large, strong, and
stately castles, rich armour, fiery steeds, choice falcons and hawks for the
chase, and in the mimic contests of armoured knights with couched
spear in hand, where warriors and courtiers strove in tourney for the
smiles of graceful dames. The gentlemen and nobles of Normandy
were famed for their polished manners and winning demeanour, for
elegance of speech and diplomatic skill. But the chief renown of the
Normans came from their military exploits. On the field of battle none
could withstand their skill and valour, and an improvement which they
made in the art of war set their gentry to fight on horseback, defended
by heavy armour and armed with swords and long heavy spears.

72 HOSTILITY OF ENGLISH AND NORMANS. [1050 A.D.

Such were the men whom, as Godwin felt, England had now to
Earl God- dread. He headed the English party that was jealous of
win and Norman influence and encroachments, and, in his own per-
the king. gon an( j through his family, was far more wealthy and power-
ful than the king. At the accession of Edward, Godwin held the
greatest earldom of the south, including Sussex, Kent, and part of
Wessex. He and his sons, Sweyn and Harold, were the lords of all
the land from the Humber to the Severn. They had thus the com-
mand of the richest half of England. Sweyn had an earldom which
made him governor of the north of Wessex and the south of Mercia,
and Harold, the second son, was earl of East Anglia, including Essex.
Earls Leofric and Siward looked askance at the growing power of
Godwin, but they joined him, at the beginning of the reign, in up-
holding the throne of Edward. They drove traitorous Danes from
the country, and asserted the English supremacy against Magnus,
king of Norway, who claimed the throne as successor of Hardicanute.
The king went on promoting Frenchmen and other foreigners. A
Norman monk, Robert, Abbot of Jumieges, was made Bishop of
London. The see of Dorchester (in Oxfordshire), a diocese which
reached from the Thames to the Humber, was given to another
Norman. In 1050 the Archbishopric of Canterbury was bestowed
by Edward on Bishop Robert of London, in spite of Earl Godwin's
prayer for the appointment of an Englishman named ./Elfric. Since
the earliest days of the Church in England, there had been no foreign
Archbishop of Canterbury, and scarcely a foreign prelate at all. At
the same time, numbers of Normans flocked hither from across the
Channel, in search of booty to be made by way of favour at court.
The king's sister was the wife of a Frenchman, Drogo, Count of
Mantes, and an earldom was made for their son Ralph out of a part of
the province of Mercia. At this time, too, Norman nobles began to
prepare for the coming days of their power and oppression by build-
ing the first of the strong stone castles of which the ruins may still
be seen. Normans held the chief posts in the king's household, and
were appointed to the command of troops and fortresses. They
"directed" the royal conscience and held the richest abbeys. Even
the seal of wax, which Edward was the first to affix to his charters,
instead of the mark of the cross made by earlier kings, was an offence
to the English party. In the palace where Edith, daughter of God-
win, was queen, her father and brothers spoke their country's speech
and wore their country's long mantle, whilst Edward gathered around
him the short-cloaked Normans, and bade his subjects address their
petitions to his clerks or secretaries, who only understood Norman-
French. The Norman favourites made jests at the expense of the
English earls, and the English looked for a day of vengeance on the
Norman courtiers.

The other earls had come, as we have stated, to regard with suspicion

1051 A.D.] GODWIN'S RUPTURE WITH THE KING. 73

the influence of Godwin and his family. The eldest son, Sweyn,
had been guilty of atrocities which indicate a period when Rupture
violence is the ready instrument of power. He carried off an between
abbess, and for this crime he was outlawed. He then took to andUod-
the old trade of piracy, and became a terror on the sea. His w * n 1051<
brother Harold and his cousin Beorn opposed the king's wish to
pardon him, and then Sweyn seized and murdered his cousin. Even
after this, the weak-minded Edward restored Sweyn to his honours and
estates. The matter was not forgotten, and the character of Godwin's
family was sensibly lessened in influence. Their strength was now to
be measured, not merely with the envy of rivals, whether Norman or
English, but with the authority of the king. Eustace, Count of
Boulogne, had married Edward's sister, widow of the Count of Mantes.
He came over with a great retinue to the court of his brother-in-law,
and appears to have thought, from what he there saw and heard, that
England was a mere tribute-land for the Normans, and the Saxon a
born slave. On his way back to Boulogne, he was to stay a night in
Dover. Before entering the town, he ordered his men to put on their
hauberks, and in this guise, at the head of his followers, he demanded
quarters of the householders. The burghers resisted the insolent Nor-
man, and one of them, who refused entrance to his house, was cut
down by the foreigners. A cry for vengeance arose, and the Count
charged the people with his spearmen, so that many fell under the
French lances. But their ringed mail could not save the intruders
from the swords of the infuriated men of Kent. The townsmen armed
in haste, formed in military order, attacked the Normans, and killed
about twenty. In the end, Count Eustace and his men were driven
out of the town. They rode off to the king, who was then staying at
Gloucester, and gave their own version of what had occurred. The
mild Edward was, for once, roused to great wrath. He sent for
Godwin, in whose earldom the affray had taken place, and bade him
visit the men of Dover with summary vengeance. The Earl told the
king plainly that he would do nothing of the kind. They should have
legal trial in their town-court, and he would see that justice was done,
but he would not punish, without a hearing, those whom the king was
bound to protect. For the moment, awed by the demeanour of his
powerful subject, the king sullenly yielded. Then his Norman advisers
came round him, and won him over to the belief that Godwin was
acting as a rebel. He was summoned to appear before a Witan at
Gloucester. There can be no doubt that, as the law then stood, the
Earl had done his strict duty in defending the people of Dover against
an illegal chastisement. The eloquent outburst of Lord Chatham was
as true for Englishmen in the eleventh century as when the words were
uttered seven centuries later. "The poorest man in his cottage may
bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail, its roof
may shake, the storm may enter it ; but the king of England cannot

74 BANISHMENT OF EARL GODWIN. [1051 A.D.

enter it. All his power dares not cross the threshold of that ruined
tenement," The Anglo-Saxon had the legal right to resist, even to the
death, any one who presumed to intrude into his dwelling, as follower
either of baron or of king. Godwin resolved to obey the king's
summons before the Witan, but to go to the west in arms for defence
against the king's Norman followers and friends. A great host under
Godwin and his sons, Earl Sweyn. and Earl Harold, assembled on the
top of the Cotswold Hills. The demand was made that Count Eustace
and his men should be delivered to their custody. Edward appealed
for help to Earls Siward and Leofric, and to his nephew Ralph, the
Norman earl. They raised what forces they could, and a civil war
seemed at hand. The advice of Leofric and others averted armed
strife, and it was agreed that, with an exchange of hostages, Godwin
and the king should meet and confer in London. The only object of
the king's party was to gain time for raising larger forces. Godwin
fell into the trap, and disbanded most of his army. When the Wit an
met in London, Edward was there with a host of men wholly under
Norman command, and Godwin and his sons, Sweyn and Harold, re-
fused to attend without a safe-conduct, in the pledge of the king's
word, and the delivery of hostages to secure the observance of the
promise of safety. This demand was refused, and they declined to
come at all. Then the Witan declared Sweyn an outlaw, and sentenced
Godwin and Harold to banishment, to depart out of England within
five days. Harold and his brother Leofvvine sailed from Bristol for
Ireland, and passed the winter in Dublin with Dermot, king of Leinster.
Godwin and his wife Gytha, and their other sons, Sweyn, Tostig, and
Gyrth, took refuge in Flanders at Bruges, with the famous Count
Baldwin. The most powerful subjects of the king were thus driven
from their homes and possessions. The saintly Edward now turned in
revenge on his own wife, the daughter of Godwin. The innocent Lady
Edith w^s stripped of money and lands, and robbed of every womanly
ornament. -From the court she passed away to a virtual prison in the
monastery of Wherwell, where Edward's own sister was abbess, and
might be trusted to keep her safe. The Norman influence in England
was fast ripening into Norman despotism.

The departure of Godwin had left the way open for the coming of an
Duke illustrious visitor to the court of Edward the Confessor. This
William was the king's cousin, William, Duke of Normandy, a natural
mandy, son of Duke Robert, and born at Falaise in 1027 of a woman
1051. named Herletta or Arlotta. The death *bf his father in 1035

left him a child-ruler, surrounded by turbulent nobles, some of whom
disputed his right to the dukedom. When he grew to early manhood,
he had to fight in the assertion of his claims, and he so bore himself
both in. action and in council as to give the world assurance that a new
star of the first 'rank had risen above the political horizon. William
the Norman was the greatest man of his time, and one of the great

1051 A.D.] WILLIAM, DUKE OF NORMANDY. 75

men of all time. His bodily size and strength, and the fierceness of
his courage, made him a prodigy of achievement in an age abounding
in warriors brave and strong. No man could bend his bow, no man and
horse could resist his lance. With iron mace in hand, either on horse
or on foot, he would smite his way through a crowd of men, and, when
a battle seemed lost to his best and bravest followers, his desperate
valour rose to its height, rallied the fainting hearts, and bore them on
to a final victory. As a ruler and a man, he was, on occasion, iierce of
look, fearful in wrath, pitiless in revenge. His skill in strategy and
tactics proved him to be a great general, and his manner of dealing
with the political difficulties of his position and his age showed the able
statesman. When he was twenty years of age, in 1047, he beat his
rebel nobles in a Iierce cavalry- battle at Yal-es-dunes, near Caen, and
in a year or two more had strengthened his position into a complete
mastery of his duchy. It was in 1060 that William reached his full
greatness among the princes of France. His genius, and the rapid
growth of his power, had excited the jealousy of his neighbours, and
Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou, roused against him the enmity of the
king of France. Normandy was invaded in 1054 by a powerful French
army, but William met the attack with a cautious skill which soon rid
him of danger. One division .of the enemy was destroyed at the battle
of Mortemer, and the other was glad to retire. In 1058 another French
army was utterly defeated at the battle of Yaraville. Geoffrey Martel
died in 1060, and then Maine and Brittany fell, almost without a struggle,
into William's hands. He had reached this high position by the exer-
cise of a fixed purpose and unbending will, and by a display of won-
derful ability in mastering great and varied difficulties. He had had
against him insecurity of title to the duchy, youth and inexperience, rival
claimants, a turbulent people, envious neighbours, and a jealous, sus-
picious, and finally hostile suzerain ; and over all he had won a signal and
complete triumph. His country, from a divided state open to the attacks
of every foe, became under him a loyal and well-ordered land, respected by
all its neighbours, and putting most of them to shame by its prosperity.
Tillage and trade were protected and encouraged, the Church was
reformed in the appointment of fit men to high positions, and, under
Lanfranc of Pavia, the school of the Abbey at Bee became the most
renowned in Christendom. The virtues of William's private life as a
husband, brother, and father are most highly esteemed by those who
best know the profligacy and cruelty of the age in which he lived. Such
was the man who, in the year 1051, came and saw the land which he
was thereafter to conquer. There can be little doubt that what he then
beheld convinced him that the country was well worth the winning, and
that he resolved that, when the time came, he would undertake the
enterprise. He would believe, too, that his work was in great part
done. Godwin and his sons, the heads of the English or national
party, were banished. The king had a Norman court about him.

76 RETURN OF EARL GODWIN. [1052 A.D.

Most of the few strongholds had Norman governors, and were garri-
soned by Norman men-at-arms. The policy of the English did not
repress foreign settlers, and there were Normans in every town.
The nobles and the franklins or free farmers, the burghers and
the churls, were large feeders and deep drinkers, and here was a
people to be first surprised and conquered, and then plundered and
oppressed.

If such were the thoughts of Duke William, he was for once wide of
Return of ^ e mark. The subjection of England was to prove neither
Godwin, so near nor so easy as he might suppose. Godwin and Harold
1052> and his brethren were not forgotten in England, and their

exile was not lasting. In 1052 Harold and Leofwine sailed from Ire-
land into the Severn. They landed at Porlock, in Somerset, and de-
feated the opposing thanes. Godwin came with a fleet from Flanders,
and met with a warm welcome from the people of his old earldom of
Wessex. Harold came round the coast and joined his father at Port-
land. They sailed for the Thames, and, on reaching London, found a
strong popular feeling in their favour. The forces of the party of
Godwin were drawn up in order of battle on the ground where the
Strand now roars with the ceaseless traffic of men and wheels. In
that day, the silent wavelets of the tidal river broke gently on a pebbly
beach, with field and forest stretching far inland. Edward found
himself helpless, and the Witan decreed the restoration of the earls
to their offices, dignities, and estates, and declared them innocent of
whatever treason had been laid to their charge. The Norman bishops,
and Norman laymen who held civil and military offices fled in haste
abroad, and the national cause, for the rest of Edward's reign, was
secured against the foreigner. Godwin did not long survive his return
to power, but died in 1053, while dining at the king's table in the
royal house at Old Windsor.

Sweyn, the eldest son of Godwin, was by this time dead, and Harold,
Harold, the second son, succeeded his father as Earl of Wessex. The
Godwin, earldom of East Anglia, now vacated by Harold, fell to
1053-1066. ^Elfgar, son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. Harold, who was as
ambitious as his father, and his superior in ability and tact, soon
became the greatest man in the kingdom, and was the real ruler in
Edward's name. He gained the king's goodwill' by his quiet de-
meanour and skilful management, and Edward was glad to leave to
him the chief conduct of affairs, while he devoted his own time to the
building of churches, the gathering of relics, and the reciting of
prayers, varied only by the pleasures of the chase. In 1055, the
death of Earl Siward of Northumbria removed from Harold's path
his most important rival. The earldom was conferred by the king
and the Witan on Harold's brother, Tostig.

The matter of the succession to the throne had begun to trouble the
childless king, and in 1057, by his invitation, Edward, son of Edmund

1065 A.D.] HAROLD.

i i

Ironside, arrived in England from Hungary, bringing with him his
young children, Edgar, Margaret, and Christina, The uncle The suc-
and nephew did not meet, for Edward the ^Etheling died in cession.
London a few days after his arrival, leaving the young Edgar, who
now became ./Etheling, the sole male survivor of the old line of Cerdic.
In the same year, the deaths of Earl Leofric of Mercia, and Balph, the
French earl, increased the influence and power of Harold. Hereford-
shire, the government of Ralph, w r as intrusted by the king to Harold
himself, and Harold's brother Gyrth had most of the earldom of East
Anglia, on ^Elfgar's succession to his father Leofric in Mercia. Essex,
Kent, and the other shires about London were made into an earldom
for Harold's other brother, Leofwine, and thus the sons of Godwin had
most of England in their hands. In 1063 Harold did good service
against a powerful chief in North Wales, who had much troubled the
adjacent English territory. His palace at Rhuddlan and his ships were
burned, and, after being thoroughly beaten in the field and pursued
to the recesses of the mountains, he was deposed and killed by his
own people. In the end, the land of Wales was, for the time, thoroughly
subdued. In the year 1065 Harold gained more popularity by sup-
porting the cause of the Northumbrians against his brother Tostig,
who had driven them to revolt by his tyranny. Morcar, grandson of
Leofric, became the new earl, and Tostig took refuge with Count
Baldwin of Flanders.

In the year 1065 we find Harold the foremost man in England,
enjoying the confidence of the king, full of ambition, idolised rp^e suc _
by the English for his generosity, and for the courage and Jl essi 9?, :
military skill displayed in conflict with their old foes, the oath to
Britons of Wales. He was not only possessed of the energy William,
of the warrior, but of the forethought of the statesman, and the supple-
ness of his policy was shown in his gentle and submissive demeanour
to the king, whom he managed and swayed to his own purpose and
will. It was bub the natural result of Harold's character and position
that he looked for the crown of England to become his on the death of
Edward. His possible rivals were young Edgar the -<35theling and
William of Normandy, and here we meet with one of the vexed and
insoluble questions of history. We are told by some of the Norman
chroniclers, who are by no means to be trusted in such a matter, that
Edward the Confessor, when his death drew near, sent a message to
William, by Harold's own mouth, that William was to fill the throne
of England. William always declared that Edward promised him the
succession, and this promise has been ascribed to the time of William's
visit in 1051. As regards the right conferred by such a transaction,
it is enough to say that an English king could not, by the law of cus-
tom and usage, appoint his successor. He could only recommend the
Witan to choose this man or that, and the real choice rested with
them, the nobles and prelates of the land. The Norman chroniclers

78 HAROLD'S OATH TO WILLIAM. [1065 A.D.

are also the sole authorities for the story about Harold's oath to
William, that he would support the Duke's claim and receive him as
king of England on Edward's death. The English^ writers say nothing
whatever about the matter, and the lack of their contradiction has
been held to give consent to the -substance of the Norman, assertion.
The affair of the oath was the chief ground on which William after-
wards based his claim, and justified his invasion of England. The
story is well known, but the Norman writers are at variance in details
of time, circumstance, and place. The accounts state in effect that
Harold was driven by a storm on the coast near the mouth of the
Somma Guy, Count of Ponthieu, was lord of the territory, and he
claimed Harold and all the effects which he and his retinue had about
them as his own property under the law of wreck which held in the
county of Ponthieu. There would be goodly store of armour and
jewels, embroidered mantles, and well-filled purses. Harold was held
to ransom, and William of Normandy paid the money and invited
Harold to his court at Rouen. Then, as the minstrel sang, to the
strains of the lute, of the gallant deeds of Roland and Charlemagne,
or as host and visitor rode forth to the chase, with hawk on fist
and the dogs leaping before them, William told Harold his story of
Edward's promise of the succession, and induced his guest to give
his support. Harold was then required to swear, and he did swear,
placing his hands to right and left upon two cabinets called reliquaries,
which Harold supposed to contain some relics of a common sort, such
as parish priests in England kept upon their altars. When the cloth
of gold, which had hidden the relics from view, was removed by
William's order, Harold found, to his horror, that he had taken his
oath over the bones of certain saints and martyrs, which gave it
a peculiar sanctity and force. As to the right of William to the
English throne conferred by such a transaction, it is sufficient to say
that Harold was not a free agent. He was in name a guest, and in
fact a prisoner. He well knew what ambition in those days was
capable of doing with men, however highly placed, whom it had
within its grasp. The peculiar sanctity of the oath taken was bestowed
on it by a kind of fraud, and, lastly, Harold's promise and oath, with
whatever moral force invested as regarded Harold himself, could not
bind, either morally or legally, King Edward and the Witan.

Edward the Confessor died on January 5, 1066, in the sixty -fifth year
Edward ^ n ^ s a g e anc ^ twenty-fifth of his reign. He was buried in the
feSor"?" ^ Westminster Abbey, the first Norman church erected in
death, England, which was consecrated only a few days before his
0661 death. It was almost demolished in the thirteenth century,

when Henry III. cleared the site for his new minster, the present
Abbey, built in honour of the Confessor, whose tomb was placed in
what is still called "The Confessor's Chapel." About a century after
his death, he was canonised, with the surname of " The Confessor" by

1066 A.D.] ACCESSION OF HAROLD. 79

a bull of Pope Alexander III. He was the sovereign who first used
"the healing benediction," known as 'touching for the king's evil, 5 ' by
which persons suffering from the disease called scrofula were brought
for the king to give the touch which was believed to effect a cure.
The practice survived until the days of Queen Anne, and the special
service may be found in the prayer-books of her reign. This pious
king deserves honour for his regard to the due administration of
justice, and for the help which he gave thereto in the compilation of a
code from the laws of Ethelbert, Ina, and Alfred. It is admitted that,
on his death-bed, Edward commended Harold to the choice of the
Wit an as his successor, though some authorities state that this .nomina-
tion was only wrung from him by the importunity of Harold and his
friends. The only royal personage in the way of the great earl was
the ^Ctheling Edgar, who was quite unfit from his youth, and his lack
of other qualities. The Wita?i, for the first and only time, chose an
Englishman not of royal blood, and on the day of Edward's burial,
Harold was crowned and anointed king, in the new West Minster, by
Archbishop Ealdred of York.

CHAPTER II.

THE FIGHT FOR THE ENGLISH CROWN.

William's claim and preparations for conflict. Harold at Stamford Bridge.
Harold's march to Senlac field. The great wager of battle. Harold's death
and burial.

WHEN the news of Harold's accession reached William at Ptouen, he
was moved to the deepest wrath. None dared speak to or Harold II.,
approach him, as he clenched his teeth, strode up and down octoSer^
his palace-hall with unequal and hurried steps, and half- 1066.
drew his sword from, its sheath. But his anger did not make him
forget his political craft. His first object was to gain to his side,
so far as might be, the public opinion of Europe. He actually claimed
the English crown as his by right of kin, through his cousinship with
Edward. This, however, could impose on but few, as William was
not of the royal house, as a descendant of Cerdic, or Egbert, or Alfred,
and his kinship was only through Edward's mother, Emma. Then he
put forward Edward's promise of the crown, and Harold's profanation
of his solemn oath. Complaints were also made about Ethelred's
massacre of the Danes, and of the injustice done to Normans in
England by Godwin and his sons. The result was, that very many
people, more distinguished by ready sympathies than by clear heads,
had a strong impression that William was the victim of grievous

80 PREPARATIONS FOR INVASION. [1066 A.D.

wrong. The Duke proceeded from words to actions, and sent an
envoy to Rome to lay the matter before Pope Nicholas II. He called
for an interdict to be laid on England the England that had chosen
a perjurer for king, that had expelled a Norman archbishop whom
Rome had consecrated, that had ceased to pay the Peter's pence,
which her pious kings of old had willingly yielded. The Pope was
asked to bless his enterprise, and William promised, in case of suc-
cess, to attach England more loyally and closely to the Roman See,
and to pay again the regular dues. The moving spirit in the coun-
cils of Rome at this time was Archdeacon Hildebrand, afterwards
the famous and powerful Gregory the Seventh. The prospect of the
increase of the Papal power in England was just the bait to catch
Hildebrand, and a solemn decision was given by the Pope and the
cardinals that England belonged to the Norman duke. A banner
blessed by the Pope was sent to head the invasion, and a hair of St.
Peter in a ring gave further strength to the hearts and arms of the
faithful. Two separate envoys had previously come from William to
Harold to remind him of his oath, but the English king replied that
he had taken it under constraint, and that he had promised that which
it was not in his power to perform. Then. William publicly denounced
him as a perjurer, and proclaimed his intention of asserting his own
rights by the sword before the year should expire.

The clergy throughout the Continent preached up William's enter-
The in- P r i se as one undertaken in the cause of God, and the Duke's
vasion proclamation of reward to all who should serve him with
prepare . S p earj SWO rd, or crossbow gathered together all the ad-
venturers of Western Europe. They came in crowds from Anjou
and Maine, from Brittany and Poitou, from Burgundy and Aquitaine,
from Flanders and France. They were all inspired with the hope of
getting land and money, of wedding English heiresses, and rising
to the rank of "gentleman." William had at first some trouble in
persuading his own Norman nobles to follow him to the war. They
contended that their "knight's service" bound them only to the
defence of their own country. They were slowly won over by the
eloquence and craft of William's great supporter, Fitz-Osbern, sene-
schal of Normandy, and by a judicious expenditure of gold as a helper
in private conference with William. Throughout the spring and
summer of 1066 the axe was ringing in the woods of northern France
as trees were cut down to furnish vessels for the troops, and all the
seaports of Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy were busy with the
building and equipment. At last a fleet of nearly one thousand small
vessels was ready, and the armament, long detained by contrary winds,
was mustered, in the last days of September, at St. Valery on the
Somme. Many of the craft had been forced ashore by a gale, and
the coast was strewn with the bodies of the drowned. The Norman
host began to murmur that Heaven was against the enterprise. They

1066 A.D.] INVASION IN THE NORTH. 81

little knew that the north-east wind which had for a month hindered
their passage, and the westerly gale which had driven them into St.
Valery, had both alike been working well for the issue.

Harold had gathered for defence the greatest naval and military
force that had ever been known in England. The coast Harold . g
was strongly guarded at all points where the Norman Duke doings in
might attempt to land, and if he had not been detained En s land -
for a month by the wind, William would have met, in August, with
an opposition that would probably have changed the whole course of
events. But Harold's army was mainly composed of militia or the
general levy of soldiers, who could not long be kept from their homes.
The farms were being left untended, and when September came, the
host was disbanded, either to reap the later portion of the harvest,
or to perform the usual autumn ploughing. The fleet which had
been cruising in the Channel to intercept the Normans had also been
obliged to disperse for the time in order to refit, and to fill up with
fresh stores of provisions. This was the great crisis in the history
of England, and thus did the elements work for the success of William
of Normandy, and for the ruin of Harold, son of Godwin.

The Norman Duke was not the only foe who was threatening the
peace of the country. The banished Tostig, eager for revenge Th .
on the brother who had preferred justice to the oppressed sion in the
before the fraternal claims of the oppressor, had been ravag- Nortn -
ing the southern coast in the spring. He then sailed off to Scotland,
and spent part of the summer with King Malcolm. He next engaged
the king of Norway to join him in a fresh and formidable attack on
the north of England. Harold Hardrada was the greatest warrior of
northern Europe in that age, and had won wide repute as a man who
had served in the hosts of the Greek Emperors of Constantinople, had
warred in Sicily and Africa, and seen as a pilgrim the Holy City.
Hardrada met Tostig near the mouth of the Tyne. He had brought
with him the most powerful fleet that ever left the Norwegian ports,
and all the best fighting men of his country. The very north-east
wind which had kept William on the coast of Picardy brought the
invaders of Norway to the coast of Yorkshire. When Harold heard
of their landing, he hurried north with the only regular force of the
country, his lius- carls, or household troops, and gathered on the way all
the men who were able to join him. After a severe battle at Fulford,
near York, Earls Edwin and Morcar, the governors of Mercia and
Northumbria, were completely defeated by the Norwegian king and
Tostig. York opened her gates, and the whole of Yorkshire submitted
to the invaders. Wl\en Harold of England came upon the scene, a
desperate battle was fought at Stamford Bridge, on September 25th.
It is remarkable that Harold won the day by the same stratagem as
proved fatal to his men a few days later. He tempted the Norwegians,
by a pretence of flight, to break their ranks and pursue. The English

82 LANDING OF THE NORMANS, [1066 A.D.

faced round, and a complete victory was won. Harold Hardrada and
Tostig fell, and the slaughter of nearly all the chief nobles made it a,
kind of " Flodden field " for Norway.

The splendid success which had saved the north had been bought
William's D 7 Harold at the price of fatal mischief to north and south
landing, alike. On the morning of September 28th the Norman fleet
arrived at Pevensey Bay in Sussex. There was no man there to oppose
the landing, and the invaders were soon quartered within and around
the walls of the old Roman city of Anderida, stormed by the Saxons
under Cissa nearly six hundred years before. On the next day they
marched along the shore to Hastings, and there an entrenched camp
was formed. The whole country for miles inland was ravaged to pro-
cure rations, in order to save the food brought over in the ships, and
also to provoke Harold to risk an early encounter.

The English king was seated at a banquet in the city of York, after
Harold's *" s victory over the Norwegians, when a thane, who had seen
march. the Normans land, arrived in hot haste. He had ridden day
and night with his news of fearful import, and he was soon followed by
a churl who had seen the invaders erecting a timber fort at Hastings.
The king started at once for London, after sending out men in all
directions to summon troops to his standard. He had lost many of
his best officers and men in the fight at Stamford Bridge, and now, at
this most critical time, he was to feel the effects of the jealous dis-
union and the treachery which had often, in the time of Danish attacks,
been so baneful to the interests of England. The men of Wessex and
East Anglia came readily to join him, and many parties were picked
up from the midland shires, as Harold sped on his way south. But
the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, Edwin and Morcar, who had
just been saved from destruction by Harold's victory, left him now
in the lurch, with the base hope that William of Normandy might
conquer Wessex, and leave them to independent rule in the north.
His brothers Gurth and Leofwine gave him a loyal support, and were
at his side in the hour of peril. The king rejected the advice of some
of his captains to lay waste the country between the Thames and the
coast, and then await William's attack in London. It might have been
the safer course, but Harold's blood was up, and, moreover, he could
not bear the thought of burning the houses and ravaging the land of
his own people. He resolved to fight a defensive battle in a position
of his own choice, and he knew that the conflict could not be long
delayed. The English fleet had now re-assembled, and cut off the
invader's communications with Normandy. William's store of pro-
visions was slender, and his only alternative was to defeat the army
which barred his way inland, or be starved out in his intrenchments
at Hastings and Pevensey.

On October 13, 1066, the army of Harold was encamped near a place
then called Senlac. From the high ground north-east of Hastings, a

1066 A D.] THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. S3

line of hills rims inland for nearly seven miles. Their course is from
south-east to north-west, and then comes a valley. Beyond Scene of
that rises a high ground of some extent, facing the south- o? e Hast- le
east. This high ground was that occupied by Harold's army. ings.
Its right was covered by marshy ground, and a part at least of the
front was protected by a trench and palisade, and had a further defence
of wicker-work and felled trees with their interlacing boughs. The day
was partly passed in futile negotiations, in the course of which Harold
declined three proposals made by his foe to resign his kingdom in
favour of William, to refer the matter to the Pope as arbiter, or to
meet William in single combat. Then the Norman Duke sent an offer
to divide the country with Harold and Gurth, and, in case of that not
being accepted, branded him as a perjurer and a liar, and threatened
excommunication, "The Pope's bull for which," he declared, "is in my
hands." When all was of no avail, the Duke announced at night to
his men that he should attack on the following morning.

The great struggle now to be described has obtained the popular name
of Hastings, but is more fitly called the battle of Senlac, from Ttle1[ , attle
the name of the hill on which the English force was posted. October
The army commanded by Harold was, in the main, a motley 14> 1066 '
host of hasty levies, stout of heart, but many of them poorly disciplined
and armed. The men of Kent stood in the front, for, as the Norman,
writer tells us, " the men of Kent were entitled to strike first." The
men of London, by the right they claimed, were guarding the king's
body and standard. The left centre of the position, from the gentler
slope of the ascent, was the most exposed part, and there, beside the
royal standard, sparkling with gold and jewels, stood Harold and his
brothers Gurth and Leofwine, with many thanes, supported by the
hus-carls or household-troops, who were men in full armour, carrying
heavy axes. The English mode of fighting in that age was on foot, in
close order, with shields held in a firm wall of defence. An attack
was met by a shower of javelins, and then, at close quarters, use was
made of the sword drawn from the girdle, or of the great hatchet slung
at the neck. The militia, rudely equipped with pikes and forks, and
some few with bows and arrows, held the ground on both wings. The
churchmen of the day were well disposed to Harold, and his ranks
included the king's uncle, Abbot of Winchester, with twelve of his
monks wearing armour over their gowns, and Leofric, Abbot of Peter-
borough. Alongside the royal standard was planted the old flag of
Wessex, with the golden dragon as emblem. The battle-cries of the
English were "God Almighty" and "Holy Cross." Strict orders were
given by Harold to fight only on the defensive. All would be well, he
declared, if his men stood still and cut down every Norman who tried
to force the barricade.

Such was the array that, as the mist cleared, saw the Norman host
approach at about nine o'clock on that eventful Saturday morning.

84 THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. [1066 A.D.

They were inarching in three divisions along the ridge of hills beyond
the valley at the foot of the ground held by Harold. They moved
down to the lower ground, and there formed with a view to assault
the English position from one end to the other. The air rang with
trumpets, horns, and bugles as the Norman army prepared for attack.
Of the numbers in each force we have no certain knowledge. In
equipment and method of warfare the great advantage lay with the
Normans. They were far better armoured, and a main part of their
force was made up of cavalry, horse and man defended by mail, and
the rider armed with heavy lance, sword, and mace of steel hung at
the saddle-bow. This mounted part of the force included the Duke,
his chief officers, and all the barons and knights. William's army
also contained a large number of excellent archers, firing heavy arrows
with great force from powerful bows. On the left were the men of
Brittany, Maine, and Poitou, led by the Duke's nephew, a Breton
noble named Alain. On the right were the hired troops and adven-
turers from Picardy and other provinces. The leader of this wing
was a famous Norman hero named Roger de Montgomeri. The centre,
composed of the Norman mail-clad knights and barons, with their men-
at-arms, and the Norman armoured foot, was led by the Duke himself,
riding a powerful Spanish steed. By his side rode his half-brothers,
Robert, and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the latter armed only with a mace,
as fighting priests were not allowed to slay with either sword or spear.
Close at hand, a knight carried the holy banner sent by the Pope.

The battle began with volleys of Norman arrows, followed by the
advance of the armoured foot, in whose rear came the horsemen. In
front of all rode a minstrel and jester named Taillefer, who'had gained
leave from William to strike the first blow, He came on, singing of
Charlemagne and Roland, and of the paladins and peers who died in
fight at Roncesvalles ; then, putting his horse to the gallop, he struck
an Englishman dead, pierced through by the lance ; then he laid on
another with his sword, but was soon hemmed in and slain. The Nor-
man host pressed on at all points, with shouts of " Dex aide" or " God
lielp us" and a furious battle arose along the front of the barricade
The utmost courage and efforts of the enemy could nowhere force an
entrance against the English defenders. Every man who came within
reach was cut down by their axes. Hour after hour the contest raged,
and no impression was made by the assailants. In vain did the Norman
archers fire their volleys of arrows. The English shields repelled them
all, and the lines of the assailants, at one time, turned and fled, rashly
pursued by some of the English. A cry arose among the Normans
that the Duke was killed, but he pulled off his helmet to show his face,
crying, " I live, and by God's help I will win the day." William and Odo
then rallied their men, and the pursuing English were severely handled
before they regained their place on the hill. It is hard to elicit the
truth from confused and conflicting accounts, but it seems that an

1066 A.D.] THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. 85

English charge at one time drove back the Norman horse upon a ditch
or fosse which crossed the plain. Men and horses were rolling over,
and much slaughter of the enemy was made. The Norman Duke re-
formed his men for another determined assault on the post held by
Harold and his best troops. Again and again William had tried to
force his way to the standard and meet the king face to face. In this
new attack he came so near that Gurth killed the Duke's horse with a
javelin, and then William pressed forward on foot, and slew Gurth in
a hand-to-hand encounter. Earl Leofwine was the next English leader
to fall, and Roger de Montgomeri, with the troops on the right, cut
down with swords and hatchets a part of the English barricade.
Harold and his men, however, still made so desperate a defence that
the Normans again withdrew, and then William gave the order for the
famous pretended flight which mainly secured him the victory. Another
assault was made, and when the Normans turned, a large part of the
English rushed out in pursuit. The line was at last broken, and the
hill at many points was left without defence. The Norman horse
charged up the slope, but again the brave Harold formed his men with
their wall of shields, and the English axes still did great execution.
At many parts of the field, a confused fight of single combats and small
parties was now going on, with varied success. It was no lost battle
yet, and, while Harold lived, none could say that the English would
not win the day. The twilight was coming on, after nearly nine hours
of conflict, when a device of the Duke's invention brought a sudden
turn in the fortunes of the fight. The Norman archers began to fire
in the air, so that the arrows fell like hail on the heads of the troops
round Harold. Some were pierced in the neck and face, and all were
driven to hold the shield above the head, so as to expose the body, and
prevent the free use of the axe. At last the English king, as he moved
his shield aside to make a blow with his axe, had his right eye pierced
by an arrow. In the agony of his wound, he plucked at the shaft and
broke it off, and then fell helpless between the royal standard and the
Dragon-flag of Wessex. With a furious cry of joy a score of Norman
knights rushed on to grasp the standard, but most were at once cut
down. The royal banner was beaten down by the survivors, and the
Dragon was borne off. Harold, as he lay on the ground, was killed
with several strokes, and the last hope of the English was gone. Even
then the stubborn English courage which has given splendour, in rare
defeat and in many a final victory, to our hard-fought battles, held out
against the Normans. The royal guard died, as it seems, to the last
man ; the Abbot of Winchester and his twelve monks perished, and
Abbot Leofric of Peterborough only left the field when disabled for
fighting by a wound, of which he soon afterwards died within the walls
of his own abbey. The remnant of the English at last dispersed, and
even in flight caused much loss to the Norman horse by enticing them
on, here to steep, and there to swampy ground, where many broke

86 THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. [1066 A.D.

their necks, or were choked in the marsh, or fell by the hand of the
pursued.

The conquering Norman Duke had fought like a hero throughout the
day. He had lost three horses killed under him, and could show his
shield and helmet dinted in by blows. He ate and drank at night
among the dead, and slept upon the scene of action. He had gained
one of the great and decisive battles of history, after a struggle
honourable to victors and vanquished alike, in which the leaders had
shown the utmost skill and valour, and had been supported by the
finest courage and endurance in the men whom they led. It was fought
out to the very end, and it was worthy of its great and far-reaching
political and social results. The old historian Daniel well sums up
this momentous event : " Thus was tried, by the great assize of God's
judgment in battle, the right of power between the English and Norman
nations ; a battle the most memorable of all others, and, however
miserably lost, yet most nobly fought on the part of England." Two
years later, William founded an abbey on the ground where Harold
and the standards had been posted during the day. The old name of
Senlac was changed, arid the foundation was called L'A b baye de la Bataille,
whence we have the modern Battle Abbey and the little town called
Battle.

The body of the English king had been much disfigured by blows
inflicted after death by the fury of his slayers, and it was with some
difficulty that it was found on the day after the battle. Two of
the monks of Waltham Abbey, which Harold had founded not long
before his election to the throne, had followed him to the battle, and
they begged his corpse for burial in his own minster at Waltham.
Harold's mother, Gytha, widow of Godwin, joined in this request, with
the offer of the body's weight in gold for its ransom. The Duke re-
fused to allow a perjured and excommunicated man to be buried in holy
ground, and for a time the body lay on the sea-coast at Pevensey under
a great cairn of stones. At a later date, after his coronation, William
permitted its removal to Waltham, where the tomb could be seen until
the dissolution of the monastery in 1540. The place was then pulled
down, and the monument of the brave Harold vanished from mortal
view amid the destructions and desecrations of the time.

1066 A.D.] COMPLETION OF NORMAN CONQUEST. 87

CHAPTER III.

AFTER THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

Coronation of William I. English revolts. Completion of the conquest. Effects
of the conquest on English institutions and character.

THE fall of Harold and his brothers had decided the fate of England.
There was no man left to lead the brave and stubborn
islanders in effective resistance to the victor of Serilac field. qj| s tcom-
Nearly five years were to pass away before the conquest of fi^Jt.
the country was complete, but there was no pitched battle,
and no general opposition made by the whole nation in arms. The
ungrateful traitors Edwin and Morcar, on hearing of Harold's death,
came up to London, and found the people not prepared to acknowledge
that the foreign winner of one field should be the king of England.
There was in their midst the lineal descendant of their ancient kings,
Edgar the .ZEtheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside. The Archbishops,
Ealdred of York and Stigand of Canterbury, joined Edwin and Morcar
in calling together some of the surviving members of the Witan. The
assembly, backed by the citizens of London, chose the young Edgar as
king, but he was never crowned, and his position from the first was
that of a mere puppet.

The Norman Duke, after the battle, took steps to secure his position
in the south-east of the country. While he was encamped at William s
Hastings, he heard that a portion of his army which had march to
landed at Romney had been attacked by the people of the London -
place, and driven off with much loss. Stern measures were needful,
and he marched in force to Romney, and made much havoc among the
townsmen as a punishment. The next point of attack was Dover,
where a strong castle stood on the cliff. The garrison surrendered at
once, but the town was fired by the Normans, and nruch damage was
done. The Duke showed his wisdom in paying the owners for the loss
caused by his troops. He claimed the throne of England as his right,
and, while he had severely punished those who had opposed him at
Romney, he treated as loyal subjects the submissive men of Dover.
There was much sickness among his men, and he waited for reinforce-
ments from Normandy. Then he marched inland, along the Watling
Street, towards London. The people of Canterbury opened their gates,
but the Duke's advance was now delayed for some weeks by his own
illness. During this time the Lady Edith, widow of Edward the Con-
fessor and sister of Harold, made her submission to the Norman Duke,

88 POLICY OF WILLIAM. [1066 A.D.

and agreed to pay him tribute for her dower-city of Winchester. The
next move was straight to London, where his advance-guard of five
hundred horse drove off some of the citizens, and burned, on the south
side of the river, the suburb or outwork called Southwark. The people
of London saw the flames with dismay, and the arch-traitors, Edwin
and Morcar, were already planning another crime of cowardly desertion
of duty. As William had no vessels by which to cross the river, he led
his army up the south bank as far as Wallingford, where he crossed
without resistance at either the ford or the bridge. He then moved on
into Hertfordshire, and pitched his camp at Berkhamstead, with the
view of cutting off the two Earls from the north. Edwin and Morcar
at once hurried away with their forces, and left their young king and
the men of London to their fate. They may have still thought that
the kingship of Wessex would satisfy William, and that they would
thus divide the country with him. How they fared will be shortly
seen. They enjoy the rare distinction of having been faithless to four
successive kings Edward the Confessor, Harold, son of Godwin, Edgar
yEtheling, and William the Norman.

There was nothing left now for the people of the south but to submit.
Stigand and Mildred gave in their adhesion to William, and then the
chief nobles and the young Edgar came to his camp and acknowledged
his authority. Other bishops and many thanes, with the chief citizens
of London, also swore oaths of allegiance, and thus, by such a show
of consent from the semblance of a Wiian, the Duke of Normandy be-
came king of England. He was anointed and crowned by Archbishop
^]ldred on Christmas day, 1066, in the new church of the late King
Edward, called the West Minster. He received soon afterwards the
submission of other chief nobles who had not been present at his coro-
nation, including Edwin and Morcar. Harold's standard was sent to
the Pope, with other gifts of value, and rich presents were made to
the churches and religious houses of Normandy, where the clergy and
monks had offered prayers for the success of William's arms.

The position of the new king of England was one of great difficulty.
William's ^ ie vicfaoij at Senlac was riot the conquest of the realm. He
early had to satisfy the greed of his followers, and also to win, if he
could, the affection of his new subjects. The estates of the
crown were his, and he had confiscated the possessions of all the family
of Harold, and of those nobles and thanes who had fought against him
in the great battle near Hastings. It is said that he claimed from the
first, by right of conquest, possession of all the public land (/0Zc-7am/), and
also of all the estates of the conquered. It is certain, however, that the
lands, in many cases, were either left from the first in the hands of
their owners, or were returned to them upon submission, or on payment
of a fine or a sum of money for purchase. In fact, only the southern
part of England was yet at his disposal, and it was needful to be wary,
and give no wanton provocation. Edgar ^Etheling was kindly received

1066 A.D.] THE TITLE OF "CONQUEROR." 8<)

at court, and other nobles were welcomed as they came to give in their
adhesion. Peace and order were restored, trade resumed its activity,
and no change of the laws and customs of the realm was made. The
liberties and privileges of London and other cities were maintained by
royal writ. But, with all these wise proceedings, the king could not,
from the very nature of his position, resist the employment of a stronger
arm of government than mere conciliation. It was at this time that
arose the beginning of the venerable fortress, hereafter to become also
a palace and a prison, known to all the world as the Tower of London.
Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester, was the architect of the castle now
known as "the Keep" or "the White Tower," which was built by
William's order to overawe the chief city. Like fortresses were built
at Winchester, Hereford, and other important places, and Normans
were put in command of these and other strongholds. William Fitz-
Osbern, as lieutenant of the south, lived in the castle of Winchester,
and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was at Dover Castle, as governor of Kent.
The title of Conqueror, which was now given to William, did not
involve the modern sense of the forcible subjection of a people. It
simply meant "an acquirer," whether by bequest of property or by
purchase, or in any other way apart from regular inheritance. William
had always said that Edward, the late king, had left the crown to him,
and so he became its " conqueror " in a legal sense. Later events made
the first Norman king William the Conqueror in the popular meaning.
The conduct of the new ruler, on his assumption of power, had already
begun to give confidence and hope to the English people, and quiet was
maintained as long as the king was present to control his Norman
adherents.

In the spring of 1067, William took ship at Pevensey, in order to
keep the festival of Easter in his own country of Normandy, wmiam
The rule of the south of England was left in the hands of j*2g.
Fitz-Osbern and Odo, and, in order to lighten their work, begin- '
some of the chief Englishmen were taken over the Channel troubles,
in the king's train. They would thus at once swell the pomp 1067-1068.
of the victor by the splendour of their equipage, and be hostages in his
hands for the peace of the country which they were quitting. Among
these leading men were Edgar the .^Etheling, the Earls Edwin and
Morcar, Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury, and Waltheof, son of
Si ward. This last noble had been created Earl, in 1065, of the shires
of Northampton and Huntingdon, and he became, through David I. of
Scotland, an ancestor of our royal line. The festival was kept at Fecamp
with great splendour, and the Norman historian, William of Poitiers,
who was present on the occasion, tells us of the admiration excited
by the English nobles for their graceful persons, flowing hair, silver
plate, and rich embroideries. The summer and autumn were passed
by the king in the administration of his Norman affairs, and then evil
tidings brought him back in haste to England. The Normans there

90 CHARACTER OF WILLIAM. [1067 A.D.

had taken advantage of their master's absence to let loose their evil
passions upon the conquered people. Odo and Eitz-Osbern paid no
heed to the constant complaints of robbery and of gross insult and
wrong inflicted on men and women alike. The tyranny of the con-
querors drove many of the best and bravest English into exile. The
Anglo-Saxon of Kent and East Anglia became the Varangian of
Constantinople. Varangians (a term supposed to mean confederates)
was a name given first to the Norwegian vikings, and then applied to
those Saxon and Danish exiles who entered, a.s household-guards, the
service of the Greek Emperor at Constantinople. These men had
quitted their country for ever, but other Englishmen were looking for
deliverance to themselves or to foreign aid. Sweyn, king of Denmark,
was invited to come and re-possess the land of which Cnut had been
king. The people of the south-west rose in arms, and, with the help
of the men of Wales, held out against Fitz-Osbern. William left the
rule of Normandy to his queen Matilda and his son Robert, and sailed
from Dieppe for Winchelsea on December 6, 1067. He kept his
Christmas in London, and then prepared to take the field in force, and
act with vigour against all who opposed his sway.

In the four years which succeeded his return from Normandy, the
William's sub j ection f tne English people was completed. We are
char- henceforth to see a dark change in the moral aspect of this
great man. At the same time our admiration for his intellec-
tual power, for his skill as a statesman and a soldier, will rise higher
than ever. None but a man like him could have mastered both
conquerors and conquered, and have made his will the only law for
Englishmen and Normans alike. Both conspire and rebel against
him, and the king holds his own against revolters at home and
invaders from abroad. He quells all opposition by fire and sword,
but, when order is once restored, he allows none other to disturb it.
To chastise the robber by any means, by any punishment however
merciless, was then held to be the first duty of a ruler, and William
fulfilled it well. No man who was not of the greatest of mankind
could have passed with success through such a career as that of
William, but we shall now see in full play the unscrupulous and cruel
part of his character. He never appears as one of the hateful tyrants
who delight in oppression and injustice for their own sakes, but he
stuck at no injustice or oppression which was needful to carry out his
purpose. His will was fixed to keep the crown of England at all
hazards and at all cost, and he was driven by opposition and revolt
into the establishment and exercise of one of the most tremendous
tyrannies on record. Oppression, exaction, and confiscation make up
much of the history of the time. He could be merciful when mercy
was not dangerous, but he could shed innocent blood without remorse
if its shedding seemed to add safety to his throne. The repeated
revolts of the harmless Edgar ^Etheling are forgiven as often as they

1067 A.D.] THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY. 91

occur, but Waltheof, caressed, flattered, and promoted, is sent to the
scaffold on the first convenient pretext, because he is held to be
dangerous. From that hour, we shall see the first Norman king's
prosperity forsake him, and he passes through ignoble quarrels with
his son, and petty, inglorious warfare, to a lonely bed of death from
an injury caused by his own savage cruelty. The four eventful years
in which William completed the subjugation of the English fill us
with wonder at the surpassing energy of the man. He is in his forty-
second year, capable of enduring the most severe fatigue, regardless
of seasons or weather ; marching with unheard-of swiftness from south
to north, and west to east; leaving the high-roads to lead his men
by shorter paths over barren mountains and through dangerous fords ;
always fearless and self-confident. At the Christmas of 1067 he is
feasting in London. In those days the climate of England then
covered with thick forests and dreary marshes, and intersected by
rivers that often overflowed their banks was far colder in the winter
and spring than in the cultivated England of our day. Yet in Janu-
ary his army is before Exeter, a walled city which had been growing
great since the days of Athelstan. In eighteen days, after a stout
defence, the place surrendered, and was saved from pillage, but hence-
forth was held by a garrison. Cornwall made no resistance, and the
king returned to keep Easter (1068) at Winchester. At Whitsuntide
his queen, Matilda, who had now for the first time come over from
Normandy, was crowned in that capital of the south. She had
brought with her the famous Bayeux tapestry, wrought by the hands
of herself and her ladies, as a picture-history of the great events of
the time. It is a roll of brownish linen, two hundred and fourteen
feet in length, and twenty inches broad. It is worked in coloured
thread with figures and letters perfectly bright and distinct, as may
still be seen in the Hotel-de-Yille of Bayeux. Odo, the Bishop of
Bayeux, is supposed to have presented it to the cathedral of the town,
where it was discovered in 1728. This valuable relic of mediaeval art
supplies several details of the invasion of England by William which
are not found in the chroniclers, and gives an exact picture of Norman
manners and garb.

When Edwin the Earl had gone in William's train to Normandy, he
saw and loved at Rouen one of the king's daughters, and Tlie great
her father had promised to give him her hand in marriage, revolts of
It has been thought that the Norman nobles looked upon 1061
such an alliance as debasing to a civilised lady. In their eyes the
Englishman was a barbarian, and, though the Norman might well
marry the Englishwoman, if she had beauty or wealth, it was a
dangerous precedent to allow the Englishman to marry the Norman
woman, and that woman a princess. From whatever motive, William,
in 1068, refused to fulfil his promise, and allow the marriage to take
place, and Edwin and Morcar left the court of Westminster in wrath.

92 DANISH INSURRECTION. [1069 A.D.

They summoned the English and Welsh to their standard, and sent
messengers in every direction to rouse the people to rebellion. Gos-
patric, Earl of Northumbria, beyond the Tyne, and Malcolm, king of
Scotland, were ready to give help. The provinces beyond the Humber
were the first to rise, but the prompt vigour of the king put down the
insurrection before it became general. He marched northwards into
the heart of the Midlands, and Edwin and Morcar dared not face him
in the field. Then York was taken, and Gospatric, with the zEtheling
Edgar, and his mother and his sisters, Margaret and Christina, fled to
the court of Malcolm, where they were received with much kindness.
The sons of Harold had landed on the western coast, but were driven
back to Ireland. In 1069 a far more formidable effort was made
against the Normans. Bobert de Comines, a Norman baron, had been
made Earl of Durham, and held the bishop's palace and the city with
a body of five hundred men. In the stillness of night, the English
assembled in great force outside the town, and, bursting in before day-
break, they fired the palace and slew nearly all the Norman garrison.
The people of York then rose upon the Norman holders of the city.
The king again took the field in person, and this premature rising was
put down with great slaughter. Amid the troubles of the time, the
queen, Matilda, had given birth to a prince at Winchester, who after-
wards became Henry I. She now returned to Normandy, and was
safe from the worse evils which were to come. Sweyn, king of Den-
mark, became a chief ally in the cause of freedom. He had for two
years been preparing for invasion, and the appearance in the Hum-
ber, in August, of a powerful Danish armament was the signal for
a general revolt in the north, the west, and the south-west of the
country. Edgar yEtheling and Gospatric came from Scotland to join
the Danes, and the whole army marched on York. A new Norman
castle had been erected there, and a garrison of three thousand
Normans held that and the town, under the command of a knight
named William Malet. Archbishop ^Eldred was there, his heart filled
with anxiety for the issue of affairs. Malet declared that he would
hold out to the last, and that the castle could never be taken, nor the
walls of the town forced by men without engines. ./Eldred, however,
well knew the temper of the townsfolk, and feared for what they
might do. Malet had just sent forth a messenger to ride to the king,
and tell him that the Normans could hold York for a year, if needful,
when the enemy's masses came rushing up in columns at every gate of
the city. The townsmen rose, attacked and overcame the Norman
guards, and flung one of the gates open. A wave of helmets, spears,
and axes came surging down the street, and Malet sent his men out
en masse, with orders to clear the place. It was a brave act, but a
fatal mistake. The Norman soldiers were hampered in the narrow
streets, and the houses, closed against them, were held by the English
and Danes. A shower of missiles from above and around, and the

1070 A.D.] DEVASTATION OF THE NORTH. 93

attacks in front and rear of overwhelming numbers, slew the greater
part of the Normans. A poor remnant escaped to the castle, where
they were closely besieged by the enemy. Then the Normans, in their
rage, shot fire into the wooden houses. The Archbishop died of grief,
as the flames were spreading through the city, and, on the eighth day
of the fire, the Minster itself was alight over his new-made grave.
The town was reduced to ruin, and Malet, with the few remaining
men-at-arms, made his escape by night.

William was hunting in the Forest of Dean when the terrible news
arrived. He swore that not a Northumbrian should escape William's
his vengeance, and started for the north with a great army, success.
But with force and anger he joined craft and cool policy. He sent
agents amongst the Danish chiefs, to try the power of gold, and their
men soon retired to their ships and sailed away. The English fell
back to the Tyne, and, after much delay caused by swollen rivers, the
king and his army entered the abandoned remains of York, where
the festival of Christmas (1069) was kept. The insurgents of the
south-west, where the men of Somerset, Devon, and Dorset had come
in swarms round Exeter, were repressed by William Fitz-Osbern, and
the Welsh on the westerly border of the midlands had been already
put down by the king. Waltheof and Gospatric submitted, and
Edgar ^theling again sought refuge with Malcolm of Scotland, who
soon afterwards married Edgar's sister Margaret. She was a woman
of admirable character and culture, who did much to civilise the Scots.
She became the mother of Matilda, whose marriage with Henry I.
united the English and Norman royal lines.

In the early spring of 1070, William issued his orders for the
wasting of the whole country between the Humber and Events of
the Tees. Every living man was to be destroyed, and every 107 -
article that could help to sustain life. Houses were to be burnt, the
implements of husbandry to be broken up, and the whole land made
a desert. In the famine which came thereafter, it is believed that one
hundred thousand innocent persons perished. This ruthless deed has
been regarded both as an act of mere vengeance and terrorism, and as
a military measure of precaution against the invasions of the Danes
and the Scots. So completely did the commanders of the separate
divisions of troops carry out the king's orders, that, when the survey
for Domesday-book was completed, fourteen years later, the lands of
all the lords, and of the sees of Durham and York, were entered in
the record as wasta laid waste. The chronicler William of Malmes-
b'ury, writing half a century afterwards, tells us that " the ground for
more than sixty miles remains bare to the present day."

The king then turned to the west, to make an end of resistance
and revolt on the northern border of Wales. In March he complete
led his army to Chester, and his conduct on this expedition conquest
displayed the character of the man. The weather encountered was

24. CONSOLIDATION OF NORMAN POWER. [1070 A.D.

fearful, and hardship amid the snows and rains, on hills and moors,
with scanty food that drove the troops to eat their horse-flesh, brought
the men to the verge of mutiny. Some of the mercenaries from
Brittany and Anjou were sent home, and William pressed on with
the Normans who were faithful. In every difficulty, he showed the
indomitable energy and vigour of his body and spirit, and his arrival
at Chester quelled the last hopes of the revolt. The bulk of the land
was now thoroughly subdued, and the work next taken in hand was
the erection, at all commanding points, of the strong stone castles
which are still the most vivid memorials of the time. At Oxford,
Nottingham, Warwick, Stafford, Shrewsbury, and Cambridge, and at
many another borough doomed for a time to feel the Norman power,
rose a castle, with its tall square tower or keep within, its bailey
around, and all the appliances of the science and art of fortification,
of which Dane and Saxon were alike ignorant. The general insur-
rection against Norman power had now rendered a large part of the
lands of English lords liable to confiscation, and they passed by the
king's gift into the hands of Normans and other foreigners. William
also began to make great changes among the holders of office, and
many posts, both civil and ecclesiastical, were now held by Normans
instead of Englishmen. At Easter, 1070, three legates from the Pope
presided at a council of prelates and abbots held at Winchester.
Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, was deprived of his high office, and
the learned and able Lanfranc became primate in his place. Most of
the other English bishops were by degrees replaced by Normans, and
Norman monks took possession of the monasteries and expelled the
Saxon clergy. We are not to suppose that all the Norman barons and
clergy were men of mere greed and oppression. The spirit of Chris-
tianity had some power over the evil of the age. When Ingulphus,
one of the king's secretaries, became head of the rich Abbey of Croy-
land, in the south of Lincolnshire, in 1076, he behaved with a brotherly
kindness to his ejected predecessor. Many of the Norman bishops and
abbots stood between the conquerors and the people, to mitigate
oppression and to save the property of the Church for charitable uses
from the grasp of private rapacity. If the wicked and cruel Ivo
Taillebois, a Norman lord in the fen-country, hunted the conquered
English like wild swine, another baron of the same parts enclosed
the marshes of Deeping, shut out the overflowings of the Welland by
a great embankment, and made a waste of impassable bogs into a
pleasure-garden of fertile fields. Such were some of the healing
influences of a time of trouble and wrong.

The restless Edwin and Morcar joined in a last English struggle

The last made in 1071. Edwin was killed, in some obscure way, on

He?e g ward, ^f s journey to Scotland, where he would again have sought

aid from King Malcolm. Morcar fled to the camp of refuge

of Here ward in the Isle of Ely. This hero of romance, styled " the

1071 A.D.] HEREWARD THE WAKE. <>r>

last of the English," had called around him there the bold spirits of
the time, and made a final and most determined stand against the
subjugators of his country. He drove away from Peterborough the
foreign abbot and his monks, and repulsed again and again Ivo
Taillebois and large bodies of Normans. The district which he held
was then really an island, amid a waste of morasses and reed -beds.
The gallant Englishman, a man of rank, who had returned from a
long exile to defend his patrimonial lands against the conquerors, had
the honour of drawing to the scene of action the greatest general of
the age. No inferior man to William himself, and he only by the
exertion of his utmost energy and skill, could subdue this last brilliant
effort of the champions of English freedom. The king gathered a
large naval force in the Wash, and blockaded every arm of the sea
that was an inlet to the fens. Wherever a road led into the district,
he closed all access by his troops. The camp of Hereward was en-
trenched in the midst of waters, in some places stagnant and thick
with reeds, in others swiftly running, but in all places dangerous for
the passage either of horse or foot. The assailant began the build-
ing of a great causeway, but at every pile which the workmen drove,
Hereward came suddenly upon them, and the work made slow progress.
After a blockade of three months, William was helped to subdue Here-
ward by treachery. The monks of Ely began to feel the scarcity of
wheaten bread and fresh meat, and they made terms with the king
for the discovery of a passage into the fens. The Norman troops
entered the isle and occupied the monastery, and finally stormed the
entrenchments. Hereward escaped to his own lands, and long kept up
a guerilla warfare, but his after-fate is uncertain. Morcar became a
prisoner, and died long afterwards in Normandy. Edgar the yEtheling
submitted, and lived in quiet as a pensioner at Bouen. Malcolm oi'
fScotland gave way only when William, at the head of his whole force,
marched northwards to the Tay. He then came into camp and swore
faith as William's vassal -king. The work was done at last, and the
Norman conquest, in its outward form of military possession and sub-
jection, was finished after five years of fitful warfare and resistance.

For a century and a half after the Norman Conquest, there is, in the
proper sense, no English history. England becomes, for the Effects of
time, annexed to the Norman dominions of her foreign kings. Norman
The Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth generation Con( l uest -
were not Englishmen. They were mostly born in France : there they
passed the greater part of their lives : they spoke a foreign language,
and almost every high office in their gift was held by foreigners. The
more territory the foreign kings of England acquired in France, the
more estranged they became from their dominions on this side of the
Channel, and if they had succeeded in becoming rulers of all France,
the whole future of these islands might have been changed. The total
loss of territory in France under the worst of these alien monarchs was

9G EFFECTS OF NORMAN CONQUEST.

the turning-point in our history. Thenceforth the Norman nobles had
to choose between England and France as their home, and, as they
finally settled down in the country where their chief material interests
lay in the shape of their lands, their castles, and their retainers, they
became English in feeling, in language, and in all their aspirations and
hopes. By intermarriage of the races the Norman element became by
degrees blended with the English, and thus a great people was formed,
with all its national peculiarities of character, and our forefathers
became what we are, a nation of islanders, not merely in geographical
position, but in politics, feelings, and manners. Two hundred years
after the Conquest, the amalgamation of the races was all but com-
plete, and the English nation was at last formed by the mixture of
three branches of the Teutonic family of mankind with each other
and with the aboriginal Britons. We have dealt with all the other
elements in their places, and have now to consider what were the
effects of the Norman Conquest upon the land and the people whom
the foreigners subdued, and by whom the foreigners were finally ab-
sorbed. The temporary effect was bad, the ultimate and permanent
results were highly beneficial. Even from the first, good was effected
in the enforcement of political unity. There was an end of the
jealousies and struggles of provincial rulers against each other and
against the crown. William the First and several of his successors
were strong men, who kept the barons in check, and maintained an
internal peace which was of great benefit to the country. We have,
indeed, for a time, the spectacle of two nations, as it were, living side
by side on the same soil, a nation of conquerors and a nation of con-
quered people. They keep aloof from each other, the one in haughty
scorn, the other in sullen abhorrence. There is no animosity worse than
that of nations which, morally separated, are yet locally intermingled.
On the one side we have, for a long time after the Norman conquest,
the race of the rich and the idle, men of the army and of the court,
knights and nobles, and dames of high degree. On the other part
we see the poor and serving English, vexed by heavy dues, men of
pain and labour, small farmers and artisans. On the one side are
luxury and insolence, on the other misery and envy not the envy of
the poor at the sight of opulence to which they cannot attain, but the
envy of the despoiled in presence of the despoilers. The Norman Con-
quest planted far and wide, as a dominant class in the land, a mar-
tial nobility of the bravest and most energetic race that ever existed
in modern times. They came at first as oppressors. A hundred and
fifty years pass away, and the descendants of these " iron barons " are
English nobles, who stand forth as the champions of freedom for every
class of the nation, and, sword in hand, extort the nation's rights from
the vilest of tyrannical kings. It is thus in a large measure true
that England owes her liberties to her having been conquered by the
Normans. The Saxon institutions were indeed the primitive cradle of

EFFECTS OF NORMAN CONQUEST. 97

English liberty, but by their own intrinsic force they might never have
founded the free English constitution, The Conquest infused a new
virtue into those institutions, and the political liberties of England
arose from the situation in which the English and the Norman popu-
lations found themselves placed in this island relatively to each other,
They had a common interest against a common foe in the person of an
evil ruler who sought to plunder and oppress them both, and they com-
bined to wring, from the wickedness of John and from the weakness
of his son Henry, first the Great Charter, and then the germ of the
House of Commons. The latest conquerors of this country were also
the bravest and the best. It was not merely by extreme valour and
ready subordination to military discipline that the Normans were pre-
eminent among all the conquering races of the Gothic stock, but also
by their instinctive faculty of appreciating and adopting the superior
civilisation which they encountered. They thus became the foremost
race of the mediaeval world, and though the brilliant qualities of their
chivalrous character were sullied by pride, cruelty, craft, and contempt
for the rights and feelings of those whom they held to be people of a
lower class than themselves, they must be considered, on the whole, as
noble specimens of mankind. Their gradual blending with the English
softened these harsh and evil points of their national character, and in
return they fired the duller English mass with a new spirit of animation
and power. One of our great lyric poets has declared that the Normans
" high-mettled the blood of our veins," and this witness is true. The
field of Senlac, won with glory and lost with honour, was the first
step by which England was led towards her height of greatness and
fame.

CHAPTER IV.

ESTABLISHMENT OF NORMAN RULE.

Norman feudality. The conquerors and the conquered. The new Councils. The
legal and financial systems. The Church of England. Domesday Book. Nor-
man way of life. The Forest Laws.

FEUDALISM, or the feudal system, was the most strongly marked
feature of society during the Middle Ages, and the comple- Norman
tion of the system in England, in its peculiar Norman form, jjjjj* 11 "
is one of the chief facts connected with the Conquest. It (i.) Feu-
was of mingled Eoman and Teutonic origin. The Roman *&**
government used to grant possession of lands, in the military colo-
nies or settlements, on condition of military service. The Teutonic
tribes had the custom of men following a chief as their personal lord.
The warriors who went with him to fight against other chieftains,

98 RISE OF FEUDALISM.

or to make forays on the lands of neighbouring tribes, devoted their
lives to his service, and were ever ready to meet his summons to
the field. In the earliest times, these companions, called in German
Gesellen, whence comes the mediaeval Latin ^ vasallm, received no pay
except their arms, horses, and provisions, with a share of booty made
in garments, arms, furniture, and slaves. When the Roman Empire
broke up under the invasions of Teutonic tribes, and vast territories
were conquered by their inroads, large districts fell into the hands
of the chiefs, and they gave certain portions of the territory to their
followers, to enjoy the possession for life. These estates were called
beneficia, and in these we have the first fiefs, feuds, or fees, which
were the basis of the feudal system. A fee, feud, or fief was a piece
of land held on certain conditions, which always included that of
doing military service when required. The holder of the fief was
his lord's man or vassal, liegeman or retainer, and the feudal lord was
his suzerain or liege. As the son of a vassal commonly devoted him-
self to his father's lord, he received the father's fief on his death, and
thus between the ninth and eleventh centuries fiefs became hereditary.
The system was extended to the Church, and bishops and abbots held
fiefs from the king, the right of succession belonging to those who
succeeded the last holders in their ecclesiastical office. The feudal lords,
barons, or tenants-in-chief, who held their lands directly from the
king, made grants of land in turn to under-tenants, also called their
vassals, on the like condition of military service. This feudal militia
was the predecessor of the modern standing army, and it was the only
means at the king's disposal for maintaining order in his dominions
or for waging war against foreign foes. The vassals who held lands
under a baron or tenant- in-chief could, in turn, sublet portions of
land to inferior vassals, and thus there was a system of concentric
circles of landholders, each under the influence of the next inner circle,
and all moving in theory around a common centre, the king, as the
supreme feudal lord. By the eleventh century, the whole of France
and the German Empire had thus become one vast feudal possession.
The system was well suited to the maintenance of right and privilege
against the power of the crown. It ensured to a brave and free
nobility, when the people were poor and disunited, the support, in
a moment of need, of a powerful military force, and this fact had,
in England, a most important effect upon the development of the
liberties of the whole nation. Besides his claim to military service,
the feudal lord had other rights and privileges touching the time and
money of his vassal, in the shape of service from him as assessor in
his courts, of various fines and payments, and of confiscation of his
lands for crime. A great source of profit was laid open to him in
the fact that he held the wardship of all minors, and the right of
disposal of heiresses in marriage. The vassal could in his turn claim
protection from the feudal lord in case he were attacked. When the

NORMAN FEUDALISM. 99

tenant was invested with possession of his feud or fief, he acknow-
ledged his dependence on his lord in a ceremony called homage (from
homo), by which he declared himself to be his lord's man for help
and service. An oath of fealty or fidelity was taken by the vassal
in a kneeling posture. He wore no spurs or sword, and placed
his hands between those of his lord while he repeated the words of
the oath. It is an error to suppose that the Norman Conquest was
the first introduction of feudalism into England. We have seen that
an approach to the system had already been made in the status both
of the thanes and ceorls, holding land with liability to service; the
thanes from the king, as officers of his armed force, and the free
farmers, or ceorls, as fief-holders under a lord, to whom service was
rendered in place of rent.

The Conquest had made the king the supreme lord and owner of
all the land, and most of the manors were bestowed upon Norman
the Normans. The whole territory of the kingdom was fjjjjjj? 1
divided into 60,215 fiefs? of which half were granted to the ism.
king's civil and military servants and followers, and half reserved
for the crown and the Church. The possessors of these fiefs were
required to equip and support a number of heavy-armed horsemen,
in proportion to the size of the estate. The term of free service,
without pay, was forty days in the year, There were about 1400
tenants-in-chief, or great vassals, of the crown, including the monasteries
and other religious foundations. They were absolute proprietors of
the land, which, in the words of the royal ordinance, was granted
to them in fee, with right of inheritance. All their sub-vassals had
the same right of holding in perpetuity. The estate, however, re-
verted to the crown, if the race of the original feoffee, or first holder,
became extinct, arid this reversion was called an escheat. Forfeiture
to the crown also occurred in cases of treason or of felony, the proper
meaning of which is, a refusal to perform feudal service, or any other
violation of the vassal's sworn fealty. The tenure of their lands by
the tenants in capite or tenant s-in-chirf, who held immediately of the
king, was known as Imight-service, and every estate of ^20 yearly
value was considered as a knight's fee, and bound to furnish one
mounted soldier or man-at-arms. The peculiarity of the Norman
system of feudality one of great importance was, that the vassals
of the great barons, or tenants-in-chief, were required to take an oath
of allegiance, not only to their immediate feudal superior, but also
to the king as the superior of the whole country, and thus all the
vassals were bound together by the common obligation of military
service to the crown. The vassals of the great barons consisted
chiefly of proprietors of middle rank, who had formed the gentry or
inferior thanes among the Anglo-Saxons. The greater thanes had
been mostly expelled from their holdings by the Norman invaders.
The result of the special Norman arrangement was, that the Norman

100 NORMAN FEUDALISM.

king of England had a far greater power than that possessed by the
feudal sovereigns of the Continent. An army of sixty thousand mailed
horsemen could, with little delay, be called into the field. This
military organisation, however, effective as it was to enable William
to keep in subjection the land which he had won, might be used
against the crown by the haughty and jealous nobles whom he had
with difficulty controlled in their native Normandy. The wise states-
manship of the first Norman king devised a means of precaution
against this danger. Whenever he granted large estates to any
noble, he gave them in the form of manors dispersed in different
counties, and thus no baron could have a great number of hereditary
vassals gathered in one mass around his castle. The great earldoms
of Anglo-Saxon times ceased to exist, and the counties were placed
under the government of sheriffs appointed by the crown. The barons
of England thus never obtained the excessive power wielded by those
of Continental countries, nor did they attempt to exercise the right
of carrying on private war amongst themselves, and thus setting at
defiance the royal jurisdiction.

We find in Domesday Book, below the Norman vassals, two classes of
men who were also liable to military service. These were the
quered freemen (liberi) or franklins and the soc-men. The book gives
English, their numbers as respectively 12,000 and about 23,000 in the
year 1085, They were the small English freeholders or ceorls, below
the rank of thanes, but it is not possible now to determine what was
the precise status of each class under the Norman kings. What is
certain is, that their condition became now semi-servile, and they were
the subjects of great oppression and extortion at the hands of the
Norman landowners. The petty ceorls of Anglo-Saxon times became
little better than slaves, unider the name of serfs and villeins. They
became at last incapable of holding any property of their own, and
were liable to be sold by their masters ; one class of them, however,
being only transferred to a new owner along with the lands to which
they were attached, the other being liable to sale in open market, like
any goods or chattels. This degraded class of villeins, by means here-
after to be told, became, at a later stage, the free peasantry of the
land.

The old English Witenarjemot was now replaced for legislative pur-
(2 ) The P oses by the Great Council of the Norman kings. This body
Great was called Curia Her/is, or the king's court, and Commune
C1 ' Concilium Regni. To this council of state were summoned the
archbishops, bishops, and greater abbots, and the barons called greater
barons. They were those who held lands from the crown on a form of
tenure called grand serjeantry. They had thereby the right of both
civil and criminal jurisdiction over their vassals in their own courts,
while the lesser barons had only the civil jurisdiction. It was they
alone who attended the king in his court (or, as we should now say,

THE LAW COURTS. 101

were peers of parliament), as well as with their companies of knights iu
war. The position of the lesser barons in this regard may be illustrated
by that of the peers of Scotland and Ireland who are not " representative
peers," or elected by the whole body to sit in the House of Lords. The
Parliament of the Norman and early Plantagenet kings was therefore
composed of a House of Lords alone. It is very important to notice
that, by the constitution of old usage, the Norman kings could not levy
money on the immediate tenants of the crown, or on their tenants,
without the consent of the barons obtained in this Great Council. We
here have the principle, which becomes of supreme importance under
the Stuart kings, that taxes cannot be levied on the subject without the
consent of Parliament. It is impossible to determine what legislative
authority was possessed by the members of this council. The degree of
control which it could exercise would vary, no doubt, with the amount
of force of character possessed by its president, the king. There was,
however, in these times little or no legislation in our sense of the word.
Charters bestowing new rights, or conferring ancient privileges, were
granted by the king, but it is not till the time of Henry II. that we
find what we should call enactments.

The highest administrative and judicial business of the realm was
carried on by the king with the assistance of a council, called (g ) The
also Aula or Curia Regis, the king's court. It was in attend- king's
ance on the sovereign's person, and included the chief officers counc
of state. These were the steward, treasurer, chamberlain, marshal,
constable, chancellor, and chief justiciary. This last was the most im-
portant official under the Norman and early Plantagenet kings. He
was president of the council, and, ex officio, regent of the kingdom in
the sovereign's absence or incapacity from illness. There were other
members specially appointed by the sovereign, and the whole body was
the original of the present Privy Council. As the supreme court of
justice in the realm, it answered, in some measure, to what is now the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

William had come to be king of England, according to his own claim,
as the legal successor of Edward. As such, his policy was to (4.) courts
retain, as far as might be, the olden judicial and administrative of law -
system. In accordance with the oath which he had taken when he was
crowned, that he would maintain the good and approved laws of Edward,
he appointed men who had a knowledge of the law to ascertain what
laws and customs had been in use in the time of the Saxon kings. He
then commanded that the law should be administered according to the
same forms and principles as before the Conquest. Along-side of the
county-courts and hundred-courts, there were now the courts of the
barons, as lords of the manors, and from these an appeal was allowed to
the Aula Regis. The old practices of compurgation by the oaths of
friends and of trial by ordeal were retained under the Norman kings,
but the latter was gradually replaced by the judicial combat or wager

102 THE REVENUE.

of battle in criminal cases, in which the result of the duel was held to
settle the question of guilt or innocence in the accused.

One of the chief elements of the power possessed by the Norman
(5.) Re- kings was their large, fixed, independent revenue. The royal
venues demesnes or crown-lands were their first source of income,
crown. In addition to the fixed rents, an extravagant king oppressed
those who lived within his demesne by levying, at his own pleasure,
heavy taxes called tallages. If any of the tenants in capite failed to
furnish a man-at-arms for every knight's fee of land which he held, he
was obliged to pay the king a money-fine called escuage or scutage. The
tax called Danegeld was also levied upon all estates at the king's dis-
cretion long after all fear of the Danes had passed away. The sovereign
raised a large revenue from the feudal fines to which his tenants were
liable. A relief, which corresponds to the Saxon heriot, was a sum of
money paid by the heir to his feudal lord on succession to a fief. The
king was entitled to an extra payment of this kind, called primer seisin,
on the death of any of his tenants-in-chief, provided the heir had reached
his majority. This payment amounted to one year's profits on the land
to which the heir succeeded. If a tenant transferred his fief to another
holder, he was obliged to pay his lord a fine upon alienation. The escheat
was the reversion of a fief to the superior lord, when no heir to the
estate was left. One great grievance of the feudal system was the aids,
which were contributions demanded by the lord from his vassal when-
ever he found himself subject to any extraordinary expense. Magna
Charta retained three of these aids, being payments made by the vassal
to the lord when the lord's eldest son was made a knight, or on the
marriage of his eldest daughter, or to ransom his person from captivity.
By wardship the feudal lord took charge of the vassal's estate and
person during the minority of the heir, and was entitled to certain
payments from the estate. Another source of great abuse and extortion
was the right of the feudal lord over an heiress in her minority. As
her guardian, he could offer her a husband, and, if she declined to take
him, she forfeited whatever sum the greedy suitor had been prepared to
pay the guardian for the honour and pleasure of the alliance. This
was in time extended to male wards.

In the ordinance issued by William on the subject of free service, we
Oppres- find the words, " We will that all the freemen of the kingdom
sSts r of possess their lands in peace, free from all tallage and unjust
feudality, exaction." This excellent theory almost utterly failed in
practice. The exorbitant reliefs and aids extorted by the crown from
the great vassals were demanded by them, in turn, from their feudal
dependents. The estate of inheritance, which looks to be so generous
and equitable an arrangement, was a constant grievance to the pos-
sessor, who could neither transmit his property by will, nor transfer
it by sale. The only legitimate successor was the heir, however remote
in blood. The wardship and marriage grievances lasted down to tha

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 103

time of the Stuarts. A gigantic system of oppression existed, in which
the crown strove to grind down the greater vassals, and they, in their
turn, made worse victims still of their tenants. If the freemen thus
suffered in the tenure of their property, the landless were still worse
off, and their whole personal property was at the mercy of their lords.
This whole system was the working out of the theory, that the entire
land of the country was the property of the king. The great body of
the people was held in entire subjection, and it required the struggles
of six centuries to cast off the chains which were riveted on the land by
the success of William the Norman.

We have seen that the English Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury
was replaced by William's friend Lanfranc, and that most of Tne
the higher English ecclesiastics made room for Norman bishops Church,
and abbots. It seems that the new monarch, judged from his appoint-
ments, really desired the religious improvement of the kingdom, and
strove to secure good and wise men to fill the higher posts in the
Church. One great change, the future evil effects of which were not
foreseen, was made by William. In the times before Senlac, the
bishops sat in the shire-courts along with the earls and thanes, and
civil and spiritual causes were brought before the same tribunal.
Separate courts were now established for the trial of all cases affect-
ing ecclesiastical persons or things. The king's intention may have
been to efface the idea of the original equality of the religious with the
civil power. The king, at all points, kept a firm grasp on his ecclesi-
astical subjects. Every bishop, as a feudal lord holding lands from the
crown, was obliged to do homage to the king, and he was not permitted,
without the royal leave given, to excommunicate any of the king's
tenants. The king's permission was required for any Church synod to
be held, and his assent was needed for the validity of its legislation.

It is most important to observe that no change was made by the
Conquest in the status of the Church of England as regarded i n a epe n-
the Papal power. The Normans did not introduce a new dence
Church, or new methods of discipline or worship, but brought church of
over their own Norman clergy, as they had brought their England.
Norman nobles, and these men simply stepped into the places of
English nobles and ecclesiastics. The churches in England were ad-
ministered according to the ancient customs. Little change of the
holders of office took place in the smaller benefices of the Church.
The records of the time prove two important facts that up to the
coming of Duke William, and all through his reign, perfect inde-
pendence from foreign jurisdiction was maintained by the English
Church, and that the English Church, before the Conquest, was the
possessor of vast estates, which the new king did not interfere with
beyond appointing Norman clergy to benefices. The great inventor
and promoter of the theory of Papal supremacy was the able and
energetic Hildebrand, who became Pope, as Gregory VII, in 1073.

104 THE CHURCH'S INDEPENDENCE. [1080 A.D.

The purpose of his life was to give effect to principles which he thus
expressed : " There is but one name in the world, that of Pope.
He alone can use the symbols of empire. Every prince ought to kiss
his feet. He alone ought to nominate and degrade bishops, and assem-
ble, preside over, and dissolve councils. No one can sit in judgment upon
him." Hildebrand had been able to extend this spiritual autocracy
over most of the Continent, but Britain had kept out of his grasp. We
have seen above that the hope of increasing Papal power in England
had induced Hildebrand, before his elevation to the Papal chair, to urge
Pope Alexander II. to bless the enterprise of the Norman Duke. The
conquest of England promised fair for his hopes with regard to the
extension of the Papal power beyond the Channel. Three legates were
sent to England, who demanded homage from King William in respect
of his new realm, as he had already rendered homage for his Norman
dukedom. The Conqueror's reply to Pope Gregory VII. is worthy of
note. " Homage to thee I have not chosen, nor do I choose, to do. I
never made a promise to that effect, neither do I find that it was ever
performed by my predecessors to thine." It is clear from this that,
prior to the reign of William, and during that reign, " the Bishop of
Rome had no jurisdiction in this realm of. England," but that English
kings were supreme in their own dominions. Before the twelfth cen-
tury, English primates always considered themselves ecclesiastically
supreme in their own province, and no Papal decrees exist which can
show that the Popes even claimed jurisdiction in the British Isles before
the date of the Conquest. We see that William the Conqueror gloried
in this independence, and he took care that the Norman clergy who
were appointed by him to vacant bishoprics and abbeys in England
should loyally maintain it. The Norman clergy realised their new
position as Englishmen by adoption. They entered at once on all the
claims of their English predecessors, and declared that, so far as their
power went, the churches under their charge should suffer no detriment.
Just as the Normans adopted the English codes of civil laws, amalga-
mating and re-stating them without material change, so the Norman
prelates strove to consolidate, but not to supplant, the numerous and
often diverse forms of public worship which they found in use in
different parts of the land. The service-book called the Use of Sarum,
drawn up by Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, in 1080, became more
generally used than any other liturgy. It was not a new prayer-book
introduced from Normandy, but a compilation, for the use of his own
diocese, out of the existing Uses of Britain. Thus did the Church of
England, for long after the Conquest, remain what it always had been,
an independent branch of the Catholic Church. The creation of a
separate tribunal to judge ecclesiastical delinquents proved, however,
to be one of the few mistakes of the policy of William, the wise and
strong Norman king. The clergy were thereby raised into a distinct
caste, not amenable to the common law of the land. The new court

1084-1086 A.D.] DOMESDAY BOOK 105

should have been confined to purely spiritual matters, and then the
serious trouble which arose between Church and State in the reign of
Henry the Second would have been in large measure avoided.

The document called Domesday Book is one of the most famous
memorials of the reign of William I. At Christmas, 1084, Domesday
the king called together his Great Council at Gloucester. Book.
Much discussion ensued concerning the land, how it was held, and
by what men. As a methodical and sagacious administrator, the
king determined to know all about his subjects and territory. His
main object was to have a sure basis for the purposes of his revenue,
and the information acquired for this end is still most valuable in
showing us the state of England at that epoch. There are really two
books, one a folio, the other a quarto, written on vellum, in characters
beautifully clear. The division into counties proves that this arrange-
ment of the country was then universally established. The survey
does not include Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, and West-
moreland, nor any part of Wales or Monmouthshire. Commissioners
were sent out to make inquiry, upon oath, from the sheriff of every
county, the lords of each manor, the presbytery of every church, the
reeves of every hundred, the bailiff and six villeins of every village,
into these particulars : the name of the place, who held it in the time
of King Edward, who was the present possessor, the amount of land
in the manor and in the demesne, how many homagers (free vassals
bound to do homage to a feudal lord), how many villeins, how many
socmen and serfs, what quantity of wood, how much meadow nnd
pasture, what mills and fish-ponds, what the gross value in King
Edward's time, what the present value, and how much property each
freeman and socman has or had. All was to be triply estimated
first, as the estate was held in the time of Edward ; secondly, as it
was bestowed by King William ; thirdly, as its value stood at the
time of the survey. The jurors were also to state whether any ad-
vance could be made in this value an instruction which seems to
reveal what was a main purpose of the whole work. The descriptions
of land mentioned in the books are arable land, open country,
wood, feeding of hogs, pasture, meadow-land, marsh or fen, and vine-
yards, of which thirty-eight at least are mentioned, belonging to most
of the great monasteries. Other particulars refer to mills, salt-works,
iron-works, lead-works, stone-quarries, and fisheries. The work was
not intended to record population, like a modern census, so that we
can form from it no precise estimate of the numbers of people in the
whole country, or in particular counties or towns. We gather, how-
ever, that the counties of Lincoln and Norfolk had then the largest
population, that York may have had io,ooc inhabitants, and London
at least three times that number. Many curious glimpses are afforded
of the condition of the people in cities and towns. Dover was an
important place, commanding the use of four hundred and twenty

106 DOMESDAY BOOK. [1085 A.D.

mariners for the king's service in war. At every turn, we meet with
petty or serious exactions made by the king or the nobles. The city
of Hereford was the king's demesne, and when he went to war or
to hunt, men were to be ready for his service. If a burgher's wife
brewed her husband's ale, he had to pay a tax of tenpence. The
smith who kept a forge was forced to buy his iron from the king's
iron-works. In. Hereford there were seven moneyers or coiners, who
were bound to coin as much of the king's silver into the pennies of
the period as he demanded. At Cambridge, the burgesses were com-
pelled to lend the sheriff their ploughs. Leicester was bound to find
the king a hawk, or pay ten pounds. In Shrewsbury, there were
two hundred and fifty houses belonging to burgesses ; but they com-
plained that they were called upon to pay as much tax as in the
time of King Edward, although Earl Roger (de Montgomeri, a hero
of Senlac field) had taken possession of extensive lands for building
his castle. Chester was a port in which the king had his dues upon
every cargo. A wholesome provision there was that the king had a
fine paid by every trader detected in using a false measure. The
modern lover of a draught of sound English ale will approve the
regulation by which the fraudulent female brewer of adulterated beer
was placed in the cucking-stool. This was an arrangement for ducking
the offender in dirty water, a degradation afterwards reserved for
scolding wives. In that day of wooden houses, particular care was
taken against fire, as we see by the Curfew, which has been ignorantly
denounced as an instance of Norman oppression. At Chester, the
owner of a house which caught fire not only paid a fine to the king,
but forfeited two shillings (equal, probably, to forty shillings now)
to his nearest neighbour. We also remark, that in all the cities and
towns, the inhabitants are described as belonging to the king, or a
bishop, or a baron. This survey of 1085 gives the most complete
evidence of the extent to which the Normans had possessed themselves
of the landed property of the country. The ancient demesnes of the
crown consisted of fourteen hundred and twenty-two manors, and, in
addition to these, William held as his own, by confiscation, the pro-
perties of Godwin, Harold, Edwin, Morcar, and other great Saxon
earls, and thus his revenues became enormous. Ten Norman nobles
who held land under the crown are mentioned in Domesday Book as
possessing among them two thousand eight hundred and twenty manors.
With the era of peace and order in the land, came the time of castle-
building, and Domesday contains notices of forty-nine castles, whereas
only one is there mentioned as having existed under Edward the
Confessor. Repeated mention occurs of houses destroyed, and lands
wasted, for the erection of these strongholds of Norman domination.
At Cambridge, twenty-seven houses were demolished to clear a site for
the fortress which was to overawe the fen-districts. At Lincoln, a
hundred and sixty-six houses were destroyed, " on account of the castle,"

1085 A.D.] NORMAN LIFE. 107

In the ruins of all these castles we may trace their general plan.
There was an outer court, an inner court, and a keep. Hound the
whole area was a wall, furnished with parapets and loopholes. The
entrance was defended by an outwork, or barbican. The most re-
markable thing about these fortresses was the prodigious strength of the
inner keep or citadel, and thus many of these towers remain, stript
by time of every interior fitting, but as untouched in their solid con-
struction as the mounts upon which they stand. When we mount the
steps which lead to the ruined keep of Carisbrook, our minds are full
of recollections only of its helpless captive Charles I., but this fortress
is registered in Domesday Book.

The life of luxury in the royal and baronial castle and demesne, as
well as the life of labour in the town and in the field, is Norman
vividly presented in the naming of the offices and occupa- England,
tions of men which occur in this interesting record. There we read
of the king's lord-chamberlain, lord-steward, and chief butler, of the
" providers of the king's carriages," and of his standard-bearers. The
sports of the supreme feudal lord, and of his barons, were provided
for by hawk-keepers, bow-keepers, foresters, and hunters. The stern
work of warfare, and the sportive, though often rough and dangerous,
contests of the tournament, come before us in the persons of the
farriers and "armourers." The minstrels made more gay with song
the hours of revelry, and the goldsmiths used their skill in framing
plate for the banquet, and jewels for the persons of the Norman ladies.
The wants of all were met by smiths, carpenters, potters, millers,
bakers, tailors, and barbers. The list of occupations includes lawmen,
mediciners, launders, salters, and moneyers or coiners. The country-life
is seen in ditchers, bee-keepers, ploughmen, shepherds, neat-herds, goat-
herds, and swine-herds. This last class of men was one of much im-
portance in that age. Bacon and pork were favourite kinds of food,
largely consumed by all classes, and in this connection we notice the
exactness with which the amount of woodland upon every domain was
registered. The timber was, of course, largely used for building, but
it had no great commercial value, from the lack of means of ready
transport. The value of the woods lay largely in their production of
acorns and beech-mast, upon which great herds of swine subsisted, so
that the trees were of essential importance for keeping up the supply
of food. We constantly, in Domesday Book, meet with such entries
as "a wood for pannage of fifty hogs." There are woods described as
capable of feeding from a hundred hogs to thrice the number, and
on the Bishop of London's demesne at Fulham a thousand hogs could
fatten. In the Saxon time, the value of a tree was determined by the
number of hogs that could lie under it, and in this survey of the
Norman period we find entries of useless woods, and " woods without
pannage," which to some extent were held to mean the same thing.
The entries show that in some woods there were patches of cultivated

108 DOMESDAY BOOK. [1085 A.D.

ground, where the tenant had cleared the dense undergrowth, and had
his corn-land and his meadows. The fen-lands were of value because
the rents were paid in eels. We find that the fisheries, in general,
were important sources of rent. Payments of eels by hundreds and
thousands are mentioned. The monasteries consumed vast quantities
of herrings. Sandwich, which was then a town upon the coast, yielded
forty thousand herrings yearly to Christ Church in Canterbury. The
great seats of the fishery were then Kent, Sussex, and Norfolk. The
Severn and the Wye had their salmon-fisheries, whose produce furnished
rent to king, bishop, and baron, and the religious houses had their well-
stocked piscina} and -vivaria, their stews and fish-ponds. There is little
mention of forests in the record, because they were no objects of assess-
ment for taxation. The New Forest is one of the few which are named,
and the mention of this famous piece of territory, still so charming in
its sylvan beauty, brings forward what has been held to be an instance
of the wanton selfishness and cruelty of the great king. The Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle declares that William " so much loved the tall deer as
if he had been their father." It is not likely that he, or his successors,
would have much scruple about clearing a district, if the presence of
human beings interfered with their sport. There is, however, good
reason to believe that much exaggeration has been used in reference
to the destruction of buildings, and the unhousing of men and their
families, in order to form the New Forest. We hear of William's
having "laid waste more than sixty parishes, compelling the inhabi-
tants to emigrate to other places," and that " he substituted beasts of the
chase for human beings, that he might satisfy his ardour for hunting."
The district between Winchester and the sea was woody from of old,
and there was no forest artificially planted by William, as some have
imagined. The chases through the ancient thickets were opened up,
and hamlets and solitary huts were demolished, but it is not likely
that a large population ever existed in that quarter of the country,
as the soil is generally barren, and fitted for little else than the growth
of timber, the lower lands consisting of marsh, and the upper of sand.
Domesday Book proves that the rental value of the cultivated parts of
the district decreased, owing to the extension of the forest, from ^363,
under Edward the Confessor, to ^"129, at the time of the Norman
survey, and this fact does not point to any great "devastation" of
cultivated lands or of human habitations. The Forest Laws were,
beyond doubt, of great severity. William increased the force of the
penalties which had existed before the Conquest, so that the killing
of a deer, or boar, or hare was punished with the loss of the slayer's
eyes,, at a time when manslaughter could be atoned for by a money-
fine. These laws soon created the race of adventurous and gallant
outlaws described in song and legend dealing with the names of RoUn
Hood and Little John; men who led bands of skilful bowmen, waging
ruthless war against the king's or barons' deer, and plundering all the

1086 A.D.] DOMESDAY BOOR, 109

wealthy travellers, whether laymen or ecclesiastics, who came within
their reach. A careful register of mills in Domesday Book is a matter
of some interest, as connected with the oppression of the time. They
were invariably the property of the lords of the manors, and the
tenants could only grind at the lord's mill. We are reminded here
of one of the grievances of rural France before the Kevolution, and
of the pilfering attributed, in popular belief and proverb, to the whole
race of millers. There is a repeated mention of salt-works, which were
either pits upon the coast for procuring marine salt by evaporation, or
were established in the places of inland salt-springs. The most nume-
rous works of this kind, then as now, were in Cheshire, and their name
of wiclies gave us Middlewich and Nantwicli. The Domesday register
was completed by July 1086. William was now possessed of an exact
knowledge of the possessions of the crown ; a complete list of all land-
owners; a means of knowing precisely the military strength of the
country ; a knowledge of the extent to which, if needful, the revenue
might be increased; and an authoritative document to which appeal
might be made in cases of disputed property. It was in the following
month (August 1086) that William received the oath of fealty from all
the holders of land in the kingdom, enforcing thus direct homage to
himself, as well as to their immediate lords. The Great Council was
assembled for this purpose at Salisbury, and the Norman form of
feudalism was there and then established.

CHAPTER V.

WILLIAM I. AND HIS SUCCESSOR.

William I. and his nobles and sons. War with France. Death of William I.
William II. and the barons. Character of Rufus. Dealings with his brothers.
Archbishop Anselm. The king's mysterious death.

THE completion of the conquest of England did not bring repose to
William. In 1073 he was quelling a revolt in Maine with William I.,
an army composed both of Normans and English. Then his 1071-1087.
barons in England (1075) began to plot against him. The king, with
the tyranny over the domestic rights of families which lasted down to
Stuart times, had forbidden the marriage of Emma, sister of Roger
Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford, and son of the minister William Fitz-
Osbern, to the Breton noble Ralph de Guader, a warrior created Earl
of Norfolk for his services at Senlac. No heed was paid to the prohibi-
tion, and, in the king's absence abroad, the bridal-feast was held at
Norwich. Saxons and Normans united in murmurs which ended in a
conspiracy. The English Earl Waltheof refused to take an active part,

110 CONSPIRACIES AND TROUBLES. [1076-1080 A.D.

but his wife Judith, the king's niece, basely betrayed his private know-
ledge of the matter, and inflamed William's mind against him by every
kind of false suggestion. Lanfranc induced Waltheof to go over
to Normandy and confess his knowledge of the plot, but his wife's
wickedness had already destroyed him, in the king's secret purpose.
The conspirators took the field, but were utterly defeated in Norfolk
before William's return, and the ordinary prisoners had their right feet
cut off, "in order to mark them for the future." William then came
over from Normandy to decide the fate of the chief rebels. De Guader
had escaped beyond the sea. The Earl of Hereford was thrown into
prison, and all the estates of both were forfeited. Waltheof had been
kindly received by William in Normandy, but was arrested on his
return, and, after a year's imprisonment, he was tried, condemned,
and executed at Winchester in 1076. The monks of Crowland Abbey,
enriched by the Earl's benefactions, received his body for burial.
Waltheof, who was regarded by the English as their last hope and
defender, was greatly mourned by them, and regarded as a martyr and
a saint. Men observed that from that time the career of William
was attended by trouble and comparative ill-success. His half-brother,
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was the next offender who plotted against the
royal power. He was arrested by William's own hands, when the
officers shrank from seizing a prelate, and he expiated his treason by
loss of all his treasure and imprisonment till the king's death. Then
trouble arose with William's children. Richard, the second son, was
killed by an accident while he was hunting in the New Forest. The
eldest son, Robert, had been named, before the Conquest, as heir to
the dukedom of Normandy, and he wished to succeed to power during
his father's lifetime. The French king, Philip I., urged him to open
revolt in 1078, but Robert was soon driven from the field by an
English army under William and his old Norman officers. Later on,
father and son met in a single combat under the walls of the castle of
Gerberoi, and William was unhorsed by Robert, who then begged
forgiveness. In 1079, Robert commanded an army against Malcolm
of Scotland, and built the fortress on the Tyne which gave its name of
Newcastle to the flourishing modern town. Then a new quarrel with
the king sent Robert over to France, and they never met again. To
the last, William maintained a stern rule over his nobles and the land
which he had won. To resist his will with defiance was to court
immediate ruin. Layman or priest, earl, abbot, or bishop, was stripped
of lands and power. With all this, England found good in this hard
sway. The country was kept in peace, and, amid all the legal and
illegal exactions of the feudal barons, the householder and the way-
farer, under William the First, had little to dread from burglars or
brigands. It is only here bare justice to record the king's humanity in
matters not concerned with the maintenance of his despotic rule. He
made an end of the punishment of death under sentence of a law-court,

1087 A.D.] DEATH OF WILLIAM. Ill

and the only man executed in his reign \vas the weak and hapless
Waltheof. He also abolished, for his time, the cruel and disgraceful
traffic in slaves which was carried on at Bristol. In 1086, the king
held his court at Westminster, where his youngest son, Henry, now
eighteen years of age, was knighted by his father. He was called
Beau Clerc, as being the lettered and cultured prince of the family,
and he had been brought up under the tuition of the learned and
sagacious Lanfranc, the king's faithful subject and friend. Early in
1087, William went over to Normandy, where he had to settle a long-
standing dispute, concerning a piece of territory, with Philip I. of
France. The English king had been growing stout of late, and for
some time he was kept in bed by sickness. A coarse jest of Philip's
roused William to fury, and he mounted his war-horse, and took the
field with his army. As he marched from Rouen along the Seine in
August, the ripe corn was burnt by his troops, and the laden vines
were trodden down. The town of Mantes was taken by assault, and
all within was given up to fire and sword. The king's horse stumbled
and fell with him, as he rode among the smouldering ruins, and the
injury done to the rider sent him back to Rouen to die. His sons
"William and Henry were with him. To "William the dying king
handed his ring, with the injunction to .start at once for England, and
engage Lanfranc's aid to secure for him the succession to the crown.
To Henry was bequeathed a sum of five thousand pounds weight of
silver a fair fortune, in that age, even for the son of a king. Robert,
the eldest, was at the court of the king of France, and now became
Duke of Normandy. Earl Morcar and Odo were released from prison
by William's order, and the chroniclers tell of a death-bed repentance
for cruelty in England, and of atonement made by rich presents to
churches and abbeys. On the gth of September 1087, as the minster-
bell of Rouen sounded at dawn the hour of prime, the great Duke of
Normandy, who had gained the English crown, suddenly passed away.
He was in his 6ist year of life, in the 2ist of his reign over England,
and in the 54th of his rule over Normandy. A moral that needs no
enforcement lies in what has now to be told. The moment the breath
was out of his body, the late mighty king's servants set to work at
plundering the room. Robes and linen, plate and armour, were seized
by greedy hands, and the body was found by some humble friends
lying bare on the floor. At their cost he was borne for burial to the
church of St. Stephen at Caen. The scanty dust now left lies under
a stone in front of the high altar, bearing in Latin an inscription to
" William, Duke of Normandy, king of England." At the great French
Revolution the republican mob, in their fanatical hatred for all kings,
broke open the grave, and the bones of him who had been the terror
of all men of his time were scattered to the winds. In passing finally
away from this proud, stern, cruel, brave, and most sagacious warrior
and monarch, we must record that, harsh as he ever was with those

112 RUFUS. [1087 A.D.

who resisted, he was ever gentle and gracious with meek and pious
souls like Anselm, and the Saxon chronicler contrasts his ferocity to
rebels with "his mildness to good men who loved God." William the
Norman needs, like all other men of great mark in the world, to be
judged with a sober regard to the times in which he lived, and the
material and moral forces with which it was his lot to contend.

William II., surnamed Rufus, or the Red King, from the colour of
w .,,. his hair, was crowned by Archbishop Lanfranc at Westminster

II., 1087- on September 26, 1087. Lanfranc, the firm friend of the
father, had moved the whole power of the Church in behalf
of the son, or there would have been serious difficulty in the second
William's succession. His own prompt action had helped to clear his
way to the throne. He arrived in England before the news of his
father's death, and in his name took command of the fortresses of
Pevensey, Hastings, and Dover, and also secured the large treasure
lying in the royal coffers at Winchester. According to the hereditary
principle recognised by the Normans, the elder brother, Robert, had a
clearer title, and, beyond this, the severance of the crowns of England
and Normandy was greatly disliked by many of the barons. The
known weakness of Robert's character would have made him a much
more acceptable ruler than William, in the choice of whom as successor
the wisdom of his father was once more displayed. Bad as he was,
the Red King was a man who much resembled his father in the bold,
haughty, and energetic part of his character, nor was he wanting on
the crafty side of policy and rule. The separation of England from
Normandy was very grateful to the conquered people, as a recognition
of their nationality.

This division of rule was, on a special ground, odious to the Norman
Conspi- barons. They had large possessions in both countries, and
racy of would now owe allegiance to two feudal lords. If they clung
barons. ^ Q William, their suzerain in England, their Norman estates
were exposed to severe exaction, or even to confiscation, from Robert :
if they held rather with Robert, they were still more likely to incur
ill-treatment from the rapacious and masterful William. The more
powerful barons also envied the influence of Lanfranc, and at once
engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow king and primate alike. The
plot was headed by the Conqueror's half-brothers, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux,
and Robert, Count of Mortaigne. The pretext put forward was that of
adherence to the claims of Robert, to whom Odo and some of his sup-
porters made a formal tender of their allegiance. When the insurrec-
tion broke out in various quarters of the country, the king found his
safety in the strong and almost unanimous support of his English
subjects. They had learnt to hate the oppressive Norman barons, and
the cunning William had already promised general mildness of rule,
with a special reference to an amendment of the severe forest-laws.
The English retainers of the crown and of many of the barons came

1089 A.D.] DEATH OF LANFRANC. 113

forward in great numbers to join the king's standard, and he was soon
at the head of a powerful army. Odo, Eustace of Boulogne, and other
leaders of the plot, with five hundred Normans, were besieged in
Rochester Castle. It was the height of summer (1088), and the
crowded state of the garrison, with the lack of due sanitation, soon
produced an outbreak of disease, along with a fearful plague of flies.
The rebels gave in their surrender, and marched out to the cry from
the English of "A gallows for the bishop!" The king allowed his
uncle to disappear from the country for ever, and confiscated all his
vast estates. A rising in the west of England was suppressed by
Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, now the only prelate of English race,
and the whole trouble was quickly ended.

In 1089, Lanfranc died, and the king's adviser was gone, whose
influence had secured the throne for his master and former Death of
pupil, and whose firmness had for a brief space kept in check Lanfranc.
the more prominent evils of the king's character. William appointed
no successor to the archbishop, and began a system of Church- plunder
by holding the revenues of the see in his own hands. The treasure left
by his father had been dissipated by the son's profligate and wasteful
mode of life, and see after see, and abbey after abbey, were left without
rulers, that the king might have the incomes for his own use.

The promises of good rule, made to the English upon his accession,
were flung aside by a resort to the old oppressive exactions, William's
and the tyranny now set up was intensified by the brutal tyranny,
violence of the ruler's temper. William had soon found a more con-
genial minister than Lanfranc. There was in his court a Norman
clerk, of the name of Ralph. He was handsome in person, fluent of
speech, sensual in life, and ambitious in his aims. He received the
nickname of Flambard, or the Torch, because, as the chronicler says,
"like a devouring flame, he tormented the people, and turned the daily
chants of the Church into lamentations." This man had a genius for
inventive and extortionate finance, and contrived to swell the royal
revenues by a stricter assessment of lands, especially those of the
Church, than the commissioners had used in compiling Domesday
Book. The laity were regarded by Flambard and his master as mere
objects of spoil. The robber could loose the halter from his neck by
the promise of gain to the king in disclosure of ill-gotten hoards. The
barons made prey of the substance of the people, and the court was a
scene of vice and of the most effeminate folly in dress.

From his own subjects, in search of fresh objects of plunder, William
turned to his brother Robert of Normandy. He invaded his The king's
dominions in 1090, and captured some of his fortresses, but the brothers,
nobles on both sides brought them to terms, and in the end anarrangement
was made that, if either brother died without issue, the survivor should
inherit all his dominions. The youngest brother, Henry, had been so
using the money bequeathed to him by his father as to become an object

1U ENGLAND UNDER RUFUS. [1092-1099 A.D.

of some jealousy to his elders. Amongst other fortresses, he became
master of the formidable Mont St. Michel, where the castle, on its lofty
rock, stood twice a day amidst a plain of sand, and twice encompassed
with tidal Avaters. He was there besieged by Robert and William, and the
characters of the king and the duke are illustrated by an incident which
occurred during the blockade. Henry could defy assault in his strong-
hold, but had no resource, after a time, against famine and want of
water. When Robert heard of his distress, he allowed Henry to obtain
a supply of water, and sent in some casks of wine. William expressed
his disgust at such misplaced tenderness, but Robert exclaimed, " What !
shall I suffer my brother to die of thirst? and where shall we find
another if we lose him ? " Henry was forced at last to surrender from
want of supplies, and was brought for the time to a state of poverty.
Amid all these quarrels between the brothers, the people of England
were the chief sufferers. The taxes levied for the contest in Normandy
took away the very means of tillage, in compelling the people to use
the seed-corn, and in 1092 the lands were left without cultivation.
A severe famine followed, and pestilence came upon that. As a
soldier, the Red King was, on occasion, an able and energetic leader.
In the year 1092 he marched against Malcolm of Scotland, who had
invaded the northern counties, and imposed on him terms of peace.
Malcolm did homage to the English king, and Cumberland passed
from the position of a Scottish fief to that of an English county.
The castle of Carlisle was built as a fortress to hold the new acqui-
sition.

In 1096, a new arrangement was made between the rulers of Nor-
Robert mandy and England, which was destined to unite England
and Nor- and Normandy again under one king. The great stirring
mandy. Q f ^ e m j n( j an( j heart of Europe, caused by the preaching
of Peter the Hermit, had issued in the organising of the expedition
known as the First Crusade. Robert was eager to join the enterprise,
but lacked money for the equipment of a force, and so agreed to pawn
his Norman dominions to William for the space of five years. The mort-
gage-money of ten thousand marks was raised, of course, by further taxa-
tion of William's unhappy subjects. He thus became virtual possessor
of Normandy and Maine, but he had some trouble with his new sub-
jects. An old quarrel of his father's with the king of France was
renewed, and one of the chief barons of Maine resisted William's
authority.

In 1099, the Red Iving was hunting in the New Forest, when the
Revolt news arrived that the baron had defeated the Norman troops
in Maine. an( j surprised the city of Le Mans. The occasion was a
trifling one, but it enabled the king to show his inherited energy
and self-confidence. He galloped off at once to the coast, and jumped
into a vessel lying at anchor. The day was stormy, and the sailors
feared to put to sea. " Sail instantly, ""cried Rufus, "kings are never

1093 A.D.] RUFUS AND THE CHURCH. 115

drowned." On reaching the opposite coast, he put himself at the head
of his troops, and his enemy fled without a battle.

We go back in the narrative for a few years in order to trace
William's further dealings with the Church. In 1093 he
had been, for four years, appropriating the revenues of and the
Canterbury and of other vacant sees. In that year, he fell Cllurcn>
dangerously ill, and fear of death did what conscience had striven in
vain to effect. The remorseful king resolved to fill up the vacant
see of Canterbury. There was a man ready for the post, who hap-
pened then to be staying in England. Anselm, Abbot of Bee, in
Normandy, was the brightest ornament of the Christian Church in
his own day, and ranks among the most illustrious saints of all ages
of Christendom. He was born at Aosta, in Piedmont, in 1033, and
in 1060 became a monk at the Abbey of Bee, then under the rule of
his famous countryman Lanfranc. Eighteen years later, he was raised
to the dignity of abbot, and during the fifteen years of his administra-
tion the abbey became the chief seat of learning in Europe. Anselm's
acuteness of intellect was matched by his tenderness and largeness of
heart, his gentle manners, and sincere piety. As a thinker and a
scholar, he may be regarded as the founder of the scholastic medi-
aeval theology. All his efforts as a writer are directed towards the
foundation of a reasoned system of Christian truth. Such was the
man who, with great reluctance, accepted from William in 1093 the
charge of the highest post in the English Church. He made it a
condition that the king should acknowledge Urban II. as Pope, instead
of the anti-pope Clement, whose cause William had espoused.

When health returned, the rapacious king dealt with the Church
in his olden fashion. He kept benefices vacant, in order to William
appropriate the revenues, and was guilty of the grossest ^StS 18
simony in the sale of spiritual dignities. From the first, Anselm.
he kept in his own hands the revenues of the see of Canterbury. The
meek and patient primate cared nothing for his own worldly interests,
but he could be bold and firm in behalf of his order, and of the
independence of the Church, which in that day represented, in no
small degree, the cause of national freedom. He protested against
the brutal despot's lawless exactions from ecclesiastics, and when
William, as feudal superior, demanded from Anselm, as baron and
vassal, his quota of soldiers for an expedition into Wales, the Arch-
bishop replied by a request that the revenues of the see of Canter-
bury should be restored. Anselm appealed in person to Pope Urban,
and also thought it better for his own safety to remain out of the
kingdom until William's death. It was during this absence from his
see that the great theologian wrote his famous treatise on the atone-
ment, entitled Cur Deus Homo. The book has ever since been
esteemed the standard-work on one of the cardinal doctrines of the
faith.

116 DEATH OF RUFUS. [1100 A.D.

The rule of William, the Red King had been such as to arouse
Death of a & a ^ nst nim g enera l hatred, and it has been supposed that
William he owed his death to assassination by the hand of one of
II., 1100. j^g victims. The scene was the New Forest, the cause was
an arrow-shot in the breast. As the sun went down on the evening
of August 2nd, and shone with level rays of red amid the ferns and
leaves of the woodland, the king fell from his horse a dying man,
on a spot, as tradition tells, where now is seen a sweet sequestered
glade, open to the west, but sheltered on the east by a grove of beech.
The contemporary chronicler, Florence of Worcester, ascribes the
occurrence to an accidental shot of Walter Tyrrel, a French gentleman,
who was hunting that day in the king's retinue. The arrow, it is
said, was aimed at a stag, and glanced from a tree upon the king,
who had just fired a shot, and was shading his eyes from the sunlight
as he looked at the stag which he had wounded. Tyrrel made off
at once to the coast, crossed to France, and joined the Crusade. The
body was carried to Winchester for burial, on the cart of a charcoal-
burner named Purkess, who lived in the village of Minstead, where
his descendants were still residing in the memory of the present
writer. The only useful acts recorded of the monarch who thus
perished are connected with the builder's art. A new bridge was
erected by Rufus across the Thames at London, with a wall around
the Tower, and a great room, with its roof supported by pillars, on
the site of the present Westminster Hall, whose walls encase some
of the old timbers.

BOOK V.

THE GREAT CHARTER.
CHAPTER I.

THE STRONG RULE OF HENRY THE FIRST.

The first charter. The King's marriage unites Norman and English lines. Henry's
conquest of Normandy. The King and the Church. Henry and his family-
affairs. The Angevin marriage.

THE death of William was the lucky chance of the ready and un-
scrupulous younger brother Henry. He was in the hunt on Henry I.,
that eventful day, and, as soon as he certainly knew the fact 1100-1135.
of the king's death, he started at full speed on a ride of twenty miles
to Winchester. His mark was the royal treasure stowed away in the
castle, and a mixture of persuasion and force obtained for him the
key from the treasurer, William de Breteuil. He then hurried off to
London, and was saluted there as king by some barons and- bishops
of his party. On August 5th he was crowned at Westminster by the
Bishop of London, and thus became king of England by a plain act of
usurpation. The rightful heir was Robert, by the arrangement made
between him and Ruf us. He was now on his way home from Palestine,
provided with ample moneys, obtained by marriage with a Norman
heiress, to redeem his mortgaged dukedom of Normandy. The barons
in general were greatly opposed to Henry as their ruler. They pre-
ferred the character of Robert, and were specially desirous of an unity
of rule which would bring their Norman and English estates under
the sway of the same supreme feudal lord.

The shrewdness of the new king, who had some of his father's higher
qualities, showed him that the path of safety for an usurper, Henry L's
who was unwelcome to the Norman barons, lay in the con- charter.
ciliation of his English subjects. Their support was essential to a
king who was to be in conflict, not with English resistance, but with
Norman disaffection. In the reign of Henry I. we have a period of
gradual progress towards the blending of the two races into one nation.
A strong and sagacious ruler did much to raise the subjected, and to
keep in check the dominant, class of the people, and a long rest from
war greatly helped the towns to grow into wealth and importance.

118 HENRY I. [1101 A.D.

One of the first acts of the new sovereign was to purge the realm of
the evil ministers to his brother's vicious pleasures, and of the corrupt
administrators of his tyrannical exactions. The hated Flambard, now
Bishop of Durham, went as a prisoner to the Tower, whence his friends
helped him to escape to Normandy. The next step was to recall the
good and popular An selm. In noi Henry made a large concession
to the national good, in the publication of a Charter of Liberties To
the people he made engagement that he would govern by the laws of
Edward the Confessor, a vague expression, which meant that he would
rule in all things well. The Church received the promise that he would
not keep in his hands any vacant benefices, nor sell them, nor farm
them out. To his own immediate vassals the king promised a future
freedom from arbitrary exactions in the form of reliefs or aids, and
from feudal interference with the marriage of their daughters, and
with the matrimony of heiresses and widows. The barons were
enjoined to grant, in their turn, the same benefits to their sub-vassals.
A charter was granted at the same time to the city of London, and
this is held to have been the first step towards the place becoming a
municipal corporation.

The choice of a wife made by Henry was such as to prove to all his
Henry's strong desire to earn the goodwill of the great body of his
marriage, people. The Princess Maud, or Matilda, was daughter of
Malcolm, king of Scotland, and of Margaret, sister of Edgar ^Etheling.
She thus, as a descendant of Edmund Ironside, was heiress of the old
royal race of England, and her union with Henry I. joined the Norman
and English lines. She had worn the veil of a nun in the convent of
Romsey, as a protection from the violence of Norman barons, but had
not taken the vows. Anselm made inquiry at a council of bishops and
barons, and judgment was then solemnly given that " the lady Edith,"
as the English called her, was not bound to celibacy. The good Arch-
bishop performed the ceremony, amid a scene of great splendour, and
with the strong approval of the English part of the nation. The
haughty Norman barons gave offensive nicknames to both bride and
bridegroom, whose union they regarded much as a Southern planter,
in the slavery-days of the United States, would have looked on a
marriage between one of his class and a coloured girl of African
origin.

Towards the end of noo, Robert returned to Normandy, and was
Robert encouraged by the exiled Flambard, and by Norman barons
and in England, to assert his claim to the English crown by force

of arms. On hearing of the threatened invasion, Henry care-
fully disciplined a large force of English troops, whom his own wise
policy, backed by the influence of Anselm, had gathered under his
standard. When Robert landed at Portsmouth in August uoi, he
found himself confronted by this hostile array, and for some days the
armies lay encamped in sight of each other. Both brothers shrank

1101-1106 A.D.] HENRY AND THE BARONS. 119

from a contest which might prove ruinous, and the interposition of
Anselni brought about a conference. Robert agreed to relinquish his
claims upon England for an annual pension of 3000 marks, or 2000
pounds sterling, and it was settled that, if either died without issue,
his dominions should fall to the other. A general amnesty was accorded
to the adherents of each party, and a treaty of amity was made between
the brothers.

When Robert had retired with his forces to Normandy, the English
king, in despite of the amnesty, turned upon the barons who H
had favoured his brother's cause. One of the chief offenders and the
was Robert de Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, son of Roger de barons '
Montgomeri, who had fought under William at Senlac. Of all the
Norman chieftains in England, he was the most rapacious, cruel, and
powerful, and when he refused to meet Henry's charges in a formal
trial, and fled to his strongholds on the Welsh border, the king followed
him with the whole military force of the country. Bridgenorth, after a
long siege, surrendered to the royal troops, and then the king marched,
with sixty thousand English foot, to attack the rebel at Shrewsbury
itself. A wood which protected the town on one side was cut down,
and a sound broad road was made for the passage of the troops. De
Belesme was prudent enough to save his life by a prompt surrender, and
the banishment of the oppressor, with the confiscation of all his lands,
was received with joy by the English throughout the country. For the
rest of his reign Henry had no more trouble with discontented nobles.

The weak character and dissolute life of Robert soon laid him open
to his brother's ambitious schemes. Under the Norman Conquest
Duke's rule, his country had become a prey to every kind of
disorder. De Belesme, ruined in England, had vast estates in 1106.
Normandy, and defied the Duke's power. He and other mailed free-
booters ravaged the land, and made themselves a terror both to ecclesi-
astics and to laymen. The traders were great sufferers under Robert's
feeble administration, and the king of England was called upon to give
help and redress to the peaceful classes. The state of things across the
Channel was a perpetual danger and trouble to Henry. Many of the
Anglo-Norman barons were also vassals of Robert for their estates in
his territory, and there was thus a conflict of interests and a discord of
policy in the two countries. In 1105, Henry landed with an army in
Normandy, and was soon master of Bayeux and Caen, the one by
assault, the other by surrender. A conference was held between the
brothers, but 110 agreement was made, and the state of Normandy was
worse than ever for the people. Henry returned to England for rein-
forcements, and, landing again across the Channel in 1106, he gained
a decisive victory over Robert at the battle of Tenclielray. Thousands
of prisoners were taken, and the unhappy Robert became a captive in
Cardiff Castle until his death in 1134. This event shows us the last
of the English heir, Edgar JEtheling. Ever fighting in a feeble way

120 REVIVAL OF ENGLISH FEELING. [1106 A.D.

against the established power of some de facto king of England, always
failing and always forgiven, he now became Henry's prisoner, and at
once received his freedom and a pension. He lived to a great age in
England, in peace, comfort, and contempt. He had the gift of personal
courage, but his lack of all other resources of character made his career
one of ignominious length and safety.

The victory of Englishmen over Normans on the field of Tencliebray
_ was gained on September 28th, the anniversary of the great

English William's landing near Hastings forty years previously. The
revival coincidence of date was of happy and significant omen for the
future of our country. The discomfiture at Serilac was already, in a
measure, wiped away from our military annals, and the spirit of the
lately subjugated islanders, who saw a queen of their own royal race
on the throne, was stirred with a new and wholesome pride in the
prowess of their own right arms. This revival of English feeling came
at a time when the towns of England were beginning, by slow and
silent steps, to prove their importance in the history of English freedom.
An influx of Norman traders and craftsmen had been raising in com-
mercial importance the cities of London and Norwich, and the charter
which Henry granted to London was the first formal recognition, since
the Norman conquest, of the old borough rights. The citizens now had
the privilege of trying their fellow -townsmen, by old English law, in
the weekly hustings or town-court, and we begin to hear of wards and
aldermen, in the modern sense, and of the merchant-guilds and craft-
guilds which played so important a part in the Middle Ages. In
England, they were closely connected with the democratic element of
the constitution, and came afterwards to possess a strong influence
in the choice of representatives, and in the municipal administration.
Other charters, modelled upon that of the city of London, were granted
by Henry during his reign to the townsmen in several boroughs, and
the rights thus conceded became the basis of a claim for the purchase
of greater freedom in the time that was to come.

The dispute between Henry, on the one side, and Ansel m and Pope
Henry I P ascna l H> on the other, respecting the right of investi-
and the' ture, marks an epoch in the history of the English Church.

113:0 Investiture, in the feudal law, was the open delivery of a
feud by a lord to his vassal. The ceremony consisted in the presenta-
tion, before witnesses, of some symbol of the property to the person
who was invested with its feudal possession. In the primitive Church,
after the election of a bishop, the early Christian emperors claimed
the right of confirming the appointment, and Charles the Great seems
to have introduced the practice of investing the newly-consecrated
bishop by placing in his hands a ring and a crozier. The estate and
honours of a bishop were held to be of the nature of aj^e/, and for
these prelates were required to do homage to the sovereign. These
claims of the supreme feudal lord were of great political moment.

1110-1126 A.D.] FAMILY OF HENRY. 121

When the chapter elected a bishop, the king might refuse to grant
investiture or to receive homage, and thus practically veto the election,
and keep in his own hands the power of appointing bishops. In 1075,
Pope Gregory VII., whom we have seen as a sturdy supporter of the
ecclesiastical power, issued a bull forbidding, under penalty of ex-
communication, all lay-investiture. Anselm refused to do homage to
Henry for his see or to receive investiture at his hands, and Pope
Paschal strongly supported the English primate. After a long dispute,
the matter was settled by a compromise, in which Henry agreed to
forego the ceremony of investiture, by which the spiritual office was
held to be conferred, and the Pope allowed bishops to do homage for
their temporal property. Anselm only survived by two years the
arrangement thus made in 1107.

The conquest of Normandy was a troublesome gain to the king of
England. The cause of the young William, son of the cap- He
tive Robert, was taken up by the French king Louis, and and Nor-
open war came at last between France and Normandy. In man " v '
1119, the French were defeated at Noyon, between Rouen and Paris,
but trouble did not cease till the death of the king's nephew in 1128,
and the English people were greatly burdened by exactions to support
the expense of Henry's warfare.

The private life of Henry was not such as a wife like the " good
Queen Maud " could regard with approval, or continue to Tlie kin ,
share with self-respect, and, at the time of her death in 1118, domestic
she had long retired from the palace to reside in the mona- affairs -
stery of Westminster, where she spent her revenues in the relief of
the sick, and her time in acts of penitence and piety. The issue of
her union with Henry had been a daughter and a son. The daughter,
Matilda, known as "the Empress Maud/' was married in n 14 to the
Emperor Henry V. of Germany, who left her a childless widow in
1125, The son, Prince William, perished by drowning in 1120, in
the terrible and well-known catastrophe of the loss of the Blanclie-Nef
or White Ship. A gang of drunken rowers, and a steersman full of
wine, were the agents in driving the vessel upon a rock as she left the
harbour of Barfleur. She filled and went down at once, taking with
her the young prince and nearly a hundred and fifty young nobles
of the chief families in England and Normandy. The event was a
dreadful blow to the king, and he felt it to the end of his life. In.
1 121, Henry took a second wife in Adelais, daughter of the Duke of
Louvain, but no children were born, and the question of the succession
began to trouble the king, as the next male heir was his nephew
William, the son of Robert. He therefore took measures to secure
the throne for his daughter Matilda, and at Christmas, 1126, a council
was held at Windsor of barons, bishops, and other great tenants of
the crown. The ex-empress Maud was declared next heir, if the king
died without any male children, and all swore to maintain her succes-

122 MARRIAGE OF MATILDA. [1127 A.D.

sion. Amongst those who took the oath were Stephen, Count of
Boulogne, a nephew of the king, as son of his sister Adela, and
Robert, Earl of Gloucester, one of Henry's natural children. David,
king of Scotland, was there as an English earl, and also swore to
maintain the succession of his niece Matilda, In order to further his
daughter's cause, Henry procured her marriage with the young Geoffrey
Plaritagenet, son of Fulk, Count of Anjou. He was one of a line of
men remarkable for a combination of intellectual power as statesmen
with great moral depravity. Fulk the Black, the greatest man of the
Angevin house, died in 1040, after fifty years of successful wicked-
ness, which left Anjou the most powerful of all the provinces of
France. The Count Fulk of Henry's time was the most formidable of
the foes of the English king, and it was for this reason that he sought
to disarm the father by a marriage-alliance with the son. The young
Geoffrey had already become Count of Anjou by his father's cession
of the province and title, and his habit of wearing in his helmet the
common broom of Anjou (the planta genista) had gained for him the
surname Plantagenet, destined to become immortal in its connection
with our history. The marriage of Matilda with Geoffrey of Anjou
took place at Rouen in 1127, but did not prove a happy one, and was
a constant source of trouble to the father-in-law, Henry A son, how-
ever, was born in 1133, an( ^ received the name of Henry, after the
king, his grandfather. The oath to maintain the succession was again
taken by the barons, and the king then appeared to have firmly
secured a peaceful succession to his daughter and her son.

The chief advantages derived by England from the rule of Henry I.
Henry's were that, along with his own arbitrary and oppressive con-
adrniSs- duct, ^ e maintained peace in the land, and restrained the
tration. tyranny of the barons. A new class of nobles arose, whom
the vigorous administration of Henry made use of as sheriffs of the
counties and judges in the courts. The Norman system of govern-
ment, which had been inaugurated by William I., was extended into
the complete form which has been already sketched. The king's
severe treatment of thieves and marauders gave him the popular
name of "the lion of justice." In 1124, forty-four robbers were put
to death, after trial and conviction at a court held in Leicestershire.
The coin was much debased and worn, and the currency was greatly
imitated by coiners of sham silver. The counterfeiters were dealt
with by mutilation, and, at one trial, out of fifty accused persons, four
only escaped the loss of the right hand. The evil side of Henry's
government was the severe taxation of all classes. The small tiller of
the land suffered along with the baron, the bishop, and the monastic
bodies. We are told that the very doors were taken off the houses,
when the people could no longer pay ; and a writer of the time relates
that a troop of wretched cultivators came once to the king's palace,
and flung down their ploughshares, as the capital was all exhausted

1135 A.D.] DEATH OF HENRY. 123

which alone could set the ploughs to work, lleniy added to the
severity of the forest-laws which had been enforced by his two pre*
decessors. The chronicler tells us that " he reserved for his own sport
the beasts of chase in the forests of England, and even caused all dogs
that were kept on the verge of the woods to be mutilated by having a
claw cut off," and that it was "with reluctance that he licensed his
own particular friends, and a few of the greater nobles, to have the
privilege of hunting in their own forests." The high position attained
by London is shown by the fact that, among those who had this
privilege, were the nobles, bishops, and burgesses, who, according to
Henry's charter, were warranted to "have their hunting-grounds, as
was best and most fully enjoyed by their predecessors, that is, in
Chiltern (the wooded hilly district in Bucks), in Middlesex, and in
Surrey."

After a reign of nearly h've-and-thirty years, in which the country
had made undoubted progress, largely due to the effective way Death of
in which a despotic and rapacious ruler had put down all Henry I.
petty tyrants, Henry I. died on December i, 1135, at his favourite
hunting-seat near Rouen, known as the Castle of Lions. He was in
the 6yth year of his age, and the cause of his death was a fit of illness
following upon over-indulgence in lampreys, a fish resembling the eel,
and well known, according to Pliny, to the epicures of Rome. Henry
was buried at Reading, in the abbey of which he was founder.

CHAPTER II.

THE REIGN OF ANARCHY AND CIVIL WAR.

Stephen the usurper. Matilda and her supporters. Battle of Northallerton. The
King and the Church. Matilda's brief rule. Feudal characters. Horrors of
the civil war. Archbishop Theobald. Literature of the age.

THE internal tranquillity which had existed during most of the reigns
of the three first Norman kings was now to come to an end, Stephen,
and to be followed by a period of disorder and misery so US5-H64.
dreadful, as to transcend all that would be invented by the most
daring writer of fiction. The late king had, by his will, left his
daughter Matilda, or "the Empress Maud," heir to all his dominions.
No mention was made of her husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet. The
late king's nephew, Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, son of the Count of
Blois, was the nearest male heir to the throne, with the exception of
his own elder brother, Henry. Robert of Normandy had died in 1134,
still a captive at Cardiff, and his son, the cousin of Stephen, was also
deceased. Great favour had been shown to his two young kinsmen by

124 USURPATION OF STEPHEN. [1135 A.D.

the late king. Henry of Blois was appointed Bishop of Winchester,
and Stephen became a great landed proprietor. He had lived much
in England, where he was an universal favourite. The chronicler
states that "from his complacency of manners, and his readiness to
joke, and sit and regale even with low people, he had gained so much
on their affections as is hardly to be conceived." Stephen was now to
show how little of moral principle went along with his charming good-
humour, and his lavish generosity to boon companions and friends.
He had sworn, as we have seen, to support the succession of Matilda.
From the death-bed of his uncle he started at once for England, and
landed, with great propriety, as an omen of his reign, during a winter-
storm of thunder and lightning. He had come to carry out a long-
prepared and well-organised plan, and, when the gates of Dover and
Canterbury were closed against him, he went boldly on to London.
His brother Henry had been working in his favour on the minds of the
dignitaries of the Church, but the first people to welcome Stephen as
successor were the citizens of London. Their aldermen presided at a
meeting of the people, and he was by them chosen and hailed as king
amid tumultuous applause. Oaths of allegiance and of good govern-
ment were interchanged, and this irregular proceeding seems to have
been confirmed by a certain number of bishops and barons. There is
no doubt that many of the nobles, and of the English people also, felt
a strong objection to the rule of a female sovereign. The idea of a
lady as ruler was out of harmony both with old traditions and with
warlike habits. Under the feudal system, the king was the great
military chief, as well as the dispenser of justice and the guardian of
property. Two hundred and fifty years had passed since Alfred's
sister, the Lady of Mercia, had shown her energy and wisdom as a
ruler, and no thane or baron had yet knelt before a queen, and sworn
to be her "liege-man." Many of the barons, who had been kept in
check by the strong hand of Henry, hoped now to have a better time
under a king of easy temper and generous disposition. In order to
give a show of legality to usurpation, and to make excuse for flagrant
perjury, it was pretended by the partisans of Stephen that the oath to
support Matilda had been extorted by Henry, and that on his death-
bed he had revoked, by word of mouth, his appointment of Matilda as
successor, and declared Stephen heir to all his dominions.

The sovereign who thus obtained the throne was crowned on Decem-
Stephen's ^ er 2 ^^ n > the day sacred to the memory of Stephen the first
first pro- martyr. The new king had become possessed of great wealth
l3nss ' in Henry's I.'s accumulated treasure, and with these resources
he hired a large mercenary force from Flanders, Brittany, and other
parts of the Continent. The evils of despotism had been already fol-
lowed by the worse mischiefs of anarchy. The forest-laws had been
the chief grievance of the late king's reign, and the news of his death
was the signal for an outburst of fury against the animals whom those

1138 A.D.] BATTLE OF THE STANDARD. 125

harsh enactments had protected. A general rush to the woods was
made, and for a time the deer and boars and hares seemed, in their
sudden disappearance, to have suffered utter extirpation. Stephen
went in person against these and other marauders, but he soon had
to deal with troubles far more serious. David, king of Scotland, came
forward as the champion of the wronged Matilda, whose claim he
had sworn to uphold, and his troops made their way to Carlisle and
Newcastle, but they retired on the approach of Stephen with a great
army at his back. In Normandy, all went well at first for the new
sovereign, as the nobles gave him their allegiance on hearing of his
succession to the English crown. In order to secure his position in
England, Stephen made a lavish distribution of crown -lands to a large
number of tenants-in-chief, who were intended by him to counteract
the power of the greater barons. These new nobles were permitted
to build castles as their strongholds, and in every quarter rose the
keeps of men who became, in the coming evil time, mere robber-chiefs,
surrounded by gangs of their armed vassals, or of mercenary soldiers
attracted by regular pay or by the hope of booty. The land soon
became a prey to disorder, in which bands of marauders sallied forth
from towns to seize the cattle at the farms, and every highway swarmed
with brigands, who kidnapped wealthy travellers, and held them to heavy
ransom under pain of torture and death.

Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a son of Henry L, had done homage to
Stephen, but he soon began to intrigue against his power, and The civil
to gather round him partisans of Matilda. In 1138, a rising ^ ar -
of the barons in the south and west of England was put down by
Stephen, but a more formidable attack upon his power came in the
north. David of Scotland again took the field, and crossed the border
into England with a tumultuous array of forces, largely composed of
men from Galloway and the Highlands, who were of the original
British stock. They were little better than savages, and the worst
cruelties marked their advance into Yorkshire.

These " Scottish ants," as a chronicler calls them, swarmed over the
whole country, and fire and bloodshed were ever the signs of Battle of
their presence. Thurstan, Archbishop of York, an aged but i^ r ^ al "
vigorous man, gathered a large force to resist them, and, in 1138.
appealing to the people of his province, he called them to join the
banners of their old English saints. The warlike Bishop of Durham
headed the army, which included Norman mailed horsemen and English
archers. In their midst was a tall cross, raised upon a car and sur-
rounded by the banners of St. Cuthbert of Durham, St. Wilfrid of
Ripon, St. John of Beverley, and St. Peter of York. The struggle
which ensued has hence been called The Battle of the Standard. The
enemy's host had within its ranks many Norman knights from the
Lowlands, and at their head charged Prince Henry, the king of Scot-
land's son. The Scots were generally armed with darts and long spears,

126 GROWTH OF ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. [1138 A.D.

but all their fierce attacks made little impression on the solid mass of
Normans and English who were gathered round the standard. Repulse
was followed by successful counter-attack, and the invading army fled,
leaving thousands of men on the field. King David himself and his
son narrowly missed capture.

The character of Stephen was merely that of a gallant feudal warrior,
Stephen's and his lack of a statesman's qualities brought him into diffi-
wtttTthe cu ^7- -^ or ^ our vears ne na d been kept on the throne mainly
Church. by the influence of the Church, and prudence would have
caused him to refrain from giving offence to the clergy. The rapid
and steady growth of ecclesiastical power in England from the time
of the Conquest is one of the remarkable facts of that age. Nearly
all the great offices of the Church were held by Normans, and for more
than seventy years the Church possessions had been ever growing in
value. Not only had the bishops and monasteries large endowments
from the lands of the crown and the confiscated estates of the English
earls, but it was a passion with Normans, both laymen and "clerks,'
to erect stately churches and abbeys, and provide the means of main-
taining them. The court-jester of Henry I. erected the priory and
hospital of St. Bartholomew on a part of .the king's market of Smith-
field. Flambard, the rapacious minister of Rufus, built the great
priory of Christchurch. A religious revival had been of late stirring
the minds of men in England. Late in the reign of Henry, the
Cistercian order of monks had begun to settle here. They sprang
from the Benedictines, and had their name from their first religious
house at Citeaux (Cistercium), near Dijon. Their rule w T as austere,
their lives being wholly given to labour and prayer, and their one
frugal daily meal was eaten in silence. Whilst other religious orders
had their abbeys amidst large communities, the Cistercians asked for
grants of land in the most solitary places, where the recluse could
meditate undisturbed by aught except the cry of birds on the desolate
moors, and the voices of the woods and the waters in the wild gorges
of the hills. In such a spot "Walter 1'Espee, \vho had fought at Northal-
lerton, founded for the new order Rievaulx Abbey among the York-
shire hills. The Norman knight had lost his son, and he found solace
in seeing the monastic buildings rise under his munificent care, and
the waste lands become fertile under the labours of the devoted monks.
The Norman prelates were men of learning and ability, magnificence
and taste, and much of the vast revenues of the great sees was applied
to noble uses. After the lapse of seven centuries, we still tread with
reverence those portions of our great cathedrals in which the early
Norman architecture is visible. It was in this age that the massive
grandeur of the rounded arch was shown in the stately cathedral of
Durham, the building of which, begun under Rufus, continued through
the reign of Henry I. Eleven years after the Conquest, Rochester
Cathedral was built, and its present nave is an unaltered part of the

1139 A.D.] POWER OF THE BISHOPS. 127

original structure. Norwich Cathedral was founded in 1094, and its
erection was carried forward so rapidly, that in seven years sixty monks
were located there. Winchester, in its oldest parts, dates from the
same period. The grand conception and solid execution of these nohle
structures suffice of themselves to show the wealth and activity of the
Church during the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons. It was with
this powerful body that Stephen now, in his rashness, ventured to
quarrel. The bishops were not only priests and lawyers, but were
often also military leaders, as we have just seen in the fight at Nor-
thallerton. As barons of the realm, they were surrounded with armed
retainers, and a king had always reason to fear lest provocation should
make a prelate put forward the proud feudal baron instead of the
priestly side of his character. Some of the bishops had, in self-defence,
been erecting strong castles like so many of the lay-barons. Roger,
Bishop of Salisbury, once a parish priest at Caen, had become chancellor
and chief justiciary under Henry I. He had helped Stephen to the
throne, and received from him lavish rewards, Besides his castle of
Salisbury, the bishop had lately built strongholds at Devizes, Sher-
borne, and Malmesbury. The bishops of Lincoln and of Ely were his
nephews, and the former, almost as powerful a man as his uncle, had
built castles at Sleaford and Newark. In July 1139, a great council
was held at Oxford, and the three bishops arrived with a large military
escort. A quarrel and a fight ensued between their retainers and those
of Alain of Brittany, and the king arrested the bishops of Lincoln
and Salisbury, while the Bishop of Ely fled to his uncle's castle at
Devizes. The prelates were forced to surrender their fortresses, and
indignant shame caused the death of the justiciary, Roger, Bishop of
Salisbury, before the year was over. Stephen's action turned against
him his brother Henry, Bishop of Winchester, who was now Papal
Legate in England, and the result was an invasion of the country by
Matilda, and Robert, Earl of Gloucester.

They landed at Arundel in September 1139, with a small force, and
the adherents of both parties prepared for what proved to be T . . .,
a long and stubborn contest. The strength of Matilda lay in war, 1139-
the west, while Stephen was supported by the eastern shires 1146<
and the men of London. During 1140, a war of partisans and plunder-
ing went on, and bodies of freebooters came over from Flanders to take
their part in the general pillage. The Legate and the bishops hurled
curses and excommunications at the plunderers of churches and abbeys,
but the lawless ruffians who filled the land laughed at all anathemas.
The atrocities of the time are almost beyond belief, but rest on good
contemporary evidence. One baron rubbed his prisoners over with
honey, and then exposed them naked to the stings of bees and the
burning shafts of the sun. The treachery of friend against friend
caused nobles who came as guests to be detained as prisoners, and
feudal barons hanged like serfs men of their own rank.

128 CIVIL WAR. [1141 A.D.

In 1141 the castle of Lincoln, held for the king, was seized by sur-
prise, through the gross treachery of two nobles who had
Lincoln? supported Stephen, and then turned to Matilda's side. The
1141. king marched to Lincoln, and laid siege to the fortress, and

Robert of Gloucester and other barons went to its relief with a great
army. A terrible fight ensued, in which Stephen, one of the bravest
men of feudal times, fought like a lion amidst a host of foes. His
heavy battle-axe rose and fell until it was shattered to pieces. Then he
drew his long sword, and smote away till that was broken, when he
was surrounded and made prisoner. He was closely kept at Bristol
Castle, and for eight months Matilda was queen.

The defeat of Stephen was a triumph for the bishops, and it was
used by them with great arrogance,, In a council held at
asV Winchester, Henry the Legate denounced his brother, falsely
ruler> declaring that the right of choosing a sovereign chiefly belonged
to the Church, and hailed Matilda as queen of England and Normandy.
The men of London, who vainly asked for Stephen's release, gave a
reluctant allegiance to Matilda, and she entered London with great
state. Her rash and imperious conduct soon gave great offence, and
Stephen's brave and faithful queen, also. named Matilda, daughter of
the Count of Boulogne, raised an army and marched on London. The
citizens took up arms to assist her, and the ex-empress fled to Win-
chester Castle. Henry had now changed sides, and, holding his palace
at Winchester, carried on a contest with Maud which caused the de-
struction of the ancient capital of Wessex by fire. Thus the rivalry
of Winchester with London was brought to an end, and from this time
London may be regarded as the capital of England. Maud was forced
by famine to flee from Winchester Castle, and in the retreat her great
supporter, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who was also her half-brother,
fell into the enemy's hands. He was then exchanged for Stephen, and
the war went on as before during 1 142.

The four chief characters of the time are specimens of the feudal age.
7he In Matilda, brave, haughty, vindictive, and cruel, we have a

feudal striking picture of the proud feudal dame, who shrank from
no peril by reason of her sex, but made the homage of chivalry
to woman a powerful instrument for enforcing her absolute will. In
Robert of Gloucester we see the feudal baron at his best. Brave he
was, of course, but he was also of a free, generous, loyal, and steadfast
nature. Wise in counsel, and a lover of literature, he had as few as
might be of the vices of that age, and most of its higher and engaging
qualities. Stephen himself may claim the merit of being able, not
merely to win, but to keep firmly the love and admiration, both in
good and in evil fortune, of the great body of the nation. After the
struggles of six years, in victory, in defeat, amid the hostility of the
Church, in capture and imprisonment, the attachment of the people of
the great towns to his person and government remains unshaken. In

1142-1153 A.D.] HENRY OF ANJOU. 129

Henry, Bishop of Winchester and Papal Legate, we have the mingled
churchman, statesman, and soldier of the time, a determined supporter
of his clerical order and of the Pope's authority in England/ The
whole panorama unrolled before us in the reign of Stephen justifies the
remark of the philosophical historian, Sir James Mackintosh, that "it
perhaps contains the most perfect condensation to be found in history
of all the ills of feudality."

In 1142, Matilda was besieged by Stephen in the strong castle of
Oxford. After three months' leaguer, as the year drew to its The war
close, famine pressed the garrison, and Maud was forced to 11*2-1150.
escape by night over the frozen snow that covered the ground, and the
ice that made a road of the river. The great fact of the time was the
universal misery of the people. Famine was rife, towns were deserted,
and foreign mercenaries, left unpaid by their baronial employers, pillaged
the farms and the monastic houses. A change in the fortunes of
Matilda's family had meanwhile occurred. Her husband, Geoffrey of
Anjou, had become master of Normandy, and its barons had given their
allegiance to her son Henry as their duke. The lad was now in England,
under the care of his uncle, the Earl of Gloucester. This wise guardian
was lost to him by the Earl's death in 1145, and the next year Matilda
gave up the contest in England and retired to Normandy, leaving the
land in extreme misery.

Henry, the king's brother, had been superseded as Papal Legate by
the excellent Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. He was The
strongly opposed to Stephen, and in this he had the support agaSn-
of the powerful Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. This great prelate tervenes.
now came forward in the interests of peace. In 1 1 50, Stephen desired
that his son Eustace should be recognised as heir to the kingdom.
Theobald absolutely refused this claim in the interests of Henry of
Anjou. This young prince, in courage and prudence, toil and tact,
was already giving assurance to his party of the great eminence he
was hereafter to reach as a ruler and a statesman. He was seventeen
years of age in 1150, and was already Duke of Normandy. His
father Geoffrey's death, in 1151, gave him the rule of Anjou, Touraine,
and Maine. In 1152, he made a marriage of ambition, rather than
affection, with Eleanor, divorced wife of Louis VII. of France. This
lady was the daughter and heir of William, Duke of Guienne and
Count of Poitou, and the alliance with Henry gave him control of
those territories and of Aquitaine. He was thus master of all the
western side of France, from the Somme to the Pyrenees, with the
sole exception of Brittany. At the end of 1152, he came to England
with an army, and some fighting had taken place with the forces of
Stephen when the Archbishop, and Henry, brother of Stephen, in-
terposed to prevent further bloodshed. The death of Stephen's son
Eustace in August was an important factor in the arrangement. In
1153 the Treaty of Wattingford brought peace to the land. Stephen

130 LITERATURE OY THE PERIOD. [1154 A.D.

led the young prince in solemn procession through the streets of
Winchester, and, as the chronicler tells us, " all the great men of the
realm, by the king's command, did homage, and pronounced the fealty
due to their liege lord, the Duke of Normandy, saving only their
allegiance to King Stephen during his life." On October 25, 1154,
Stephen himself died, preceded to the tomb, three years before, by his
constant and heroic queen.

The monastic chronicles, due to the brains and pens of the monks
Litera- in the scriptorium or writing-room of the monastery, are
the 6 f found at their best in the reign of Henry I. In these
period. valuable independent records, made from personal knowledge,
or based on the evidence of eye-witnesses, we have our authorities for
the history of England at that date. Florence, of Worcester, a brother
of the monastery in that city, continued another man's chronicle from
1082 to 1117, the year before his death. Ordericus Vitalis was son
of a married priest from Orleans, who came over to England with
lioger de Montgomeri, Earl of Shrewsbury. He was born in 1075,
at Atcham, on the Severn, and was educated at a Benedictine abbey
in Normandy. There he became a monk, and spent all his life devoted
to literary pursuits. His work was an Ecclesiastical History of Eng-
land and Normandy. The last half of the book gives a trustworthy
account of the political events of his own time in the kingdom and
the duchy. He has no literary skill, but is valuable for his facts and
genuine copies of documents. The work is brought down to 1142,
which is the supposed date of the author's death. In William of
Malmesbury we have a writer of a much higher stamp. He was born
in Somersetshire near the end of the eleventh century, and was of
Norman-English parentage. He became a monk of Malmesbury
Abbey, and was there made librarian. His De Gestis Regum Anglorum
is a general history of England, from the coming of the invaders in
449 to 1126 : he also wrote an account of events from that year to
the escape of Maud from Oxford in 1142. The De Gestis was dedi-
cated to his patron, Robert, Earl of Gloucester. He shows great
diligence, modesty, and good sense as a writer, and in his grouping
of events and liveliness of style rises far above the mere annalist or
chronicler, and takes rank as our earliest historian after the Con-
quest. Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh monk of the Benedictine
order, became Bishop of St. A : saph in 1152, and died in 1154. His
Latin History of British Kings was dedicated to the cultured Robert,
Earl of Gloucester, and became very popular from, the introduction
of a large element of romance and fiction. The writer had the poetic
genius of the Cymric race, and to him we are indebted for the legends
of Arthur and his knights, for the fiction of Sabrina, " virgin daughter
of Locrine," in Milton's Comus, for the subject of Kiny Lear, and for
the story of Gorboduc, the theme of the first English tragedy. The
historical part of the book was extracted into an abridgment made

1154 A.D.] LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD. 131

by Alfred of Bei'erley, and the full work was turned into French verse
for those who could not read Latin. Wace was a man born at Jersey,
who was writing romances at Caen towards the end of Stephen's reign!
He also turned Geoffrey's chronicle, with additions of his own, into
a French romance in verse called Brut. Another work of his was
Roman de Ron, a picturesque and animated adaptation in French
verse of a Latin chronicle about the deeds of William the Conqueror.
Henry of Huntingdon, born near the end of the eleventh century, was
an English historian who became archdeacon of the town whence he
has his name. He compiled a chronicle ending with the death of
Stephen, and at the end of his life produced a little work entitled
De Cont&inptu Mundi, containing many curious contemporary anec-
dotes of kings, prelates, and nobles. In the time of Stephen, we have
the earliest extant Miracle Plays, the acting of which was probably
begun in this country soon after the Conquest. The authors and
performers were ecclesiastics, and the name arises from the fact that
the miracles of the first founders of the faith, and of the saints and
martyrs, were set forth in a dramatic form. They were represented
at church on occasion of solemn festivals. Hilari-us, an Englishman
living in France, wrote two such dramas in the time of Stephen. A
similar kind of plays was that called Mysteries, because they repre-
sented the mysterious doctrines of Christianity. We have one Mystery
of Hilarius, called the Raising of Lazarus, composed for the enforce-
ment of the doctrine of resurrection.

CHAPTEE III.

THE PLANTAGENETS BEGIN TO REIGN.

Henry II. ; his person and character. Thomas Becket as statesman and church-
man. The great conflict between Church and State. Becket's exile, return, and
death.

THE first monarch of the famous line which reigned in England for
over three hundred years was the greatest king of his own Henry II.,
age, and one of the ablest rulers who appear in all our annals. 1154-1189.
Henry II. and his two sons and successors are known as the Angevin
kings, from, their origin in Geoffrey of Anjou, and their close connection
with France, where that territory formed a part of their inherited pos-
sessions. The new king, at twenty-one years of age, was welcomed to
the throne by all classes of a nation which had hopes of a quiet future
in receiving a ruler possessed of an undisputed title. He was crowned
at Westminster on Sunday, December i9th, with his queen, Eleanor of
Guienne. The extent of his Continental dominions has been already

132 HENRY II. [1154 A.D.

shown. They comprised nearly a half of France, and were far superior
in wealth and size to the territories under the real control of the
French monarch.

The intellectual powers of the king, as a shrewd and prudent states-
man, were well matched by his athletic form, expressive face,
ter a of lively speech, restless energy, and wonderful capacity for
Henry II. wor ] > He was a thorough man of business, pleasant in de-
meanour, strong of memory, vigilant, firm, and methodical. He was
tenacious in his likes and dislikes, and would, when provoked, give way
to furious bursts of rage. His reign forms a memorable period in our
history, when a cruel and turbulent baronage was subjected to the solid
power of an energetic and able monarch, and a great advance was made
in the equal administration of justice. Under his sway, the English and
Normans were more closely drawn together in the bonds of commerce
and intermarriage, and a new national feeling arose. Henry had no
poetical regard for any of the traditions of his elders. His sole object
as ruler was to work out a system of good government, in which pri-
vilege would be swept aside if it barred the way to the end in view,
and public administration would be carried out by men acting under
the eye and by the orders of the sovereign who chose them. The great
contest in which he engaged was that for maintaining the supremacy
of the civil power over that of the Church. A dramatic interest is
given to his reign by the contrast of the brilliant morning of his career
with its dark and stormy close.

The work ready to Henry's hand was that of restoring internal peace,
kin 's ^ IW} anc ^ or( ^ er 5 after the late dreadful anarchy. Herein he
first pro- was well backed by the help and advice of the good Archbishop
ceedmgs. Theobald. The foreign mercenaries were driven from the land ;
the castles lately made the abodes of mere robbers and rebels were de-
molished. The crown-lands alienated by Stephen were resumed, and
the coinage of the realm, grievously debased, was restored to a proper
form by the abolition of the private mints of the barons, and the issue
of new money as the exclusive right of the sovereign. In 1158, Henry
added the county of Nantes to his French dominions, on the death of
his brother Geoffrey, and seven years later took possession of the duchy
of Brittany, as lord and guardian of his third son, Geoffrey, who had
married the Duke's daughter.

Gilbert Becket was a citizen of London in the reign of Henry I., and
Thomas his son Thomas was born there in 1119. He was educated in
Cnancel- boyhood in the Abbey of Merton, and then passed, for in-
lor, H57. struction in logic and rhetoric, to one of the schools of London.
He went to Paris to complete his training in the accomplishments of
the time, and acquired there a knowledge of philosophy and divinity,
with a thorough mastery of the French language, and a conquest of
the English accent distasteful to the Norman ear. His abilities soon
attracted notice, and he became Archdeacon of Canterbury, by the

1157-1162 A.D.] THOMAS BECKET. 133

patronage of Theobald. Henceforth his rise was swift and sure. He
was twice sent on important diplomatic business to Rome, and was the
right hand of the Archbishop during the troubles of Stephen's reign.
He had all the qualifications for a successful courtier in a fine person,
a cultivated mind, a pleasing address, readiness of wit and speech, and
a taste both for the sports of the field and the revelry of the banquet.
In 1157, he became chancellor, and was ever about Henry's person as
the sealer of his writs, and as his secretary and adviser in affairs of the
highest moment. He was now the first subject of the kingdom in
influence, and held several baronies, which brought him great wealth.
Like other churchmen of the age, Becket did not shrink from active
service in war, and in 1159 fought bravely at the king's side, leading
the knights of his own household in a campaign against King Louis of
France. In 1162, Becket became Archbishop of Canterbury, and there
can be no doubt that, in making the appointment, Henry reckoned upon
finding him a supporter in the battle which he had resolved to fight
with the Church.

We have seen that one of the rare mistakes of William the First's
policy had been the separation of the civil and ecclesiastical . ..
tribunals. The power of the Church, backed by Papal influ- and the
ence, had long been encroaching on the civil authority, and clmrcl1 '
it was a special scandal of the time that those who belonged to the
priesthood were not subject to the laws of the state for the punish-
ment of crime. They claimed to be tried by their own courts, and
those courts were partial. This was one of the inequalities which
Henry had fully resolved to redress. We learn that Becket paused a
year before he accepted the primacy, and expressly warned the king
not to expect from him, as archbishop, the same devotion to the royal
interests which he had shown in his office as chancellor. When
Becket at last became the leading man in the Church, his conduct
came upon the king as a most unpleasant surprise. Becket had -made
up his mind to bring about a contest between the Church and the
State, and he relied for final victory on the support of the see of
Rome. He well knew the character of the king with whom he would
have to contend, and could form, a just estimate of the power of the
nobles who would be banded against him. But the authority of the
Church Catholic had already made kings hold the Pope's stirrup, and
Gregory VII. had excommunicated an emperor of Germany, and forced
him to wait his pleasure, for three winter days, in his outer court at
Canossa, with all the humiliation of naked feet and the penitent's
woollen shirt. What Pope Gregory was in the eleventh century, Pope
Alexander would be in the twelfth, if Henry were contumacious.
With these views, Becket at once resigned his office as chancellor, and
exchanged his life of luxury for one of extreme asceticism. The gay
attire of a courtier was laid aside for a monk's frock and a hair-shirt,
and the pomp of a train of nobles, and belted knights for a body-

134 CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON. [1164 A.D.

guard, gave way to the feeding of the poor in his private chambers,
to waiting on them, and washing their feet. The friendship between
Becket and the king was at an end, and they both prepared for the
inevitable struggle. The importance of the matter to be dealt with in
the separate jurisdiction of the courts may be judged from a few facts.
The clergy claimed an exemption from all civil judicature. Whilst
the murderer and robber were punished with death, if tried in the
courts of the crown, the vilest offender, if a clerk or clergyman,
escaped often with a mere fine. The number of persons in holy orders
was enormous. The great increase of religious houses, and of eccle-
siastical revenues, had opened the doors of the Church, as a profession,
even to the Saxon serf. The bishops and abbots, as feudal lords, had
men in their retinues who were half-priest and half-soldier, and many
of these were guilty of conduct most shameful to their priestly char-
acter. After the appointment of Becket to the primacy, a flagrant
case of murder by a priest came to light in Worcestershire. The
offender was demanded for trial in the king's courts. Becket shielded
the criminal in the interests of the Church, and passed on him only a
sentence of degradation from the priestly office. The king then called
a council of prelates at Westminster in 1 163, and asked them " whether
they were willing to submit to the ancient laws and customs of the
realm?" The reply, framed by Becket, was that they would observe
them "saving the privileges of their order." Becket, at the instance
of his friends, afterwards gave his assent to the demand of the indig-
nant Henry, but the king resolved to have a more formal assertion of
the principle which he maintained the equality of the clergy and the
laity before the law.

A Great Council was summoned in January 1164, to meet at Claren-
Constitu- don, near Salisbury, and there was passed a series of resolu-
"cSSceS- tions which have since been known as the Constitutions of
don, 1164. Clarendon. They formed, in fact, a statute, and had the
force of law. After three days' earnest debate, the consent of Becket
himself was obtained, upon what pressure from within or without the
council, it is now difficult to determine. The Constitutions were a
formidable attack upon the power of the clergy at home, and upon the
interference of the Papal See with the affairs of the English Church.
The preamble declares them to be a record and recognition of the
ancient laws and customs which ought to be observed in the kingdom.
The great point of contest that of clerical exemption from the secular
arm or civil law was thus decided : " Ecclesiastics accused of any
matter shall, upon summons of the king's justiciary, come into his
court, to answer there concerning what shall appear to the king's
court to be there cognisable ; and shall answer in the ecclesiastical
court, concerning what shall appear cognisable there; and if an
ecclesiastic shall be convicted, or confess his crime, the Church ought
not any longer to give him protection/'' All pleas of debt were to

1164 A.D.] COUNCIL OF NORTHAMPTON. i :>,.-,

belong to the king's judicature, as well as rights of advovvson, and
questions of the tenure of property arising between ecclesiastic and
layman. Another clause provides that no dignified ecclesiastic should
leave the realm without license of the king. It was also provided that
none of the king's chief tenants or officers should be excommunicated
without the king's permission. The clauses which enabled the king-
to send for the principal clergy of a church, upon the vacancy of a
bishopric or abbacy, and, with the advice of such prelates as he should
choose, to give his assent or otherwise to the election of a new bishop
or abbot, and to receive homage from the person chosen all these
were a distinct assertion of the principle for which Henry I. had con-
tended against Anselm. The Constitutions were sent to the Pope for
confirmation, but Alexander III. refused to ratify them.

Immediately after giving a reluctant consent at Clarendon, Becket
had repented of his action, and he refused to affix his seal conduct
to the Constitutions. He was the victim of a vacillation of of Becket.
mind due to his fear of the king and the barons on the one hand,
and to his zealous regard for the interests and dignity of the Church
on the other. He took an oath to observe the Constitutions, and then
imposed on himself a penance for taking the oath, suspending himself
from offering mass, and writing to the Pope for absolution. When
the Pope refused to ratify the statute, Becket grew bolder, and began
a course of determined hostility. He twice endeavoured to leave the
kingdom, but was intercepted and detained. Henry saw him, and
tried to pacify him, but Becket returned to his see at Canterbury, and
began to set the statute at defiance.

The king, on his side, was just as firmly resolved as the Archbishop.
In the Council of Northampton Becket was arraigned for council

havinsr broken his fealty to the sovereign, in not having of Nor-

5 , . J ., . , , . b ' . , . 6 thampton.

appeared in person to a suit against him concerning certain October

lands. On this charge he was condemned, and all his posses- 116 **
sions were confiscated. Henry was not satisfied with this, but pressed
Becket for large balances of money declared to be due to the crown
in connection with his former administration as chancellor. As the
danger grew, the boldness of Becket increased. On the last day of the
council, he preached at the morning service from the text, "Princes
sat and spake against me," and then went in solemn procession to the
king's house, bearing the archbishop's cross in his own hands. As the
primate entered the hall, the king retired, followed by the bishops and
nobles, and Becket took his seat, with a few of the humbler clergy
grouped around him. The wrath of Henry was roused, and, in fear for
what might happen, the Bishop of Exeter came, and flung himself on
his knees before Becket, beseeching him to have pity upon himself and
his brethren. His answer was " Fly, then, thou canst not understand
the things that are of God." The other bishops then came and re-
nounced their obedience to him, on the ground that he had sworn falsely

136 FLIGHT OF BECKET. [1165 A.D.

to observe the Constitutions, and had then resisted them and broken his
fealty. " I hear what ye say," was the only reply. The barons then
pronounced a sentence of imprisonment against him, and the Earl of
Leicester came into the hall to read it. The Archbishop broke in with
11 Sir Earl, hear you first," and then he disclaimed the king's judgment,
and that of the barons, Ci being only to be judged, under God, by our
lord the Pope." He then cited the bishops (who had chosen, as he
said, to obey men rather than God) to appear before the Pope. As he
rose to depart, a cry of " traitor" was heard, and the man's old warrior-
spirit flashed out in the words, " If my holy office did not forbid it, I
would make answer with my sword." Thus Becket passed out of the
king's hall, and at dead of night left Northampton, in the garb of a
monk, with but two attendants. Fifteen days later he embarked in a
small fishing-boat at Sandwich, and was set ashore near Gravelines.
He had a narrow escape, for Henry had given order that all the
seaports should be watched. Thus the bold Archbishop went into a
voluntary exile of six years. The king at once banished several hun-
dreds of his adherents and kinsfolk.

The Archbishop was received with the greatest distinction by Louis
Becket's VII. of France and by the Pope, and then took up his abode at
proceed- ^e Abbey of Pontigny, in Burgundy. He abated nothing of
ings. his rancorous hostility to Henry, and in 1166, on the festival

of the Ascension, he made a striking display of feeling at Vezelay, near
Auxerre. Mounting the pulpit, he denounced all those whom he called
the enemies of the Church. Then the bells tolled, the crosses were
inverted, the priests stood around with lighted torches, and the dreadful
form of excommunication was pronounced against certain dignitaries
of the Church in England, against Jocelin de Baliol, the king's chief
justiciary, and against all who should abet, enforce, or obey the Consti-
tutions of Clarendon. This sentence was not pronounced by Becket
against Henry himself, but he was called upon, by name, to repent, and
to atone for the usage which he had offered to the Church, on pain of
all the curses included in excommunication. Then the torches were
extinguished, in token of the utter perdition of the souls of those cut
off from the Church. The Abbey of Pontigny, where Becket was
residing, was a Cistercian house, and Henry replied to Becket by a
threat that he would confiscate all the estates of the Cistercians in
England, if the Archbishop were still harboured in their monastery
abroad. Becket then withdrew to another asylum at Sens, whence he
kept up the contest by fervent appeals to the Pope, to Henry, arid to
various English prelates. It is believed that Henry kept himself free
for a time from a Papal interdict, which might have shaken the alle-
giance of his subjects, by the free use of gold at the Papal court, where
the metal proved more potent than the letters of Becket, in which the
king of England was denounced as a malicious tyrant. At last the
scandal was brought to an end by the intervention of Louis of France.

1170 A.D.] NEW QUARREL OF BECKET. 137

In July 1170, Becket and the king met in conference abroad, and an
outward reconciliation was made. It was observed, however, that
Henry, though he held Becket's stirrup when he mounted his horse,
did not give him "the kiss of peace." This token of amity, dating
from early Christian times, was invested with a peculiar solemnity
when given by the lips of a king in the feudal age. The Archbishop
was to be restored to his see, with all his lands, benefices, and honours,
and Henry was content with Becket's agreement to love, honour, and
serve him " in as far as an archbishop could render in the Lord service
to his sovereign." Thus they parted to meet no more on earth.

At the time when Henry was looking for excommunication at the
hands of the Pope, he had thought it well to provide the The mur-
realm with another to rule in case of need. In June 1170, jacket
his eldest son, Prince Henry, fifteen years of age, had been 1170.
crowned, and, during his father's absence in France, he was acting in
England with royal authority. To him the king sent a letter com-
manding that Becket, and all his people who had been banished,
should now peaceably and honourably have all their possessions. When
Becket landed at Dover on December ist, he came provided with a
new quarrel. The ceremony of consecrating Prince Henry as co-king
had been performed by the Archbishop of York and the bishops of
London and Salisbury, and they had thus usurped an office pertaining
to the see of Canterbury. Thomas Becket was not the man to endure
the least encroachment of this kind, and he had previously inhibited
all the bishops from assisting at the ceremony, and had backed his
inhibition by a Papal mandate. As these were disregarded, he came
to England armed with a sentence of suspension from his office against
the Archbishop, and of excommunication against the two bishops. The
returning exile was received at Canterbury with acclamations by the
burgesses and the poor, but none of the nobles or higher clergy came
forth to meet him. The same reception awaited him at Rochester and
other towns, but in Southwark he was met with the warmest welcome
from the clergy and laity of all classes. It is impossible to know the
exact feelings and intentions of the king towards the Archbishop, but
it is clear that Becket, by his aggressive and arrogant demeanour,
rushed upon his fate. He was a man of such ardent temperament,
that he preferred death to indignity, and the excommunication of
those who gave him offence was to him as the breath of life. On
Christmas-day (1170), he preached in his cathedral, and then delivered
the curses of the Church against a man named Ranulph de Broc,
whom he charged with wasting, as sequestrator, the property of the
Canterbury see. In the meantime, the Archbishop of York and the
two bishops had crossed over to Normandy, and laid their grievances
before the king at Bayeux. Henry flew into a violent rage, and cried,
" Is there no one to deliver me from this turbulent priest ? " We may
or may not believe that the angry monarch meant the imperious sub-

138 MURDER OF BECKET. [1170 A.D.

ject's death, but the zeal of some of his courtiers turned the words into
a sentence of doom. Four knights of Henry's court at once formed
their plans, and started by different routes for Kent, all failing to be
overtaken by the messenger whom the king sent after them, with a
charge to do no personal harm to Becket. Their names were William
de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, Richard Brito, and Reginald Fitz-TJrse.
They met at Saltwood Castle, the residence of De Broc, on the night
of December 28th, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and there made
their final arrangements. On the next day they hurried to Canterbury,
and had a stormy interview wdth the Archbishop at his palace. Becket
refused either to leave the country or to withdraw the excommuni-
cation of the bishops. In the evening he went to vespers in the
cathedral, passing from the conventual buildings into the cloister,
and, as he entered the church, the tramp of armed men was heard
mingling with the slow tread of the monks. As he stood before St.
Bennet's altar, De Tracy cried, " Where is the traitor ? where is the
Archbishop ? " Becket replied " Here am I, the archbishop, but no
traitor!" "Thou art a prisoner," said the other, and took him by
the sleeve, but the old martial temper was roused, and the Archbishop
threw him off with violence. The assailants tried to drag him from
the place, in order to escape the guilt of murder upon holy ground,
but Becket resisted all efforts, and Fitz-Urse then used his sword.
As it came down on the prelate's head, his faithful cross-bearer,
Edward Gryme, received the blow upon his arm, which fell severely
wounded, and the stroke spent its last force on the side of Becket's
head and on his left shoulder. Then blow after blow brought him to
his knees, and to the ground, where he fell flat on his face, after
murmuring his readiness to die for Jesus and the Church. A tre-
mendous blow from Brito came down upon the skull, and the frightful
crime was complete. The martyrdom of " St. Thomas of Canterbury "
brought pilgrims for many a year to worship at his shrine, and gave
to England's first great poet the framework of his finest poem. A
foul murder had ended the contest between the fanatical churchman
and the able statesman. The result appeared to be a drawn battle
between the powers of Church and State. A natural reaction of
feeling, compounded of pity for the dead man, and horror at the worst
of sacrilege, wrought on the public opinion of the age, and forced
Henry to make submission to the Pope, and formally annul some
of the provisions of the Constitutions of Clarendon. The election of
bishops and abbots became nominally free, but was practically still
in the king's hands, and the ecclesiastical courts remained subordinate
to the Aula Regis. The time was yet distant when, between Crown
and Church, should arise the majestic form of an enlightened and power-
ful nation, to teach them that both existed for the common good of all,
that the reign of brute violence was at an end, and that piety could
c/xist without superstition, and freedom reign along with law and order.

Stanford's Geog^Sstab* London.

1172 A.D.] CONDITION OF IRELAND. 139

CHAPTER IV.
HENRY'S REIGN AFTER BECKET'S DEATH.

Early history of Ireland. State of the country. The nominal conquest. The King
and his family. Rebellions in England and France. War with Scotland.
Great legal reforms. Henry's later troubles and death.

Ix the reign of Henry II. began that direct connection of Ireland with
the government of England which has lasted nearly seven
hundred years a connection which has involved as much and Ire-
misrule and oppression, misery and revolt, as ever belonged to land> 1172<
a struggle between alien races and rival creeds. We have seen that
the Celts of Ireland were early converted to Christianity, and before
the ninth century the people had famous schools of learning, and were
becoming slowly civilised. The invasions of the Danes then drove them
back into a state of semi-barbarism. Learning had all but vanished,
and the Church, devoid of a proper system, had ceased to influence the
people for good, or control the disorders of rival clans. There was no
central kingly authority, and now, towards the end of the twelfth century,
we see five kings of Munster, Leinster, Ulster, Connaught, and Meath,
besides many small tribes. The towns of Dublin, Waterford, Limerick,
and Cork were of Danish origin, and the people were usually in a state
of hostility with the Celtic tribes around them. They had some inter-
course with England towards the close of the eleventh century, acknow-
ledging the . supremacy of the see of Canterbury, and seeking thence
ordination for their bishops. We learn something of the state of the
country from a chronicler who travelled there in the train of Henry's
son, Prince John. The people preferred pasture to tillage, and disliked
all sedentary pursuits. They were brave in an impetuous way, very
excitable, and fond of music. Lands descended to all the sons of a
family in equal shares upon the death of a father, and, upon the deatli
of each possessor, they were thrown into the common stock, and a new
division was made. Under a system so absurd, no improvement could
take place in the cultivation of the soil ; there could be no accumulation
of capital, and no profitable industry. At an early part of liis reign,
Henry had thought of the subjection of Ireland, and in 1155 he had
obtained a bull for the purpose from Pope Hadrian IV., whose lay-
name was Nicholas Breakspear, and who was the only Englishman
that ever reached that exalted post. In theory, the enterprise was to
be a kind of crusade, in which Henry was to implant a real Christianity,
win the land for the Papal see, and enforce the payment of Peter's pence.
Many causes prevented the immediate execution of the plan, and it was
not until 1168 that the opportunity came. Dermot, king of Leinster,

140 STRONGBOW'S LANDING IN IRELAND. [1168-1185 A.D.

driven out of the island by a rival chief, had gone to Aquitaine in 1167,
rendered homage to Henry, and obtained leave to enlist adventurers
for the recovery of his dominions. He obtained the help of a Norman
noble, Richard de Clare, Earl of Chepstow, who bore the name of
Stronyboiv, and of two knights of South Wales, Robert Fitz-Stephen and
Maurice Fitz-Gerald. De Clare was a man of ruined fortunes, who, in
return for the use of his sword, was to marry Dermot's daughter, and
become heir to the kingdom of Leinster. Fitz-Stephen was the first
to cross, with a small force of knights and men-at-arms, and a few
hundred Welsh archers. He easily scattered the ill-armed Irish rabble,
and took the town of Wexford. In 1169 Fitz-Gerald arrived with
fresh men. and in the next year Strongbow landed near Waterford
with a large force, captured that town and Dublin, married Dermot's
daughter Eva, and, on her father's death, became king of Leinster
(1171). The jealousy of Henry was aroused, and he recalled Strong-
bow and his followers, but the Earl appeased him by doing homage for
his kingdom. In 1172, Henry went to Ireland with an army, and re-
ceived homage from most of the chiefs, but soon returned. In 1175 ne
claimed the lordship of Ireland, under Pope Hadrian's bull, and then the
king of Connaught was made his deputy, with rule over the other chiefs,
all paying tribute to Henry. In 1177 a lord-deputy named Hugh de
Lacy was sent over from England, and had much success in reconciling
the natives to a foreign sway. In 1185 he was succeeded by Prince
John, who went over with a large force, and proved a thorough failure.
His wise father, during his six months' stay in Ireland, had placed the
native chiefs at his own table, and treated them with all the courtesy
of chivalry. The wanton insolence of the king's youngest son, when
the chiefs of Leinster came to do homage, encouraged his silk-clad
attendants to ridicule their dresses of home-spun wool, and to pluck
their bushy beards. The country was soon roused to revolt by com-
bined insult and oppression, and the prince was recalled in less than a
year. The country was in no wise really made subject to England at
this early period. A small amount of territory was held by the new-
comers round the towns of Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Drogheda,
and Cork, and this was known as the English Pale, while outside these
limits the chiefs were virtually independent.

The king, in 1172, had four sons living. Henry, the eldest, was in
Henry II ^ is e ig nteentn y ear > Richard, in his fifteenth, Geoffrey, in his
and his ' fourteenth, and John, in his sixth. These were the children
of Queen Eleanor. A lady named Rosamund Clifford, known
as Fair Rosamund, in connection with whom we have the romantic
stories of the secret bower at Woodstock, and the queen's revengeful
visit with a dagger and a bowl of poison, as a choice of the means of
death for her rival, was the mother of William Longsword, Earl of
Salisbury, of whom Henry was father. The eldest son had been named
by the king as his successor in England, Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and

1173 A.D.] TROUBLES OF HENRY'S REIGN. 141

Touraine ; Richard was to have Guienne and Poitou ; to Geoffrey was
assigned the duchy of Brittany ; to John was given the shadowy posses-
sion of Ireland, which gained him the taunting surname of Lackland.
The king had offended the barons by measures designed to enable him
to become independent of their military support. The smaller feudal
vassals of the crown were allowed to make a money-payment called
scutage, or shield-money, in lieu of their personal service, and with the
resources thus acquired Henry kept under arms a body of mercenary
troops. In 1173, a powerful confederacy was formed against him, and
in this plot the Queen, provoked by Henry's domestic conduct, and
the princes Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey, were involved. Henry was
married to the daughter of the king of France, and now demanded
that his father should resign to his control either England or Nor-
mandy. Richard also claimed possession of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey
that of Brittany. They fled to the court of the French king, and
were about to be followed by their mother, but her husband arrested
Eleanor, and kept her a close prisoner.

The rebellious sons of Henry were backed by Louis of France, and
by many of the nobles of Normandy, Brittany, and Aquitaine. Tr . l
In England itself, some of the nobles were disaffected, arid of the
William the Lion, king of Scotland, and Philip, Earl of kins '
Flanders, were parties to this formidable league. Henry had need
of all his great qualities to avert the severance of his dominions. He
quickly gathered an army of twenty thousand adventurers, soldiers of
fortune, who were ready, for pay and plunder, to support any cause.
He soon routed his foes in Normandy, but England, meanwhile, was
itself in danger. The Scots invaded it from the north, and there
were revolts in Yorkshire, and the Midlands, and the east. The
northern incursion was repelled by Richard de Lacy, the justiciary,
and Humphrey de Bohun, the lord-constable, and then they turned
south to encounter the Earl of Leicester, who had brought over the
seas a large body of Flemings. The rebels met the royal forces in
October 1173, at Fornham, near St. Edmundsbury, and suffered entire
defeat. In 1174 the trouble was worse than ever. The Scots again
entered England in great force, and the risings in the counties were
renewed. A fleet was ready at Gravelines to bring over the young
Henry, and all seemed crumbling into ruin. On July 8th, the king
took ship in Normandy, and crossed the Channel during a heavy
storm. During the long and difficult passage, his usual gaiety of
heart and demeanour was overclouded by deep thought. He was well
aware that many of his subjects held him responsible for the murder
of Becket, and that they believed the disasters now coming to be
Heaven's judgment upon him for crime. Free from superstition him-
self, he was too wise a statesman to disregard its power over others,
and he now resolved to do his best to recover the good opinion of
the faithful. The man who had fallen dead at the shrine of St.

142 LEGAL REFORMS. [1175 A.D.

Bemiet at Canterbury had just become, by the Pope's act, a canonised
saint himself, at whose tomb miracles were wrought which noble and
churl equally believed. On arrival at Southampton, Henry rode off to
Canterbury, and entered the city barefoot in penitential garb. Then
he knelt at Becket's tomb in deep humiliation. The Bishop of London
preached, and called on all to observe that the king had thus avowed
his freedom from blood-guiltiness. Then the king, before the assembled
monks and chapter, poured forth his contrition for the passionate utter-
ance which his knights had so rashly and wickedly misapplied, and next
he was scourged with a knotted cord. After spending the night in the
dark crypt, he rode fasting to London, and there he fell ill.

On the fifth night of his fever he received good news from his
Eenr minister, Rannlf de Glanvill, commanding in the north. On
and Scot- the very morning when Henry was before the tomb of Becket,
land. William of Scotland had been surprised at Alnwick, and taken
prisoner in a lost battle. The insurrection was soon at an end in
England, and the rebels hastened to renew their allegiance. Then the
king took his army of mercenaries over to Normandy, raised the siege
of Rouen, and brought his sons to obedience. The king of Scotland
was a prisoner for several months in the castle of Falaise, in Normandy,
and, by the advice of his nobles and prelates, he rendered homage to
Henry as liege-lord. The Scottish clergy and barons were also to take
an oath of fealty to the English king. This treaty was ratified at
York in 1175, and the acknowledgment made to the English king of
his being lord-paramount of Scotland becomes of importance in the
future relations of the two countries.

When he was once more firmly established in power, Henry began a
Henry II ser ^ es f reforms which may be regarded as the foundation of
and legal our judicial legislation. The Curia, or Aula, Regis Court of
ns- King's Bench is held to have been confirmed and fully estab-
lished by Henry, if not first instituted by him. In the reign of Henry
I. there were itinerant justices of assize, with occasional commissions,
but it was Henry II. who set on foot the present system. In 1176, a
Great Council was held at Northampton, and there the kingdom was
divided into six regular districts or circuits, each having three itinerant
justices or judges. When it was found, three years later, that these
men were guilty of corruption in their office, the king removed from
their posts all the justices in eyre, as they were called, except Ranulf
de Glanvill, who held assizes, with five others, to the north of the Trent.
This, able man afterwards became chief-justiciary, and we shall see
him hereafter as a writer on law. The old Saxon principle of lot, or
pecuniary compensation for crime, had been superseded by criminal
laws, administered with stern severity. We have now some approach
to the mode of trial by jury. An enactment at Northampton in 1176
orders the king's justices to make inquiry by the oaths of twelve knights,
or other lawful men, of each hundred, together with four men from each

1186 A.D.] AFFAIRS IN THE EAST. 143

township, into all murders, robberies, and thefts, since the king's acces-
sion to the throne. But these men did not, like modern jurors, decide
upon the credibility of evidence, or hear questions of law and fact dis-
cussed and argued. They were both witnesses as to the facts, however
their knowledge might be acquired, and judges as to the value of the
charge, and bore some resemblance to the modern "grand jury," whose
business it is to present prisoners for trial, after hearing evidence in
favour of the prosecution only. At the same time, the old English
practice of corn/purgation came to an end, while the ordeal was retained
until its abolition by the Council of Lateran in 1276.

In 1183, the tranquillity of the king was again disturbed by the
conduct of his sons. The unquiet Plantagenet blood was Last
again asserting what Richard called " the birthright of their gemy?
race to be at variance. 1 ' The king had commanded Richard reign,
to do homage for Aquitaine to his elder brother Henry. On his
refusal, Henry invaded his territories, but they were reconciled by the
father, and then Henry and Geoffrey rebelled against him. Then the
young prince, or king, Henry fell ill, and died penitent, pressing to
his lips a ring which his father had sent him in token of love and
forgiveness. Next came a war between Richard and Geoffrey, and,
when this was settled, the worthless Geoffrey made war upon his father.
In 1 1 86, he was killed at a tournament in Paris, and Richard and John
alone remained to show " how sharper than a serpent's tooth " is filial
ingratitude. Religious affairs in the East were now drawing the
attention of the whole Christian world. The Christian kingdom of
Jerusalem, founded in 1099 by the great Godfrey de Bouillon, pattern
of all chivalric virtue, had fallen under the assaults of the famous
Sultan Saladin. The Holy City fell into his hands in 1187, and a new
Crusade was planned. In England there were already two powerful
bodies sworn as defenders of the Cross the Knights-Hospitallers and
the Knights-Templars. In 1185, Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem,
consecrated the church of the new house of the Templars in London.
In the quiet courts, now so changed in character of buildings and
of dwellers, but looking out upon the placid stream of the same broad
river, lived the prior, the knights, and the serving brethren of the
great order of Templars. In that round church, restored now to its
primitive beauty, the chaplains of the community prayed for the fall
of the infidel. There the knights who had fought for the Cross against
the Crescent were buried with monumental honour as they were in
other churches distinguished by the crossed legs which showed that
the Holy Land had witnessed the performance of their vows. The
special mission of Heraclius to England had been to urge King Henry
to rescue the sacred city. The Great Council decided, on the king's
reference of the question, that it was his duty to remain and govern
the nations of which Heaven had given him the charge. In 1180,
Louis VII. of France had been succeeded by the great Philip Augustus,

144 DEATH OF HENRY. [1189 A.D.

and this monarch, in 1188, after the fall of Jerusalem, engaged Henry
at last to accompany him to Palestine. The king returned to England,
and raised a great sum by taxation, of which about one half was ex-
torted from the Jews. Just at this crisis, trouble came again from
his rebellious sons. Richard had been intriguing with the French king,
to whose sister he was betrothed, and a dispute about some lands ended
in their making a joint war upon Henry in 1189. The English mon-
arch's health was failing, and he was unable to show his usual energy
in conflict. He lost fortress after fortress, and was obliged to make
submission to King Philip. Then came a final blow. He was lying
on a bed of sickness when he signed the treaty with Philip, and he
then asked for the names of those of his barons who had joined the
French king. The written list was handed to him, and the first
name that met his eye was that of his youngest and favourite son,
John. He looked no further. The world and all its hopes and troubles
faded from his view. Turning his face to the wall, he cried, "Let
everything go as it will." He was then carried on a litter to his
pleasant castle of Chinon, near Saumur, where he died on July 6,
1189. One son, Geoffrey, afterwards Archbishop of York, the offspring
of Fair Rosamund, had watched over his death-bed with real affection.
On the next day the king's body was carried out for burial in the
church of the nuns at Fontevraud, and his late rebellious, now re-
morseful, son Richard met the sad procession. He shed bitter tears
and uttered many penitential words for what he could never undo.
One atonement for the past he could and did make. He drove from
his presence with disgust all persons, clerical or lay, who had sided
with himself against his father, and richly rewarded those who had
been Henry's faithful servants.

CHAPTER V.

RICHARD OF THE LION HEART.

The Jews in England. Richard's character. His part in the Third Crusade.
Richard's noble foe, Saladin. Conduct of Prince John. Richard's return to
England. His warfare in France. Literature of the time.

RICHARD was crowned at Westminster on 3rd September 1189. The
spirit of the age is shown in the treatment accorded to the Jews by the
Richard I Christians of the time. At the coronation, their chief men in
n89-ii99. ' London came to offer presents to the king, in spite of an order
issued against their attendance. Some of the mob attacked
the heretics, and "cast them forth out of the king's hall, with wounds
and blows." The citizens of London then fell upon the Jews in the

1189 A.D.] THE JEWS IN ENGLAND. 145

city, murdered a number of them, and burnt their houses. Some of
the offenders were hanged, by the king's command, but the chronicler
informs us that he punished the rioters " not for the sake of the Jews,
but on account of the houses and property of the Christians which they
had burnt and plundered." Under Henry II., the Jews had only been
robbed. A number of Jewish traders had followed William I. from
Normandy, and, under royal protection, they and other immigrants of
their race settled in separate quarters, or Jewries, of the chief English
towns. There, as in other countries, they were deprived of the civil
rights of Christians, and could hold no public office. They had no right
of domicile, nor could they belong to any guild or corporation, but, in
consideration of the payment of certain sums of money, they enjoyed
the immediate protection of the sovereign, who resorted to their aid in
his financial troubles. The Jew's life and goods were entirely at the
king's mercy, and for law he was obliged to resort to a royal judge,
as he had no standing in the local courts. The Jews were the great
accumulators of personal property, as lenders of money, for which
they charged a high interest in times so insecure, and it is probable
that their own usury and the rapacity of the Christians, rather than
religious hatred, were the true causes of persecution. Vulgar prejudice
ascribed to the race all kinds of hateful opinions, and they were
believed to be cruel murderers of innocent children, as well as rapacious
plunderers of insolvent barons. In the Russia of the present day
we may behold, in this respect, our forefathers of the Plantagenet age.
The mastery of commerce attained by this people, as well as their com-
mand of money, enabled them to render substantial service, not only to
kings and nobles, but to the nation at large. A great impulse was
given to trade, and the sovereign had in the Jewish capitalist a ready
resource for the needs of foreign war or domestic revolt. Nor must we
forget the culture which distinguished the mediaeval Hebrews. Astro-
nomy, philosophy, mathematics, and medicine were eagerly studied by
them in the schools of Spain and the East, and the twelfth century was
ennobled by the learning of the great Rabbi Maimonides, a native of
Cordova, who studied Jewish and Arabic literature, and was acquainted
with Greek philosophy in an Arabic version of Aristotle. Some of
this learning found its way to England, and the skill and energy of the
race were also shown in the improvement of domestic architecture by
the building of the first stone houses in our towns, in place of the wooden
or lath-and-plaster huts of the period. Under the Angevin kings of
England, it is likely that a fanatical feeling against the Jewish race was
aroused by the events which were the cause of the Crusades. After
the riot in London, the spirit of persecution spread through the king-
dom, and in many a town the Jews were ill-treated and massacred.
Richard and Philip of France had agreed to start for the Holy Land
after the Easter of 1190, and large bodies of Crusaders were already
gathering in England. As they marched to the coast for embarkation,

146 RICHARD, CCEUR DE LION. [1190 A.D.

they incited the people to plunder and murder the Israelites. At York,
the persecuted people showed a sublime heroism, worthy of the best
days of the ancient children of Zion. A body of armed men, emulating
the deeds of rioters at Lynn, Stamford, Lincoln, and Bury St. Edmunds,
entered the city, and began to plunder and murder the Jews. The
leaders of the mob were some thriftless profligates, who wished to cancel
their debts by killing their creditors, and to recover their bonds de-
posited in the public office. Some priests and monks were hounding on
the mob, and five hundred of the Jews, including women and children,
took refuge in the castle. The dreadful issue was partly due to the
suspicious fears of the besieged, who distrusted the protection given to
them by the Norman governor, and, in his absence, overpowered the
guard and closed the gates against him. The fortress was attacked on
all sides, and offers of ransom were refused. Then the desperate men
put their wives and children to death, and nearly all fell by their own
hands. The few survivors were at once butchered, and the instigators
of the riot went to the register office at the cathedral, and committed
to the flames the bonds there deposited.

Richard's first object was to raise money for his great adventure in
The king tne East. -^ ne crown demesnes were put up to auction, and
and the earldoms and public offices were sold. For the paltry sum of
Crusade, ten thousand marks the king disposed of the claim of homage
1190-1194.' w hi c h his father had asserted against, and won from, the king
of Scotland. "I would sell London," cried the fighting monarch, "if
I could find a chapman." It is only fair to his repute for practical
wisdom to state, that, on his return from the East, he forcibly resumed
the crown-lands which he had sold, and turned out the public officers
who had purchased their places. Of all the Norman line there was
none who cared so little for the duties of a king as this brave and
reckless Crusader. He passed but a few months in England during
the ten years of his reign, and is hardly worthy of consideration in
any character but that of a feudal knight. He was, like all his race,
an unscrupulous, crafty, and violent man, but in personal beauty,
physical strength, courage, and other attractive qualities, he was a
noble specimen of a warrior. He had one large, passionate idea, which
he carried out with surpassing bravery, and with the loftiest contempt
of danger and privation, nor was he incapable of bursts of generous
feeling. He appears in romance as the great hero of chivalry, but, as
king of England, his chief value lies in the fact that he hastened, by
his prodigal expenditure and useless warfare, the separation of England
from the continental dominions of her kings, and so promoted the
union of Normans and English into one powerful nation. Kings
Philip and Richard, with an united host of a hundred thousand men,
met on the plains of Vezelay, near the borders of Burgundy, in July
1190, and then, on quitting Lyons, took different routes to the East.
We have little concern with the English monarch's adventures by the

1191 A.D.] RICHARD IN PALESTINE. 147

way. He soon began to quarrel with his powerful ally. Richard had
been betrothed to the French king's sister Adelais, but he now deserted
her for the daughter of the king of Navarre, a lady named Berengavia,
Her mother and she sailed for Palestine, and the marriage took place
at Limasol, in Cyprus, of which the Crusader made conquest by the
way, as a punishment for ill-treatment of his stranded sailors by the
king. On reaching the Holy Land in July 1191, the English hero
found work ready to his hand. Acre had been for two years vainly
besieged by a Christian host. The army of Saladin was posted on the
distant hill?, but Richard's arrival changed the course of events. The
troops of Philip were repulsed in an assault, and then Richard, on
recovery from a fever, took the siege in hand with vigour. The
battering-ram and the rude artillery of the age were used against the
walls, and the besieged rained " Greek fire :) upon the assailants. All the
attacks of Saladin from without upon the Christian lines were repulsed,
and he failed to throw supplies into the famine-stricken town. At last
the place surrendered, and then the French king, jealous of Richard's
exploits, and offended by his haughty demeanour, returned to France
in pursuit of his own schemes. The generalship of Richard was now
put to the test in a march of a hundred miles along the coast from Aero
to Ascalon. His army had been reduced to thirty thousand men, and
for eleven days they were exposed to incessant attacks from the host
commanded by Saladin. On September 7, 1191, Richard gained a
signal victory over the Saracen hero, and Ascalon and Jaffa fell into
his hands. He was almost within sight of Jerusalem, when he was
forced to abandon the enterprise. The autumn rains were beginning,
provisions were scarce, and sickness rife. Disunion had arisen in the
Christian army. Richard had quarrelled with and grossly insulted
the Duke of Austria, and the Duke of Burgundy had deserted the cause.
Saladin was still in the field at the head of a great army, and there
was nothing left but retreat. It was fortunate for Richard's repute as
a Crusader, and perhaps for his personal safety, that his prowess had
won the respect, and almost the personal affection, of his gallant and
powerful foe. Saladin was the greatest Mahometan ruler of his time,
and is one of the noblest characters in the whole history of Islam.
Pure in life, just in judgment, courteous in demeanour, boundless in
liberality, brave as a lion in battle, he presents us with the brightest
example of Eastern knighthood. Crescent against Cross, keen and
gleaming sabre against heavy battle-axe and inace, he had met Richard
in battle, and learnt to admire and esteem him. In the hour of his
enemy's need, he accorded generous terms, and a three years' truce
was concluded in 1192. The honour of the English king was saved by
stipulations that Acre, Jaffa, and other seaports should remain in
Christian hands, and that pilgrims should be unmolested in their visits
to Jerusalem. On October 9th he sailed from Acre on his return
to England.

148 CAPTIVITY OF RICHARD. [1193-4 A.D,

The cowardly Prince John had begun to play his brother false as soon
Events as he left England. The government had been left mainly in
Eichafd's cnar g e f William de Longchamps, Bishop of Ely, who was
absence, also justiciary and Papal Legate. Against him John formed
a party, and at a council held in London he was removed from his office
as justiciary, and sentenced to banishment. It was a remarkable
assumption of authority, and is regarded as the earliest instance of
ministers being made responsible to Parliament. John was chosen as
justiciary in October 1191, and a great popular meeting of the citizens
of London took a significant part in the movement. Philip of France
had also been intriguing against Richard, and the English king's mis-
fortune on his homeward journey gave his rival great opportunities for
mischief.

Richard became the captive of his enemy Leopold, Duke of Austria,
and was by him sold to the German Emperor, Henry VI. A
king's letter of the Emperor's to Philip made Richard's captivity
return. known in England, and general indignation was aroused.
His deeds in Palestine had won the admiration of his subjects, and they
hated Prince John, who was now openly hostile to his brother. He
gave up to Philip some parts of the Continental dominions, and did
homage to him for the rest, and then returned with a band of mer-
cenary troops, and a story that Richard had died in prison. The
prelates and barons stood firm against John, and Longchamps, the
exiled justiciary, took up Richard's cause, and succeeded in having him
brought before the Imperial Diet at Hagenau in March 1 193. Richard's
eloquence greatly impressed the German princes, and they forced the
Emperor to set the captive free for a large ransom raised in England.
It needed some months to get together a hundred thousand pounds, but
at last John received a letter from Philip with the words, "Take care
of yourself, for the devil is let loose." In March 1194, Richard landed
at Sandwich, and was received with joy by his subjects. The barons in
council deprived John of all his English possessions, and Richard was
again master of his realm. He had come back to an impoverished land.
The churches had been stripped of their sacred vessels, the traders taxed
to the utmost, and the tillers of the land had sold their stock, to gather
the amount of the king's ransom.

The Continental dominions were in danger, and loudly called for the
Richard presence of the warrior-king. His visit to England, on his
in France, return from Palestine and his German captivity, only lasted

~ 1199 ' two months. For the first fortnight of this time, he was
engaged in taking castles held by the partisans of John, Then
came the Great Council at Nottingham, when judgment was given
against the treacherous brother, and a land-tax was decreed, and
knight's service demanded, to enable Richard to carry an army to
Normandy. About the middle of May, he landed at Harfleur, and was
soon in the field against Philip. In a few months his enemy's troops

1194-1199 A.D.] DEATH OF RICHARD. 149

were driven out of Normandy, Touraine, and Maine. The government
in England was in charge of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury,
whose chief duty, as a civil ruler, was that of raising money, by per-
sistent and crushing taxation, to supply the wants of the king in his
foreign contest. Year after year, with occasional truces, when both
combatants were for the time drained of resources, the inglorious war
went on. The military skill of Richard was shown in the erection of a
fortress designed to protect the borders of Normandy on the south,
and to bar the approach to Rouen from Paris. At the bend in the
Seine where Les Andelys lies with its green valley, the English king
constructed a series of works, forming, in conjunction, the greatest of
mediaeval strongholds. The river itself was barred by a bridge of boats,
a stockade, and a fort on an island in mid-stream, and near at hand, on
the hills three hundred feet above the Seine, towered up the mighty
castle known as Chateau Gaillard. Its remains still attest the grandeur
and the solid strength of its construction, and the security which was
afforded to Normandy aroused the wrath of Philip and the just exulta-
tion of Richard.

It is well to note the devices by which the " lion-hearted " king raised
money from his wretched subjects to pay the cost of exploits ^^ Q kin
which surround his name with a halo of military and chivalric of chi-
fame. The modes adopted by his ministers, and approved by valry '
himself, appear to combine the attributes of the tyrant and the swindler.
In the name of the " magnanimous " Plantagenet king, the great seal
was broken, which had been affixed to deeds of grant, and then it was
declared that no grant made under that seal should be valid, unless the
fees due to the crown were paid a second time for affixing the new seal.
The undoubted fact is symbolic of much besides itself that concerns the
"age of chivalry." To look steadily at the solid and real through a
blaze of glory and success, is to discern sordid crime and atrocious
cruelty alongside of much that does honour to human nature.

The death of Richard was not worthy of the past of the great Crusader.
A vassal of the king's in Aquitaine, the Viscount of Limoges, Death of
had discovered on his estate a treasure of silver and gold. Richard.
The king claimed it all, and the Viscount offered a large part, and then
suffered siege in his strong castle of Chaluz. Richard was wounded in
the arm by an arrow, and the clumsy surgery of the day failed to
extract the barbed iron head. Gangrene of the wound ensued, and the
king felt his end approaching. He bequeathed England and all his
other dominions to John, and died on April 6, 1199. His remains were
buried at the feet of his father in the abbey-church of Fontevraud.

The accumulation of wealth by the Church, and the idleness en-
gendered by riches, had given rise to a corruption of morals Litera ture
among the clergy which provoked the shafts of satire. Walter of the
Map t or Mapes, a native of the Welsh Marches, was born p '
about 1150, and studied at the University of Paris, then in its earliest

150 LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD.

days of repute. He became a favourite at the court of Henry II., and
was appointed Archdeacon of Oxford in 1 199. Map was a man of the
world, a royal chaplain, judge, and ambassador, endued with high
purpose, and with the Celtic genius for literature in a vein of wit and
poetry. The Confession of Bislwp Golias is a sharp attack on the evil-
livers among the clergy, in the shape of some Latin poems, wherein the
bishop, a glutton and a wine-bibber, now glories in his self-indulgence,
and then, with despairing candour, exposes his moral condition, and
declares that he will die drinking at his inn. Map's book entitled
De Nugis Curialium, " On the Trifles of the Courtiers," is a note-book
of court-gossip, valuable as an illustration of the limes, and containing
satirical remarks against zealous Crusaders who left home-duties un-
done, and attacks on the vices of the court of Rome, and even on the
forest-laws of his patron, Henry II. He also has the credit of impor-
tant additions to the cycle of romances connected with the story of the
British hero Arthur, including Lancelot of the Lake and the Quest of
the Holy Graal. Sir Galahad, the spiritual knight, son of Lancelot,
and Mort Artus, the " "Death of Arthur," are inventions of the same
bright fancy. Ranulph, or Ralph, de Glanvil or (Glanville\ has been
seen as a Norman warrior and justiciary in the reign of Henry II., and
as the captor of William the Lion of Scotland at Alnwick. He went
with Hichard I. to the third Crusade, and died at the siege of Acre in
1190. His Latin work Upon the Laivs and Customs of the Kingdom of
England, completed towards the close of Henry's II. 's reign, is the
earliest treatise upon English law. It contains a sketch of the forms
of procedure in the king's courts and of the most common principles
of law there arising.

Among the chroniclers of the time we find William of Neicbury, a
Yorkshireman of Bridlington, who became a monk of the abbey of the
Austin friars at Newbury, in the North Riding. His Latin chronicle,
the "History of English Affairs/'is a trust worthy account of events under
Henry II. and Richard I. The historian Roger de Hoveden, or Ilowden,
was also a Yorkshireman, having his name from a village in the East
Riding. He flourished under Henry II., was a lawyer and professor
of theology, and was employed by the king to collect the revenues of
religious houses on the death of their abbots or priors. His Latin
work called "Annals" was begun under Richard I., and brings down
affairs from 731 A.D, (the last year of Bede's History) to 1201, the third
year of John. He was a diligent and faithful writer, who acquired
such authority that Edward I. caused careful search to be made in all
the libraries for copies of his book, in order to ascertain the homage
due from the Scottish crown to England. At the close of the reign of
Henry II., and during the reigns of Richard and John, we have a
notable writer of history in Gerald du Barri, or Gerald of Wales, usually
known as Giraldus Camlrensis. He was the son of a Norman noble
settled in Pembrokeshire, where Gerald was born about 1146. He

LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD. itl

studied at Paris, entered the Church, and became Archdeacon of St.
David's. In 1184 he was appointed chaplain at the court of Henry II.,
and in the following year accompanied Prince John on his visit to
Ireland. He retired to Lincoln in 1192, and devoted himself to lite-
rature, dying at some period after 1220. His Latin "Topography of
Ireland" has much valuable information, along with many proofs of
the writer's ready credulity. The best of his writings is the History
of the Conquest of Ireland, a critical and careful work in its narrative
of events, and having much shrewd and lively observation of character.
The novelty of his style, and the vivacious way in which he uses tho
Latin tongue, give a strangely modern air to his descriptions of travel,
and to the controversial pamphlets on matters of Church and State,
in which he pours forth jest, quotation, and anecdote in audacious and
pungent satire.

We go forward a few years, into the reign of John, in order to
mention the earliest noted writers of English after the Conquest.
Nearly all writing had hitherto been in Latin or Norman-French, but
at last books appeared in the language of the people. Lat/amoji, a
Worcestershire priest, who flourished under John, was author of the
End, a metrical chronicle of Britain, from the fabled arrival of Brutus
until the death of King Cadwalader in 689. It is mainly a translation,
with additions, of the French work of Wace. The book came forth
early in the thirteenth century, and is chiefly linguistic in value. The
English belongs to the period of transition, in which the groundwork
of Anglo-Saxon phraseology and grammar still existed. AVe are helped
by it to trace the process by which the Anglo-Saxon was gradually
turned into the English of Chaucer. In over thirty thousand lines but
fifty Norman words appear, and we see the tongue of the conquered,
unaffected by over a century of subjection, beginning to triumph over
that of the conquerors, whom the speakers and readers of English were
soon to absorb in the mass of the nation.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WICKED KING AND THE GOOD CHARTER.

Character of King John. Effect of his doings upon England. John and the Pope.
England under interdict. The king's tyranny. The Barons take arms for free-
dom. The meeting with their sovereign at Runnymede. Provisions of the Great
Charter. The royal vengeance and timely death.

ON May 27, 1199, John was crowned king at Westminster. By
strict hereditary succession, the kingdom would have gone to jolm,
Arthur, Duke of Brittany, now twelve years of age, son of ]
Geoffrey, the third son of Henry II., instead of to John, the fifth son

152 CHARACTER OF JOHN. [1199 A.D.

of Henry. The interests of the young prince were overpowered by the
fitness of age in John, who was now thirty- two ; by the promises pre-
viously made by the justiciary and the Archbishop at a Great Council
held at Northampton ; and by respect for the will of Richard.

The reign of the new king forms an epoch of great importance in the
history of England. The utter badness of the man is in
is an ' wonderful contrast to the good wrought out by the thorough
epoch. failure of all his clever and wicked schemes. The island was
now to be separated from France, and the interests of her ruling classes
were to be concentrated under one monarchy. The interest of England
had been quite at variance with that of her first six French kings.
Their talents, and even their virtues, had been only a curse to her, in
enabling them to maintain their Continental sway. The follies and
vices of John made the House of Plantagenet succumb to the strength
of mind and the ability of the first great monarch of France. The loss
of Normandy forced the Norman nobles of England to look upon this
as their country, and upon her people as their fellow-citizens. The two
races, so long hostile, had now common interests and common foes, and
thus the descendants of those who had fought at Senlac under William,
and of those who had maintained the brave contest under Harold, began
to draw together in friendship. The Great Charter was the fruit of
their common hatred and united exertions against a bad king, and, as
it was framed for their common benefit, so it was the first pledge of
their amity.

In his outward presence and demeanour, the new king had a large
The king's share of the charming qualities of his race. He was the
character, cleverest of the Angevin kings, and a careful and diligent
Nor- ruler in the details of government. His inner character, as

mandy. revealed by conduct, has no lights and shades. It is the
blackness of utter depravity, unillumined by one gleam of virtue. In
all relations of life, he was bad as man can be. Treacherous, false,
cruel, profligate, impious he cared naught for the lives or the honour
of either men or women, and his utter want of moral principle caused
his intellectual quickness to lead him ever into deeper infamy. A man
of his own time, who knew of what he was writing, declares that the
presence of John after death would be a defilement to the region of
lost souls. In Normandy, Aquitaine, and Poitou, John was readily
admitted as ruler, but Maine, Anjou, and Touraine did homage to
Prince Arthur, and the English king, alarmed at the position of affairs,
was in Normandy before the end of June. Philip of France had taken
up the cause of Arthur, solely with a view to his own advantage, and
had invaded Normandy, and placed garrisons in the towns and fortresses
of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. Constance, the mother of Arthur,
having her suspicions of Philip, took her son out of his hands, and
placed him in the care of John. At the same time, she took measures
to rouse revolt against the French garrisons, and John was soon in

1199-1203 A.D.] MURDER OF ARTHUR. 15:;

possession of the three disputed provinces. In May 1200, peace was
made between the two kings. The cause of Arthur was abandoned
by Philip, and the young prince was compelled to do homage to John
for the duchy of Brittany. All seemed to be safe, but the wicked
passions of the English sovereign soon involved him again in trouble.
John had been married for nearly twelve years to the daughter of
William, Earl of Gloucester. He now fell in love, if the word may be
so abused, with another man's betrothed. Isabella, daughter of the
Count of Angouleme, was betrothed to the Count de la Marche. John
had been struck by the lady's beauty when he met her in Aquitaine,
and persuaded her father to violate honour and decency, and give his
consent to a match. The English king procured a divorce from his
wife, who was connected with him in blood, on the usual plea of con-
sanguinity, and Isabella was crowned as queen of England in October
1200. The nobleman robbed of the lady appealed to Philip for redress,
and headed a vain revolt against John in Poitou and Aquitaine. In
1202 Philip took the field again, along with many barons and knights
of Poitou, who demanded redress for the infamous wrong done to the
Count de la Marche. Constance, the mother of Arthur, was now dead,
and Philip induced the young Duke of Brittany to join him against
John. He married the French king's daughter, and was invested anew
with Anjou and Maine. The quickness of John, who had all the mili-
tary skill of his house, brought the revolt to an end. Arthur was
besieging his grandmother Eleanor in the castle of Mirabeau, near
Poitiers, and an ill watch was kept against relief from the outside.
John suddenly appeared at the head of a large force, took the town
by surprise, and captured his nephew Arthur, along with two hundred
nobles and knights who had followed his unhappy fortunes. Another
chance of security was now offered to the English king, and he fiung it
away with the reckless wickedness which was ever betraying its per-
petrator. Arthur, with perfect safety, might have been released, and
sent back to his duchy of Brittany, to ponder the lesson lately received
in the art of war at the hands of his elder relative. The course taken
by the uncle was to cause the nephew to be murdered, at or near Rouen,
in 1203. Of the details of this foul deed nothing certain is known.
The other prisoners of rank taken at Mirabeau were treated with a
cruelty that rarely disgraced the times of chivalry, which generally
dealt fairly by men of the dominant order. They were loaded with
irons, and kept in Norman and English dungeons. Twenty-five of the
number were confined in Corfe Castle, and most of them were there
starved to death. Arthur's eldest sister wore out her life as a prisoner
at Bristol. The gathering hatred of all mankind soon found a reward
for the brutal and cowardly despot. A meeting of the states of Brit-
tany at Vannes demanded justice against John from Philip, their and
his feudal lord. He was summoned to appear as a vassal of France,
and, on his refusal, was declared guilty of felony and treason in the

154 LOSS OF NORMANDY. [1205 A.D.

murder of Arthur, and adjudged to forfeit all the lands which he held
by homage. The king of France at once invaded Normandy, and
carried all before him. Town after town sin-rendered at the first
summons, while John, amusing himself at Rouen with his young wife,
looked on disaster with indolent levity, as if he fancied that he could
recover with ease the power that was slipping from his grasp. The
Norman people, in their failure to resist, appeared to welcome French
rule, and John did not stir until the enemy were drawing near to Rouen,
and about to capture, after a long siege, the stronghold of Chateau
Gaillard. Then he took the field at last, and showed great military skill
in the plan which he formed for raising the siege. The assault on the
French lines failed from, lack of concert in the two attacking bodies, and
the grand fortress erected by Richard fell into Philip's hands. John's
last hope was gone. His resources were at an end, his troops passed
over to the enemy, and his ignominious flight to England was followed
by the capture of Rouen. The whole duchy of Normandy was thus
reunited to the crown of France, about three centuries after its cession
to Rollo by Charles the Simple. Anjou, Maine, and Touraine were soon
reduced by Philip, and most of Aquitaine followed the same course.
In 1206, John made a vain attempt, after a landing at Rochelle, to
recover his lost dominions, and with this ended English rule in France
to the north of the Garonne.

The rise of a new spirit in the English Church, after its subjection
John's by Henry II., had been shown in 1205, when Hubert Walter,
quarrel the primate, joined the powerful baron William Marshal,
Pope, Earl of Pembroke, in a vigorous protest which withheld John
1205-1213. from a renewed effort in France. A short time later, the see
of Canterbury became vacant by Hubert Walter's death, and John
saw a chance of asserting himself against the Church. A dispute
arose between him and the chapter as to the appointment of a new
archbishop. Some of the monks elected their sub-prior, Reginald,
and at once dispatched him to Rome to have his election confirmed
by the Pope. The king caused the chapter to elect a friend of his
own, John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, and a deputation of monks was
sent off to Rome in support of the new choice. John was to find
himself now in collision with a power beyond that of monks, bishops, or
barons. The Pope of the time, Innocent III., was one of the most
resolute and ambitious men that ever filled the Papal chair. His
design was to use the spiritual power as an instrument for controlling
temporal power in every Christian state. He declared that "regal
dignity should be but a reflection of the Papal authority (as the moon
owes its 'splendour to the sun), and entirely subordinate to it." He
had already decided between rival claimants to the imperial crown of
Germany, setting up one prince and then deposing him. He had, by
the dreadful weapon of excommunication, punished Philip of France
for an unlawful marriage, and forced him to take back his repudiated

1205-1212 A.D.] JOHN'S QUARREL WITH ROME. 155

wife. The Pope now decided that the right of election, as against the
king, lay with the monks, and he set aside both choices, commanding
the deputation there and then to choose, as the new Archbishop of
Canterbury, the illustrious Stephen Langton. This blow, aimed at the
rights both of the Church and the crown in England, was delivered
by the Pope in 1207. Langton, an Englishman by birth, was educated
at Paris, and rose by sheer merit to be Chancellor of the University.
On his going to reside in Rome, his learning, talents, and virtues
raised him so high in Innocent's favour that he became Cardinal in 1206.
John turned against the monks of Canterbury the anger aroused in
him by the Pope, and drove them from the place, with the loss of all
their revenues. In March 1208, Innocent placed the whole kingdom
under an interdict. Nothing more terrible can be conceived than such
a sentence in such an age. The consolations of religion were eagerly
sought for by the great body of the people, who earnestly believed that
a happy future would be a reward for the patient endurance of a
miserable present. They were also firmly persuaded that the blessings
conveyed by religious rites could be suspended by the mysterious power
which the Pope wielded as head of the Church. Under an inter-
dict, 110 knell was tolled for the dead, for the dead were committed to
unhallowed ground without the office of a priest. No merry peals
welcomed the bridal procession, for no couple could be joined in wed-
lock inside the church. The mother might have her child baptized,
and the dying receive extreme unction, but public worship, and the
use of all other sacraments, were in a state of suspension. After
pronouncing the sentence of interdict in Passion Week of 1208, the
Bishops of London, Worcester, and Ely fled from the country, and
were followed by other prelates, till only one was left in the land.
The weight of this crushing blow fell mainly on the laity. The monks
and nuns had their religious offices within their own walls, but all the
churches were closed to the people, though sermons were preached on
Sundays in the churchyards. This anomalous condition of society
lasted for more than six years. The English king retorted by seizure
of the property of all clergy who observed the interdict, and was
threatened in 1209 with excommunication. When this sentence fell
three years later, John treated it with defiance, but soon found himself
face to face with a new danger. The Pope declared his deposition,
absolving his vassals from their fealty, exhorting all Christian princes
and barons to unite in dethroning him, and excommunicating those
who held any intercourse with him. W T e shall see that the conduct
of John towards his subjects, during the years of the interdict, had
not been such as to enable him, with the least feeling of confidence, to
call on them for resentment against such an attack as this. John
looked on and listened with contempt when Cardinal Pandulf, the
Papal Nuncio, proclaimed his deposition in 1212, before a Great Council
held at Northampton.

156 JOHN'S SUBMISSION TO ROME. [1213 A.D.

Then Innocent called upon the French king to carry into effect the
... sentence of deposition, and promised to grant him the king-
France) clorn of England. Philip prepared a great army at Rouen,
1212 ' and a vast number of ships in the Channel, for the invasion

of the country. John was roused to exertion by mingled wrath and
fear, and gathered a great fleet at Portsmouth, while every man that
could bear arms was summoned to the coast of Kent. The threat of
invasion had roused the spirit of Englishmen. The fleet, instead of
waiting for Philip, crossed the Channel, destroyed many ships at
Fecamp, burnt Dieppe, and dispelled all danger for a time. The
diplomatic skill of John was then shown in forming against France
a powerful league, including Flanders, Germany, and the barons of
Poitou, but, in the moment of apparent triumph, he was forced to
give way.

Pandulf the Legate again appeared in England, and revolts in
John's Wales, plots among the barons, and the hostility of Scotland,
sSrato" pl ace d Jh n * n a helpless position. On May 13, 1213, he
the Pope, subscribed a deed in which he promised to obey the Pope,
in admitting Langton to the see of Canterbury ; to recall the exiled
bishops, and all other opponents; to reverse outlawries, and restore
property unlawfully seized. On these terms, the interdict and excom-
munication were to be revoked. May i4th was spent by the king
in secret council with the Legate, and the next day witnessed an act
without parallel in all our history. In the hope of turning the
spiritual thunders of Rome against his rebellious barons, John had
resolved upon a complete and most degrading submission to the Pope.
He laid the kingdom of England at his feet. He did homage to
Pandulf, as representative of the see of Rome, and took an oath of
fealty as the Pope's vassal. He put an instrument into the Legate's
hands, granting to Innocent and his successors the kingdoms of Eng-
land and Ireland, and agreed to hold these dominions of the Church
of Rome in fee, by the yearly payment of a thousand marks.

During the six years of the interdict, John appears to have conducted
John's affairs with more vigour and decision than at any other part of
rule from his reign, but his tyrannical and licentious behaviour towards
1205-1213. a jj c i asses O f the people, especially towards the baronage,
made him the object of general hatred. The partial conquest of Ireland
had only increased the evils under which the country suffered. The
semi-barbarous natives were at war among themselves, and showed the
utmost hatred for the small body of adventurers who kept them at bay,
outside the narrow limits of the Pale. The feudal conquerors sank in
character almost to the level of the natives, and, in conflict with each
other, and cruelty both to the Irish and to the English settlers within
the Pale, created a scene of anarchy which was a practical defiance to
the English sovereign. In 1210, the king took a great army over,
and his stern measures created for a time a state of order. He also

1214 A.D.] OPERATIONS AGAINST WALES. 157

made some useful reforms, in dividing into shires, each having its
sheriff and other officers, the portions of the country held by England,
in the coinage and circulation of English money, and in the establish-
ment of English law. John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, a man of
wisdom and ability, was left there as chief -justiciary, and for the rest
of the reign the country had something like peace and prosperity. The
expedition to Ireland was followed in 1211 by an attempt to repress
the incursions of the Welsh over the English border. A powerful
prince, named Llewellyn, had received homage from the other Welsh
chiefs, and he aimed at complete independence of the rule partially
established by the early Norman kings of England. John had once
before advanced with his army to the foot of Snowdon, but was unable
to reach the enemy in his fastnesses, and was at last obliged to re-
treat before the assaults of climate and famine. In a second attempt,
he again reached Snowdon, and forced Llewellyn to make a nominal
submission and to give hostages. The Welshmen, however, rose again
when John became embroiled with his barons, and the country was not
subdued until near the end of the thirteenth century. In 1209, an im-
portant work was completed in London. This was the London Bridge
which stood against flood and frost for more than six centuries, until
it was replaced by the present solid and stately erection in the reign of
William IY. The architect of the old structure was a London priest,
Peter, chaplain of St. Mary Colechurch, in the Poultry. The oppres-
sion of the nobles by John was such as, in the end, to rouse the proud
barons to a resistance of the highest value to the cause of English
freedom. Not only were they plundered by heavy and illegal taxation,
but their honour was outraged by the wicked king's gross behaviour to
their wives, their sisters, and their daughters. Their jealousy had also
been aroused by the favour shown to smooth-tongued, greedy French-
men, refugees from Anjou, Maine, and Poitou, with whom the king
had filled the court, and on whom he bestowed the lands and offices
within his power. For their benefit, rightful owners were robbed
of their possessions, and the king used in their behalf his own feudal
rights as to wardship and marriage.

Upon the absolute submission of John to the Pope's authority, it was
notified by Pandulf to Philip of France that the king of Jo ^ and
England had been received as a repentant son of the Church, HjUfr*
and that no attempt must be made upon his dominions. Wroth
as a wolf robbed of prey, Philip proposed to invade England without
Papal sanction. He was foiled in this design by the courage of English-
men. A fleet under William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, attacked
the French in their own ports, and gained a signal victory over their
fleet in the Flemish harbour of Damme, near Bruges. The ships were
either taken or burnt, and all fear of invasion came to an end. In
1214, John landed at Rochelle, in Poitou, gathered the nobles around
him, and, after crossing the Loire, succeeded in taking Angers, the

158 BATTLE OF BOUVINES. [1214 A.D.

capital of Aiijou, the land of his own ancestry. At the same time, the
members of the league formed by John began to act against the king
of France. Philip's country was invaded from the north by a great
combined army under John's nephew, Otto IV., emperor of Germany.
The Emperor's own troops were aided by the men of the Count of
Flanders and the Count of Boulogne, and by a body of English mer-
cenaries under the Earl of Salisbury. The united forces exceeded a
hundred thousand men, and the case of France was one of great peril.
But the men of France were equal to the need, and their great king
came safely out of this crisis of his fate. The battle of Bouvines was
fought on July 27, 1214, at a village between Lille and Tournay. A
complete and glorious victory was gained by the French army. The
Flemings, the Germans, and the English were all broken in the shock
of battle, and the Earl of Salisbury was taken prisoner. It was by
far the greatest conflict of those times, but its interest to us lies in
the lasting effect which it produced upon the fortunes of our country.
Never was battle more beneficent to the sacred cause of freedom. The
hopes of John for successful coercion of the baronage of England were
staked upon the issue of the fight. The discomfiture of Philip would
have meant for John the restoration of all his French dominions, and
the vengeful tyrant would have returned to England with a force at his
back that would have put baronage and people alike at his mercy.
When the fatal news reached Poitou, the nobles at once abandoned the
king, and in October he returned in a helpless state to England.

Two great men were the leaders of the English nobles and the English
The nation in the enterprise now undertaken. Stephen Langton

trnd n d. k a d come to assume his office as Archbishop of Canterbury,
against and already, before the king's departure for Poitou in 1214, he
the king, ^ad stood forward in the cause of freedom. The barons had
refused to sail with John, on the just ground that their term of feudal
service was expired, and at a Great Council held at St. Alban's they
issued a proclamation in the royal name, commanding the laws of
Henry I. to be observed. When John threatened vengeance on those
whom he called "traitors," the Archbishop told him that it was not
for a king to punish any man without trial, and that the barons were
ready to answer in the king's court. The other chief champion of
English liberty was William Marshal, eldest son of the Earl of Pem-
broke. They and other bold and earnest churchmen and laymen saw

not at all. They knew the difficulties in their path. The restored
position of John in Papal favour might greatly influence the clergy.
The royal castles were held by mercenary troops. They would have to
deal with the most crafty, cruel, and violent of despots. But these
great patriots shrank from no danger that seemed to lie in the way

1214 A.D.] LEAGUE OF THE BARONS. 159

of duty, and tney quietly formed a league that would be strong enough
to enforce their just demands, even if the issue were put to the arbi-
trament of civil war. On November 20, 1214, the barons met at St.
Edmuiidsbury. There, with hands on the altar, they solemnly swore
to withdraw their allegiance from the king, if he should resist their
claims to just government. Then they marched to London, where
John had shut himself up within the precincts and sanctuary of the
Temple. In a meeting at St. Paul's in London, before the battle of
Bouvines, Langton had produced a copy of the charter of Henry I.,
and it was resolved to use this as a basis of further reforms. On
the present occasion, January 1215, when the deputies of the barons
came before John, he first mocked at their claims, and then asked for
delay. The Archbishop, Pembroke, and the Bishop of Ely undertook
that a proper answer to the barons' demands should be given before
Easter. The king used the interval in trying to win over the clerical
magnates by promising a free election of bishops, by vowing to go to
the Crusade, and by seeking help from the Pope. The Pontiff ordered
Langton and his associates to make their peace with the king, but they
disregarded the command, and, soon after Easter, met in great force at
Stamford. John was then at Oxford, and Langton and Pembroke were
with him. They were dispatched to ascertain the demands of their
peers, and they brought back the written articles afterwards signed by
John. He flew into a violent rage, and vowed he would never grant
liberties that would make himself a slave. The barons girded them-
selves up for war, and choosing Robert Fitz- Walter as general, gathered
a force which they styled The army of God and Holy Church. With
this they marched on London, whose gates were thrown open to wel-
come them on May 24th. At this time John was at Winchester, and
passed to and fro between the old capital of Wessex and Windsor.
Exeter and Lincoln followed London in adherence to the patriotic
cause, and the barons of the north took the field against John. The
tyrant was forced, in sheer helplessness, to capitulate to an armed
nation, and the result was seen at Runnymede.

To that long low plain, bounded on one side by the Thames, on
the other by a gentle line of hills, King John summoned The Great
the barons in council. The very name of this spot, of sacred jlSJ*?^
and undying memory in the history of freedom, proves that 1215.
it was not then used for the first time as a place of solemn delibera-
tion. In this council-meadow for Rune-med means the "mead of
council" king and earl had often met in Wilan, before the Norman
planted his foot on the island. A great mixed race had kept the old
traditions of liberty, which belonged to the days before the Conquest.
The spirit of the ancient institutions had blended with the feudal
principles, and this coalition, of excellent use for varying states ^ of
society, was now to become the priceless inheritance of generation
after generation of Englishmen. The barons encamped on the marshy

160 THE GREAT CHARTER. [1215 A.D.

field of Runnymede, and the king on the opposite side of the river.
The deputies of both met in conference on a little island between
them, which still bears the name of Magna Carta Island. There was
no need for long discussion. The barons could neither be coerced nor
cajoled, and on that one great day, June 15, 1215, the Great Charter
was accepted and signed by the king. Its surpassing and supreme
importance in our history has not sufficed to save it from miscon-
ception of its essential meaning. It is commonly regarded as the
original basis of English freedom. It is, in reality, a code of laws,
expressed in simple language, and embodying two principles. The
first of these principles includes such limitations of the feudal claims
of the king as would prevent their abuse. The second involves a
statement of the general rights of all freemen, derived from the
ancient laws of the realm, however these rights had been neglected
or perverted. The Great Charter contains no assertion of abstract
principles of freedom or justice, but meets unquestionable evils by
practical remedies, and is based, as all English freedom has been
based, upon something which went before it. It was, therefore, not
a revolution, but a conservative reform, demanding no limitation of
the regal power which had not already been admitted, in theory, by
every king who had taken the coronation-oath. It made that oath,
hitherto regarded, at least by some kings, as a mere form of words,
into a binding reality. It defined, in broad terms of practical applica-
tion, the essential difference between a limited and a despotic mon-
archy, and preserved all the proper attributes of kingly power, whilst
guarding against all tyranny. In the clauses which concerned the
barons of England as a feudal aristocracy, the charter limited the
royal practice of exacting arbitrary sums under the name of reliefs,
of wasting the estates of wards, of disposing in marriage of heirs
and heiresses during minority, and of choosing husbands for widows.
One clause declared that the consent of the Great Council of the
tenants -in -chief was necessary for the levying of an aid upon the
tenants of the crown, in any case beyond the legal ones of ransom
for the king from captivity, the knighting of his eldest son, and the
marriage of his eldest daughter. The chief tenants also agreed that
" every liberty and custom which the king had granted to his tenants
should be observed by the clergy and laity towards their tenants."
Other clauses secured the freedom hitherto enjoyed by the city of
London and other cities and boroughs, and enacted that no aids were
to be required of London, except by consent of the Great Council.
One weight and one measure were to be used throughout the kingdom,
and freedom of commerce was granted to foreign merchants. An im-
portant clause provided for the regularity, accessibility, and independ-
ence of public justice by requiring that the Court of Common Pleas
should be stationary, instead of following the king's person as he
moved about the country. The great glory of this famous document

1215 A.]).] THE GREAT CHARTER. 161

shines forth in the clauses which, in language of noble simplicity,
secured to Englishmen the two chief rights of citizens in any free
society of men personal freedom and security of property. The 39th
article runs thus : " No FREE MAN SHALL BE TAKEN, OR IMPRISONED, OR
DISSEISED (i.e. dispossessed), OR OUTLAWED, OR BANISHED, OR ANY OTHER-
WISE DESTROYED I NOR WILL WE PASS UPON HIM, NOR SEND UPON HIM (i.e.

inflict upon him or cause him any harm) UNLESS BY THE LEGAL JUDGMENT
OF HIS PEERS (i. e. equals), OR BY THE LAW OF THE LAND. To NO MAN WILL

WE SELL, TO NO MAN WILL WE DENY OR DELAY, RIGHT OR JUSTICE." In a

revised version of the charter, as issued by Henry III., the word dis-
seised is followed by the words " of his freehold, or liberties, or free
customs." This article really contains the writ of habeas corpus and the
trial by jury, which are the most effectual securities against oppression
that the wit of man ever devised. It also asserts the great principle
that justice is a debt of every government, a due which cannot be paid
to the people governed, unless law be cheap, prompt, and equal. A
general and a particular proof may be given of the corruptions of the
time in the administration of law. The rolls of the Exchequer afford
constant evidence of sums of money received by the king, to procure
a hearing in his courts. Some suits, through this corruption, were
made as lengthy and ruinous as Chancery-suits became, in times yet
recent, through neglect and vicious formalities. There was a dispute
about a marsh between the Abbot of Croyland and the Prior of Spald-
ing. This matter lasted through the reign of Richard I. and a great
part of John's reign. The Abbot and the Prior went on, during these
years, outbidding each other to obtain a hearing, and security was at
length given for the payment of the bribe, as if the transaction were
perfectly regular.

Not only did the barons of England provide for their own security
and that of the body of the nation, but even the villeins were B aron i a i
not forgotten. The 2oth section of the charter provided that care for
the freeman should be amerced only according to the degree
of the fault, saving always to the freeman his tenement, and to a
merchant his merchandise. After this security against excessive and
ruinous fines, the clause proceeds, "And a villein shall be amerced after
the same manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls under our mercy."
The expression, salvo wainagio suo, in mediaeval Latin, saves to the
villein his implements of husbandry in the shape of carts and ploughs.

When the king's assent and signature to the terms of the Charter
were given, the next work of the barons was to provide for its The
execution and continuance. Copies were sent to every diocese, ^ J^ hn
and the most accurate and complete copy now existing is that
preserved in Lincoln Cathedral. The document was ordered to be
publicly read twice a year. The king was compelled to surrender the
city and Tower of London, to be held by the barons till August i5th, or
until he had completely executed the charter, which was at present

162 INTERFERENCE OK THE POPE. J.215 A.D.

only in the form of a rough draft of its articles. John was also
obliged to consent that the barons should choose twenty-five of their
number to be guardians of the liberties of the kingdom, with powers, in
case of any breach of the charter, and the delay or denial of redress, to
make war on the king, to seize his castles and lands, and to distress and
annoy him in every possible way (saving only the persons of himself,
the queen, and children) until justice was done. The character of the
man, as judged by those who had the best means of knowing it, comes
out in strong colours in this most stringent and insulting provision.

No sooner had John submitted thus to the barons in arms, than he
John cast about, with his usual treachery, for the means of evading
barons ^he performance of what he had undertaken. He appealed to
1215-16.' Pope Innocent for aid, and he sent persons abroad to enlist
foreign troops. The king now found the benefit which he had looked for
in becoming the Pope's vassal. A bull was issued by the feudal lord of
the kingdom, in which the Charter was annulled, as being obtained
illegally, and on the ground that the king had no right to surrender
the privileges of the crown without the consent of his feudal superior.
The barons were also made subject to excommunication. Langton, the
Archbishop, was a thorough patriot, as well as a great statesman, an
honest churchman, and a good man. He refused to excommunicate the
barons, and was suspended from office by the Pope. The interference
of Innocent in temporal concerns was generally held by the nation to
be without warrant, but John found a stronger ally in the foreign
mercenaries, who began to arrive in the autumn. Troops were landed
from Flanders and Brabant, Gascony and Poitou, and gathered in great
force round the king at Dover. The barons appear to have been taken
by surprise, and the king, after revoking the charter in accordance
with the bull sent from Rome, was able to give full vent to his passion
for revenge. He marched on Rochester Castle, reduced it by famine
after eight weeks' siege, and put to death a part of the garrison. The
country was then overrun by his fierce hirelings. He marched to the
north with fire and sword, and entered Scotland, to punish her king,
Alexander II., for the alliance which he had formed with the barons.
The abbeys were burnt without distinction, and John, after staying the
night at a village, would set fire, with his own hand, to the house in
which he had rested. His half-brother, the Earl of Salisbury, was
committing havoc in England upon the estates, tenants, houses, and
parks of the barons. Neither age nor sex, nor things sacred nor pro-
fane, were spared by the ferocious soldiery. The nobles, in their despair,
sought help from France, offering the crown to Louis, the eldest son
of Philip. In May 1216, Louis came over with an army, reduced
Rochester, and marched upon London, where he received homage as
king from the citizens and barons. The position of affairs was one of
great danger for the freedom of Englishmen. The tyrant still held
most of the castles, and the fortresses at Dover and Windsor offered a

1216 A.I..) DEATH OF JOHN. 163

stout resistance to the troops of Louis and the barons. The great
support of their cause lay in the character of John and the universal
hatred which he had aroused in the hearts of the nation. The proceed-
ings of the foreign deliverer then began to arouse doubt and suspicion.
He was dispensing honours and lands to his own countrymen, and
there was disunion in the camp of the confederates.

From the danger of foreign subjugation and the horrors of civil war
the country was now happily delivered by the sudden death Death of
of John. He had been reduced at first in strength, on the John, 1216.
arrival of Louis, by the desertion of his French mercenaries, who would
not fight against their own prince. He retired, first to the west,
and then to the north, and showed his military skill in puzzling his
opponents by swift and eccentric movements, and in raising the siege
of Lincoln. On October nth, he was at King's Lynn, whence he
marched to Wisbeach, in order to cross the Wash for a new movement
to the north. The passage over the sands was safe at low water, and
part of the army had crossed, when the inflowing tide and the strong
descending current of the Welland cut off the baggage. At a spot still
known as King's Corner, between Lynn and Cross Keys Wash, the
waggons and sumpter-horse?:, with the treasure, provisions, armour, and
clothes, were swallowed up by the waters, and the king, on the
northern shore, looked on in helpless despair. That night brought
him to the Cistercian Abbey at Swineshead, where fatigue and anguish
of mind laid him low with a fever. He was borne in a litter to
Sleaford, and thence to the Castle of Newark, where he died on October
1 8, 1216, in the fiftieth year of his age, and the eighteenth of his
reign. His body was buried at Worcester Cathedral, where his tomb
stands in the midst of the choir. He left two sons, Henry, a boy of
nine, and Richard, Earl of Cornwall.

[1217 A.D.

BOOK VI.

RISE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
CHAPTER I.

HENRY THE THIRD AND SIMON DE MONTFORT.

The French expelled from England. Pembroke and Hubert de Burgh. Character
of the king. Des Roches and the foreign intruders. Royal and Papal plunder-
ing. The barons roused to resistance. Simon de Montfort a national leader.
A curb put on the king.

THE boy -king Henry came to the throne at a critical time. A foreign
Henry III., prince and army were in the land. Louis would not readily
1216-1272. ' forego the power which he had attained, and the barons were
seen in separate camps. A long civil war was in prospect, but an able,
faithful, and patriotic man was at hand for the direction of affairs.
William Marshal, now Earl of Pembroke, was official head of John's
army, and to his hands the rule now passed. He took the young king
to Gloucester, where he was crowned by the Papal legate on October
28th, in the presence of a few bishops and barons. Homage to the
Pope was exacted, and the rendering of fealty to the Papal see gained
an ally of great importance at such a juncture. On November i2th, at
a Great Council held at Bristol, Pembroke was chosen liegent of the
kingdom, and the Great Charter was re-issued and confirmed, with the
omission, for the time, of certain clauses.

The first business of the new government was to free the land from
rpkg the foreigners. The barons began to leave the camp of Louis,

French inspired by a national feeling which now began to show its
intruders. s t ren gth, and by pity for a young king, devoid of share in his
father's guilt. Gualo, the Papal legate, put the ban of the Church on
Louis and all his adherents, and the young king's cause daily gained
strength. Early in 1217, the French prince crossed the Channel and
returned with reinforcements, but Pembroke, in the meantime, had
been winning over the barons, and a general confidence was felt in his
honour and sagacity.

Battle of ^^ e Londoners, however, adhered to the foreign prince who
Lincoln, had come to help them against the tyranny of John, and the
prospect was still doubtful, when the vigour and skill of
Pembroke brought matters to a happy issue. In April 1217, a large
French army, under the Count of Perche "wicked French free-
booters," as a chronicler calls them with some English barons and

164

1219 A.D.] DEATH OF PEMBROKE. 165

knights under Robert Fitz- Walter, marched from London to besiege
the castle of Lincoln, which was held by the king's party. Pembroke
called out the tenants of the crown, and gathered a force from the
garrisons of the royal castles. He was in far inferior strength, and
might have been crushed in the open field. The French, however,
remained within the walls of Lincoln, where the castle held out against
all their attacks. Pembroke boldly entered the town while a sortie
was made from the castle, and in the narrow streets the French
cavalry were unable to act. A complete victory, called, from its easy
accomplishment, The Fair of Lincoln, was won by the assailants, on
May 20, 1217. The Count of Perche fell, with thousands of his men,
and the rest became prisoners.

The contest at Lincoln was followed up by a great naval success.
Under the command of a famous pirate, known as Eustace Defeat of
the Monk, an armament of eighty large vessels put to sea French
from Calais on August 24th, bringing reinforcements to the fleett
Thames for Prince Louis. Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary, a resolute
and able man, gathered forty vessels in the Cinque Ports, and set sail
from Dover. He met the enemy off Sandwich, and the battle was soon
over. The French were blinded by showers of quick-lime thrown by
the English, shot down in heaps by their arrows, and brained by the
axes of the boarders. The ramming of the French vessels by the
strong prows of the English ships completed the foe's discomfiture, and
the invading fleet ceased to exist. The cause of Louis was hope-
less, and he quitted the kingdom, under treaty, in September 12 i*j.
The country was soon pacified, and Pembroke completed the work of
the Great Charter by causing the king to issue a Charter of the Forests,
in which the terrible penalties for destroying the king's deer were
abolished, and fine or imprisonment were appointed.

The death of this excellent statesman in 1219 was a great misfortune
for the country and the king. He left a noble example of Death
the principle upon which alone the blessing of just laws can br^ke* 1 "
be made permanent a constant reparation, instead of a sweep- 1219.
ing change. The Great Charter and its subsequent improvements were
essentially practical reforms, and thus they resisted every attempt to
overturn them during a coming century of struggles, and stood boldly
up either against a weak Henry or a powerful Edward. One of the
services of Pembroke was a provision that the charter should live in the
popular mind of England, by being read periodically in the county-
courts. His monument is still to be seen in the Temple Church in
London.

Pembroke was succeeded in power as regent by Hubert de Burgh,
aided by a prelate of Poitevin birth, Peter des Roches, Bishop Hubert ^ e
of Winchester, and by Cardinal Langton, the primate, who Burgh,
had now made his peace with Rome. Pandulf resided at
court as Papal legate, and for a part of the reign, Papal interference

166 DEATH OF LANGTON. [1223-1228 A.D.

greatly hindered good government. De Burgh was a man of English
independent spirit, with a strong prejudice against foreign interlopers
and Continental wars. He had high notions as to the royal prerogative,
and the omission, from Henry's version of the Great Charter, of the
clause against the imposition of scutaye or aid without the consent of
the Great Council, gave the crown an opening for illegal exactions.
But a spirit had been aroused in the nation, which exercised a restrain-
in* influence. Money was often obtained by the sovereign only on
redress of some grievance, though many arbitrary taxes were levied
upon the industrious classes, especially in London. In 1223, De Burgh
obtained a bull from the Pope, declaring Henry competent to do all
royal acts, and in 1224 a war occurred in Poitou, where the king's
uncle, the Earl of Salisbury, checked the forces of Louis VIII., who had
succeeded Philip Augustus. England had been reduced to peace by the
stern measures of De Burgh against turbulent barons and lawless
foreigners. The Earl of Chester, a powerful rebel, yielded to Hubert's
armed forces and Langton's threat of the ban of the Church, and Faukes
de Breaute, a Frenchman who held possession of several royal castles,
Was quelled by the hanging of four-and-twenty knights, with all their
retainers, who had held for him the fortress at Bedford.

The good Archbishop Langton was a staunch and valuable champion
Arcli _ of freedom in the earlier part of the reign. He watched with
bishop care over the Great Charter, of which he was so largely the
Langton. au ^} lorj an ^ on ^ wo occasions, in 1223 and 1225, he headed
the barons in demanding its solemn confirmation by the king. He
died in 1228, to the great grief of all lovers of liberty, arid his removal
from the scene opened the, way for exactions from the clergy, which the
Pope demanded on the basis of feudal right, according to the surrender
made by John, and continued by his son and successor Henry.

At twenty years of age, Henry declared himself fit to rule, and
Henry began his independent course by stating his power to " inter-
assumes |>ret, enlarge, or diminish the aforesaid statutes, and their
1227. ills several parts, by our own free will, and as to us shall seem ex-
cnaracter. p ec lient for the security of us and our land." The "statutes "
here mean the charters. This cool assumption of the suspensory and
dispensing power, which became familiar in Stuart times, has a formid-
able look, but there was, even in the thirteenth century, a national spirit
which deprived it of its fangs. In addition to this, the king who put
forth the claim was a thoroughly weak man in character the tool of
the last favourite, unstable, capricious, frivolous, fond of display, void
of control over temper and tongue. His chief aims in home and
foreign policy were quite beyond his reach, but his efforts to attain
them were productive of much temporary harm, issuing in permanent
good for the nation. In England, he strove for the exercise of absolute
power : beyond the Channel, he dreamed of regaining the lost French
dominions. He was a man of taste in literature and art, and to him

1229-1249 A.D.] RULE OF HENRY III. 167

we owe the larger portion of the existing Westminster Abbey, which
he began to erect in 1220, and almost completed in 1245.

In 1229, the king was at issue with his able and faithful minister.
De Burgh had felt bound to oppose the king's designs against Fall of
France, and Henry, in wrath, accused him of treason. In d^Bur !!
1230, the king received homage in Poitou and Gascony, but 1231.
failed there and in Brittany in his military efforts. De Burgh was
blamed for this, and just at this time the Pope charged him with
having contrived an outbreak of popular wrath against the Papal tax-
gatherers, who were mercilessly robbing the clergy. The justiciar
was driven from office in 1231, and a brief imprisonment in the Tower
left him without future influence for good.

Des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, now held power for a time, and
the court was soon filled with his countrymen from Poitou, mfc'* !,
and with other greedy Frenchmen, on whom the king be- rule, 1231-
stowed offices, castles, and lands, to the great disgust of Eng- 1253 '
lish knights and barons. In 1236, Henry took a wife in Eleanor,
daughter of the Count of Provence, and this event brought over hosts
of her relatives and friends to plunder the unhappy country. Her
uncle, Peter of Savoy, became the king's chief counsellor in 1241,
arid built the splendid palace in the Strand, called after his country's
name. On the death of Edmund Rich, in 1240, Peter's brother,
Boniface of Savoy, was made Archbishop of Canterbury, but his gross
insolence and violent conduct roused a riot in London, which drove
him for safety out of the country, A few years later, the king
welcomed another tribe of hungry aliens. These were children, by a
second marriage, of his mother Isabella of Angouleme, who died in 1246.
One son, William of Valence, was created Earl of Pembroke ; another,
Aimar de Valence, received the rich bishopric of Winchester, though
he had not yet arrived at the canonical age for the office. Never was
royalty more degraded, apart from gross vice, than in the rule of
Henry III. Kingship with him was a mere trade for extracting
money from the people, to supply his own extravagance, and to shower
favours on worthless foreign dependants. He appears on the page of
history as an extortioner, or as a beggar. The records of the Ex-
chequer prove that, for forty years, there were no contrivances for
obtaining money so mean or so unjust that he disdained to practise
them. When his son Edward was born in 1239, Henry sent out all
over the country, asking the rich for presents. "God gave us the
child," a Norman was driven to exclaim, " but the king sells him to
us." In 1249, the king exacted New Year's gifts from the citizens
of London. " Lend me a hundred pounds/'' said Henry to the Abbot
of Ramsay, and the poor man was forced to go to the money-lenders,
and borrow the sum demanded. When the sovereign did not beg, he
turned robber under the old system of purveyance, by which the king's
officers took, at their own price or at none at all, all kinds of neces-

168 EXTORTION OF HENRY. [1248-1250 A.D.

saries for the use of the royal household. This abuse was expressly
regulated by the Great Charter, yet we learn from a remonstrance
made by the Great Council in 1248 that the king "seized by force on
whatever was used in the way of meat and drink especially wine, and
even clothes against the will of those who sold these things." Even
justice was poisoned at its source, in order to raise money. The judges
went forth on their regular circuits, not for the punishment of offenders,
but to compound for offences, real or falsely imputed, by the payment
of great fines. The Jews, according to the ideas of the age, were legi-
timate objects of plunder, and Henry spared them no more than his
wicked father John. The rich merchants of London also received the
costly attentions of the king. On one occasion he asked the abbots
of all the Cistercian houses for a year's value of their wool, and when
they refused the payment, he forbade them to export it. The fleeces
remained in the monastery-lofts, and the monks were obliged to forego
their share of the wines of Germany and of the broadcloths of Flanders.
Under the royal prerogative of interference with trade, Henry, in 1248,
sought to punish the Londoners by holding a fortnight's fair in West-
minster. During that time, all traffic in the city was suspended by
royal proclamation, and traders were forced, in October, to expose
costly merchandise in booths around the new Abbey-church. It was
a time of wind and rain, and the soaking of the canvas caused the
rotting of the goods. The hatred of the citizens was roused by such
tyranny as this, and a mean apology made to them by the king in
1250, at Westminster Hall, did not at all mend matters. Queen
Eleanor was also at feud with the burgesses of London. She claimed
that all vessels navigating the Thames should unlade at Queenhithe,
and there pay her heavy dues. During Henry's absence in Gascony,
in 1253, she was Lady Keeper of the Great Seal, and, armed with this
power, she vigorously enforced payment, and committed the two sheriffs
to prison for resisting her demands.

In all the violations of the letter and spirit of the Great Charter, in
Papal ex- which the king indulged himself, he also aided and abetted
actions. the Pope and his officials. At the Council of Lyons, held in
1250, the English representatives declared that the number of foreigners
to whom the Pope had given preferments in England was so great that
60,000 marks (or forty thousand pounds, equal to about eight hundred
thousand of present value) were carried out of the country yearly by
foreign clergy. The best bishoprics and livings were bestowed on
Italians, and sometimes on mere boys, and on men of evil life. The
excellent Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, was suspended for
refusing to induct, to a rich living in his diocese, a boy from Italy
presented by the Pope. The clergy were harassed by constant demands
for money as a gift or on loan. Appeals to Rome on all Church-
disputes were encouraged and expected, and heavy fees were extorted
in the Papal courts. The Pope claimed the goods of all intestate

1242-1245 A.D.] MISGOVERNMENT OF HENRY. 169

ecclesiastics ; all legacies left for pious purposes ; and all property
unjustly gained, if the true owner could not be found. The Papal
collectors were ever passing through the country, and arousing the
deepest hatred by their insolence and greed.

The arbitrary acts done and permitted by the crown, by which the
Great Charter was broken at every turn, were not committed The
without remonstrance from Parliament, as the Great Council andthe
had now begun to be styled. In 1242 they refused a supply king,
of money for Henry's war in Poitou. In 1244 they sent messengers to
Home to remonstrate with Innocent IV. against the doings of " Master
Martin," who in the Pope's name was demanding rich gifts and seizing
vacant benefices. In 1248 another Parliament rated and threatened
the king about his lavish gifts to foreigners, his abuses of purveyance,
and his appointment of evil men to rule. Sometimes the barons vented
their wrath in another fashion than by mere words or refusal of
supplies. In 1245 a powerful baron named Fulk Fitz-Warrenne pre-
sented himself before Master Martin, and ordered him at once to leave
the country. The Italian demanded in whose name the order was
given, and was answered, " I speak in the name of all the barons of
England. If you are wise, do not stay till the third day, lest you and
all your company be cut in pieces." Martin went off to the king in
great fear and trembling, but got scanty comfort there, being told by
Henry that he could scarcely keep the barons from rising against him-
self. The Italian then put spurs to his horse, and made his way to Dover.

The foreign enterprises of Henry had no such measure of success as
might have caused any class of his subjects to endure mis- Henry's
government at home with patience. In 1242, he was engaged foreign
in a quarrel with Louis IX. of France respecting the county wars<
of Poitou, which the French monarch had bestowed on his brother
Alfonso. Henry III. had assigned the same territory to his brother
Richard, Earl of Cornwall. The English king's mother, Isabella, after
King John's death, had married her former lover, the Count de la
Marche, one of the most powerful of the Poitevin nobles, and they
persuaded Henry to take up arms. In May 1242, he landed at the
mouth of the Garonne, and met his mother at Saintes. Louis came
against him, at the head of a much greater force, and on July i9th the
armies were both close to the town of Taillebourg, on opposite sides of
the river Charente. The English king had none of the military skill
or courage belonging to some of his ancestors, and he shrank from an
encounter. At the request of Henry's brother, Earl Richard, who had
just returned from the Crusade, Louis granted a truce for a day and
night, and Henry fled to Saintes with all his men. The French followed,
and drove him from the town, the king only escaping capture through
the courage of Earl Simon de Montfort and a few English nobles. His
treasure was all taken, and he retired to Bordeaux. There he concluded
a five years' truce with France, on condition of giving up all claims to

170 NATIONAL DISCONTENT. [1253 AJ>.

Poitou, and returned to England in September 1243. Humiliation
did not teach him prudence, and at a later date he was involved in
trouble through accepting the kingdom of Naples and Sicily for his
son Edmund, a boy of nine. Pope Alexander was the bestower of this
territory, which needed to be conquered, before it could be held, from
the son of the German emperor, Frederick II. The only result was
that the English king became largely in debt to the Pope for expenses
incurred, and the nation was insulted by a Papal agent coming before
the Parliament, with a demand for instant payment, and threats of
excommunication and interdict.

In 1253, the aspect of the kingdom was becoming serious. A Parlia-
Growing ment was held, at which the king asked for a grant to enable
of S the tent ^ m * undertake a Crusade. A part of it was given, and
nation. afterwards lavished in expenses at Bordeaux, beyond which
Henry did not proceed. The king was forced, before receiving promise
of the money, to undertake, with great solemnity, that he would observe
the charters. The prelates, abbots, and nobles all held burning tapers,
and the Archbishop of Canterbury pronounced excommunication against
" all violators of the liberties of the Church, or the ancient and approved
customs of the kingdom, and especially the liberties and free customs
which are contained in the charters of the common liberties of England
and of the forests." Then the lights were all flung down, with a
frightful curse on whoever should incur the sentence just declared.
The king arose, and said, " So help me God, all these terms I will
faithfully observe, as I am a man, a Christian, a knight, and a crowned
and anointed king." The money obtained on false pretences was
employed as we have seen, and more Parliaments, more false promises,
and more ill-spent grants of money went on for some years longer. It
was clear that some change was impending. Not only was the burgess
class rising into importance, but the great tenants of the crown, the
barons, the natural leaders in any strong expression of resistance, or
any sweeping measure of reform, had now wholly become English.
They might not be English yet in language or in feeling, and the
courtiers might still call the citizens "rustics," implying that the
Saxon blood of the tillers of the soil flowed in their veins. The laws
might still be administered in Norman-French, but the tenure of pro-
perty was making an undivided nation. In 1244, the king of France
had declared that "as it is impossible that any man living in my
kingdom, and having possessions in England, can consistently serve
two masters, he must either inseparably attach himself to me, or to the
king of England." Those who had possessions in England were thus
called upon to relinquish them, and keep those they had in France, or
to give up their lands in France, and keep their English domains. The
separation made the barons of England patriots, and we are now to see
a great and good man of French birth standing forth as a champion of
English freedom.

1231-1248 A.D.] SIMON DE MONTFORT. 171

Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, was a man of rare ability, lofty
purpose, resolute mind, and keen political foresight. The gi mon de
Simon de Montfort who, in the first decade of the thirteenth Montfort.
century, had led, at the command of Pope Innocent III., the Albigensian
crusade against the heretics of Provence, became, through his mother,
Earl of Leicester. His fourth son, born in France, at Montfort, between
Paris and Chartres, about 1208, was also called Simon. Forced to leave
France for England by political troubles, he was kindly received by
Henry III., always ready to welcome French immigrants, and in 1231
he did homage to the king as Earl of Leicester. The young man was a
fine specimen of the feudal noble in face and iti athletic frame, in war-
like skill and courage, and in 1238 he married the king's sister Eleanor,
Henry himself giving the bride away in the royal chapel. She was the
widow of the famous William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and was in
character worthy of both her husbands. The English barons were in-
dignant at the high position thus acquired by a foreigner, and trouble
was averted only by De Montfort's submission to Earl Richard of Corn-
wall, the king's brother, whose anger was soothed by soft words, lavish
promises, and hard cash. The king presented the castle of Kenilworth
to his sister, and in June 1239 De Montfort was one of the godfathers
of the king's eldest son, Edward. A few weeks later, the fickle Henry,
for some unknown reason, showed such anger against Simon, that he
went with his wife into voluntary exile. He had the happiness of
knowing that he left behind him a faithful friend in the noblest man
that England then contained, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln.
This learned, wise, holy, and independent prelate was an honour to the
Church which he served, and his friendship is a high testimony to the
character of the Earl. In 1240, Simon went to the Crusade with
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and gained repute in Palestine for military
skill. The service which he rendered to Henry in Poitou in 1242 re-
stored him to full favour, and the royal castle of Kenilworth was now
bestowed on De Montfort himself. From 1243 till 1 248 he dwelt there
in peace, with his devoted wife, the Princess Eleanor, and five sons were
born, intrusted in clue time to the care of Bishop Grosseteste. Through
the prelate Earl Simon and his wife became known to the famous
Franciscan friar, Adam de Marisco, whose faithful friendship made
him offer the soundest advice to the noble amid the difficulties of his
life. The three men, bishop, baron, and friar, were devoted to the
common aim of social and ecclesiastical reform. They were firmly
united against regal and Papal oppression, and the Earl became, through
the great friar, known to the reforming party among the burgesses of
the towns, who were to serve him well in the coming time of trouble.
During his retirement at Kenilworth, De Montfort had quietly watched
the king's gross inisgovernment, arid was forming resolves for future
action. In 1248, he was appointed governor of Gascony, the only re-
maining French possession of the English crown. The province was

172 THE KING AND THE BARONS. [1252-1258 A.D.

wavering in its allegiance, but the firmness and energy of De Montfort
did much to reduce the turbulent barons to submission. He was, how-
ever, ill-supported by the king, whose weakness and caprice forgave too
readily those whom the Earl had punished, and listened too eagerly to
complaints and false charges from disorderly nobles. At last the un-
grateful monarch's violence and injustice to a faithful servant caused an
open rupture. One of De Montfort's few faults was a quickness of
temper which made him resent fiercely all imputations upon his honour.
Early in 1252, he was put on his trial before the Great Council on
charges of oppression brought by Gascon barons. He defended himself
with great ability, and the judgment was given in his favour. The
king for the time acquiesced, but the next day, in the course of a dis-
pute, called Simon to his face "a swindler and traitor." The Earl, hot
with passion, gave the king the lie direct, and rebuked him severely for
unchristian conduct. De Montfort then returned to his command, and
took a noble revenge in a severe defeat given to the rebel barons, five
of whose leaders were sent captives to Henry. Late in the year, he
retired into France, whence he returned in the autumn of 1253, and
with troops raised at his own expense rescued Henry from a position of
danger and distress in Gascony. Such was the man who at last headed
the barons in strong action against an evil rule which had become in-
tolerable.

By the year 1258, the state of affairs in England was very menacing.
The Pro- Prince Edward, the king's eldest son, married in 1254 to
Oxford* f Eleanor of Castile, and now taking an active part in public
1258. life, had lately been defeated by Llewellyn on the Welsh

border, and the English lands near the frontier were turned by
ravages into a mere desert. The harvest of 1257 failed, owing to
excess of rain, and the price of corn went up from two shillings to
twenty shillings a quarter. A severe famine followed, and thousands
of people had died in London, when corn- ships arrived from Germany,
and a royal proclamation forbade merchants to buy for storing up. The
king was needing supplies of money to deal with the rebellious Welsh,
when he summoned his barons to a Parliament at Westminster, in the
Easter of 1258. A large body of nobles met in the great hall, each
clad in complete mail. As the king entered, there was a clatter of
swords, and Henry, looking round in alarm, cried " Am I a prisoner 1 ? "
"No, sir," said Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, an old opponent of
Henry's, "but your foreign favourites and your prodigality have
brought misery upon the realm ; wherefore we demand that the powers
of government be delegated to a committee of bishops and barons, who
may correct abuses and enact good laws." De Montfort spoke strongly
to the barons in the same sense, and Henry was forced, in adjourning
Parliament on May 2nd, to agree that a commission of twenty -four
members, twelve to be elected by himself, and twelve by the barons,
should be appointed to draw up a plan for reform. On June nth,

1258-1261 A.D.] THE PROVISIONS OF OXFORD. 173

the Parliament met again at Oxford. The barons came with their
retainers at their backs, and, in remembrance of the foreign troops
brought in by John, they had garrisoned the Cinque Ports, or the five
harbours of Dover, Winchelsea, Romney, Sandwich, and Hythe, which
faced the French coast. This assembly has been called The Mad
Parliament, from the novelty of its proceedings. It was far more
largely attended than usual, about a hundred barons being present,
instead of thirty or forty, and they went to work with vigour against
the political evils of the time. The articles known as the Provisions of
Oxford made some important reforms. A permanent council of fifteen
members was to advise the king on all matters of administration, and
to them the justiciar and chancellor, and other great officers of state,
were to be responsible. The Great Council or Parliament was to meet
thrice in the year, with or without royal summons. The freeholders
of the counties were to choose "twelve honest men" to come to the
Parliaments, and treat of the wants of the king and of his kingdom.
Other committees were to reform the Church, and settle financial aids
to be granted to the king. On June 22nd, a decree was made that
all the king's castles held by foreigners should be given up, and Earl
Simon himself resigned his castles of Odiham and Kenilworth. An
armed resistance was made by some, but all the foreign intruders
were soon driven out of the land, except the queen's uncles, Peter of
Savoy, and Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury. At Michaelmas, a
proclamation was issued in the king's name to order the observance
of the Provisions. Hitherto all legal and political documents had been
drawn up in Latin, but this was issued in English and French, the
two languages then commonly used in England. This fact proved
the determination of the reforming barons that all men should be
acquainted with what had been clone, and also the growing influence
of the bulk of the people. The new baronial government settled other
affairs by the expulsion of all Papal collectors, by refusing to fulfil Henry's
arrangement with the Pope concerning the kingdom of Sicily, and by
malting peace with France, in renouncing Henry's claims to the provinces
lost under John. The royal power was thus usurped by the barons, and
the whole foreign and domestic policy of the king was reversed.

Early in 1259, the king's brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, returned
to England, and was forced on landing to swear support Disunion
to the Provisions of Oxford. He then headed an opposition ^S-ons
to the committee of government, and the barons were soon 1259-1263.
divided into two factions. Earl Simon headed the party of earnest
reformers, and the reactionary body was led by Robert de Clare, Earl
of Gloucester, and Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. The king was en-
couraged to resist, and he took up his abode in the Tower, where he
strengthened the works, and also began to levy mercenary troops.
The Pope issued a bull declaring the Provisions to be null and void,
and absolving Henry from his oath to observe them. Early in 1261,

174 PROCEEDINGS OF DE MONTFORT. [1263-1264 AD.

the city of London was in the king's hands, and all citizens were
forced to take an oath of allegiance. The Earl of Leicester had
withdrawn for a time to France, and Henry took the government
again into his own hands. The death of the Earl of Gloucester
brought about the return of De Montfort in 1263, and the young
Earl joined his cause with all his retainers. Leicester was once more
the powerful head of a baronial party resolved to sweep away arbitrary
rule, and he had upon his side all the middle classes the knights, the
lower clergy, and the citizens of London and the larger towns. The
Earl raised an army, and, after driving back Welsh marauders, formed
an alliance with Llewellyn. He then marched to Dover, and seized
the place in order to prevent foreign troops from coming to assist the
king.

CHAPTER II.

DE MONTFORT AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Henry III. and the bai'ons at war. Battle of Lewes. The Commons meet the Barons
in Parliament. Prince Edward and the Battle of Evesham. The king vic-
torious. Close of reign. Prince Edward in the East.

IN June 1263, on receipt of a letter from De Montfort, the citizens of
The London gave their adherence to him and the cause of the

Bagms' Provisions, and Henry, with his court, was almost a prisoner
1263-65. in the Tower. The Earl marched on London. Prince
Edward, before his arrival, made his escape to Windsor, where he held
the castle with a trusty garrison. Queen Eleanor, his mother, tried to
join him there, but her barge was attacked by the people on London -
bridge. She was loudly abused by the crowd, and pelted with stones
and rotten eggs, but the Lord Mayor came to her relief, and took her
away in safety. On July 15th, the Earl was received in London with
a hearty welcome from the citizens. The king once more accepted the
Provisions, and at a Parliament held in St. Paul's in September, Prince
Edward renewed his oath to observe them. Simon de Montfort, for a
time, was the virtual ruler of England. Then the influence of Prince
Edward, and, according to some authorities, the haughty and arbitrary
conduct of De Montfort himself, began to disintegrate the reforming
baronial party. A regular civil war was at hand, when an attempt at
settlement was made by a reference of all points in dispute to the
decision of Louis IX. of France.

Delegates from both parties met the French king at Amiens soon
Mise of after Christmas, and he gave his decision, known as a Mise
January or settlement, on January 23, 1264. His award was en-
1261 tirely in favour of Henry. The Provisions of Oxford were

annulled. * All the royal castles held by the barons were to be restored

1264 AD.] THE BATTLE OF LEWES. 175

to the king, who was also to have the power of appointing and dis-
missing all his officials. Foreigners were to be again admitted to the
country and to office. On the other hand, " all privileges, charters,
liberties, statutes, and laudable customs of the realm of England which
existed before the time of the Provisions" were still to be in force. It
was not likely that the Earl and his party would consent to such a,
decision as this, and their honour was saved by the fact that the French
king's award, in the arbitrary power which it gave to the king, was
itself a violation of the old " privileges, charters, and liberties." It was
now a case of the English nation and its freedom against the king, the
Pope, and the foreigner, and Earl Simon prepared at once for the
arbitrament of the sword.

The citizens of London, and many of the Oxford students, armed
themselves to support De Montfort. Even then, the barons The war.
tried to make terms with Henry at a conference held at Lewes f
Brackley, near Oxford, and agreed to accept the Mise of May 1264.
Amiens, if the king would banish foreigners from office, and allow the
country to be ruled by and for the English. This offer was refused,
and there was nothing left but to fight. At first the struggle went
against the barons, and Northampton, with a number of De Montfort's
knights, was captured by the royal forces in the first days of April.
Earl Simon marched to Rochester, and captured the town, but was
recalled from the siege of the castle to the relief of London. Prince
Edward, after the success at Northampton, had taken Leicester and
Nottingham, and, being joined by the forces of some Scottish barons,
he made a rapid march on London. De Montfort saved the city from
his grasp, and the royal army, with fire and sword, pressed on to
Tunbridge, where they took the Earl of Gloucester's castle, and then
failed in an attempt upon the Cinque Ports and the ships there in
harbour. The king, Prince Edward, and the royal army marched
next into Sussex, and on May nth Henry's head-quarters were in the
Priory of Lewes, while Prince Edward occupied the castle. Already
many of the barons had deserted the Earl's cause, but their loss was
more than compensated by a reinforcement of 15,000 Londoners. On
the night of May i2th, De Montfort's forces, marching straight from
London, were quartered in and around the village of Fletching, nine
miles north of Lewes. A last attempt at a peaceful settlement was
rejected with scorn by the royalists, and at the dawn of May i4th, the
barons' army marched for Lewes along the summit of a ridge of hills,
De Montfort's men wore white crosses stitched on their breasts and
backs, as the army of God and the Church wore them on meeting John
at Runnymede. Earl Simon took up a position on the hills to the east
of the town, and, when the battle began, Prince Edward, leading the
right wing of the royalists, routed the men of London, who faced him.
The heavy-armed mounted knights at once broke the raw levies of light-
armed foot, and the Prince, in his hatred of the citizens for their

170 BEGINNINGS OF MODERN PARLIAMENT. [1264 A.D.

insults to his mother, Queen Eleanor, pursued them hotly, with great
slaughter, for four miles. He returned to find the battle lost. De
Montfort had thoroughly beaten the other divisions, and captured
the king and Bichard, Earl of Cornwall. The impetuous valour of
Edward had made the Earl of Leicester virtual king of England.

Moderate terms were imposed by the victors in the Treaty, or Mise,
The Mise of Lewes. All differences were to be settled by arbitrators,
of Lewes, ^Q -were to be partly French and partly English barons,
1261 l along with the Papal legate. All foreigners were to be
excluded from office in England, and strict economy was to be used in
managing the royal revenues. An amnesty, and the release of all
prisoners, were included in the conditions. Prince Edward became a
hostage, and was sent to the castle of Dover. The king, treated with
all outward respect, was really a prisoner in the hands of the Earl, who
arrived with him in London on May 28th.

De Montfort now showed that he could be wise as well as strong,
Tlie and came forward as a constitutional reformer of the highest

Commons class. The statesman, the man of real political sagacity, in
Parfia- any country which possesses elements of freedom, does not
ment, 1265. bring in exotic plants, and vainly strive to make them flourish
in an alien political and social soil. Earl Simon had nothing in
common with an Abbe Sieyes, and had no idea of sitting down to
"frame a constitution." He was the real founder of the House of
Commons, which is flourishing now in its seventh century of life, just
because he took what he found ready to his hand, aimed at improving
and developing a native growth, and adapted to higher uses existing
institutions. The shire-courts, as local institutions of the county, had
been always representative, and had gradually grown in importance.
At these shire-moots, or county-courts, groups of elected men sent from
various parts of the county, and also from the towns, represented the
whole free folk of the country districts and the boroughs. They trans-
acted business for them, in conference with the king's commissioners
or the king's justices, when they began to go on circuits through the
land. The Parliament of England arose in the mingling of the Great
Council of the kingdom with these county-courts. When men were
sent to the Great Council to represent the people of the shire, in the
same way as they had long been deputed to represent different districts
of the shire in the county-court, then a Parliament, in its true sense,
began to exist. " Knights of the shire " had been summoned by King
John in 1213, and again to Parliaments of 1254, 1261, and 1262. This
custom the great Earl of Leicester now made a definite, and, as it proved,
a permanent institution.

Before keeping Christmas in his splendid castle of Kenilworth, De
Montfort had issued writs from Worcester in the king's name, sum-
moning a new Parliament to meet in London. A reaction against the
Earl had now made great way amongst the barons, and of the lords he

1265 A.D.J ORIGIN OF HOUSE OF COMMONS. 177

only called such as he had reason to believe would support his measures.
Five earls, including himself, Gloucester, and Norfolk, and eighteen
barons, along with Baliol and Bruce (Scotch lords who held lands in
England), and eight northern barons, were the only lords in the
assembly, and ten of the number were friends of his own. His chief
supporters, of the higher class, were among the clergy, and writs were
issued for the attendance of above a hundred bishops, abbots, priors,
and deans, along with the Archbishop of York and the Master of the
Temple. The sheriffs of the counties were ordered to send from each
shire "two of the more discreet knights of the aforesaid county, elected
for this purpose by the assent of the county." They were to treat with
the king about such matters as he would lay before them. But the
Earl went a step further, and, knowing that his great supporters were
the people of the towns, he also issued writs calling on the citizens of
York, Lincoln, and the other boroughs of England, and on the men of
the Cinque Ports, to send up two of their " more discreet, loyal, and
honest men " to confer with the king.

This was the origin of the House of Commons. This summons to
Parliament was the first that ever called for representatives House of
of towns. It is true that, by the Plantagenet system of rule, Commons,
the local government in the towns, as well as in the counties, had been
already brought to bear on the central administration of affairs, and
that the direct summons of delegates chosen by the towns to sit in the
Great Council of the realm, or " Parliament," was nothing more than
a natural extension of the summons of their representatives to meet the
royal commissioners or justices on circuit. It is in this very fact that
the genius of De Montfort is shown. The thing was natural ; it gave
no shock to people's minds ; it caused no surprise. Thus it was that
it lived, and grew, and became a thing abiding, as we see it now, and
destined, it may well be hoped, to flourish with greater good than ever
to all the subjects of the realm. Henceforth, in spite of reaction,
which ever fades away to nought before the power of real progress, the
trader and the merchant were to sit along with the baron, the bishop,
and the knight of the shire, and deliberate on measures for the good
of all. All classes in the state were represented, and so there was a
true and complete Parliament.

The power and life of the Earl of Leicester did not long survive his
great achievement. His natural and acquired superiority Battle of
provoked jealousy amongst the barons. The young Earl of ^ugliS" 1 '
Gloucester turned against his friend, charged him with de- 1265.
signs upon the crown, and withdrew from Parliament to organise revolt
in the west of England. The royalist party grew daily stronger, and
only needed a leader to enable them to take the field in formidable
strength. The position of De Montfort, as custodian of the persons of
his sovereign and Prince Edward, had aroused the loyal feeling of all
classes, and the Parliament, in March, released the Prince from actual

17S BATTLE OF EVESHAM. [1265 A.D.

confinement within the walls of the castle of Kenilworth, and directed
that he should remain in <; free custody " at Hereford. Communications
\vero opened between him and the royalists, and, in spite of the oath
which he had lately taken to maintain the new system, the Prince
resolved to make his escape, if possible, and fight for the king's
restoration to power. Earl Simon was in the west of England early
in Mav, when soine of his greatest enemies landed from abroad at
Pembroke with a body of men. These were the king's half-brother,
William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and De Warenne. On May
28th, Prince Edwar4 was riding with his attendants outside Hereford,
and, after wearying their steeds in riding races with him, he mounted
another fresh horse which had been kept hidden at a certain spot, in
readiness for his attempt. Bidding the lords " good-day," he galloped
off, ancl met the Earl of Gloucester and Earl Warenne at Lucllow.
The whole west of England at once declared for Prince Edward and
the king, and Pe Montfort's position became serious. His son Simon
marched to his aid with a large force from London and the south, and
upon their junction everything was staked. The Earl's cause was
ruined by t\ie carelessness of the younger Simon. On August ist,
through ill-watching, he and his men were surprised in their beds at
Kenilworth by Prince Edward. Simon himself barely escaped within
the castle, and a great booty was takers. De Montfort was moving
from, Hereford to meet his son, and on August 4th he and his army
]\ad reached Evesham. They were encamped in a position of great
clanger for receiving battle, on a tongue of land almost encircled by the
river Avon. The barber of the Earl, says the Chronicle of Evesham,
went ivp the clock-tower of the Abbey-church, and came down in glad-
ness to tell that he saw the banner of De Montfort on the distant road
in advance of a mighty host. Again he went up to scout, and this time
he descended pale and trembling, with the news that the royal banners,
with the leopavds, of Prince Edward, were visible in the rear of the
column. The chronicler relates that the Earl's cry was " God have our
souls all, our days are all done." He did not know his full danger
until he saw the other two divisions of the Prince's army hemming in
his flanks and rear. He at once prepared to die, when his son Henry
begged him to retire, and leave the fight to him. This he stoutly re-
fused to do, and all his friends were resolved to share his fate.

The battle raged from six to nine in the morning, De Montfort
Death of %hti n g "like a giant for the liberties of England," until his
De Mont- horse was killed under him, and then, on foot, dealing with
both hands tremendous sword-strokes on every side. He
refused every summons to surrender, and fell at last amidst a host of
assailants. His son Henry was also killed, and Guy de Montfort
became a prisoner when he was covered with wounds. Henry the
king had a narrow escape, as the visor of his helmet was closed, and he
was attacked by his own friends in Prince Edward's arm}'. At length

1265-1269 A.D.] DEATH OF DE MONTFORT. 170

pt slight blow caused his visor to fall, and with the cry, " I am Heriry of
Winchester," he was known, and led away to his victorious son. The
barbarity of the age was shown in the treatment of the dead Earl's
body. The hands and feet were cut off, and sent to different towns to
be exposed to public view. The head, after mutilation, was sent to the
wife of Roger Mortimer, a royalist who commanded one of Prince
Edward's divisions. The trunk alone was given up to the dead man's
friends, and buried by the monks of Evesham in front of the high
altar. Earl Simon was regarded by the people, not as a slain rebel,
but as a glorious martyr for the Church and the common weal. It
was commonly held that miracles were wrought at his tomb, and it was
thought needful by the royalists to enact that "no man should hold
Simon, Earl of Leicester, for a saint or just one," and " that the vain
and foolish miracles related of him by certain persons shall not pass
any man's lips." The foreigner who became so thorough an English-
man, as to use all his endeavours against Papal interference and
foreign favourites, had perished at the right moment for his future
fame. His work was done when he bade the sheriffs to send men
from the towns and cities to meet the nobles of the land in council.
That which he had then so well begun was carried to completion thirty
years later by the royal Edward, who had really been his pupil both in
politics and war.

The death of Simon de Montfort restored the king to his lawful
power, and new sheriffs of his appointment were sent into all
the counties. All acts of the government since the battle of royalist
Lewes were declared invalid, and a confiscation was made of clfse^of :
the estates of all rebels who had fought at Kenilworth and the reign,
Evesham. The city of London was mulcted in a heavy fine.
Resistance was still maintained in some quarters by the adherents of
the dead Earl. The castle of Kenilworth, which had been strongly
fortified by De Montfort, and furnished with all the engines of war, was
held by a garrison of 1300 men in the name of his widow, the Princess
Eleanor. It defied all efforts, and the resolute defence caused the
king and Parliament to make certain concessions in October 1266.
By the Dictum de Kenilworth, or Award of Kenilworth, the dispos-
sessed barons were allowed to receive back their lands on payment
of a fine, proportioned to their guilt, with the exception of the son of
the late Earl. The castle only surrendered, from famine, in the
following December. In the same Parliament at Kenilworth, the
king was required to adhere to his oath to preserve the liberties of the
Church, and the charters. Simon de Montfort, the eldest son, long
defied the king's armies in the Isle of Ely and the Isle of Axholm,
and the Cinque Ports, strongly attached to the interests of the great
Earl Simon, resisted Prince Edward until he took Dover and Win-
chilsea at great cost in men and money. At last the troubles were at
an end, and in 1269 the victor of Evesham, with many barons and

180 DEATH OF HENRY III. [1272 A.D.

knights, took the cross at Northampton, before setting out on a
Crusade to help Louis IX. of France, It is likely that a prince so
politic as Edward had in this, for one of his motives, the purpose of
removing with himself, to a safe distance from England, many of the
turbulent spirits of the time among the barons and knights. It is
certain that many of the chiefs in the late civil war, and amongst
them the .troublesome and capricious Earl of Gloucester, were in
Edward's expedition to the Holy Land. A grant of a tithe of the
Church-revenues for three years, and a subsidy of a property- tax of
one-twentieth of their value on the goods of the laity, defrayed in part
the cost of the enterprise. We are to observe that such a tax was
levied upon all the people's movables, from the valuable stock of the
wealthy tanner, down to the commonest utensil of the poor housewife,
and the simplest tools of the working carpenter. Quicquld delirant
reges, plectuntur Acliivi. Prince Edward, in 1270, found his friend
Louis IX. dead of disease in his camp at Tunis, and in 1271 went
forward himself, with his faithful wife, Eleanor of Castile, and landed
with the expedition at' Acre. Some fighting occurred, in which the
English prince showed his courage, and took Nazareth by storm. In
the autumn of 1272, he and his wife left Acre for Europe. During
his absence, King Henry died at Bury St. Edmunds on November
1 6, 1272, in the 66th year of his age, and the 57th of his reign.
He was buried four days later in his new Abbey-church at West-
minster. Immediately after the rites, Earl de Warrenne, and all the
clergy and laity present, swore fealty to Edward, the eldest son of the
late king, on the great altar of the church. A splendid deputation
of the clergy and barons met the new king in Burgundy, on his
leisurely progress home. At Paris, Edward did homage to Philip III.,
the new French king, "for the lands which he held, by right, of the
crown of France," and part of his time abroad was spent in settling
the affairs of his province of Guienne, and in making a commercial
treaty with the Countess of Flanders concerning the trade in wool,
which England largely exported for manufacture into cloth by the
ingenious and industrious Flemings.

RELIGION AND LEARNING, 181

CHAPTEE III.

LEARNING AND RELIGION IN THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, and the Friars. Franciscans and Dominicans. Roger
Bacon. Henry of Bracton on the limits of royal power. The historians of the
time.

WE have already seen the learned and pious Robert Grosseteste, or
Greathead, Bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to 1253. Born of Re iigi 0n
humble parents at Stradbroke, in Suffolk, about 1175, he and
studied first at Oxford and then at Paris, acquiring the learnmg>
mastery both of Greek and Hebrew. On his return to Oxford, he be-
came, in 1224, the first president or rector of the Franciscan school
there, and had a great reputation for his skill in languages, logic,
natural philosophy, music, and medicine, and for his knowledge of the
Scriptures. As a bishop he was most zealous in the reform of abuses,
ever striving to introduce order in the monasteries and among the
clergy. Within a year of his consecration, he had removed from office
seven abbots and four priors, and he was throughout a steady opponent
of pluralists, of Papal interference, and of the corruptions of the court
of Rome, where, as he declared once in the Pope's hearing, " there was
nothing that money could not do."

One of the great religious and social influences of the age was that
wielded by the new orders of Franciscan and Dominican The
Friars. St. Francis of Assisi, in Umbria, born in 1182, Friars,
was the son of a rich merchant. In 1208 he devoted himself to
religion and a life of the most rigorous poverty. His followers
formed the order of Franciscans or Minorites, under the sanction of
a Papal bull. Their name of Fratres Minores was given them by their
founder in token of humility, and they were also called Grey Friars,
from the colour of their sole garment. Bound to absolute poverty, and
to a livelihood only obtained by labour or by alms, their chief work in
life was the bodily and spiritual care of the poorest and most ignorant
people, from whom the secular or non-monastic clergy held too much
aloof. The order spread with marvellous speed, and a party of Fran-
ciscans first landed at Dover in 1224. Four of the party of nine were in
orders, three being Englishmen ; the five lay-brothers were four Italians
and one Frenchman. A part settled at Canterbury, and the rest went
on to London, and settled on the spot afterwards known as "The Grey
Friars," where Christ's Hospital arose at a later day. They were
welcomed and assisted by several wealthy citizens, and had further
success at Oxford, when some brothers of the increasing order tried
their fortunes there. Henry III. greatly patronised them, and within

18:3 THE FRIARS. [1256 A.D.

a few years they had houses in Norwich, Lincoln, York, Shrewsbury,
and many other cities and populous towns. By the year 1256, the
Franciscans had nearly a hundred monasteries or stations, and the
number of enrolled members exceeded twelve hundred. All lived
mainly upon the alms of the benevolent, whose good- will was drawn
to them by their self-renunciation and the resolute poverty of their
lives. They were placed thereby in a position of strong contrast to
the worldly wealth of the monks and the dignified clergy, and they
exercised a powerful influence over the people of the towns. The
source of their power lay in their work among the poor. The sick
and the miserable blessed the men who fearlessly entered the worst
haunts of the plague, leprosy, and other scourges of men's bodies in
that insanitary age, and who, from their knowledge of medicine,
brought healing to those who had no other physicians. In open-air
preaching, with a most effective use of homely word and jest, and
burning eloquence in personal appeal, they brought the Gospel to the
toilers of the towns, and to the busy throng at market and at fair.
They thus became the founders of a new spiritual life among the body
of the people. Their study of nature's secrets in the cause of healing
led many Franciscans into other paths of physical investigation, and
some of the Grey Friars became as famous for their learning as for
their poverty and pious self-devotion to the good of others. In order
to meet objections made by hearers of their preaching, the study
of theology became a cherished pursuit of the abler men among
the brethren. Many lecturers or readers of the order were soon
established at the chief towns, and the Universities at Oxford and
Cambridge had a succession of their teachers or professors. Robert
Grosseteste was followed at Oxford by his pupil, the famous and
learned Franciscan, Adam Marsh, or Adam de Marisco, and the repute
of Oxford soon became such as to rival that of Paris, and to cause
teachers from her schools to be sent for to the seats of Continental
learning. Another famous and important order was that of the
Dominicans or Preaching Friars, founded by St. Dominic, a Spanish
monk, in 1215. The theory of Dominic was that for the heretic there
was no salvation in heaven, and there should be no mercy on earth.
The object of the work of the Dominicans was the extirpation of all
heresy by preaching and teaching. They also became a mendicant
order, and grew so rapidly in numbers that their establishments were
found in all parts of Europe, and on the coasts of Africa and Asia.
One great result of the work of the Friars among the people was the
restoration for the Church of the religious influence which had greatly
lessened from Papal ambition and extortion, from the disuse of preach-
ing, the ignorance of parish-priests, and the corrupt life engendered
among monastic orders by the possession of great wealth as landowning
corporations. In political affairs, the sympathies of the wandering
and begging brethren were almost wholly with the body of the people

1240-1290 A.D.] ROGER BACON. 183

against the crown, and, as purveyors of news and kindlers of feeling,
they played no small part in the struggles of this and the following
century.

The best intellectual light of the time shone forth in the illustrious
Rotjer Bacon, a monk to whose genius and labours due Roger
honour has not beeii always rendered. He was born in Bacon.
1214, of a rich family in the county of Somerset, and was noted from
his childhood for an inquisitive spirit and his love of learning. A
student at Oxford and Paris, he became a thorough master of Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew 7 , and, returning to England in 1240, he entered
in course of time the order of Franciscans, and took up his abode
at Oxford. Bacon's chief delight lay in natural philosophy, a study
needing an expenditure far beyond the means of a man who had
already made away with two thousand pounds in the search for know-
ledge. His family embraced the king's side in the civil war between
Henry III. and the barons, and the matter ended in their ruin and
exile. The difficulties with which this great student had to contend
were enormous. The works of Aristotle were now beginning to be
studied, and copies of those, as of the philosophical writings of Cicero
and Seneca, were most expensive and difficult to procure. It was
only by the help of generous friends of science that Bacon could
obtain books, and instruments wherewitli to make needful experi-
ments. He was especially given to the study of optics, and left
behind him in his writings new and ingenious views on the refraction
of light, with exact descriptions of the nature and effects of convex
and concave lenses, showing his acquaintance with the principle of
the telescope and microscope. The ignorance and prejudices of tho
age were hostile to his work. The subtleties of the scholastic philo-
sophy were far more regarded than the pursuit of real knowledge in
the questioning of nature, and the wonders which he revealed caused
his imprisonment for a time on the charge of dealing in magic. At
last, Pope Clement IV., hearing of his rare attainments and philo-
sophic mind, ordered him to write down his knowledge and views on
philosophy, and %vithin a year and a half he produced, in 1268-69, the
work called Opus Majus. This was followed by a supplement, Opus
Minus, and the Opus Tertium was a summary and introduction to
the whole, with an account of the difficulties which had beset the
author in his pursuit of knowledge. This great man was again the
victim of an age quite unworthy of his genius. Under Clement's
successor, Pope Nicholas III., Bacon's imprisonment for ten years,
by the general of the Franciscans, was permitted, and near the close
of the thirteenth century he died, forgotten by a world which could
not appreciate its greatest scholar. The glory of Roger Bacon has
been till lately overshadowed by that of his namesake who adorned
the Elizabethan and the early Stuart age. The truth is, that the
great thinker and student of the thirteenth century was at least

184 HENRY OF BRACTON. [13th cent. A.D.

equal in ability and merit to the philosopher whom he preceded by
more than three hundred years. The "Greater Work" of Roger is
an encyclopaedia of all the knowledge of his time. The man's learning
is less admiiable than the principles which, with truest insight, he
lays down for the pursuit of all real knowledge. He declares that
there are four chief grounds of human ignorance submission to
custom ; popular opinion ; reliance on inadequate authority ; and
false pretence, or the attempt to hide real ignorance under a show
of wisdom. He insists upon the need of reading books in the original
text, and upon regard for linguistic accuracy of interpretation. The
study of mathematics is, according to the elder Bacon, the basis of
all real scientific acquirement, and Nature must be studied by experi-
ment, if we are to get fairly at the secrets which she has to reveal.
Grammar and philology, geography and climate, chronology and music,
arithmetic and astrology, all pass under review, and, if he did believe
in prediction by the stars, and now and again use alchemy to find the
philosopher's stone, these vanities are but as spots upon the splendour
of his fame. Henry of Bradon, a judge for over twenty years under
Henry III., is one of our earliest writers on jurisprudence. His Latin
work Upon the Laws and Customs of England, shows him to have been
profoundly skilled in Roman law, and contains a scientific and reasoned
system of the English law of his time. The progress made in con-
stitutional principles is proved by the remarkable passage : " The king
must not be subject to any man, but to God and the law, for the law
makes him king. Let the king, therefore, give to the law what the
law gives to him, dominion and power; for there is no king where
will, and not law, bears rule."

The thirteenth century produced the greatest of the historians who
Litera- wrote the annals of their time in the monastic cells. Matthew
ture. Parts, born at the close of the twelfth century, became in

1217 a brother in the Benedictine monastery of St, Albans, where
he succeeded, in 1235, Roger of Wendover as chronicler to the house,
In the following year he attended the marriage of Henry III. at
Westminster. He obtained much information on affairs from the
frequent visits of the king himself to the Abbey of St. Albans, and
from numerous correspondents highly placed in Church and State,
such as Hubert de Burgh and Bishop Grosseteste. His principal
work is his Historia Major, written in Latin, and containing the annals
of eight kings, from the beginning of William the Conqueror to the
end of Henry III. He seems to have been a man of real attainments
in art as well as literature, and left behind him many manuscripts
with illuminations of his own execution. From 1235 to 1273, the his-
tory is his own account of his own times, and is very valuable from
its impartiality, and its quotation of the original public documents
of the age. He is also remarkable for the bold tone which he adopts
with regard to the doings both of Pope and king. He writes as an

1235 A.D.] MATTHEW PARIS. 185

Englishman might do who had no connection either with the Church
or with the court, and in his pages may be clearly traced the growing
influence of a national opinion. As we pass from Roger de Hoveden
to the work of Matthew Paris, we see that the struggle against the
wrong suffered from kings and popes has aroused an energy of public
spirit to which the nation was hitherto a stranger. In one passage
he declares that "the Pope and the king favoured and abetted each
other in their mutual tyranny."

[1272 A.D.

BOOK VII.

ENGLAND CONQUERS WALES AND ATTACKS
SCOTLAND AND FRANCE.

CHAPTER I.

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST.

Conquest of Wales. Great legislative reforms. Full establishment of Parliament.
The king and the barons. Continental warfare. Early history of Scotland.
Edward I. and Scottish affairs. Wallace and Robert Bruce. Social life of
England in thirteenth century. Commerce of the period.

ON August 3, 1274, the man who was to prove the greatest of English
Edward I., kings, and was the first since the Conquest to bear an English
ffis cnar- name j landed with his queen among his subjects at Dover,
acter. On the I9th they were both crowned at Westminster, and the
hospitality of the age was shown in the feasting for fifteen days of rich
and poor at tables gathered round the Great Hall. Oxen, sheep, pigs,
and poultry were consumed in prodigious quantity, and the Pipe Rolls
record that three hundred barrels of wine were purchased for the great
occasion. The new monarch was a thorough Englishman in his virtues
and in his faults of heart, mind, and temper. Just and truthful, tem-
perate, toilsome, self-respecting, conscientious, devoted to duty, reverent
of a higher power than man's, the first Edward was also proud, self-
willed, obstinate, self-assertive as to his rights and his opinions, some-
what slow to understand, limited in range of sympathy for others.
Like his ancestors of Anjou, he was liable to gusts of passion which
swept pity away, but these were rare exceptions to the usual generosity
of his essentially noble nature. His reign is one of vast importance in
our history for the solid strength gained by the realm through measures
and achievements affecting our territory, constitution, laws, and social
condition. The courage, watchfulness, industry, and enterprise of a
warlike and politic ruler were devoted for over thirty years to the best
interests of his people, and the latest generations of Englishmen will
have reason to revere his name. He was at all points a great general
and soldier strategist, tactician, organiser, and fighter. His headlong
courage was shown alike in the melee of fierce tournaments where the
knights fought as if on the battle-field, and in the desperate charges of
real warfare against a host of foes. The deeds which have laid this king

1 86

1272 A.D.] EDWARD I. 187

open to just reproach, such as the execution of Wallace and of David of
Wales, and the slaughter of the citizens of Berwick, were due to the
influence of the debased " chivalry " of the age a compound of cruelty
and kindness, physical daring and moral cowardice, sensitive honour
and broken faith. The good feeling shown by nobles and knights was
mainly confined to those of their own class, and the sufferings of the toilers
in the towns and the tillers of the soil were viewed without compassion.
From the same source came the narrowness of spirit with which, accord-
ing to the legal technicalities of the age, he sometimes treated rights
and. liberties, both English and Scotch ; which rested on a broader basis,
and should have been dealt with in a nobler fashion than by appeal to
the letter of a treaty or a charter, or by reliance on the chicanery of
law. In person, as in the main elements of his character and in the
purity of his life, Edward commanded the admiration of his subjects.
His handsome face, fringed by golden hair, surmounted a tall athletic
frame that could exert the greatest effort in the hour of combat, and
endure the utmost hardships of the long campaign. His dignified and
courteous demeanour completed the charm of his presence. Coming to
the throne as he did at thirty-three years of age, he was equipped with
much experience of rule gained during his father's weak administration,
and with much knowledge of the world and its ways acquired during
his lengthened stay abroad. In expending the resources of his country,
he did not waste, like his father, the moneys which, sometimes by the
exercise of arbitrary power, he obtained from those he ruled, but was
economical or lavish, just as need required. Like another of our
greatest sovereigns, Elizabeth the Tudor, he could bend his haughty
will upon occasion to a determined expression of his people's wishes.
The ruling principle of his life was love of justice, and he took care that
his judges, and all other servants of the crown, should dispense the
same with rigorous exactness. The one word which sums up his policy
is consolidation. A main purpose of his life was that of bringing the
whole island under one crown, and though the patriotic courage of the
Scots made this a failure, under his successor's feeble rule, yet he left
behind him at his death a well-knit kingdom, supplied with an admir-
able judicial, legal, and parliamentary system of government.

The hospitalities of his coronation were scarcely ended when Edward
repaired to Chester. The state of Wales presented a tempting Conques f;
occasion for the exercise of his politic ambition. Politically of Wales,
and socially, the country had sunk into seeming barbarism 1275 ~ 1
under the evil influence of internal feuds and border warfare with their
powerful neighbours. The mass of the people knew nothing of the
use of bread, and were wild herdsmen, feeding on the milk and flesh
of their flocks, and clothing themselves in the skins. They were
divided into numerous clans, waging pitiless, revengeful, and treacherous
warfare with each other. The only sign of culture lay in the poetry
of their bards, whose Celtic nature burst forth in song of real literary

188 LLEWELLYN, PRINCE OF WALES. [1275-6 A.D.

merit, expressed in a language which, at that early age, had reached a
definite form, and was used with great richness of imagery to manifest
the poet's sense of the beauties of nature and to reveal the emotions of
the heart. The utterances of the Welsh singers were not confined to
the region of romance. The passionate patriotism of their race roused
them to fling out in many an ode their people's hatred of the Saxon,
and the land was stirred with a new and feverish strength to its last
contest with the English invaders. The southern part of the country,
in its more level regions along the Bristol Channel, was occupied by
Norman barons after the Conquest, and Henry I. settled, as colonists
in Pembrokeshire, a number of Flemings, who brought with them their
habits of industry, and their skill in the weaving of woollen cloths.
In the last century of Welsh independence, some princes named
Llewellyn were in power. The last of these had been in arms against
Henry III. in the Barons' War, but had promised fealty to the king
before Prince Edward went on his crusade. Llewellyn had conquered
Glamorgan, and, in recognition of his strength, he was allowed in 1267
to take the title of "Prince of Wales," and to receive homage from
the other Welsh chieftains. He was deeply attached to the family of
De Montfort, and, in their prosperous days, when receiving hospita-
lity at Kenilworth from the Countess of Leicester, he had pledged his
hand to her daughter Eleanor. When he was summoned as a vassal
of the English crown to do homage at Edward's coronation in 1274,
he refused to attend without a safe-conduct. When Edward was at
Chester, Llewellyn was again summoned, but refused to meet the king.
He further declined to appear at a Parliament held at Westminster in
1275. Before the death of De Montfort's widow in that year, the
young Eleanor was married by proxy to the Welsh prince, who kept
the faith to the poor and exiled orphan which he had vowed in the
days of her prosperity. In 1276 she sailed with her brother Almeric
to join her husband in Wales, but the vessel was taken by an English
cruiser off the Scilly Isles, and Eleanor and her brother became the
captives of their cousin Edward. Llewellyn demanded the release of
his bride, and again refused to attend a Parliament in 1276. In the
following year, Edward marched to North Wales with an army, and
the contest, for the time, was soon over. The castles of Flint and
Rhyddlan were taken and garrisoned, and a fleet from the Cinque
Ports patrolled the coast, and cut off from the Welsh all supplies of
provisions. Llewellyn could not meet his foe in the open field, and
the advance of Edward's army drove him into the mountains, where
every outlet was guarded. The arrival of winter forced him to sur-
render from famine, and Edward dictated a treaty at Rhyddlan Castle,
by which the country was surrendered to England as far as the river
Conway, Llewellyn retaining the rule of the district of Snowdon and
the Isle of Anglesea, with the title of " Prince of Wales," which was,
however, to cease at his death. Then the Welsh prince at last received

1278-1283 A.D.] CONQUEST OF WALES. 189

his bride, and they were married, now in person, at Worcester, in 1278,
in the presence of the king and his court. The Welsh ruler did riot
appear to know when he was well off. His brother David, who had
abandoned his cause and joined the English king in the late brief
struggle, persuaded him to revolt in 1282. David took Hawarden
Castle by surprise, carried off a justiciary, Roger de Clifford, to the
fastnesses of Snowdon, and put to death his retinue of knights and
servants. Llewellyn laid siege to the castles of Flint and Rhyddlan,
and all North Wales was in a flame. Edward again took the field,
with the stern resolve to make a speedy and complete end of Welsh
independence. He had gathered the military tenants, and sent to
Gascony for a force of Basque mountaineers from the Pyrenees, accus-
tomed to all the difficulties and hardships of hill- warfare, fleet of foot,
expert at climbing, and able to penetrate where the English, men of
the plain, and heavy-armed infantry, could not make their way. The
English leader advanced with due caution, and at first met with some
reverses. A force of horse and foot perished at the passage of the
Menai Strait into the Isle of Anglesea over a broad bridge of boats, a
hasty retreat occurring on the advance of a Welsh force from ambush
in the hills. The ring-bolts to which Edward's bridge was fastened
were lately to be seen on the Caernarvonshire side of the Strait, which
was never bridged again until the opening of Telford's beautiful
structure in 1826, for the more enduring purpose of peaceful passage
from Holyhead to Ireland. Llewellyn and his men were driven at
last, as winter approached, to the recesses of the Snowdon group of
mountains, and Edward sent for a new army from South Wales to
complete his circle of investment. The danger was pressing, and the
Welsh prince sallied forth to meet this new foe, leaving his brother
David to defend the Snowdon passes. He had lately lost his wife,
the Lady Eleanor de Montfort, and he was destined to quickly follow
her. His party was surprised at Builth, in the valley of the Wye,
and Llewellyn fell in the skirmish. His head was sent to Edward,
who placed it on the walls of the Tower of London, crowned with a
wreath of ivy. This was done in mockery of a prediction attributed
to the Welsh prophet and magician, Merlin, who is held to have
flourished in the fifth century. The English king, in his care for the
people, had issued a new copper coinage of round half-pennies and
farthings, to meet the want which had caused them to cut the silver
penny into halves and quarters. The prophecy declared that, when
the English money should become circular, the Prince of Wales should
be crowned in London, and such was the patriotic zeal and superstition
of the Welsh, that on this ground many had been induced to hope for
success in the struggle. For six months longer David held out against
the invaders, or rather, failed to be captured, as he was hunted from one
retreat to another. He was at last betrayed to the enemy, imprisoned at
Rhyddlan Castle, tried before a Parliament at Shrewsbury in September

190 EDWARD'S JUDICIAL REFORMS. [1275-1284 A.D.

1283, and put to death as a traitor. This was the end of Welsh inde-
pendence. The other chiefs laid down their arms. Strong castles were
built at Conway and Caernarvon, and English nobles received much of
the land as their own, on the usual feudal terms. After the death of
Llewellyn, Edward remained more tKan a year in Wales. The story of
his slaughter of the bards, as sowers of sedition, which was made the
subject of a noble ode by Gray, is nothing but a fable. Queen Eleanor
was with the king during his abode in Wales, and there, at Caernarvon
(not at the castle, then scarcely begun) her son Edward was born in
April 1284. His elder brother, Alfonso, died in the following August,
and it was then that the infant prince received the Principality as his
appanage, and was invested with the dignity and title of "Prince
of Wales," since generally given to the sovereign's eldest son. In a
Parliament held at Rhyddlan Castle in 1283, Edward had taken various
measures to regulate his conquest. The country was, to a large extent,
divided into shires and hundreds, and some of these, including Angle-
sea, Caernarvon, Merioneth, Flint, Cardigan, and Carmarthen, were
kept in the hands of the crown. P>y the Statute of Wales, in 1 284, Eng-
lish laws, judges, sheriffs, and courts were introduced into these new
districts, with a partial retention of old Welsh laws and customs, for
the avoidance of undue offence to a most susceptible race. Many
fortresses were built to guard against revolt, and some of the chief
towns received a large influx of English settlers. Complete incorpo-
ration with England came at a later time, in the reign of Henry VIII.
It was the royal task of Edward I. to develop and to organise much
Edward's ^ na ^ came down to him from preceding times. In judicial
judicial matters, he finished the work so well begun by the first
lative 6 ??- Plantagenet king. The superior courts of justice known as
forms. } ie Kjny'g Bench, Exchequer, and Common Pleas were each
supplied by Edward with a special staff of judges. The jurisdiction
of the royal council, the highest court of appeal, was invested with
powers which gave rise to the Court of Star Chamber of the Tudor and
Stuart times, and were the model for the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council in the present day. The equitable jurisdiction of the
Court of Chancery now began to provide for the redress of grievances
not reached by the remedies which the common law provided, and to
deal with the rights and wrongs of wards and other helpless persons.
The king's regard for the correction of abuses and the due administra-
tion T't)fs justice was especially shown in the statute of 1275, called the
First Stain4?, () f Westminster. In this elaborate Act of fifty-one chapters
all kinds of maL&L rs are dealt with the oppression of religious houses
by barons and grea$ men demanding hospitality on travel ; the law of
wrecks; freedom of flection of sheriffs, coroners, and other county-
officers, and of represent tives ^ n Parliament. No king's officer was
to take any reward to do hii? duty. Devisors of slanderous news were
threatened with punishment, i ' ind J uries who g ave false verdicts.

1279-1285 A.D.] LEGISLATIVE REFORMS. 191

Edward was resolved to maintain, like his predecessor Henry tho
Second, the rights of the crown against the Church. His
real view was that of making it a truly national institution ainTthe
by compelling it to contribute to the expenses of government, clmrcl1 -
and by checking and diminishing its subservience to the Papal see.
The Statute of Mortmain, passed in 1279, was directed, as its title De
Religiosls shows, not mainly against the bishops and clergy, but against
the monastic bodies, or corporations of vditjiosi, meaning those bound
by monastic vows. All members of such bodies were reckoned dead in
law, and so land held by them was said to be in mortua manu. There
were two great reasons for the legislation now undertaken. An appre-
hension existed that a large part of the lands of the kingdom might
come by conveyances, prompted by the piety or superstition of owners,
into the hands of religious bodies, and thus become exempt from taxa-
tion, as all lands held in mortmain were freed from the usual feudal
services. The other, and more practical reason was, that existing land-
owners conspired with the monastic bodies to defraud the crown of
its rights in taxation by a pretended conveyance of lands from
lay owners to religious bodies. It was enacted by the new law that
no lands or tenements should be bequeathed or otherwise alienated to
religious corporations without the express license of the crown. The
king also dealt firmly with the bishops who strove to withdraw from the
royal courts causes in any way dealing with the property of churchmen.

The interests of trade were not forgotten in the watchful care of
the king for the true welfare of the realm. The Statute of Trade
Merchants, passed in 1283, and called also, from the place legisla-
where the Parliament was then sitting, the Statute of Acton tlon-
Burnel, recites that " merchants which heretofore have lent their goods
to divers persons be greatly impoverished, because there is no speedy
law provided for them to have recovery of their debts at the day of
payment assigned." It was provided by the new Act that the debts of
traders should be registered, and that when a debt had been acknow-
ledged before a proper officer, and a day of payment fixed, execution
might follow on default of payment, the amount due being recovered
by seizure and sale of the debtor's goods, and pressure exerted on him
by the imprisonment of his person.

The Statute of Winchester, in 1285, dealt with the grave question of
public order, and revived old arrangements for defence against Law and
invasion and against internal marauders. The hundred was order,
made answerable for robberies committed within its limits. In the
great towns, furnished with walls and gates, the gates were to be closed
from sunset to sunrise, and watch was to be kept all night. In order
to save wayfarers from sudden attack by robbers, it was enacted that
the highways leading from one market-town to another should be
enlarged, so that, within two hundred feet of each side of the main roau,
there should be no bushes, woods, or dykes, with the exception of great

192 THE JEWS UNDER EDWARD. [1278-1290 A.D.

trees, and, if the lord of the land would not make such clearance of the
cover that might harbour thieves, he was to be answerable for any
felony commitced. To enforce the observance of the Act, knights were
appointed in each shire under the name of Conservators of the Peace.
They were the original of the useful local magistrates now known as
justices of the peace. It was also provided that " every man have in his
house harness, for to keep the peace after (i.e. according to) the ancient
assize," and the nature of the arms to be kept whether sword, knife,
or bow and arrows is regulated according to the property of the house-
owner. The allusion to " the ancient assize " seems to refer to Henry the
Second's Assize of Arms for the gathering of the militia, and other pur-
poses of the public peace. The Act of Edward I. required subjects to be
ready with arms against invasion or revolt, and for the pursuit of felons
on due notice. In the same year, 1285, we find the statutes for the city
of London enjoining " that none be hardy to be found going or wander-
ing about the streets of the city, after curfew-bell tolled at St. Martin's
le Grand, with sword, or buckler, or other arms for doing mischief," and
that " none do keep a tavern open for wine or ale after the tolling of
the aforesaid curfew."

It was in this reign that the Jews were banished from England,
The n t to reappear until the days of Cromwell. They had been

Jews. rigorously treated, in accordance with the bigotry of the
age, before the final step was taken. In 1278, they were seized upon
a charge of clipping the coin, and a record of the time states that
" of the Jews of both sexes two hundred and eighty were hanged in
London, and a very great multitude in other cities of England." The
Christians guilty of the same offence were only fined. In spite of all
their disabilities and persecutions, and of frequent plundering, they
continued to amass great wealth. In 1286, the Bishop of Hereford
excommunicated certain Christians of that city for attending a marriage-
feast given by a rich Jewish family. On another occasion, the whole
body in the kingdom, including women and children, were imprisoned
until they paid a heavy fine as ransom. At last, by proclamation
dated July 27, 1290, the whole of the Jews were banished, to the num-
ber of over sixteen thousand. Their real estate (lands and dwell-
ings) was forfeited to the crown, but they were allowed to take away
their coin and other movables. The king had made some efforts for
their conversion to Christianity, and his motive for their exile is be-
lieved to have been to set them free from persecutions which he found
himself unable to check, though others allege that he issued the order
in return for a large subsidy made to him by Parliament.

It was under this greatest of the Plantagenet sovereigns that the
Parlia- House of Commons definitely acquired its complete form as a
SJjJfer representative body, and became established as a great and
Edward I. permanent institution of the state. Here, as in the case of
municipal freedom, it may be truly asserted that the people of England

1295 A.D.] PARLIAMENT UNDER EDWARD. 193

bought their full measure of rights and liberties. The king was
always in need of money for state purposes, and as the only sure, safe,
and speedy method of obtaining it was by the grant of the whole
nation as represented in Parliament, that body was summoned with
more frequency and regularity than in the previous days of a partly
arbitrary rule. When Parliament came together, the knights of the
shire, or county members, and the deputies from the towns, or borough
members, who together represented the lower nobles and the commons
of the realm, were at last only ready to grant money on redress of
certain grievances, and thus the assembly by degrees acquired the
power of originating legislation for the good of the whole realm. It
was convenience that, in the first instance, caused Edward to resort
to a more regular summons of the House of Commons. A grant of
money made in the Great Council, or the assembly of the lay barons
and higher clergy, answering to our House of Lords, could only en-
force payment from the class who gave the subsidy. The clergy
could only be reached by bargains made, through the officers of
the Exchequer, with the archdeacons in each diocese, and the same
process of negotiation had to be conducted by the crown officials
with the borough-reeves and the shire-courts, in order to get money
from the men of the towns and counties. The increase of the wealth
of the country, through trade, agriculture, and handicrafts, had made
it very desirable for the king to raise money promptly from the
personal property, or "movables," of his subjects, just as a Chancellor
of the Exchequer now is ready to fly, in a time of urgent need, to the
income-tax on the middle classes which brings in so large and sure a
revenue. It was this that caused the full Parliament to be summoned
by Edward in the year 1295. The king needed money for a rebellion
in Wales and a war with France. He stated in the writ of summons
that " what concerns all should be approved of by all, and that common
dangers should be met by measures provided in common." A more
truly constitutional admission was never made by any monarch. The
assembly that gathered at Westminster in the autumn of 1295 was * n
every way a national Parliament. It contained the three estates of
the realm the lords spiritual (archbishops, bishops, and higher abbots),
the lords temporal (the lay barons) and the commons, with the sove-
reign as head of all. The representatives of the cities and boroughs
were now first made a permanent part of Parliament, and so the year
1295 is the true date of the House of Commons. Its full powers are
a matter distinct from its full establishment as a part of the constitu-
tion : these were acquired, as has been stated, by degrees. The lords
often remained to pass laws in conjunction with the sovereign, after
the retirement of the Commons, who at first were only summoned for
the purpose of granting money. At first, also, both Houses sate ^ in
the same chamber, but they each gave separate votes, in the imposition
of taxes each upon its own order. The voters for the election of

194 PARLIAMENT UNDER EDWARD. [1295 A.D.

knights of the shire consisted of the whole body of rural freeholders,
a restriction being afterwards made in the reign of Henry VI. It is
curious to note, in contrast with the present system, that the crown,
in gathering two burgesses "from every city, borough, and leading
town," to sit in Parliament, kept in its own control the number of
boroughs to be represented, and that the sheriff could, at the wish of
the king, disfranchise at his pleasure any number of boroughs within
his own shire. It is still more strange, to those who regard the
enormous power now wielded by the House of Commons, and the
eager competition for the privilege of admission within its portals, as
a member chosen by the free will of the borough-voters, that in those
early days the towns were often unwilling to send up representatives,
and shrank from the task as a burden upon their resources. Travelling
in that age was a matter of great trouble and cost, and the men of
the boroughs could ill afford the two shillings per day paid to their
burgess for the charge of his maintenance. Little, indeed, could they
foresee the time when the sons of the proudest nobles in the realm
would offer themselves, with all due show of humility, to the men of
the towns, and spend large sums of money, and incur infinite trouble
in intrigue, canvass, and oratory, in order to become members of a
House that should hold the chief share of power in ruling a world-
wide dominion. Under Edward I. and his nearest successors, it was
often needful to enforce attendance by heavy fines laid, in default, on
representatives chosen either by town or shire, and for a long series of
years the sheriff of Lancashire would not admit that his county con-
tained any " boroughs " at all. The fact is again in vivid contrast to the
present condition of that busy hive of towns teeming with wealth, the
products of whose countless looms go forth to the farthest parts of the
globe. We must also note the action of the lower clergy in reference to
the Parliament as constituted by Edward I. The king, in the writs of
summons issued in 1295, had ordered the personal attendance of all
deans of cathedral churches, proctors of cathedral chapters, with two
representatives of the parish clergy in each diocese, and all the arch-
deacons. They refused, when they did attend, to sit with the other
representatives, and they would not grant any aids, or supplies of
money, except in their Convocations of York and Canterbury. By
degrees they ceased to come at all, and thus committed a kind of suicide
as regarded the legislative powers which, in course of time, would have
devolved upon their very numerous and wealthy order. It remains to
observe that the word "Parliament," or "talking body," meant any assem-
bly that meets for the purpose of debate, and that the word, as applied
to the national council, first appears in a document of 1244, where it
is used of the meeting at Kunnyrnede. The place of meeting for the
great assembly of the nation's representatives became by degrees con-
fined to Westminster, instead of the summons being issued, as the
names of statutes show, for conference at Oxford, Winchester, Nor

1274-1297 A.D.] EDWARD AND THE BARONS. 195

thampton, and other provincial towns, as well as in the capital of the
realm.

The power of the nobles had been greatly increased by their own
vigorous action in the reigns of John and Henry III. They
had gained an acknowledged position in the government of and the
the country, and their assent was needed for legislation, barons -
taxation, and war, They had also acquired the full trust of the body
of the nation in having become Englishmen instead of Normans, and
by the patriotic course which they had adopted at Runnymede in*?
claiming right and justice for other classes than their own. For a *
time, under Henry III., and after his death, a council of barons had
been the actual rulers of the land, and their conduct had proved their
fitness for so high a trust. They were now to show, even against such a
monarch as Edward I., the strength which they had won in the constitu-
tional system. The king, not long after his assumption of power in
1274, dispatched commissioners to make inquiry into the amount of
feudal revenue due to him from baronial estates, as to encroachments
made on the crown domain, and into various rights and possessions
claimed and held by barons. As a result of their discoveries, judges
were sent out with writs of quo warranto in 1278, demanding by what
right or warrant estates were held by present possessors. The spirit
of the feudal nobles was shown by Earl Warenne, who drew his sword,
and threw it on the table before the judges, when a sight of his title-
deeds was required. "This, my lords," he cried, "is my title. My
ancestors won their lands, under William, by the sword, and with the
same I will defend them." Throughout his reign, the king had much
trouble in repressing the military violence used by great barons towards
each other, and the lawless treatment of traders in the towns and on
the highway by depredators from the strongholds of the nobles, and by
roving bands of marauders. On the whole, order was maintained by
the imprisonment and heavy fining of the greater offenders, and the
hanging, or summary slaughter by the sword, of minor miscreants.

In 1297, the resistance of the nobles to Edward's unconstitutional
exactions of money led them to a measure of great importance Tlie C q n _
to the future freedom of the nation. Foreign war, with France firmation
and Scotland, had utterly exhausted the king's resources, and charters,
he was driven by sheer need to violate the letter and the spirit 1297>
of the Great Charter, in order to obtain prompt supplies from his
subjects. The high notions of the royal prerogative held by his
predecessors were by no means extinct in this excellent monarch, but
the force wielded by the barons of England guided affairs to a good
issue. The Church was made the first victim, in 1294, and refusal
of Edward's demand for one half of the annual income of the clergy
was punished by the loss of all protection from the law. The courts of
law were closed against them and all others who refused to furnish
aids of money. The clergy were driven to submission, but the moneys

196 EDWARD AND THE BARONS. [1297 A.D.

furnished by them did not long suffice for the ravenous demands of
war. In 1297, the Scots were in arms against Edward, and the war
with France demanded the king's presence in Flanders, at the head of
a large force, for an attack on the enemy's northern frontier. Previous
exactions had roused against Edward all classes of his subjects. The
country squires had been plundered by being forced to accept knight-
hood, with its burdensome fees and duties, or to pay sums of money for
declining the uncoveted honour. Heavy tallages had been levied from
the towns and tenants of the royal domain, and an enormous duty
had been imposed on the export of wool, then the chief article of
produce in the land, which was sent abroad to be worked up into cloth
by the looms of the artisans of Flanders. The growers of the country
and the merchants of the ports were alike interested in setting limits
to the power of taxation. The exactions made from the Church and
the laity came near to kindling another civil war. The treasures of
monasteries and cathedrals had been seized, and agricultural produce
had been taken, without present payment, in the most wanton exercise
of the royal right of purveyance. At this juncture, two bold barons
led the way in a successful resistance to tyranny. Humphrey Bohun,
Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, openly disobeyed
the king's command that they should sail with a reinforcement of
troops to his army in Gascony, though their offices as Marshal and
Constable of the realm made it their duty to act as leaders in war.
The enraged Edward swore that Bigod should "either go or hang."
The stout Earl retorted that he would "neither hang nor go," and even
the great Edward shrank from the ultimate issue to which he was
thus challenged. The king, helpless as he was, summoned a Parliament
to meet at Westminster, and there, in the Great Hall, met his subjects
face to face, and humbled himself before them. Wounded in his pride
by the rebuff which his passion had provoked, and with a heart sore at
what he deemed to be ungrateful treatment, Edward shed tears while
he confessed that he had taken his people's goods without right in law.
He then declared that he had imposed these heavy burdens, not for
selfish ends, but for the sole purpose of protecting them against the
Welsh, the Scots, and the French, who were seeking his crown and
thirsting for his subjects' blood. Such a scene enacted by the weak
Henry, his father, would have moved nothing but contempt, but the
lords and commons alike knew the noble nature of the monarch who
stood before them, and an assent was given to the prosecution of the
war. Edward then sailed for Flanders, but the barons were resolved
to turn the stirring occasion to a practical use for the future. They
met in arms at London, but strictly preserved the peace, and, along
with the Primate and the citizens, on October loth, caused the young
Prince Edward in council to assent to the famous statute known as
the Confirmation of the Charters, meaning the Great Charter and the
Charter of the Forests. All taxation was prohibited until the king's

1279-1305 A.D.] CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS. 197

consent to the Act was obtained, and the document was sent to Edward
at Ghent, with a demand for his signature by December 6th. The
state of foreign affairs was such as to prevent the king from dreaming
of resistance or delay. The Scots had gained a victory at Stirling,
and Edward was opposed in Flanders by a superior force of the French
king. On November 5th, he signed the Act which for ever invested
Parliament with the sole right of raising supplies of money from the
people, apart from fixed feudal claims. Certain clauses were added to
the Great Charter in which the king promised to take from his people
henceforth "no aids . . . but by the common assent of the realm, saving
the ancient aids . . . due and accustomed." The true meaning of this
would be that the Crown, from that time forward, could not, without a
vote of Parliament, lawfully raise money except in the shape of the
usual feudal payments. It was also required that pardon should be
given to the barons and their followers who had refused to go to
Guienne, and that they should again enjoy the king's favour. Edward
issued, along with the Confirmation, letters patent granting a full pardon
to Humphrey de Bohun, Roger Bigod, and others, "for certain dis-
obediences," and "certain alliances and assemblies of armed people,
made against our will and prohibition," and setting aside " all manner
of rancour and indignation," which he "had conceived against them."
The ground thus won was never lost in the ten remaining years of
Edward's reign. In 1299, he was obliged, at the request of the barons,
to renew the Confirmation, and in 1301 the nobles, again in arms,
forced him to carry out to the full the Charter of the Forests. In
1305, absolution was secretly procured at Rome from all oaths and
engagements as to the keeping of the charters, but again the barons
wrung an assent to the Confirmation and prevailed against the united
forces of the Pope and the crown.

For a time Edward I. remained at peace with his feudal superior, the
king of France. In 1279, he visited Philip III. at Amiens, Edward s
and at this meeting some of the causes of dispute between the Continen-
crowns were removed. Edward did homage, and received tal wars -
formal possession of Guienne, and also made formal resignation of
Normandy. This French king died in 1285, and was succeeded by his
son Philip IY. In 1286, Edward visited Paris, and rendered homage
to his new feudal lord. He remained abroad for three years, arranging
terms of peace between the French king and the king of Aragon, and
settling matters in his own province. During his absence, a Welsh
rising, in 1287, was subdued by his justiciary. The English people
had been greatly suffering from the rapacity of judges, sheriffs, and
other officers, and the king, according to his wont and nature, dealt
sternly with the offenders. He summoned a Parliament in 1290. The
offending judges were tried, and all except two were convicted, fined,
deposed from office, and either imprisoned or banished. In 1293,
trouble arose with France through an accidental fight in a Norman

198 EDWARD AND SCOTLAND. [1286 A.TX

port between some French and English sailors. An Englishman was
killed, and then reprisals began on both sides, and were carried to such
an extent that the Channel and the Bay of Biscay were scenes of con-
stant conflict. A large fleet of Norman traders, going southwards in
'the bay, attacked English ships, plundered them, and slew the seamen.
The English ports in the Channel gathered a strong force, met the
Normans on their return, and almost destroyed their whole flotilla.
Then Philip IY. summoned the king, as his vassal-ruler of Guienne, to
appear in his court in Paris, and answer for the conduct of his Eng-
lish subjects. French trickery involved Edward in a seeming neglect
of feudal duty, and the forfeiture of Guienne was formally declared.
Edward's army sent to recover it met with no ultimate success. The
real importance of the matter lay in the long-enduring union here-
by brought about between France and Scotland. Philip formed an
alliance with Baliol, who renounced his allegiance to Edward, and
caused a war between the two countries of England and Scotland.

Whilst Edward was abroad in Gascony, Alexander III., king of
Edward I. Scotland, died in 1286, leaving no descendant except Margaret,
fand SCOt ~ a g ran d-daughter, child of his own daughter Margaret, and
1290-1307, Eric, king of Norway. This princess, known as The Maid
of Norway, was Edward's grand-niece, through the marriage of his
sister to Alexander of Scotland. She now became heir-apparent to the
Scottish throne, and her right had been solemnly acknowledged at
Scone in 1284. Nothing seemed less likely than that trouble should
arise concerning the succession to the crown of Scotland.

A brief review of previous Scottish history here becomes needful.
Past The people of Scotland included men of the same diverse races

Scottish as those who dwelt in England, but in very different relative
ory * numbers, and not so closely blended, as with us, by inter-
marriage and political union. In Scotland there were Celts, Teutons,
Danes, and Normans, but there were also Picts. For some centuries
after the departure of the Romans from the island, the predominant
race in Scotland was the Picts. Their country extended from the Firth
of Forth along the east coast to the Pentland Firth. It was bounded
on the west by that of the Scots, a Celtic people from Ireland, who,
as we have seen, settled in Argyle, and then spread their dominion
northwards along the western coast. The Teutonic conquest gave the
country English people as the holders of Lothian, or the district lying
between the Tweed and the Forth. Another Celtic people lay between
the Firth of Clyde and the Solway Firth. These were the Britons of
the kingdom of Cumbria, which at first stretched southwards to the
river Dee. The victory of the Picts over Ecgfrith in 685 has been
related as a turning-point in the history of the English kingdom of
Northumbria. The conquerors in that battle afterwards made their
way west, and became supreme in the land northwards of the Forth
and the Clyde. About the beginning of the ninth century, the Scots

SCOTTISH HISTORY. 199

were making rapid progress in numbers and civilisation, and, in 843,
their king, Kenneth Mac-Alpin, became possessor also of the Pict
sovereignty. He waged war stoutly for many years against the
English of Lothian, the Danish pirates under Ragnar Lodbrog, and
the Britons of Cumbria. He is notable as having removed the pal-
ladium of the Scots, their "stone of destiny," from Argyle to Scone,
and for the transference of St. Columba's remains from lona to Dun-
keld, where he built a church, and made the town his ecclesiastical
capital. Under Mac-Alpin's successors, the country became subject to
most serious attacks from the Danes, who had by this time made good
their footing on the Irish coasts. The Scottish coasts were assailed in
all quarters by the fleets which hailed from Dublin and other Irish
harbours. The Danes came pouring into the firths on the eastern and
the western shores, and for many years the land was in a state of con-
flict with these formidable foes. It was by this process, however, that
the Picts and Scots were hammered and welded into political union.
In the tenth century, we find the Scots in alliance with their old foes,
the Danes, and their great defeat at Brunanburh by the English
king, Athelstane, in 937, has been already recorded. A great political
advance for Scotland came from the action of an English king.
Edmund the Elder conquered the southern part of the old kingdom of
Cumbria, and gave the modern Cumberland and the northern part of
Westmoreland to King Malcolm I. of Scotland, upon the condition of
his defending the north of England against Danish incursions. A kind
of alliance thus arose between the two countries, but nothing could
have been implied in the form of a feudal vassalage. At a later date
the Scottish kings became possessed of Northern Cumbria, or Strath-
clyde, and, under either Edgar or Cnut (the precise time and terms of
cession being unknown), the kingdom of Scotland was completed in its
territory by the cession of Lothian. Edinburgh became a chief town
of the country, and the Scottish king and court were thus brought into
close connection with English culture. Malcolm III. of Scotland, who
reigned from 1056 to 1093, is the one known as Canmore ("large
head "). He was a man of good natural abilities, improved by train-
ing at the court of Edward the Confessor. We have already seen how,
after the Norman Conquest, he gave refuge to Edgar Atheling, the
heir of the English line, and to many of the English nobles, and how
he married Margaret, the sister of the fugitive prince. The number
of the people in the Lothians was increased by many refugees of their
own kin from England, under the rule of William the Conqueror, and
the influence of the good Queen Margaret was very beneficial to the
Scottish king, court, and people. The marriage of Henry I. of Eng-
land with the Scottish Princess Matilda not only joined the Norman
and English royal lines, but had an important influence on Scotland
in tho introduction of the Norman element into the ranks of her
nobility. David of Scotland, a younger son of Malcolm, had married

200 SCOTTISH HISTORY.

a Norman heiress, daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, and in
1108 was created Earl of Huntingdon. From that time till his acces-
sion to the Scottish throne in 1124, he had lived chiefly at the English
court as a wealthy and powerful English noble, and had formed many
friendships among the Norman barons at the court where his sister
Matilda was queen. It was he who, as king of Scotland, brought Nor-
man nobles and Norman feudalism into the land. A Celtic chieftain of
the territory known as Ross and Moray was defeated by David's forces,
and his lands were then subjected to feudal forfeiture. They were
portioned out by David to Norman and other nobles, to hold of him as
vassals of the crown, and it was thus that Norman adventurers became
heads of great Highland families, and the chiefs of Celtic clans. The
Norman feudal law was brought into Lothian, and the connection be-
tween the two countries grew ever closer.

After his discomfiture at Northallerton in the Battle of the Stan-
dard in 1138, David of Scotland spent the rest of his reign in peace,
and strove with success to improve the social, moral, and ecclesiasti-
cal condition of his people. To his time we trace the chief Scottish
bishoprics, and the famous Abbeys of Holyrood, Jedburgh, Kelso,
Melrose, and Dryburgh. The rich endowments which he bestowed on
the Church so taxed the royal domains, that, being canonised, he was
bitterly styled by one of his successors, James I., as a "sair sanct
(sore saint) for the crown." All along the eastern coast of the country
were planted Norman, English, and Flemish colonies. From these
centres the interior of the country, inhabited by Celts, was further
settled, and thus the language, manners, and literature of people mainly
Teutonic were spread through much of the land. A system of written
law was introduced, and this by degrees took the place of the old Celtic
traditionary usages.

The capture of William the Lion at Alnwick, and the doing of homage
to Henry II. for the crown of Scotland, by the Treaty of Falaise, in 1 1 74,
with the annulling of that treaty by Richard L, have been already dealt
with. William continued a faithful ally of England until his death
in 1214, after a reign of forty-nine years, the longest in Scottish his-
tory. His son, Alexander II., married Henry III. of England's sister,
Joanna, and in this reign the boundary-line between the two countries
was settled almost as it now exists. The two lands were generally at
peace for nearly a hundred years, and the question of vassalage to the
English kings, not for lands held by Scottish kings in England, but
for the Scottish realm, was left conveniently vague. It was in the
reign of Alexander III., who certainly never did homage to Henry III.
for his Scottish kingdom, but only for his English estates of Tyndale
and Penrith, that the last Danish attack on Scotland took place. The
Danes had got possession of all the isles from Orkney and Shetland to
the Isle of Man, and had even occupied Argyle, where the Scots from
Ireland had first established the Scottish monarchy. The chiefs in

SCOTTISH HISTORY. 201

these parts, when they did not claim independence, professed allegiance
to Norway rather than to Scotland, and the Scottish kings had long
desired to make the chiefs of Argyle and the Isles admit their depen-
dence on the Scottish crown. Haco, king of Norway, resolved to
assert his headship over the western isles and districts, and assembled
a powerful fleet at Bergen in 1263. A large army was taken on board
1 60 ships, and the invader passed southward by Lewis and Skye, levying
contributions and exacting submission from the chiefs as he sailed along.
At length the great armament swept round the Mull of Cantyre, and
came to anchor between Arran and the coast of Ayrshire. A detach-
ment under Haco's son-in-law, Magnus, king of Man, dragged their
vessels across the isthmus of Tarbet, launched them on Loch Lomond,
and then landed on the eastern shore and ravaged the rich district of
Lennox. Haco refused to give up his claim on the western mainland
and inner Hebrides in return for a free surrender of the outer isles,
and there was nothing left but to fight. The winter was approaching
as the Scots gathered on the heights above the Ayrshire coast. Thence
they saw storms wreck a large part of the enemy's fleet, and the Scots
totally defeated a considerable force which was landed near Largs. It
was a great clay in Scottish history. Haco retired to Norway, and died
at the end of the year. The new king, Magnus, gave up Man and all
the Western Isles to the king of Scots in 1266, and in 1281 peace
was further established by the marriage of the Scottish Princess
Margaret to Eric, eldest son of the Norwegian king. In 1286, as
the Scottish king was riding in the dusk along the coast of Fife,
near the village of Kinghorn, his horse started or stumbled, and he
was thrown over a precipice and killed on the spot.

We have now seen how the Scots came from Ireland and settled in
Argyle, how their kings extended their sway over Pictland, state of
north of the Forth, Stratlicylde, between the Solway and the Scotland
Clyde, and Lotliian (or Northumbria), between the Forth and ^ 1286<
the Tweed, and thus formed the kingdom of Scotland. The Scottish
kings, through intermarriages with English and Norman princesses,
had almost ceased to be of Celtic race, and from this and other causes
the court and the nobility of Scotland had become chiefly Norman and
English, while the feudal system had come to prevail over the older
laws and customs of the land. The distinction of races is clearly
marked in official documents of the Scottish kings, wherein they
address their subjects as Francs, Angles, Scots, and Gahvegians, or
men of Galloway. The Francs were the Norman settlers ; the Angles
were the refugees from England after the Conquest, and the people
of the Lothians ; the Scots were the inhabitants to the north of
the Forth; and the Galivegians were the people of the districts
bordering on the Solway. These various races had laws and customs
of their own, but the general system of government was feudal.
In great questions, the king administered justice, and there were

202 SCOTTISH HISTORY.

judges and sheriffs appointed by the crown, but we can understand
'many parts of Scottish history only when it is remembered that
these offices often became hereditary, and almost independent of
the central authority. Thus it came about that decisions often de-
pended less on written law than on the arbitrary will of the feudal
lord. Alexander TIL did much to remedy these evils by making an
annual progress through his kingdom, attended by his justiciar, chief
nobles, and a military force, and he then heard all appeals for justice
that were brought before him. Wrong-doing and oppression were thus
checked in his time, but in Scottish history we find the conduct of the
nobles marked by a singular turbulence and disregard of the royal
authority, and the king had little control over the Celtic chiefs beyond
the Forth, and the people who, in a later age, became known as the
Highland clans. There was no capital city in Scotland, such as
Winchester and London were in England, but the kings had favourite
royal residences, which became centres of wealth and civilising influence.
Among these were Stirling, Scone, Forfar, Aberdeen, Inverness, Edin-
burgh, Roxburgh, and Berwick. To these and many other towns charters
were granted by the kings, and they were called Royal Burghs. The
spirit of these towns, where the dwellers were governed by laws of. their
own, and enjoyed special privileges under their charters, was strongly
opposed to feudalism. Every royal burgh, like the great barons, held
its lands and tenements directly from the crown, but their inhabitants
were on a footing of equality, and had trading and industrial inte-
rests in common to strengthen and protect against the overbearing
and encroaching spirit of the great nobles who surrounded them.
They thus became democratic communities, and were favoured and
encouraged by the kings as a counterpoise to the defiant power of the
great feudal nobles. In the time of Alexander III., the trade of some
of these towns had become very extensive. Berwick, from its wealth
and commerce, was looked upon as a northern rival to London. There
was a great trade done in skins, furs, fish, the fruits of Southern Europe,
and even in the spices of the East. The luxuries consumed in Scotland
included wine nnd wheaten bread, and comfortable clothing was a sign
of progress in civilisation. The state of agriculture was displayed in
the hamlets, granges, and farmsteads scattered over much of the country
in the midst of pasture-land and corn-fields. There were some good
hard roads, and some of the great rivers, as well as small streams,
were spanned by bridges, as the South Esk, at Brechin, the Tay, at
Perth, and the Forth, at Stirling. At the death of Alexander III.,
Scotland had become more prosperous and civilised than she was des-
tined to be again for more than four centuries, marked by foreign
war and by religious and political strife.

We are thus again brought to the advent on the scene of the young
Maid of Norway, heir to the Scottish crown, by the death of her grand-
father, Alexander IIT. She was at once acknowledged as queen by the

1290 A.D.] THE MAID OF NORWAY. 203

Scottish nobles and people, and Edward, who had lately become master of
Wales, now saw an opening for the f ulfilment of one of his great rj,^
life-projects, the union of the whole island under one crown. Scottish
His proposal for the marriage of his eldest surviving son, vacant,
Edward, Prince of "Wales, with the young queen, was well re- 129 -
ceived by the Scottish Estates, or Parliament. Long negotiation followed
as to terms, and it was not till July 18, 1290, that the Treaty of Brighom,
near Berwick, was signed. The strong national feeling of the Scots was
carefully provided for in the terms of the treaty. It was declared that
the laws and liberties of Scotland should be strictly observed, and that
the kingdom should remain free and without subjection. The English
king could call for no military aid, as if he were feudal lord, and no
Scotch appeal was to be carried to an English court. The young queen
then set sail from Norway, but the voyage was rough, and she was
landed, in a state of exhaustion, on one of the Orkneys, where she died
in October. Never was the death of a child more disastrous to the
interests of two nations. The decease of this young girl was the im-
mediate cause of three long centuries of estrangement and strife, of
the loss of many thousands of the lives of Scottish and English warriors,
and of infinite mischief, material and moral, caused by the constant
forays and " cattle-lifting " of the border- warfare between the kindred
peoples on both sides of the Sol way Firth, the Cheviots, and the Tweed.
Thirteen pretenders to the crown of Scotland at once appeared, but the
number was soon reduced to three, as the only real claimants. The}'
were all descended from daughters of David, Earl of Huntingdon,
brother of King William the Lion. From the eldest daughter, Margaret,
came John Baliol, Lord of Galloway, David's great-grandson. Robert
Bruce, Lord of Annandale, was son of Isabel, the second daughter. John
Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny, was grandson of Ada, the third daughter.
Bruce was nearer to the original stock, as daughter's son : Baliol, as
grandson of an eldest daughter, was from a higher branch, but was one
step farther removed. Both their claims were clearly superior to those
of Hastings. But another question then arose. Baliol and Bruce each
claimed for himself the whole kingdom : Hastings declared that, by
Scottish law, the kingdom was divisible among the three claimants. A
civil war was in prospect, when the Scottish Estates referred the claims
to Edward's decision. The English king saw his opportunity, and was
ready with a new claim on his own behalf when, with many barons arid
their armed retainers, he met the Scottish Parliament on May 10, 1291,
near Norham Castle, in Northumberland. There were ten conferences
held, from May loth to June I3th. At the first meeting, Roger do
Brabancon, chief -justice of England, addressed the assembly in the
French language, setting forth that Edward, king of England, was
come, as superior and direct lord, to do justice to the claimants of the
crown of Scotland, but that he first required the assent of the States to
his own claim to feudal superiority. The English king had come supplied

204 BALIOL, KING OF SCOTLAND. [1292-1296 A.D.

with extracts from monastic chronicles in proof of homage done by
Scottish to English sovereigns. The Scots were taken aback by the
king's demand, but at last the two chief claimants, Bruce and Baliol,
and the rest of the Scottish nobles, admitted the claim. The Scottish
commons rejected it, but they were of little account at that day in their
Parliament, and no heed was paid to their opposition, Edward then
assumed possession of the country as suzerain of a disputed feudal hold-
ing, and commissioners were appointed from both nations, with a large
majority of Scots, to decide upon the claims. In November 1292, they
reported in favour of Baliol. Edward confirmed this decision, and on
December 26th, John Baliol did homage to Edward, and became king
of Scotland. It is most difficult for us, at this day, to decide upon the
delicate question of feudal law which is involved in the subsequent treat-
ment of Baliol by the English king. It is certain that, by the treaty
of Brigham, Scotland was to be judicially independent, and that no
appeal from a Scottish court to that of an English king had been made
for a long period. The pride of the Scots, both king and nation, was
grievously wounded when Edward proceeded to assert this right of
appeal. They shrank at first from open resistance, and Baliol had, in
a case of his own, to endure the indignity of standing at the bar in the
king's court at Westminster as a private gentleman. Scotland began
to look towards France for help, and, as we have seen, when Edward
became embroiled with Philip IV., a French and Scottish alliance was
made, and war began between England and Scotland in the spring of
1296.

On March 28th, the English king crossed the Tweed, with an army
The first of five thousand horse and thirty thousand foot. The fate of
Scotland 1 Berwick was a dreadful one. This important town, a free
1296. ' harbour, whose customs amounted to a fourth of those of all
England, was taken by assault. Its inhabitants, to the number of
many thousands, were massacred, and the whole place was given up to
pillage. The town never recovered from the blow, and became, as it
remains, a small local port. The king and his army stayed there for
a month. A messenger from Baliol reached Edward at Berwick, re-
nouncing his fealty, and refusing to obey the summons to appear.
" The felon fool," cried Edward, " since he will not come to us, we will
go to him." A part of the army was sent forward to Dunbar, and a
battle was fought, ending in the defeat of the Scots. The castle sur-
rendered to Edward himself on April 29th, Roxburgh castle was taken
next, and Edinburgh was reached on June 6th. The castle was at
once besieged, but, without waiting for the result, the English king
moved on to Stirling; and on June i4th received the surrender of its
fortress without the least resistance. The garrison, according to the
chronicle of the time, " had run away, and left none but the porter,
which did render the keys." Montrose was reached on July 7th, and
there the feeble Baliol, wholly unfit to be ruler of so proud and inde-

1296 A.D.] EDWARD'S INVASION OF SCOTLAND. 205

pendent a nation, " came to Edward's mercy, and did render quietly the
realm of Scotland, as he that had done amiss." This ignoble person
was taken a captive to London, imprisoned for three years in the
Tower, and then liberated. He retired to France, and died there an
exile in 1314. It was well for Scottish fame that he had left behind
him men of a far different stamp. Edward made his way to Aberdeen,
then "a fair castle and a good town on the sea," and is believed to
have gone as far north as Elgin, penetrating, as he proceeded, into
nearly desolate parts, "where there was no more," says the writer of
the time, "than three houses in a row between two mountains." He
returned to England at the end of September, leaving John de Warenne,
Earl of Surrey, as governor of Scotland. At Berwick he received, now
as king of Scotland, as a fief forfeited by treason, the homage of the
bishops, barons, and knights of the land. The first " conquest of
Scotland " had been little more than the triumphal march of an irre-
sistible foe. The victor brought back to England the crown and
sceptre surrendered by Baliol, and carried away from Scone the sacred
" stone of destiny," on which the Scottish kings were seated at their
inauguration. This venerable relic is now to be seen in Westminster
Abbey, in a recess beneath the seat of the chair on which, for ages
past, the English sovereigns have sat for coronation. The prophecy
that " where that holy stone is found, Scottish kings shall e'er be
crowned," was fulfilled again in 1603. The castles, hostages, and
regalia of Scotland were Edward's, but he had not won the hearts of
the people, and the end was not yet.

In 1290, Edward lost, by her death at Hareby, in Lincolnshire, his
beloved wife Eleanor, of whom he wrote to his friend the Death of
Abbot of Cluny, in seeking his prayers for her soul, " We i 9 e queen '
loved her tenderly in her lifetime, and we do not cease to Peace
love her in death." Her body was brought in solemn pro- France,
cession from Lincolnshire to London, and buried with great 1298 -
honour at Westminster. At every place of halting for the night, the
king afterwards erected one of the famous "Eleanor Crosses." The
finest of all was that at Waltham Cross, in Hertfordshire : the erection
of the last, at the village of Charing, near to the final destination at
Westminster, gave its name to the thoroughfare now ever alive with
the traffic of the world's greatest town. Three of Eleanor's four sons
had died young : the survivor, Edward of Caernarvon, became his
father's successor. In March 1298, the contest between France and
England came to an end. Pope Boniface VIII. acted as mediator
between Philip IV. and Edward. Guienne was restored to England,
and her king renounced his alliance with the Count of Flanders. The
Prince of Wales was betrothed to Philip's young daughter Isabel,
whom he afterwards married, and Edward married Philip's sister,
Margaret, in 1299. She became the mother of two sons, Thomas,
Earl of Norfolk, and Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent.

206 WILLIAM WALLACE. [1297-8 A.D.

A new struggle for Scottish independence was now to begin under
Second the leadership of one of the most famous of all patriots
Scottish an( j popular heroes, William Wallace. In addition to Earl
1297-1305. Warenne, Edward had left, in charge of Scotland, Cressingham
as treasurer, and Ormsby as justiciary. The Scottish nobles had tamely
submitted to English rule, and the people were now to come to the
front. It is said that the exactions of Cressingham were intolerable,
and that the English troops who held the land were guilty of outrage.
It is likely enough that many of the more turbulent Scots hated the
rule of law and order which checked internal feuds and forays. It
is certain that the tillers of the Lothians and the toilers in the
towns the Scottish Commons, whose protest had been set aside by the
nobles at Norharn in 1291 were indignant at English supremacy, and
quite ripe for revolt. The hour had come, and, with the hour, the
man.

Setting aside the legends about Wallace, his gigantic stature and
Battle of strength, his wrongs and his revenge stories whose only
Stirling, basis is the minstrelsy of "Blind Harry," who sang to the
Sept. 1297. p eo p} e o f two centuries later we can safely record that
Wallace, first the leader of a band of outlaws, took the field near
Stirling with a powerful force in September 1297. De Warenne
advanced at the head of 40,000 men, and the armies met on September
nth. Wallace was skilfully posted on the hills to the north of the
river. The English host advanced over the narrow bridge, and the
Scots rushed down on them when only a part of the foe were across,
and before deployment could be made on the farther side. The result
was a total rout. The hated Cressingham was killed, and De Warenne
made a swift retreat into England. Wallace followed up his success by
ravaging over the border, and made his way to Newcastle. Then he
returned and captured Stirling Castle. Edward was at this time in
Flanders, and had just subscribed the Confirmation of the Cliarters. The
Scottish victor held power in the name of the deposed John Baliol, as
is proved by a charter of March 29, 1298, where "William Walleys,
miles" (knight), is styled "Gustos regni Scotise," or guardian of the
kingdom for John. Edward came over the sea, and entered Scotland
with a great army in June.

The nobles held aloof from Wallace, and his ariny was mostly com-
Battfe of P ose d of footmen. The strength of Edward lay in his numerous
Falkirk, mailed cavalry and skilful archers. The terrible energy of the

y 1298. jjnglish king and leader, now in his sixtieth year, is shown by
the fact that, as he advanced to the field of Falkirk. he was thrown
from his horse and broke two of his ribs, but persisted in leading the
cavalry forward to the encounter. The only hope of Wallace was in a
formation that the English horse could not shatter, and he drew up his
men, armed with long spears, in four great masses, presenting on all
sides a bristling array of points. Before the attack, he cried to his men,

1301-1305 A.D.] EDWARD AND THE POPE. 207

" I have brought you to the ring, now let me see how you can dance."
For a time, the resistance was a perfect success. The most desperate
repeated charges of the mailed chivalry of Edward could force no open-
ing, and his best knighthood recoiled from the deadly spears of the
Scots. But Edward was not a man to be beaten by one or more re-
pulses at the outset. The Welshmen had left the field, and a panic was
beginning among the English, when Edward ordered his archers to the
front. The Scottish formation now only offered a mark that could not
be missed to deadly showers of shafts. The spearmen fell by hundreds,
and it was impossible to fill up the gaps. The English horse dashed in
at the openings, and soon broke up the masses. Thousands of Scots
fell, and Wallace barely escaped capture. The south of Scotland was
soon subdued, but the courage of Wallace had now shamed many of the
nobles into keeping up the war. Edward's army was forced to retire by
famine, and a commission of regency under John Comyn, Lord of Bade-
noch, headed the party struggling for Scottish independence. Wallace
had ceased to be " Guardian," and for some years little is heard of him
and his doings. Edward was occupied by English affairs, and the
Scottish regency appealed for help to Pope Boniface. In a letter sent
to the king in 1300, the Pope claimed a right of deciding between
England and Scotland.

In January 1301, the English monarch called a Parliament at
Lincoln. Over three hundred persons met prelates, abbots, dward j
barons, knights of the shire, and burgesses. A plain answer and the
was sent to the Pope's pretensions against English independ- Po * }e '
ence. He was informed that "with respect to the king of England's
temporal rights, the king would not plead before him, nor submit in
any manner to his judgment, nor suffer any inquiry, nor send agents
to the Papal court." It is curious to note, alongside of the bishops and
abbots who thus boldly spurned the temporal interference of their
spiritual head, a worthy merchant or tradesman of Lincoln, who sat as
a burgess. This was Stephen Stanham, who dealt in sugar, figs, herrings,
and stockfish.

Early in 1303, Stirling Castle was taken by the Scots, and an Eng-
lish army was defeated at Roslin. Edward entered Scotland _ .. f
with a force that could not be resisted, and a fleet, with Wallace,
supplies of food on board, now followed his land armament. 1305<
In February 1304, the Scottish leaders, including the Regent Comyn,
gave in their submission, and the second conquest of Scotland was
completed by the surrender of Stirling Castle from famine, in the
summer of the same year. Wallace was betrayed in August 1305, by
Sir John Menteith, Edward's governor of Dumbarton, and taken to
London for trial as a traitor at Westminster Hall, crowned with a
wreath of oak, as a king of outlaws. "Traitor," he cried, "I could
never be, for I was not a subject of King Edward." He was con-
demned, and executed with the horrible barbarity which survived to a

208 ROBERT BRUCE. [1306 A.D.

later age. His head was struck off after death by hanging, and placed
upon a pole fixed on London Bridge. The special cruelty of the age
divided his body into four quarters, which were taken and exposed
to public gaze at Newcastle, Berwick, Perth, and Aberdeen. In the
same year, Sir Simon Fraser, one of the partisans of Wallace, was put
to death in London, and his head was placed on London Bridge beside
that of his brave leader. In other respects the English king used his
success with clemency and wisdom. No other victims were sought,
and a scheme of government was drawn up which left Scottish law
predominant, and placed rule in the hands of Scottish nobles, including
Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, grandson of the former claimant of the
crown.

The name of Robert Bruce is the noblest in Scottish history, but it
Robert seems that ambition, rather than patriotism, was the first
Bruce moving cause of his action against Edward I. He had long
fieldf 6 regarded himself as the rightful heir to the Scottish crown,
1306 * but policy had made him swear allegiance to Edward, and

even bear arms against his countrymen. He was of English lineage,
and being born at Westminster in 1274, was brought up at the court
of Edward. Another possible claimant of the Scottish throne was
John Comyn, known as the Red Comyn, son of John Baliol's sister
Marjory. As such, he was regarded with jealousy by Edward. It
seems that Bruce and he made a bargain, by which Comyn was to help
Bruce to gain the crown of Scotland, and, in case of success, receive
Bruce's lands as Earl of Carrick and Lord of Annandale. In order to
further his private schemes, Comyn betrayed the plan to Edward, and
the life of Bruce, who was then in London, was in danger. A friend
gave him a hint by sending him a purse of money and a pair of spurs.
Bruce fled for Scotland with two attendants, and, as snow lay on the
ground, they all rode with their horses' shoes reversed, so that the
tracks resembled those of steeds making for the capital. On their way
they met and slew a messenger of Comyn's, and found on him written
proofs of his master's treachery. In the church of the Greyfriars at
Dumfries, Bruce killed the traitor, after an angry altercation, and this
deed of sacrilegious violence made a course of the utmost boldness the
only possible one for safety. He took up arms in February 1306, sent
out people on all sides to rouse the country, and on March 2yth was
crowned king of Scots at Scone. The "stone of destiny" was wanting,
and a circlet of gold was used as a crown. The clan Macduff had the
right of placing the crown on the head of a Scottish king, but the
chief was not present, and his sister, the Countess of Buchan, dis-
charged the duty in his place. For this bold act she was afterwards
exposed to the pity or scorn of passers-by in a cage suspended from
one of the outer turrets of the walls at Berwick. The great English
king was now failing in health, but at a solemn festival in London he
conferred the degree of knighthood on his son Edward, and on many

1307 A.D.] DEATH OF EDWARD. 209

young nobles. He heard of the new revolt with the deepest rage, and
when, at the banquet, a dish of two swans was placed on the table
before him, the king rose and swore " before God and the swans " to
have a deadly vengeance for the murder of Comyn. Such were the
fantastic vows of chivalry, which were often thus taken at the feast of
the peacock.

The first efforts of Bruce met with ill-success. Aymer de Valence,
Earl of Pembroke, one of Edward's commanders in Scotland, routed
his forces at Methven, in Perthshire, on July 22nd, and the king was
forced to take to the hills with a few followers. After a narrow escape
from the vengeance of Comyn's friends, Bruce sailed for the isle of
Rathlin, off the north coast of Ireland, and spent there the winter of
1306-7. Unsparing punishment was dealt out to the patriotic party
in Scotland. Priests, knights, and nobles alike went to execution by
hanging and the block, and the wife, daughter, and two sisters of Bruce
were flung into prison.

In the spring of 1307, Bruce was again in Scotland, and in May

severely defeated Pembroke at the lattle of London Hill. The ,.

-r, ,. / , . , , , ., , , , J , . , . Death of

English king had meanwhile been slowly making his way to- Edward I.,

wards Scotland, with health fast declining. He lay long on 1307>
a bed of sickness, but at last reached Carlisle, and, thinking his health
improved, he hung up his litter in the cathedral as a thank-offering,
and once more mounted his war-horse. But the king's work in life
was done. At Burgh-on-Sands, in sight of Scotland, he died on July
7, 1307, giving orders that his flesh should be stripped from his bones,
and that these should be carried before the army till Scotland was
subdued. The new king sent his body to Westminster, where it was
buried with the inscription " Here lies the hammer of the Scots"

At the period now under review, we have clearly visible signs of the
development of various kinds of freedom among the class of
toilers both in town and country. This process continued, newliber-
with ever-growing strength, until the end of the time during *i|| S eS d
which the Plantagenet kings ruled the land. The rise of the under
towns of England has been already noticed. They all became, and^Ms '
like the land outside them, the property, in a certain sense, succes-
either of the king or of some great landowner thane, baron,
bishop, abbot, or earl. Each was ruled by an officer of the lord's
appointment, the lord's or king's reeve, whose duty it was to summon
the town-meeting or borough-moot, and there render justice to the
townsmen in the presence and with the assent of their fellow-burghers ;
to get in the moneys due to his lord for rent; and to see that the
"services" were duly rendered to him by the town. The townsmen
were hereby compelled to make use of the lord's mill, to gather in his
harvest, and to pay for the right of sending out their cattle and swine
into the lord's pasture and woodland. From fair and market he also
gathered a revenue of tolls and fees, and his income was swelled by

210 PROGRESS OF MUNICIPAL FREEDOM.

various forfeitures and fines from his tenantry of the town. Apart
from all this, they were free men, who managed their own affairs in
the same way as a local board or municipal council does at the present
day. It was by no revolution of violence, no rising or revolt, that the
men of the English towns got rid of the feudal services and payments
due to their over-lords. A slow and silent process, in the growth of
sound opinion, good feeling, and good sense, made some of these signs
of subjection lapse by degrees into desuetude. Other burdens were
thrown off by the just and manly process by means of which the
thrifty artisan in our own times becomes his own landlord, the pos-
sessor of the tenement in which he and his family dwell. The towns-
men in olden times worked and traded, acquired wealth, and bought
out their lords. They paid in sums of hard- won money for the privi-
leges and immunities which make up the noble thing known as
municipal freedom. An adventurous or fanatical lord starts on a
Crusade, or returns from the land of the Payriim a penniless man,
with armour rusty and worn, ragged shirt and hose, and a remnant of
followers hungry for pay deferred. A jovial, spendthrift lord scatters
his means at tournament, banquet, and revel. A litigious lord makes
away with his cash in suits before judges, of Church or laity, who are
open to the soft persuasions of extra-fees for a quicker hearing, or
bribes for a wrongful award. A quarrelsome lord is ever at war with
neighbouring barons, and gets the worst in the conflict, to the loss of
real of personal property. A warlike lord becomes captive in a foreign
campaign, and is held to heavy ransom. A religious lord is lavish of
gifts to the Church in the shape of shady monastic cloister and cell, or
the splendour of some stately shrine. An abbot or prior erects a new
minster for the house which he loves and rules. The supreme feudal
lord, the Plantagenet king of the day, needs supplies for a contest
abroad or the brilliant extravagance of his court. In all these cases,
and many more, resort must be had to the milch-cow the burghers,
who, in the quiet life of the town, have been creating wealth instead of
destroying it, winning in place of spending. Their lord, from whatever
cause, has an empty coffer which needs to be quickly filled. "Nothing
for nothing " is the trader's motto, and he looks for good to himself and
his heirs and successors in the present needs of his lord. Money
there is with him ; and his lord receives a portion in return for the
deed or charter which for ever sweeps away some feudal right over the
town's justice or government or trade. It was thus that our fathers,
by the sweat of their brows, and their own sturdy good sense, bought
the rights which created the class of municipal freemen who played so
great and glorious a part in winning national freedom in after- times,
by blows dealt on the field of battle.

The population of the towns was not, however, composed only of
the burghers who conducted its trade, and were the owners of the land
within its limits, subject to the claims of the feudal lord. For purposes

TOWN-GUILDS AND LANDOWNERS. 211

of local government, and the management of the trade of the town,
they were gathered into the bodies called merchant- guilds. As -p^e
co-dwellers with themselves, but without any share of muni- towns,
cipal right or rule, they had around them a mass of other settlers. This
body was composed of poor "landless" men, serfs escaped from their
masters in different parts of the country, hucksters and petty traders,
and all kinds of artisans. Among the less wealthy burghers, and the
smaller traders and craftsmen, there arose, in distinction from the
merchant-guilds of the higher and richer burghers, a number of craft-
guilds, or trade-guilds, exercising a sway resembling that of the modern
trades- unions. Charters obtained from the crown, by the usual method
of purchase, gave these guilds a legal control, each over its own trade,
and they assumed, by slow steps, a position of formidable rivalry with
the older and more powerful merchant-guilds. In time they became
predominant, and all power having at length passed from the ancient
oligarchical bodies to the modern associations with their more numerous
members, the basis of municipal freedom was widened, and the local
government of the towns took a far more popular form.

During the thirteenth century, we note the growth of a numerous
class of landowners, who became the social ancestors of the The new
squires and landed gentry, as opposed to the nobles of the iand- f
highest class in wealth and power. The mass of the feudal owners,
tenants who held land, in smaller portions, directly from the crown,
became known, even under Henry the First, as the "Lesser Barons,"
as opposed to the "Greater Barons," the holders of numerous manors,
forming, in all, great landed properties. It was these barons who
usually attended the Great Council, the only Parliament of that age.
From the ranks of the lesser barons, or knights (who had the right
of attendance, as direct holders from the crown, but who did not care
to incur the trouble and expense of answering to a summons), came
the knights of the shire, or county-members, of the true later Parlia-
ment. By the time of Edward I., a marked decrease had occurred in
the ranks of the greater barons. In the natural course, and by losses
through foreign and civil war, the families of many earls and barons
had become extinct, and their estates had lapsed to the crown. Other
greater baronies had their lands divided among female heiresses, from
lack of male representatives, and so had ceased to exist. At the same
time, the "lesser baronage" was ever growing in numbers and impor-
tance. A great increase had taken place in the wealth of the country
through the growth of trade, the increased production of wool, from
which large profits were derived in exportation to Flanders, and through
superior methods of tillage. The possession of land became a passion
with the owners of hard cash. The holding of landed property, to a
far greater degree in that age than in our infinitely complex social
system, conferred political and social importance on its possessor.
Wealthy traders sought admission to the ranks of the landed gentry,

212 THE SERFS.

by Applying to tenants of the greater barons for the sub-letting of land
on the usual feudal terms. The statute Quia Emptores, passed in the
reign of Edward I., strove to check this subdivision of the large estates,
by enacting that these sub- tenants should hold the land directly from
the great lord, and render to him the feudal services, and afford him
the feudal profits in reliefs, escheats, aids, fines, forfeitures, wardship,
and marriage, instead of holding from their immediate tenant. The
Act had a precisely opposite effect to that which those who passed it
had contemplated. The tenant who had sub-let the land often desired
to be virtually quit of a holding which brought him neither pleasure
nor profit. He therefore handed over his estate, with its burden of
feudal " services," for a round sum of money, to the man of wealth and
enterprise who thought he could manage to make the investment pay,
A number of small estates, held direct from the crown or other great
feudal lord, was thus created, and the new class of landowners rapidly
grew in the repetition of the same process. A class of small farmers
also began to arise from among the ranks of the higher class of villeins.
Common lands began to be enclosed, and the large landholders adopted
the plan of leasing out portions of their estates to men who were the
forerunners of the tenant-farmers of the present day.

The ceorl of the older English system, who was the villein of the
Gradual time after the Conquest, had become, under Anglo-Norman
disap- legislation, the serf of a feudal lord. He lived in a portion
ance'of of l an d which he tilled under the lord, and to that lord and
serfdom i an d he was bound. To the lord of the manor he was forced
lower to render services as a kind of rent paid in labour, by reaping,
viUenage. WO od-cuttmg, shearing, thatching, and other rural toils. He
could not leave the estate, to change his mode of life for that of an
artisan or trader, without the leave of his lord, on pain of becoming an
outlaw. From this kind of bondage, removed indeed from what we
understand by the position of a slave, the serf was slowly freed by the
operation of various causes. The Church did what she could in in-
ducing feudal lords, in the time of health, or on their death-beds, to
emancipate their serfs. Many made their way to towns possessing
charters of freedom, and the law was that such a fugitive, if he lived in
such a town for a year and a day, became one of its free citizens.
Others ran off to distant parts of the country, and took service as free
workers for pay under a town or country employer. In other cases,
the lord changed the service of forced labour into a fixed money
payment. Many industrious serfs or villeins obtained freedom by the
same method as that by which, as we have seen, the burghers of the
towns acquired municipal rights. They saved money and bought their
freedom from a needy lord. Many a brave and hardy serf was freed
by a grateful feudal master for good work done in a home or foreign
war, or on the long and dangerous Crusade. Even the king was
known, in case of his need, to sell manumissions for hard cash to serfs

SOCIAL LIFE. 213

on the royal domain. Thus, by a silent and almost imperceptible
process, was effected, under the Plantagenet kings, the revolution
which put an end to the peculiar kind of property of man in man
known as villenage or serfdom. The causes of the change were moral
and noiseless. There was no physical force, no special statute, and no
man can fix the precise time at which the political distinction between
master and serf ceased to exist. We only know that, when the Tudors
began to reign, it had vanished, as things dark and dreary do vanish,
like the shadows of night from the sky, before the mounting sun of an
enlightened public opinion.

An authentic document of singular interest and value gives us the
power of producing a picture of many parts of our social Life,
system, in an age which has not received, from our writers of aSurade
either history or fiction, the same degree of attention as that in Eng-
bestowed on similar matters belonging to the Tudor and Stuart Juuired
times. The Household Roll of Bishop Swinfield of Hereford, years ago.
during part of the years 1289 and 1290, is the account of the prelate's
domestic expenses, kept upon parchment by his house-steward, John
de Kemeseye, from day to day, week to week, and month to month.
The separate skins used by such an official formed, when they were
tacked together, one roll, complete for a given period, generally one
year. Two months of the year have been lost to us in the present case,
by destruction of two skins of the record, and we thus miss the interest-
ing period of the corn-harvest in 1290. We trace, as the roll remains
to us, the life of the Bishop and his household from September 30,
1289, to July 23, 1290. Bishop Swinfield appears to have been a
good specimen of the Church ruler, not ambitious, luxurious, or idle,
but a watchful administrator of his diocese. He had risen to his high
rank from a humble beginning, having been chaplain and secretary to
his predecessor. His regard for the people of his flock is shown in his
friendly feeling towards those whom we have seen as the devoted
servants of the poor the Franciscan or Minorite Friars and in his
preaching during his episcopal journeys, a duty which bishops seldom
troubled themselves to discharge. A feature of the time, to which
allusion has already been made, is revealed in the fact that the good
Bishop, who naturally sought to maintain the rights of his order, was
not on the best terms with the burgesses of Hereford. They were
striving for municipal freedom, and constantly disputed the feudal right
of the Bishop to control them. Half the city was his fee or feudal
holding, and his jurisdiction was constantly clashing with that of the
civil magistrate. The Bishop of that age was a far more wealthy man
than the prelate of the present day, who, though a peer of the realm as
a spiritual lord, receives but a moderate stipend for the position which
he is obliged to maintain. The feudal baron, Bishop Swinfield, had a
palace at Hereford, a house in Worcester, and a house in London. At
Ledbury, Prestbury, Boss, and several other places, he was the owner

214 THE MANOR-HOUSE.

of manor-houses, each with a farm or demesne attached. Stables there
were for his numerous horses, kennels for his hounds, mews for his
hawks. On the Welsh border, he had his episcopal fortress-house,
called Bishop's Castle. The household consisted of forty-one members,
including the steward, De Kemeseye, some confidential servants of gentle
blood, two clerks, a butler, a messenger, a launder, a palfreyman (in
charge of the Bishop's own riding-horse), a porter, two farriers for the
forty horses, two carters, a falconer, a cook, and twenty-two other
domestics, among whom we find garciones (gossoons) and pages. All
these persons were fed, clothed, and lodged, and received half-yearly
wages ranging downwards from ten shillings to sixpence, amounts
respectively equal to about ten pounds and ten shillings of present
coin,

In the discharge of his official duties, the Bishop moves about from
Tlie one manor-house to another. At each of these abodes, the

manor- great hall is his feudal court. Here he sits in baronial state
houses. Q rece j ve the homage of tenants, to sentence ecclesiastics to
penalties for offences against the canon law, and to threaten or ex-
communicate lay offenders against public morals. Here he entertains
the suitors of his court, and his dependents, on high festivals. The
internal arrangements of such a house in that age are remarkable.
The hall, from which the whole manor-house derives its name in
modern usage, is the one great room of the establishment. There
was only one principal private chamber, devoted in this case, of course,
to the use of the Bishop himself. The large hall was the common room
for all other purposes. There the guests dined, the wine was drunk, and
both guests and upper servants slept on the wooden floor, strewed with
dry rushes in winter, and with green fodder in summer, or, at times,
with hay or straw. The clerks and squires of a bishop, or the knights
who surrounded a great baron, there took their rest. The lower servants
slept in the stables. There were no separate dormitories, as is proved
beyond dispute by the remains of houses of the period, and by documents
which detail the apartments of which a house was to consist. We can-
not enter into a detailed description of the method of erecting a manor-
house in that age. The materials and style of such a building, as well
as the furniture, were rough and inartistic. The thirteenth century has
left us, in the Cathedral of Salisbury, and in the latest part of W T est-
minster Abbey, some of the finest examples of ecclesiastical architecture,
but that age was very little advanced in the construction of elegant, or
even comfortable, houses. The truth is, that it was a period of transition
from the baron's embattled fortress to the hospitable hall of the later
Plantagenet times.

We will now accompany the prelate in some of his journey ings. A
The marked difference between that and later ages is shown in

travelling, the bare condition of a noble's different places of abode. In
making a change of residence, the great man of the thirteenth century

TRAVELLING, 215

did not merely send word to air rooms and prepare for himself and
guests : he took his household -gear along with him. On December
20, 1289, the Bishop and his retinue set out from Prestbury, on a
journey to London, The baker of the household has gone in advance,
to have a store of bread and pastry ready for the travellers when they
reach the halting-place. Many of the household-servants are well
armed, to meet the possible attacks of robbers. Sumpter-horses carry
clothing and bedding. There are carts laden with meat and wine, and
with the domestic utensils the brass and iron pots and pans, and good
store of earthenware. The Bishop's establishment seems to have been
especially rich in crockery. The use of earthenware was not common
in that age, when wooden trenchers and leathern "jacks " or drinking-
mugs appeared at every board. The crockery was a great charge in
the household expenses, from frequent and large breakage, in moving
from place to place along rutty roads, where a cart might easily be
upset. There are fifty-one horses in the troop. " Harbingers " precede
the party to look out for quarters. On the first night, they lodge at
a vacant manor-house of the Abbot of Gloucester. Here they eat the
food which they have brought, and the house-servants furnish brush-
wood for the fires, oats for the horses, and bed-litter for the floor.
There were scarcely any hostels or taverns, for the supply of food arid
beds, till the middle of the fourteenth century. At his meals by the
way, the Bishop would have his silver cup, out of which to quaff his
Bordeaux wine, of which the steward, in the record, declares his
master's liking. He would use spoons of silver, and silver forks were
also known in that age. Each man of the household carried his own
knife, and finger and thumb supplied the place of the fork. In the
smaller houses at which the prelate slept on his journey, he would have
no glass window, such as he had constructed, at the cost of six shillings
and eightpence (about seven pounds now), for his luxurious chamber
at Bosbury. On December 3oth, they arrive at Wantage, and thence
make their way to Reading, over roads made difficult by constant
rain. At the great Abbey of Reading, praised for its hospitality by
William of Malmesbury, the whole party remain for four nights. Hugh,
the harper, plays in the hall, and receives for his skill a fee of twelve
pence (a sovereign now) from the Bishop, who also gives a dole of bread,
to the value of seven or eight pounds of our money, for the poor of the
town. Thus he repays his generous host, the lordly Abbot of Reading.
By the time the travellers reach Staines, where they cross the river by
the ferry, their store of food is done, and they have to buy at Cook-
ham, where sprats from the London market are obtained.

On January 7 th, they arrive in London, at the Bishop's house in Old Fish
Street, by Queenhithe, a dwelling pertaining to the see. During London
his absence from town, the prelate let it to a "pepperer," or
grocer. At the feasting on arrival, we hear of gurnets, sturgeon, and
oysters, hares, rabbits, and a side of venison sent by the king. London

216 TRAVELLING.

and Westminster at this time, in January 1290, were full of court
visitors, as Convocation and Parliament were both sitting. On Sunday,
January 8th, the Bishop goes by river to Westminster, to make a visit
of state to Edward. His retinue ride thither, to be ready for attendance
on him at the palace. From the house in Old Fish Street, they would cross
the river Fleet by the bridge ; pass the great convent of White Friars ;
and leave on their left the splendid house and church of the Templars.
Thus they would go through the great wooden bar known as Temple,
and reach the Strand. In passing along to the city of Westminster,
through the village of Charing, they would have to cross three bridges,
over as many streams which intersected the road on their way to the
great river. The houses which they passed would be mostly of wood :
some were of wooden framework filled up with clay. There were but
two stories, and staircases were seen outside, leading from the footway
to the first floor. On reaching court, the Bishop presents the king
with a purse containing 66, 135. 4<i., an amount representing nearly
^1400, and the queen with half that sum. In the feast given that
Sunday in Westminster Hall, the roof rang with the sounds of the
harp, the dulcimer, and the viol, and the prelate bestowed twenty
shillings on each of the king's two chief harpers.

On his return journey, we find that, on a certain day, only five miles
were accomplished. The way was over clayey roads, where
Bishop's the shoes were dragged off the horses' feet, and there were
return. many halts for the farrier, who accompanies the train, with
a great store of shoes and nails. At one place of halting, the Bishop
has to get an important business off his rnind. He must address a
long letter to the Pope, on the grave subject of canonisation for his
predecessor, Bishop Cantilupe. A letter in that age was a solemn
document, fairly written on the whitest parchment, concerning which
we have a record, in this very Roll, that a hundred and fifty skins were
bought at Oxford for three shillings and fourpence. After two days'
seclusion, for the purpose of writing his letter, the prelate crosses the
Wye, and visits the rich abbot and brethren of the Cistercian house of
Tintern, whose stately ruins now charm the eye of the tourist. In the
age of which we are writing, the vaulted roof echoed back the loud
chant of the monks, and the long procession moved up the aisles where
we now tread on the softest and greenest sward. It is pleasant
to read of the good Bishop that, on this return journey from a visit to
the capital, he was met by two students who were maintained at his
charges at the University of Oxford. Their names were Kingswood,
and there was a servant of that name in the Bishop's establishment.
During the vacations, they usually visited their patron. The two cost
the prelate a sum amounting to nearly three hundred pounds a year in
our coin.

On October 3oth, the episcopal household comes to Sugwas, one of
the Bishop's manors, on the left bank of the Wye, about four miles from

THE FOOD. 217

Hereford. Here are a mill, a dovecot, and a fishery. The river yields
salmon, and the tenants pay dues of eels. Friday, Saturday,
and Wednesday are days of abstinence. On Sunday, Novem-
ber 2nd, the household is abundantly feasted. The consumption includes,
besides beef and mutton, half a pig, eight geese, ten fowls, twelve
pigeons, nine partridges, and unnumbered larks. The Church fasts
of that age caused the consumption of enormous amounts of fish
and eggs. We have sticks of eels, sold by twenty -five on a stick,
according to the statute; salmon, tench, lampreys, and lamperns. Salt-
herrings and salted cod are always in store, and dried cod is brought
from Aberdeen. In winter, oysters are bought by the gallon ; in May
and June, the fresh mackerel supplies a new delicacy. The trout is
produced at the table in the season of the May-fly, At Easter-time we
find fourteen hundred eggs brought in for the use of the Bishop's house-
hold, and paid for at the rate of eight for a farthing. It was only for
a part of the year that the richest people, in the thirteenth century,
could see fresh meat, or "shambles-meat," as it was then called, set
upon their tables. There was no stall-feeding for cattle, and the
animals were only fit to kill after good feeding on the spring and
summer grass. There was, therefore, a great salting of provisions for
use during the winter months. One of the chief places of abode for
Bishop Swinfield was his manor-house of Bosbury, on the site of which
are still some vestiges of strong buildings. In the Roll we find him
there at Martinmas, when the salting- tubs are being filled. Fifty-two
beeves have been brought in from the different farms, and sheep and
swine in large numbers, for the purpose of being salted down. The
salt was purchased at Worcester, being brought thither from the pits
at Droitwich, and, when the supply ran short, 100 Ibs. was borrowed
from a house belonging to the Knights -Templars. The modern epicure
will shudder to learn that the fattest venison of the Bishop's parks and
chases shared, at this season, the fate of beef, mutton, and pork, in
being salted down. The stud-groom, the huntsmen and their hounds, the
stable-helpers, the boys of the farm, were driving the deer out from
their thick coverts, to fall before the shafts from the cross-bows. The
hides produced by the slaughter of all the animals, wild and domestic,
were partly sold, and partly made into leather in a rude fashion for
household use. The superfluous fat of the animals was turned into
home-made candles, of which we find in the record that 80 Ibs. were
made on one day of this time of slaughtering. An attempt was made
to provide for the lack of vegetables for winter use, in the absence of
the Tudor- found potato, by the salting of greens, in the shape of certain
kinds of cabbage. Of the luxuries of the time we learn something in
reading of the provision made for the Bishop's Christmas-feast at Prest-
bury, one of his larger manor-houses. At Bosbury, five casks of wine
had been laid in, having been brought from Bristol, one of the chief
marts in the west for the wines of Gascony and the Mediterranean.

218 THE CHRISTMAS FEAST.

The Bishop's servants conveyed it by boat up the Severn, and a cask
was sent from Bosbury to Prestbury for the Christmas revels. In
December there was also a great brewing, managed in those times by
women. The sempstress, the breweress, and the house-cleaner are the
only females of whom we catch a glimpse in the Bishop's great estab-
lishment. All things had been set in order at Prestbury before the
coming of the lord of the household. The kitchen, always detached
from the house, and the ovens, had been repaired, and a penthouse,
with a dresser, had been built from the kitchen to the hall-door.
Charcoal for cooking had been burned, and brought in from the woods.
Loads of thorns from the coppices had been drawn in to heat the
ovens, and to crackle under the pots. Canvas had been given out to
repair the kitchen-strainers. The spice-box had been filled with cloves,
mace, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cummin, aniseed, and coriander. The
foreign spices came, as they do so largely still, from the East, reach-
ing Europe then by way of Arabia, Egypt, and Venice, Amongst
the spices we find given out by the steward a pound or two of the
valuable article called sugar. The Crusaders found sweet honeyed
canes, called zucra, a word of Persian origin, growing in the meadows
near Tripoli, in Syria. The article seems to have been imported into
Venice late in the tenth century. In the twelfth, it was brought to
Northern Europe in small quantities from Sicily and Egypt. At the
time of which we are writing, the end of the thirteenth century, sugar
had so far come into use by the wealthy that on one occasion 100 Ibs.
are purchased in London by Bishop Swinfield's agent. In the pro-
vincial town of Ross, a single pound is bought for eightpence, which
represents a price of nearly fourteen shillings a pound in the present
day. The article now within reach of the very poorest was thus a rare
luxury for the rich. A difference of taste is marked by the existence
of a tub for the especial reception of saffron, an indispensable article
of cookery in the Plantagenet age. When all things are in order, and
the Christmas feasting begins, we can form some idea of the prodigal
hospitality of a great baron in those days. We must remember that
there was no poor-law, and that, besides the domestic household of over
forty persons, a man like the Bishop of Hereford would have many
humble dependents. Only on the agreeable theory that the rich of
that age gave very largely of their leavings, in themselves a bounteous
feast, to the humble folk around them, can we explain the enormous
consumption of food. Christmas-day, in 1289, fell on a Sunday. There
appear to have been guests at the manor-house, from the additional
horses found in the stables. The bill of fare for the day consisted of
two carcases and three quarters of beef, with calves, does, pigs, fowls,
bread, cheese, ale, and a very large supply of red and white wine. As
a separate matter suggested by rich living, we may mention that during
the year in which, through his steward's care in keeping his parch-
ment roll of accounts, and the skill and diligence of his modern editor,

FRUIT AND CLOTHING. 219

the Reverend John Webb, we have our Bishop under a microscope, he
seems to have borne well both the fatigues of travel and work, and the
plentiful feeding of the time. On one occasion he burns a "mortar" or
night-light in his chamber, a thing usually done only in cases of illness.
Once a physician came to the manor-house, receiving a fee of half a
mark, or six and eightpence, in our coinage over six guineas. There is
no record of fees paid to the barber for bleeding, the universal remedy
for every ailment of the time. Some valet of the household was, no
doubt, the blood-letter for bishop and clerks, grooms, pages, gossoons,
and breweresses.

Vegetable food and fruit were not so plentiful as they became after-
wards in Tudor times. We find, however, that green-peas
and beans make their appearance at table in June and July, (
and that the gardens yield leeks, onions, garlic, and certain " pot-herbs."
Of lettuces we have no trace. Apples are once mentioned. Pears and
cherries were then grown in England. The famous warden-pie, which
the fanciful ignorance of many writers of poetry and romance has
represented as a huge pasty of venison or other meat, suited to the
appetite of the '' wardens " of feudal days, was really a pasty containing
the good baking-pear, grown first by the monks of Warden, in Bedford-
shire. Gooseberries were known, but the gardens had no raspberries
or strawberries. The Bishop had a vineyard at Ledbury, the grapes of
which yielded, in 1289, seven casks of white wine. There is no mention
of bees, and once only, in his travels, does the Bishop taste metheglin,
or mead, the old English drink. It would seem that there was little
cultivation of flowers, as no gardener is included in the household.
No doubt the cottages of the bailiffs would have blooming around them
the rose and the gillyflower, with the wallflower and the " fresh per-
winke " (periwinkle) of Chaucer's verse.

The clothing of a large household was an expensive item under
Edward I. During the visit to London already described,
one of the upper household, Thomas de la Dene, buys up a
large stock of goods for future use, which the capital could best supply
cloth, furs, wax, and spices ; also boots and shoes for his lord, and a
pair of boots for himself. We find that in cloth and furs he expended
about a thousand pounds of present value. The Bishop and his clerks
wore the same material, a coarse but high-priced woollen cloth, made
up into long robes. The bishop's brother, who was a layman, wore a
short cloak. The squires and bailiffs were attired in striped cloth of
good value, and the serving-men, grooms, and pages wore a cheaper
striped material. It was the furs that chiefly marked the rank of
the wearer. The Bishop had a winter overcoat of deer-skin, and a
furred cap, to keep off the cold during his journeys in winter and
spring amongst the Herefordshire hills. For oflicial costume, his
hoods were of minever, and his mantles were trimmed with the same
costly material. The chaplains had also trimmings of valuable fur;

220 THE HUSBANDMEN.

the squires and lay-clerks were distinguished by lambskin. The skins
of foxes, taken in the chase, were dressed for use in this careful house-
hold. At Whitsuntide, summer cloths were bought, of lighter texture,
but still of woollen material, called " bluett " and "russet." The Bishop
and his clerks had still the same quality of stuff; the servants are
again marked by their striped dresses. A peculiarity in the cloth of
the period was the length of its nap : when the garment was rather
shabby, the nap was freshly shorn. The same sort of woollen cloth
was worn, as the ordinary dress, both by men and women. Under
Edward I., there was already a well-established manufacture of woollen.
Totnes was the great clothing town of the western district, Beverley of
the northern, and Lincoln, of the midland. Linen, fine enough for
the Bishop's rochets, garments for ecclesiastical dignitaries, like a
surplice with tight-fitting sleeves, was bought at Aylsham, in Norfolk.
A large part of the wool grown in England was, however, exchanged
for foreign manufactures, and woollen and linen cloths were imported
from France, Flanders, and Spain.

In the Roll of Bishop Swinfield, amidst the entries of wages paid,
Story of we have no notice of the many farm-labourers who must have
a villein, been employed in an age when hand-labour derived little help
from the tools and machines of modern days. They were the serfs,
the born thralls, the bondsmen of one manor, chained by law to the
one spot from the cradle to the grave. The chroniclers of the time
notice their condition as little as that of the cattle which these people
tended. We have already noticed their passage, by slow degrees, into
the state of free labourers. Upon one of the farms of the Bishop's
manor of Ross was a bailiff named Robert Crul. His parents were
mere serfs, but he had, by his industry, thrift, and intelligence, ac-
quired property which he was allowed to accumulate whilst he worked
for his lord. That property he held only upon sufferance. He was
in a position superior to that of the ordinary villeins. Of their oppres-
sion in many ways we learn from a " Song of the Husbandman " of the
time. The singer complains of the persecutions of the hay-icard, the
wood-ward, and the bailiff. The beadle, he tells us, comes for a tax,
and says, " Prepare me silver for the green wax." To get silver for
the king, he had to sell his seed, and his cattle were taken from the
field. In 1302, by a solemn deed, Robert Crul was manumitted by
the Bishop, and " Robert Crul, of Hamme, and Matilda his wife, with
all his offspring, together with all his goods holden and to be holden,"
was rendered " for ever free and quit from all yoke of servitude." He
bought his freedom for forty marks, or ^26, 135. ^d., a sum equivalent
to over ^500 now. This manumission of a virtual slave in the thir-
teenth century was destined to ameliorate the lot of the wretched in
the eighteenth. Robert Crul, the churl of Hamme, the bailiff of good
Bishop Swinfield of Hereford, was the ancestor of John Kyrle, an
English gentleman who possessed an estate of ^500 a year at Ross,

FARMERS AND TRADERS. 221

where he died in 1724, after a life devoted to good works, at the age
of ninety. This is the man immortalised by Pope, in the Moral Essays,
by the splendid eulogy on the Man of Ross, who, at his own charges,
and by the contributions of others who were stirred by his zealous
exertions, " hung with woods " the " mountain's sultry brow ; " " whose
Causeway parts the vale with shady rows, Whose seats the weary
traveller repose." The power of good to propagate itself has rarely
been more nobly shown than in the work of the admirable body
called, after his illustrious name, the Kyrle Society, which devotes
itself to the provision of gardens for the wholesome recreation of the
toilers in the Victorian age of London.

The tenants who leased lands were subject to many exactions. The
feudal lord's bull and boar were free, under the conditions of __
the tenures, to range at night through their standing corn mers and
and grass, and the tenant's sheep had always to be folded on tlie land '
the lord's land, for a reason easy to conjecture. We learn something
of the condition of farmers and cottier tenants from a survey of
the village of Hawsted, in Suffolk, in 1288. The place contained fifty
houses. Small allotments were given at a nominal rent, or were held
without rent, in return for labour done for the lord, and the labourers
were fed besides, chiefly upon porridge. At Hawsted, there were seven
farmers, holding amongst them nine hundred and sixty-eight acres of
arable land, which, with a little meadow, averaged a hundred and forty
acres ; thirty-six small cultivators held an average of eleven acres.
The method of tillage must have been rude, when the highest rent was
sevenpence (now about twelve shillings) an acre, and some land was let
at a farthing, or five-pence, an acre.

The city of London, in the middle of the thirteenth century, was a
great commercial port, carrying on trade with the French ports Tr d
in the Channel, with Germany and Flanders, and with some of the
parts of Italy. The merchants of Almaine (Allemagne, Ger- P eriod -
many), as they are called in the charter of the 44th year of Henry III.,
had their hall in London, afterwards known as "The Steelyard." This
" factory," in the sense of a goods-depot in a foreign country, under the
charge of factors or agents, belonged to the Hanse traders, hence known
as "the Merchants of the Steelyard." It was on the bank of the Thames,
a little above London Bridge. The Hansa, or Hanseatic League, was
the great commercial organisation of that age. It was a confederacy
formed between many trading towns for mutual protection, and the
furtherance of their common interests, when commerce was greatly
exposed to piracy on sea, robbery on land, and illegal exactions from
king and baron. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Hamburg
and Liibeck first formed such an alliance. During its best period, the
Hansa embraced ninety towns, inland and on the coast, spread over
Germany and the Netherlands, from Revel to Amsterdam, and from
Cologne to Cracow. The chief town in the League was Liibeck, and

222 TRADE OF THE PERIOD.

the principal centres for trade were at Novgorod, Bergen, London, and
Bruges. The Hanso merchants in England were, to a large extent,
exempted from duties on exports, and so acquired a monopoly of some
articles in foreign markets. In London, they were large importers of
grain, flax and hemp, pitch, and steel. In 1241, we find that tin was
imported from Germany at a lower rate than it was obtained from
Cornwall. The merchants of London grew very rich, and in 1248,
when they bought Henry III.'s jewels, the king declared that " if the
treasure of Augustus were for sale, these ill-bred Londoners would suck
it all up. They possess a surfeit of riches. That city is an inexhaustible
well." It was one into which, at times, he dipped his bucket deeply,
in this and that exaction. Southampton was the great port for the
wine of Bordeaux, though Bristol, as we have seen, stocked the cellars
of the Bishop of Hereford. The silks of Italy, the muslins and spices
of India, the refined sugars of Alexandria, found their way to London
and Southampton chiefly through the Netherlands. The Italians had
become the great mercantile capitalists of England, after the expulsion
of the Jews in 1290, and conducted the banking transactions with
foreign countries, by making arrangements for remittances. They
were also money-lenders in England, and we see Jacob de Brabason,
of Sienna, in Central Italy, coming to the manor-house of Bosbury,
with two grooms and a page, to transact a little business with our
good Bishop de Swinfield.

CHAPTEE II.

THE FIGHT FOR SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE.

Edward II.'s weak character. Royal favourites. The barons rebel. The king in
Scotland. Bruce and Bannockburn. The Despensers in power. Queen Isabella
and Mortimer depose Edward. His terrible death. Parliament. The Knights
Templars dissolved.

EDWARD II. was proclaimed king at Carlisle on July 8, 1307, being then
twenty-three years of age. The new monarch was by no means
II. 1307- devoid of mental ability, but in moral power and worth lie
cMntcter s ^ an( ^ s ^ n pitiful contrast to his illustrious sire. He had lost
and his excellent mother, Eleanor of Castile, when, he was but

policy. seven years old, and, in the excesses of his youth, the son
appeared to have wholly forgotten her whose memory was so tenderly
cherished by her husband. The young Edward became at an early age,
and remained during his reign, the victim of favourites, who aroused
against the throne the wrath of the barons whom his father had not
been able to bend to his haughty will. The son's purpose, as it seems,
was to wrest the government from the hands into which it had mainly

1307 A.D.] EDWARD II. 223

fallen since the close of Henry III.'s reign, and to supersede the nobles
and prelates, who largely represented the nation, by men of a lower
class, who should take their orders from him and be subservient
to the interests and the will of their sovereign Edward II. had, in
some degree, a kindly nature, but his character was weak, impulsive,
and passionate, and wholly unfitted to contend with the men who were
the people's natural leaders, and the difficult times in which his lot
was cast. The barons of England and Bruce of Scotland would have
taxed between them the mental and moral resources of the Conqueror
himself, and, in presence of foes so formidable, a man like Edward of
Caernarvon could only come to an ignominious end as a ruler. He was
most unhappy in taking to wife such a woman as the Princess Isabel
or Isabella, branded by the poet as the "she- wolf of France." We
know not what provocations this wicked woman may have received
from the "mangled mate" whom she first assailed as a rebel, and
then, at least by connivance, did to death as a murderess. Under the
year 1300, the chronicler states that Edward I., "for complaint that
was brought unto him by Master Walter Langton, Bishop of Chester,
of Sir Edward, the king's eldest son, for that he, with Piers of Gave-
ston and other insolent persons, had broken the park of the said
bishop, and riotously destroyed the game within it, therefore im-
prisoned the said Sir Edward, his son, with his accomplices." This
" Piers of Gaveston " was the evil spirit, not only of the prince of
sixteen years, but of the man and king. When the young Edward
was in his twenty-first year, his conduct towards the same Bishop of
Chester caused the king to forbid him entering the palace, and to issue
an order to the Exchequer that sustenance should be denied to him and
his followers. A penitential letter from the Prince followed. He had
been before this better engaged, having the courage of his race, in
fighting his father's Scottish foes in 1301 and 1303. In 1306, his
cruel devastation in Scotland brought him a rebuke from the king,
and his wicked companion soon led him into further trouble. In a
Parliament held at Lanercost in February 1307, an order was issued
that Piers Gaveston should be banished for ever from the kingdom, as
a corruptor of the Prince of Wales. Five months later, the Prince of
Wales became king, and at once revoked the sentence of his sagacious
father.

Edward II. did not seriously attempt to execute the late king's
dying injunctions. Some Scottish nobles rendered homage opening
at Dumfries, and Edward marched northwards as far as of the
Cumnock, in Ayrshire. He then returned to London, accom- reisn
panied by Gaveston, who had hastened over from France, and joined
him in Scotland. Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, was left
there as guardian and lieutenant. The new minister's presence and
influence were soon felt in England. Before Christmas came, the
chief officials of the crown were changed : the favourite was loaded

224 PIERS GAVESTON. [1309-1311 A.D.

with wealth and honours, married to Margaret, the king's niece, and
appointed regent of the kingdom on Edward's departure for France,
to fetch home his bride Isabella, daughter of Philip IV. The
marriage took place at Boulogne, and on February 24, 1308, the
coronation came at Westminster. At the very inauguration of the
new monarch, the barons of the realm were insulted. All the old
claims to precedence at the coronation of English kings were dis-
regarded, and the place of greatest honour to carry the crown and
walk before the king in procession was given to Gaveston, now
created Earl of Cornwall.

This Piers de Gaveston was a Gascon of many chivalric accomplish-
Gaveston ments. At the tournament he overcame his opponents with
Sarong 6 ^ e ease afforded by strength and skill. In Ireland and in
1308-1312. Scotland he gave signs of courage and ability as a ruler and
commander. Amidst his prodigal splendour of life, he showed taste in
dress and equipage ; but he had all the gay and audacious insolence
of his race, and it was his reckless tongue that brought him to ruin.
Within three days after the coronation, the jealous nobles had petitioned
for the favourite's banishment, and the king sought delay in referring
the matter to a Parliament to be held after Easter, Gaveston was
then banished, and compelled to swear that he would never return.
He was appointed by the king, in order to break his fall, to the
government of Ireland. A few months later, in 1309, Edward per-
suaded a party of the nobles to consent to his recall, and the Pope
dispensed Gaveston from his oath. Then the court became a scene of
revelry, and Gaveston ruled with more power and insolence than ever.
The barons had now a leader in Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who was
the king's cousin, as being son of Edmund, second son of Henry III.
This great noble held also the three earldoms of Derby, Leicester, and
Lincoln. On him the foreign upstart bestowed the nickname of " the
old hog." The Earl of Pembroke was " Joseph the Jew," and the Earl
of Warwick was styled "the black dog of the wood." We can better
now understand the hatred that must have been aroused, than we can
see the point or wit of such appellations. In March 1310, the barons
came in arms to a Parliament at Westminster. They then and there
forced the king to appoint a governing Committee, under the name of
Lords retainers, to provide for the better regulation of the king's
household, and to remedy the grievances of the nation. Their moving
principle in this strong measure was, beyond doubt, a hatred of
Gaveston. Edward went off to Scotland, wintered in Berwick, and
returned to London, leaving Gaveston in command. The twenty-one
Ordainers, in October 1311, presented to the king their articles of
reform. These required that all grants made since the previous year,
and all future grants, without the consent of the barons, should be
invalid : that purveyance, except what was ancient and lawful, should
be punished as robbery : that the great officers of the crown should be

1312 A.D.] GAVESTON AND THE BARONS. 225

chosen by the advice and assent of the baronage : and that Parliaments
should be held once in each year, or oftener, if needful. Then came a
clause decreeing the banishment of Gaveston, for giving bad advice to
the king, embezzling the public money, obtaining blank charters with
the royal seal affixed to them, and estranging the king's affections from
his subjects. The attitude of the barons was not to be mistaken, and
their power not to be resisted. The protests of the king about "the
just rights of the crown" only ended in Gaveston's exile to Flanders.
In January 1312, the favourite was again in England, and Edward
issued a proclamation, declaring that the exiled man was a true and
loyal subject, and had returned in obedience to the royal command.
The barons at once took up arms, and marched on York, where the
king had been joined by Gaveston. Onward they followed their
sovereign's flight to Newcastle, and thence back to Scarborough, which
Edward had reached with Gaveston, by sea, from Tynemouth. The
Earls of Surrey and Pembroke besieged the castle, and Gaveston
surrendered, under a pledge of safety, which had been given on his
behalf to the king. He was then taken by the Earl of Pembroke to
Dedington in Oxfordshire, and the next morning found himself face to
face with " the black dog," his enraged foe, the Earl of Warwick. He
was placed on a mule, and conveyed to Warwick Castle a prisoner. As
he entered the walls of Guy's lofty tower, he came in presence of the
haughty barons whom he had insulted and despised. His skill as a
knight at the tourney, his splendid apparel, his jewelled rings, his
titles, his reliance on the power of a king all became worthless in this
terrible hour. His enemies sent him to death, and at a little knoll,
near Guy's Cliff, called Blacklow Hill, with the Avon gliding in peace
beneath, Piers de Gaveston, in defiance of honour, but in grim and
just warning to foreign favourites who trust to kings and break the
laws, had his head struck from his body. The vengeful and triumphant
nobles afterwards made a mock submission to the king at Westminster,
and Edward sought redress in constant efforts to avoid, year after year,
the execution of the terms imposed on him by the Ordainers.

Kobert Bruce was a man who was taught wisdom and moderation
in the school of danger and suffering. In his earlier struggles gcottis j l
for recognition as king, and for the independence of Scot- affairs,
land, he had been at times a fugitive, hunted by bloodhounds, 1307 ~ 1323 '
and wading in swift streams to elude their deadly scent ; defying his
enemies single-handed in mountain -pass and at river- ford. In 1309
he was recognised as king by the clergy at a general council held at
Dundee. This had a great effect on the nobles, and the powerful
Douglas, the " Good Lord James " of Scottish story, heartily took up
his cause. The family of Douglas has a famous name in Scottish
history. Of unknown origin, they were already great nobles when
the elder Bruce and Baliol were competitors for the crown. Their
Scottish estates lay upon the borders, and thus they became guardians

226 BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN. [1314 A.D.

of the kingdom against the encroachments of the English, especially of
their great border rivals, the Percies of Northumberland. The James
Douglas of this period was son of a William Douglas who had been
in the field with Wallace, and an inherited patriotism, made him
one of the chief supporters of the great Bruce throughout his career.
The troubles which had arisen between Edward II. and his barons
were the turn of the tide for Scotland. A truce made in 1309 ended
in August 1310, and border- warfare began. Then Bruce took the
field in earnest, and fortress after fortress fell. Randolph recovered
Edinburgh. Douglas retook Roxburgh and his own castle of Douglas.
Bruce seized Perth and Aberdeen, and Dundee, Dumfries, and other
places fell into the hands of the Scots, In 1312, Bruce crossed the
Tweed with a large force, burnt Hexham and part of Durham city,
and made his way even to Chester, Counter-raids were made by the
English, and the lands on both sides of the border became a desert.
At last a crisis came which roused the attention of England. A show
of reconciliation between Edward and the barons had taken place at ;.,
Parliament in October 1313. The Scottish forces were besieging the
great fortress of Stirling, the last of the castles to remain in English
possession. It was the key of the country, and Edward Bruce, the
king's brother, was in command of the assailants. The English gover-
nor, Mowbray, made an arrangement by which the place was to be
surrendered, if not relieved before June 24, 1314. The Scottish king
was displeased, but for the sake of his brother's honour agreed to abide
by the bargain. A direct challenge was thus given to English pride,
and it was promptly taken up.

Edward summoned the military tenants of the crown to meet him
Battle of at Berwick on June nth, and levies of foot were made in the
fourn C ^" nol 'thern counties and in Wales. On June i6th, only eight
June'l3l4. days before the time fixed for the surrender of Stirling, the
English king marched from Berwick at the head of a hundred thousand
men. The main strength of the host lay in its thirty thousand horse-
men. There was a vast train of provision- waggons, and of carriages
and horses laden with tents, pavilions, and the splendid equipments of
a royal court. The English army reached Edinburgh on June 2ist,
and Bruce took up a strong position to cover Stirling. His left rested
upon high ground above St. Ninians, and his right on the stream
destined to endless fame as Bannock Burn. A morass partly defended
his centre, and his army, composed of thirty thousand men, nearly all
on foot, could only be approached on a narrow front, a fact which
tended greatly to equalise the contending forces. On the left of the
Scottish army there was a level tract over which the English horse
might pass to the gate of Stirling Castle. On this ground Bruce
caused pits to be dug, in which were inserted pointed stakes, lightly
covered with turf and rushes. All that skill and labour could do to
ensure success was accomplished, and the Scottish hero and his men

1314 A.D.J BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN. 227

calmly awaited their enemy's approach. On the eve of June 23rd,
their great host was seen advancing in magnificent array. Countless
flags flew in the breeze, and the burnished steel armour of the many
thousands of horsemen glittered in the rays of the sinking sun. An
attempt of the English advanced guard to steal past to Stirling was
foiled by Bruce's nephew, Randolph, who repulsed all their charges
with a small body of spearmen. The feat of Bruce himself in slaying
the English knight Henry de Bohun further raised the spirits of the
Scots. At daybreak on June 24th, both armies prepared for battle.
When the English van was within bowshot, the Abbot of Inchaifray,
barefooted, and with crucifix held aloft, walked slowly down the
Scottish line, while the men knelt a few moments in prayer. " See,''
cried the English king, "they beg for mercy." "They do," replied
Umfraville, a Scottish baron in Edward's army, "but it is from God,
and not from you." The charge was sounded, and the Scottish squares
of spearmen received, as at Falkirk under Wallace, the attacks of the
English horse. But the issue was now different. The English archers,
whose fire at first was very severe, were scattered by Bruce's small
body of horse, kept in hand for the purpose, and then all the desperate
efforts of the mailed knights could make no impression on the squares.
The Earl of Gloucester, Edward's nephew, fell. The ranks of the
English became confused. The Scots moved slowly forward, still keep-
ing their firm array. At this moment the wavering English caught
sight of what they thought to be a fresh army in the Scottish rear.
On a hill since called the Gillies'' Hill, from the camp-followers or
servants, who had been stationed behind it, appeared a motley host of
thousands of men, armed with pikes and ox-goads, with rude pieces of
cloth fixed on tent-pales in place of heraldic banners. They were but
coming to cheer on their countrymen, but they really made an end of
the fight. The English were struck with dismay, and Bruce, with the
eye of a skilful warrior, ordered a general charge. A panic set in, and
the battle was won. The English king refused to flee, but the Earl of
Pembroke seized his bridle rein, and hurried him from the field. He
fled with a party of horse to D unbar, and there took ship for England.
About four thousand Scots had fallen, and more than double that
number of English. The spoil which the victors took was enormous.
There were herds of cattle, droves of sheep and hogs, loads of corn
with portable mills, and casks of wine. Thousands of suits of costly
armour, military engines, money, vessels, and rich apparel, captives of
rank to hold to heavy ransom, were taken on the field and in the
camp of the vanquished. The total booty may have been worth three
millions sterling, a noble prize for so poor a country as the Scotland
of that age. The most honourable reward of that great day was the
fortress of Stirling, which Mowbray, true to his word, delivered up on
the day after the battle. In exchange for some of his English captives,
the victorious king of Scots recovered at last his wife, daughter, and

228 ENGLISH AFFAIRS. [1312-22 A.D.

sisters, with the Bishop of Glasgow and the Earl of Mar. Thus
complete was the victory that made Scotland a nation ; thus splendid
was the achievement that won undying fame for the "Bruce of
Bannockburn."

This victory so roused the Scots, that, in 1315, Edward Bruce landed
Aft at Carrickfergus, with intent to drive the English from

Bannock- Ireland, in concert with the native chiefs. The Welsh rose
burn. against England, and formed an alliance with him. The
enterprise ended in failure. After reigning for a time in Ulster,
Edward Bruce was defeated and slain in 1318, in a battle near Dun-
dalk. Robert Bruce captured Berwick in the same year, and held
it in 1319 against English efforts by land and sea. The northern
counties of England, including Yorkshire, were ravaged by Scottish
forays, and great booty was taken of gold and plate, of furniture and
church ornaments. Edward's new invasion of Scotland with a great
army in 1322 failed from famine, as Bruce retired through the pur-
posely wasted Lowlands, and on May 30, 1323, a truce between the
two states was concluded for thirteen years.

For some years after Gaveston's fall in 1312, the country was in a
Internal terrible condition. There was constant feud between the king
affairs, and the barons as to the observance of the Ordinances, and
The Des- the realm was cursed by virtual anarchy. A succession of
pensers. j^ harvests, and murrain amongst the cattle, brought famine
on the wretched people. The nobles drove from their castles the
hungry retainers for whom they could find no food, and the land
swarmed with robbers. The Scots ravaged in the north, and the
people, for the time, lost all heart to resist. The result of Bannock-
burn greatly shook Edward's position at home, and Lancaster, in a
Parliament held at York in September 1314, forced him to dismiss
from the Council several of his advisers, and to replace them by friends
of his own. One of the men removed was Hugh le Despenser the
elder, a man of ability, experience, and high character, and the conduct
of the powerful Earl in this instance shows that he was unfitted for
the position which he held. In 1316, Lancaster became president of
the Council, a post of almost absolute power, which he still failed to
use wisely. The capture of Berwick by Bruce in 1318 was another
humiliation for Edward, who was now compelled to recognise the
Ordinances, and give an amnesty to all his opponents among the
barons. Then the weak king took a new favourite in Hugh le
Despenser the son, who became his chamberlain in 1318. Edward
soon roused the jealous anger of the barons by his lavish bounties to
this second Gaveston. He gave him to wife the daughter of the Earl
of Gloucester, who had fallen at Bannockburn, and the young Despenser
thus became owner of most of Glamorganshire. His wealth in cattle
and other possessions, as recited in a parliamentary document, was
enormous. He soon became embroiled with his neighbours, the lords

1321-23 A.D.] THE DESPENSERS. 229

of the "marches," who attacked his castles and harried his lands. A
league was formed against the Despensers, of whom the elder, though
deprived of office, was the possessor of wealth far beyond that of his
son. The barons demanded their banishment, which Edward indig-
nantly refused. They then marched in arms to London, and in 1321
the Parliament there passed a statute of exile against both the Des-
pensers, on a number of charges as to their evil influence over the
king. In a few months a reaction came. The feeling of the people
was roused in favour of their helpless sovereign, and Edward took up
arms in October. An insult had been offered to Queen Isabella, in the
closing against her of the gates at Leeds Castle, in Kent. The castlo
was taken by the king, and he then marched for Wales to attack his
enemies there. Lancaster and the Earl of Hereford fled to the north.
The king followed, and in a Parliament held at York in the spring of
1322, the exile of the Despensers was annulled, and they both returned
to England. Lancaster, long suspected of traitorous correspondence
with the Soots, had lately declared himself their ally, and this foolish
act put him outside the pale of public sympathy. At Boroughbridge,
near Ripon, his diminished forces were defeated by the governors of
Carlisle and York. The Earl of Hereford was killed, and Lancaster
went a prisoner to his own castle of Pontefract, at the gates of which
he had stood in 1319, and jeered Edward as he passed by on his return
from the failure to recover Berwick. The king now made a speedy
end of his rebellious kinsman. Lancaster was condemned as a traitor,
taken out of his own hall, placed on a grey pony without a bridle, and
beheaded outside the town of Pontefract. Eighteen other confederate
barons suffered death in the hour of Edward's brief triumph. A
Parliament at York then revoked all the Ordinances, and repealed
''all provisions made by subjects against the royal power of the an-
cestors of our lord the king." This seems to be aimed at the liberties
won by the charters, and to undo the work of previous ages, but
another part of the same enactment tends to prove that the legislative
power lately assumed by the baronage alone, apart from the commons,
was attacked, and that it was now laid down that a part of the king's
subjects were not to take upon themselves to dictate their will to the
sovereign.

The unfortunate Edward was now to meet with his bitterest foe in
his own household. One of the chief supporters of Thomas Fall of
of Lancaster had been Roger Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore, in n^SJ.
Herefordshire. He was spared the last penalty of treason, 1327.
and confined in the Tower of London. In 1323, ho escaped, and
proceeded to France. In Paris he met the English queen Isabella,
who had gone thither to settle some differences concerning Guienne
between her husband Edward and her brother Charles IY. of France.
Mortimer was a married man, as graceful and charming in person and
demeanour as he was hateful in moral character. These attractions

230 MORTIMER AND THE QUEEN. [1325-27 A.D.

proved irresistible, and he became the queen's avowed lover. In May
1325, Isabella made her treaty with the king of France. It was to
the effect that Edward should transfer his foreign possessions of
Uascony and Ponthieu to his son Edward, now thirteen years of age,
and that the young prince should forthwith go to Paris, and do homage
for them to the feudal lord, Charles IV. Edward suspected nothing,
and sent over his son. Isabella and Mortimer, filled with a common
hatred of the Despensers, had met in France with many exiled mem-
bers of the Lancastrian party. A league against Edward was formed,
and a correspondence maintained with those of the same views in
England. The king requested the return of his wife and son in several
letters still existing. The queen gained favour in England by an open
statement that she would never return till the Despensers were
banished from the king's councils. Her brother, Charles IV., invaded
Gascony. Isabella had been sent from France, at the instance of the
Pope, and took refuge with the Count of Hainault, to whose daughter,
Philippa, the young Edward was soon betrothed. The Count's help
supplied her with an armed force, and on September 24, 1326, she
landed at Orwell, in Suffolk, with two thousand men. Many Lancas-
trian nobles were in her train, and powerful barons and prelates, includ-
ing the king's half-brothers, the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, joined her
on her arrival. A proclamation was issued, stating that the queen, the
Prince, and the Earl of Kent were going to free the nation from the
tyranny of the Despensers. Edward in vain applied for help to the
citizens of London, and then fled to the west with his two friends.
The elder Despenser was taken and executed in October. Edward
tried to reach the fortified Isle of Lundy, but was driven by a storm to
the Welsh coast at Swansea. The younger Despenser was captured
and hanged as a traitor at Hereford, and the king was put in prison
at Kenilworth Castle. On January 17, 1327, a Parliament met at
Westminster. The young Edward was declared king, and a deputa-
tion was sent to Kenilworth to demand his father's assent to his own
deprivation of royal power. The hapless monarch received from Sir
William Trussel, the procurator or proctor of the nobles assembled at
Westminster, their renunciation of allegiance, and then Sir Thomas
Blount, the steward of the household, broke his staff of office, a
ceremony always observed at a king's death. On January 24th, the
accession of the new king was proclaimed with the title of Edward III.,
and the coronation followed on the 2gih.

It might have been supposed that a king, deposed and utterly
Murder of ne lp^ ess > would be allowed at least to live in peace and
Edward obscurity. It is certain that some dark mystery lies below
the violence and cruelty shown in the treatment of Edward
II. So far as we know, he had not wronged his wife or son : he had
simply been a weak and incapable king, a chooser of advisers not
always evil, as the favour shown to the elder Despenser proves. He

1307-27 A.D.] PARLIAMENT UNDER EDWARD. 231

had been lavish of money, and unfortunate in war. Yet in the hour
of his fall, he has not a single friend or supporter. The atrocious and
indescribable cruelty used in his murder at Berkeley Castle in Sep-
tember 1327, marks the crime as the most odious infamy perpetrated
in all our history. The villainous Mortimer confessed, afterwards, at
the point of death, that he had ordered its commission, and stated
that Thomas Gournay and William Ogle were the doers. The "shrieks
of an agonising kiug ;; seem yet to ring through the ages, arousing
ceaseless wonder as to what evil in a crowned and anointed monarch
could have provoked so terrible a doom.

In the course of the fourteenth century, there was a marked growth
in the power and importance of Parliament. During the first p ar ji a .
fifty years of the life of the institution, since the days of De ment
Montfort, it became settled that solemn acts of change in the Edward
method of rule must be done by this body, and also that Parlia- IL
ment alone could legally enforce the payment of any tax. Under
Edward II. , we find the Commons voting taxes only on condition of
the redress by the king of grievances which they brought before him.
The action of the barons throughout the reign shows, however, that
they held the proper sphere of the Commons to be confined to asking
for redress and ordering payment of taxes to the king by the class
which they represented. High matters of state, such as the making
of peace and war, and important changes in the government, such as
the passing of the Ordinances, were regarded as belonging only to the
nobles of the land.

It was during this period of violent change that the great military
order of the Templars was dissolved, after holding high T) iggolu
authority and influence in Europe for nearly two hundred tion of
years. In 1307, Philip IY. of France, desirous of acquiring Knigfcts-
for himself the great wealth of the Order, seized the palace of Templars,
the Temple in Paris, and threw into prison the Grand Master 1324>
and all the Knights. The total ruin of the body, so famous for their
deeds of arms, and so obnoxious for their luxury and pride, was soon
completed throughout Europe, under sanction of the Pope. In France,
the utmost cruelty was used, and the Grand Master, with many Knights,
perished at the stake. In England, a milder course was adopted. In
1308, by sealed directions sent to all the sheriffs in England and Ireland,
about 250 Knights were arrested, and all their property was seized.
Before a tribunal of prelates and Papal agents, many of the Knights
boldly maintained their innocence. The use of torture was urged upon
the king in a letter from the Pope, but the honour of the country was
saved by the Archbishop of York declaring that torture was unknown
in England, and that there was no machine for such a purpose to be
found in the kingdom. The Knights were 'kept in prison, and in 1324
a statute was passed reciting that, the Order of the Templars having
been dissolved, their lands and tenements had been taken into the

232 DISSOLUTION OF THE TEMPLARS. [1324 A.D.

hands of the king and of divers other feudal lords ; but that now, as
the Order of ohe Brethren of St. John of Jerusalem is instituted and
canonised for the defence of Christians, the lands and all appurtenances
of the Templars should go to that Order, to be employed, as the Templars
should have employed them, in relieving the poor, in hospitalities, in
celebrating divine service, and in defence of the Holy Land. The
Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, had a great priory in Clerkenwell,
where they maintained as much state as the Templars had done on the
banks of the Thames. The held their wealth in England till the sup-
pression of the Order by Henry VIII. In the reign of Edward III.
the students of the law took possession of the great house of the
Templars in London, and their preceptories in the rural districts fell
into decay, or became the homesteads and barns of the descendants of
the Saxon villeins whom the proud Norman knights had oppressed and
despised.

CHAPTEE III.

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR BEGINS.

Scotland left independent. Edward III. assumes power. The new king's character.
The war with France. Cre"cy, th'e Black Prince, Poitiers. Home-affairs. The
Black Death. Legislation. Treaty of Bretigny. Loss of French territory. Death of
Black Prince. Parliament and John of Gaunt. Parliament under Edward III.

ON the deposition of Edward II., Parliament named a council of regency,
Edward and Henry, Earl of Lancaster, was made guardian and pro-
1377 132? ~ tector f the young king's person. Edward was now but
Early fourteen years of age, and the rule of the country was really
reign f * n ^ ne h ana< s of Mortimer and Isabella. The success with
1327-1330. which they wielded the power so wickedly acquired was not
such as to win the admiration of the people. The first trouble that
arose came from the side of Scotland. The truce for thirteen years,
concluded in 1323, had come to a legal end in the deposition of Edward
II., and war soon began. A Scottish army under Douglas and Randolph
crossed the borders and ravaged Cumberland. The young king went
against them with a great host of English knights and archers, aided
by foreign troops from Hainault, but the result was utter failure.
Edward was all but captured in a daring night-attack made upon his
camp by Douglas, and the Scots then slipped away in safety to their
country. This was the king's first lesson in warfare. He was out-
generalled by a foe of far smaller numbers, and it is recorded that he
wept at his discomfiture. The days were coming when he should wage
war, with a far different issue, against other foes than the Scots. King
Robert Bruce was now to receive the reward of his long and heroic
struggle for the independence of his country. In a Parliament held at

1330 A.D.] FALL OF MORTIMER. 233

York in January 1328, a treaty was prepared in which the English
king declared for himself and his heirs that the kingdom of Scotland
should remain " to the great prince Lord Robert, by the grace of God
illustrious king of Scotland, and that Scotland shall be separated from
the kingdom of England, and from all claims of subjection or vassalage."
The treaty was concluded at Edinburgh in March, and ratified by the
English Parliament at Northampton in April, being thus known as the
Treaty of Northampton.

Bruce did not long survive this grand success. He died at Cardross,
near Dumbarton, in June 1329, and was buried in the Abbey Death of
of Dunfermline. In pursuance of his vow to bear arms Bruce,
against the infidels, he had charged Lord James Douglas to carry his
heart to Jerusalem and bury it there. The heart was placed in a silver
casket, but Douglas was killed in 1330, fighting in Spain against the
Moors of Granada. As he saw himself surrounded, he flung the casket
before him, with the cry, "Onward as thou wert wont, noble heart!
Douglas will follow thee ! " The heart of the great king was recovered
near the body of his faithful friend, and placed in the church of Melrose
Abbey. Bruce was succeeded by his young son, David, a boy of five,
crowned at Scone in 1331 as David II.

In 1328, the young King Edward was married to Philippa of
Haiuault. The treaty with Scotland had severely wounded Fallof
English pride, and Mortimer's power began to decline. By a Mortimer,
base deception, the upstart brought, to the scaffold the young 1330>
Earl of Kent, and the Earl of Lancaster, the nominal head of the
regency, became alarmed for his own safety. Mortimer had been
created Earl of March in 1328, and his pride and unscrupulous conduct
had aroused universal fear and hatred. The young king, in 1330,
determined to act for himself. He was in his eighteenth year, and
had lately become a father by the birth of the boy who was to be
hereafter the renowned "Black Prince." A Parliament was to be held
at Nottingham, and Queen Isabella took up her residence in the castle
with Edward and Mortimer. The place was filled with guards, and
the keys of its gates were taken every night to the chamber of Isabella.
But there was a subterraneous passage, leading from the w r est side of
the sandstone-rock on which the castle stood, the entrance to which
from the road is still known as " Mortimer's Hole." Edward had gained
to his interest the governor, Sir William Eland, and on October 10,
1330, a force of soldiers was introduced at midnight, who made their
way to Mortimer's room, slew the knights who defended the entrance,
forced the door, and carried off their victim, amidst Isabella's shrieks
of "Spare my gentle Mortimer!" On the next morning, Edward
issued a proclamation, declaring that for the future he would himself
govern his people by right and reason, as became his own dignity, and
with the advice of the common council of the realm. In November,
Mortimer was condemned as a traitor in a Parliament at Westminster,

234 MARKS OF THE PERIOD. [1330 A.D.

and hanged on a gibbet at Tyburn, in a district near London, on the
great western road, now covered with the abodes of the affluent, after
being for a long period the scene of execution for common felons. The
ex-queen passed the rest of her life, until 1357, in strict confinement
at her manor of Rising, near King's Lynn. Once or twice a year the
king paid her a formal visit, and then rode away, leaving her to the
memories of the past.

The famous king who now comes fully before the view was a man
Character ^ g rea * ambition and energy, with a large capacity for civil
of Edward affairs, and skill and courage in war. His rule over nobles
marks o^ and people was, in the main, firm, vigorous, and success-
ive period. f u L !J e } ia d the chivalrous virtues of munificence and cour-
tesy, and won, in his best days, the love and esteem, of barons and
commons. His long reign was, on the whole, glorious for triumphs of
the English arms, for constitutional progress, for the advancement of
trade, and for the assertion of English rights against the Papal power.
If it closed in outward disaster and gloom, it did not the less leave
behind it enduring and beneficent results. The great English nation
was now formed, and was about to show its strength and prowess on
Continental fields. The islanders whom Norman knights and barons
had once regarded with disdain were to cross the sea, and, with their
cloth -yard shafts from bows of native yew, effect for a time the con-
quest of France. The great contest known as the " Hundred Years'
War" was to begin; and though, happily for England, it closed with
our expulsion from the soil that we had coveted, the struggle taught
the yeomen and peasants their strength and value, and the power of
their own right arms to resist the aggression and to curb the spirit of
baron and of king. Physical force must ever be the last hidden re-
source of all moral restraint, and the liberties of England would have
perished all untimely, if her sons had not, upon the soil of Picardy,
and on the western plains of France, proved that, against amazing
odds, they still could fight and win. The triumphs of the age were
not limited to those won upon the field of battle. It was in the reign
of the third Edward that our Parliament assumed its present form,
and established, in the main, its present rights. Then, too, our noble
language finally asserted its claims with success, and won its way to
general use throughout the nation. The nobles laid aside the iise of
French, and, early in the next reign, all the grammar-schools were
teaching English to the young learners. In 1362, the native tongue
was ordered for use in the law-courts, from sheer general ignorance
of the Norman-French hitherto employed in the proceedings. The
language of the people, enriched from French and Latin sources, be-
came the copious and forcible medium for the expression of thought
which was about to give instruction and delight in the -prose of John
Wycliffe and the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. In this reign, too, the
towns and trade of the country displayed the vigorous life and rapid

1330-32 A.D.] EDWARD AND SCOTLAND, 235

growth which belong to an age of extended freedom and of new ideas.
In turning towards the picturesque side of the period, we find that
chivalry, before its coming decline, puts on its most attractive features
of courtesy and courage, the knightly qualities set forth in colours so
seductive by the great chronicler of chivalry, Sir John Froissart. The
reign of Edward III. was the golden age of that romantic display,
beneath the surface of which so many evil things lie lurking for the
inspection of the close observer. Of all these things the chronicler says
nought. Froissart delights in setting forth the peaceful graces of the
life of king and noble ; the minstrelsy and tales of glee ; the dances
and the carols. He goes forth to the chase with hawk and hounds.
He sees the fairest maiden bestow the silken scarf upon the victor in
the tourney. He hears without a shudder the herald's cries of " The
love of ladies," " Glory won by blood." He does not see the bleeding
horse, the gasping knight. There are death-wounds in the meetings
of the melee, but the wine is sparkling, and the harp is sounding,
in the lighted hall. Thus, too, does he describe the course of warfare
the charge of horse, the unbroken ranks of foot, the fatal volleys of
the archers, the solemn confession before battle, the elation of heart
at the cry of " Banners advance ! " the knighting on the field. The
horrors are passed over in a few brief sentences, made grim by the em-
phatic words, " burnt " " robbed " " wasted " " pillaged " " slain "
"beheaded." Such as it was, the age of chivalry shows at its best
not long before its brightness paled, like stars before the sun, in the
dawn of higher and better things.

One of the first cares of Edward, on assuming the regal authority,
was to reduce the land to a state of peace and order. Robbery Edward
and murder were rife, and bands of evil-doers were maintained gcotfand
by the nobles for employment in their mutual feuds. Bodies 1330-1342.'
of troops were set to work under the king's own personal direction, and
a vigorous use was made of the office of the hangman. He then found
his attention called to the affairs of Scotland. The Regent Randolph,
who had ruled with vigour and prudence since the death of Bruce in
1329, died in 1332, and was succeeded in his office by the Earl of Mar.
Trouble then arose through the action of Edward Baliol, son of the
former king of that name. He came over from France to the English
court, and was well received by Edward. Great discontent prevailed
among the Scottish nobles, many of whom had not received back, in
accordance with the Treaty of Northampton, the estates which they
had held in England. The case of many English nobles, who had
been possessors of lands in Scotland, was the same, and both parties
hoped that a change of rule in Scotland would favour their desire
to recover their lost possessions. Both parties therefore supported
Edward Baliol's claim to the throne. Edward is believed to have'
secretly encouraged, though he openly forbade, the enterprise. In
August 1332, Baliol sailed from the Hum her with a small army, and

236 HALIDON HILL. [1333-1341 A.D.

landed on the coast of Fife. His success was wonderful in its swift-
ness and completeness. A far larger Scottish force, under the Regent
Mar, was routed at Dupplin, the Regent being among the slain. The
young king, David Bruce, fled to France, and Baliol was crowned at
Scone. In the very moment of success, he ruined his own cause with
the people of Scotland by a renewal of the vassalage to England, and
the formation of an alliance with Edward. The younger Randolph,
who had succeeded Mar, made a sudden attack which drove Baliol in
helpless flight to England. War then began between the two countries,
and in the summer of 1333, the siege of Berwick by a great army
under Edward brought on a crisis. A brave defence was made by the
garrison, but the attack on the land side was pressed so hard that the
governor promised to surrender unless he were relieved by July 2oth.
A Scottish force, which was coming to the rescue, attacked Edward on
the 1 9th at Halidon Hill, a tract of rising ground to the north-west of
the town. The result was for the Scots a severe defeat, in which the
Regent, Lord Archibald Douglas, and many Scottish lords were killed.
The issue was largely brought about by the terribly effective fire of the
English archers on the Scots who advanced to the assault of the Eng-
lish position. The town of Berwick was surrendered the next clay.
Baliol then resumed the kingship as Edward's vassal, and ceded to him
the possession of the south-eastern counties of Scotland, or the district
known as the Lothians and Merse (the March). Many of the Scottish
nobles still adhered to the cause of David Bruce, and the position of
Baliol was very uneasy. When the English king became closely en-
gaged with France, the support of his forces was, to a large extent,
withdrawn from his Scottish feudatory, and in 1339 Baliol was glad
to retire to England. Perth, Cupar, Stirling, and other fortresses
were recovered by the Scots, and when Edinburgh fell into their hands
in 1341, David returned from France, and was welcomed by all his
subjects. This event was, in fact, the finally successful assertion of
Scottish independence.

The friendship of France and Scotland, shown in the substantial aid
England given to King David against England, was the immediate
France cause of Edward III.'s conflict with his powerful neighbour
1328-1349. and suzerain, Philip VI. Edward had already put forward a
Years*War shadowy claim to the French crown, based upon his being the
begins. son o f Isabella, daughter of Philip IV. The last of her three
brothers who were kings of France, Charles IV., died in 1328, leaving
no male issue. The English king claimed the throne on the ground
that, though the Salic law excluded females, it did not preclude the
claim of a male through a female. It seems that this point had never
yet been determined, but, granting it to Edward, there was a claim
prior to his that of Charles, king of Navarre, descended from Philip
IV, through a daughter of Philip's son, Louis X. The French throne
had been taken by Philip of Valois, cousin of the deceased Charles IV.,

1337-1340 A.D.] ENGLAND AND FLANDERS. i>:37

and on two occasions, in 1329 and 1331, Edward had fully recognised
his pretensions by doing homage to him for Guienne as Philip VI. of
France. The English king was greatly irritated by the French help
afforded to Scotland, an interference which had, as he conceived,
mainly caused the loss of his prey when it was fully within his grasp.
There was a vast difference in the apparent strength of the two com-
batants. The territory and population ruled by Philip far exceeded
those of the English sovereign, and Edward sought to equalise matters
by Continental alliances. In October 1337, he took the title of king
of France, and openly prepared for invasion. Large sums of money
were spent in buying up the help of petty German and other states on
the northern and eastern borders of France, but they proved of little
service, and Edward found, like other English rulers after him, that
it was better to trust to his own subjects. In two respects, the position
of Philip was inferior to that of Edward. The nobles of France did
not form, like the barons of England, a strong collective body. The
people of France were not, like the people of England, animated by
the vigorous impulses of a rising spirit of freedom. There was one
democratic country across the sea in which Edward might, as he hoped,
find substantial help for his cause. We have seen how largely the
wool of England was sent to Flanders for manufacture, and how bodies
of Flemish weavers were brought over to settle in England, and teach
their art to our people. This interchange of the good offices of com-
mercial intercourse had been already largely extended by Edward, who
settled many Flemish immigrants in the eastern counties, and derived
a revenue of over thirty thousand pounds a year from the export duties
on English wool. The people of Flanders, as democrats, were hostile
in advance to the feudal nobles of France : the people of the towns, in
particular, as weavers of wool, were largely dependent on England for
their raw material. The burghers and trade-corporations of Ghent,
Bruges, and other Flemish towns, were, as a body, the richest people in
Europe, and their power and spirit were such as to enforce respectful
treatment from the sovereign, count, and nobles of the land.

An invasion of France from the north by Edward in 1339 had failed
from the supineriess of the Emperor and other German allies, War toe _
and he now turned to his commercial friends. The great enemy gias 1339.
of the liberties of the people of Flanders was the king of France. He
had defeated the revolted burghers at Cassel in 1328, and the Flemings,
now under their great leader, Jacob van Artevelde, were prepared for
the strictest alliance with England. A treaty was concluded by Edward
with them and the Duke of Brabant, and both sides prepared for war.

In 1340, Edward had gone over to England, leaving his queen,
Philippa, at Ghent, when he was informed that Philip had Battle of
gathered a great fleet in the harbour of Sluys, at the mouth Sluys,
of the Scheldt. He set sail from Orwell with a powerful June
armament, and when he arrived off Blankenberg, "he saw," as Froissart

238 INVASION OF FRANCE. [1346 A.D.

tells us, " so great a number of ships, that their inasts seemed to be
like a great wood." The action which ensued was long and fierce.
The first English success was the recapture of a large vessel, the
Christopher , which had been taken in the previous year. The fighting
was very close, and the English archers did terrible execution. After
a contest of many hours, victory declared for Edward's men. Over
two hundred French ships, or more than half the fleet, were taken,
and the enemy lost many thousands of men. Edward then besieged
Tournay with a great host, but want of money forced him to desist.
A truce was made with Philip, and the war practically ended till 1344.
The murder of Van Artevelde in a popular rising at Ghent deprived
Battle of -^dward of his chief ally, and he prepared to renew the struggle
Cr6cy, with reliance mainly placed upon his English nobles, knights,
1346. peasants, and yeomen. One of his best captains, the famous

Sir Walter Manny, had already done good service with Englishmen, in
forcing the French to raise, in 1342, the siege of the castle of Henne-
bonne in Brittany, bravely defended by the Duchess, Jeanne de Mont-
fort. Her husband was a prisoner in Paris, and the chronicler tells us
of her being in extremity with her garrison, when she looked down
from a window of the castle over the sea, and "smiling for great joy,"
cried, "I see the succours of England coining!" In 1346, Gascony
was being threatened by a great French army, when Edward gathered
a large fleet and land force at Southampton, with intent to sail to its
relief. The winds detained him in harbour so long that he resolved to
make for France at the nearest point, and cause a diversion by attack-
ing the enemy from the north. On July 10, the English king landed
near Cape la Hogue, in Normandy, with 30,000 men. His eldest son,
Edward, Prince of Wales, now sixteen years of age, and the chief nobles
of England, were there. The chief strength of the army lay in the four
thousand mail-clad men at arms and the ten thousand archers. The
rest were Welsh and Irish infantry. The mounted nobles of France
were now to be put to the test, and a secret was to be revealed which
few yet suspected the real want of military power in the haughty
world of feudalism. The town of Barfleur was surrendered and de-
spoiled, and then, passing by the strong castle of Cherbourg, the Eng-
lish came to Carentan, where the fortress was taken by assault. The
fleet sailed along shore, and received on board wealthy burgesses that
were taken and held to ransom. Caen was taken with some loss from
missiles hurled down by the townsfolk on the men marching through
the streets, and the fleet was now sent home, laden with prisoners and
plunder. Edward and his men were thus fully engaged in a hostile
country, and there was nothing before them but victory, capture, or
death. By Evreux and Louviers, with avoidance of castles and wallecl
towns, the march for the Seine went on. The English king's object
was to cross the river at Rouen and march on Calais, there to meet an
army of Flemings. Philip, however, was before him at Po>uen ; and

1346 A.D.] BATTLE OF CRECY. 239

had broken the bridge of boats. Edward then went straight for Paris,
and came, by the left bank, through Yernon and Mantes, to Poissy.
His position was one of great peril. He was separated by two rivers,
the Seine and the Soinme, from his Flemish friends, and Philip was
fronting him on the opposite bank. Some of the English made their
way to St. Germain and Neuilly, while the rest repaired the bridge of
Poissy. The Seine was then crossed by the army, and Philip took up
a position at St. Denis. Edward then marched for the Somme, by
way of Beauvais, and the French arrny hurried to Amiens. Their de-
tachments on the right bank of the Somme were guarding every ford
and breaking down every bridge, in pursuance of Philip's plan of
shutting up the enemy in the nook between the Somme and the sea.
At Pecquigny and Pont de Remy, Edward's advance-guard was inet
and confronted by an overwhelming force, and they returned to report
to him at Airaines that no passage could be found. The chronicler
tells us that thereupon "the king of England was right pensive.''
From Airaines the invaders made in haste for Oiseinont, while the
scouts hurried on to Abbeville and St. Valery. At last a peasant was
found who knew of a spot below Abbeville where the Somme, there
tidal, could be forded at low water. The bottom was hard, with white
stones, giving the place its name of "Blanchetaque." At sunrise on
the morning of Friday, August 25th, the English, marching from
Oisemont, reached the critical point, to find themselves confronted by
twelve thousand men. A fight took place at the crossing of the ford,
and some loss was caused by the Genoese crossbows, but the' English
archers cleared the way with their steady volleys, and that night our
army encamped in the fields near Crecy. The French king, who had
now 100,000 men in hand, had his head-quarters at Abbeville.

The village of Crecy has behind it ground gently rising into a broad
ridge, and there Edward posted his men. The army was formed iu
three divisions, all on foot, with the horses and baggage-carts parked
behind them in a wood defended by entrenchments. The flanks were
also entrenched, and a ditch protected the front. The ground behind
this was held by two divisions, the right commanded by the Prince of
Wales, having with him the Earl of Warwick and the valiant Chandos :
the left was commanded by the Earls of Northampton and Arundel.
Above them were stationed the reserve, under the king's immediate
command. Each brigade included men-at-arms and archers, but the
force had been so reduced by the marching, fighting, and disease of
seven weeks, that only about eight thousand archers and men-at-arms,
with a few thousand of the Welsh and Irish foot, were left to face n
host of seven times their number. The English king was at the famous
windmill, on the highest point of the position. At nine o'clock on the
morning of August 26th, our army, having broken their fast, lay down
to await the foe. It was afternoon before they appeared, wearied by a
march of fifteen miles, and some of Philip's advisers wished him to rest

240 BATTLE OF CRECY, [1346 A.D.

for that day. This counsel was left unheeded, and the battle began
with volleys from the crossbows of the Genoese. It was now five
o'clock in the evening, and the sun shone brightly out, after a storm
of thunder and rain, full in the eyes of the French, and on the backs
of the English. A well-aimed volley from our bowmen routed the
Genoese at once, and then the French cavalry came on. The flying
shafts shot down men and horses, and the light-armed Welsh and
Irish dashed in with their knives. The chivalry of France were not
to be beaten by one or two repulses, and the battle raged fiercely.
The Prince of Wales was hard pressed, but his father let him fight on,
and "win his spurs." The incessant volleys of our archers caused a
slaughter so dreadful that the French at last wavered and fell into
disorder. The Count of Alenon, the king's brother, the Count of
Flanders, and many other nobles had fallen ; knights by hundreds and
footmen by thousands lay on the field. Putting aside as doubtful the
use of cannon by the English, and the story of the blind king of
Bohemia's feathers and motto, we can safely affirm that before dark
the French king had left the field with the remains of an army utterly
beaten, and to a large extent destroyed. He stayed not till he reached
Amiens, leaving behind him over thirty thousand slain men. By
torchlight on the field Edward embraced his brave son, who became
the terror of the French from that hour as the Black Prince, from the
colour of the mail worn by him on this great day. The battle of Crecy
was a struggle of even more than national importance. The bow and
bill of that age were exchanged for the matchlock and the pike of Tudor
and Stuart times, and these again for the musket and bayonet of the
battles of Marlborough and Wellington, but the serene and stubborn
courage of the men who wielded the weapons was now first proved
on a great scale, with success almost portentous. The bearing of that
success on the position and repute of feudal nobles, until then held
to be the only real fighters, has been already noticed as involving a
political and social revolution. The evil side of this warlike glory won
on the " famed Picard field" was the hostility, of nearly five centuries'
endurance, thereby engendered between two great nations. The loss
of the French, dreadful as it was, including eleven great nobles, and
nearly thirteen hundred knights, was not confined to that suffered in
the great battle. On the next morning, Sunday, August 2yth, there
was a heavy fog, and an English detachment of five hundred lances
and two thousand archers went out to scour the country. They fell in
with two separate French forces, and almost destroyed them. The whole
English loss in the battle of Crecy amounted to but a few hundred men.
The spirit of the nation was now fully aroused. David II., the king
Neville's ^ Scotland, took advantage of Edward's absence to cross the
Cross, border, in the hope of striking a good blow for his friend
King Philip. On October lyth, he was encountered to the
south-west of Durham city by an army under Henry Percy, Again

1347 A.D.] SIEGE OF CALAIS. 241

the glory of the day rested with the English archers. The Scots were
utterly defeated, with the loss of many thousands of men, and King
David was taken prisoner. He remained a captive in England till
1357, when he was released on the Scottish Parliament undertaking to
pay a heavy ransom. Sir Ralph Neville, who had commanded the
English along with Percy, erected a cross to commemorate the victory,
and the event became known as the Battle of Neville's Cross.

The English forces in G-uienne, under the Earl of Lancaster, attacked
Philip's dominions on the south, and ravaged the country as The war
far as the Loire. On August 3ist, Edward began the long in France,
siege of Calais, which was blockaded by land and sea. The French
king, with a new great army, took the field at Whitsuntide, 1347, and
started to raise the siege c On approaching Calais, he found the English
force so strongly entrenched that attack was hopeless, and Edward was
too wise to be tempted forth by a challenge to meet again in the open
field. The French army was disbanded after a stay of six weeks, and
the men of Calais were forced to surrender from famine, after con-
suming all their horses and dogs. The burghers who volunteered for
death, in order to save the lives of their fellow-citizens, were saved
by the earnest entreaties of Queen Philippa, who was there with the
ladies of her court. The taking of Calais occurred on August 3,
1347, and the place remained in our hands for over two centuries, being
held as a Channel port and a door of entrance to France. Edward
made all the inhabitants leave, and settled there an English trading
colony, who formed a great depot for wool and leather, lead and tin,
the chief articles of our commerce in Continental markets. The French
king's resources were now exhausted, and Edward also was glad of a
respite. After the capture of Calais, a truce was made between the
two monarchs, and there was no more regular warfare till 1355.

Edward returned to England in October, and proceeded to Windsor,
where he had both romantic and practical work to perform. Edward
He was naturally ready to associate the memory of his great Windsor
victory with the ostentation of chivalry. He had summoned Castle,
illustrious knights to a "Feast of the Round Table "at Windsor, before
his invasion of France. It was soon after his return that he founded
the highest and most ancient order of knighthood the Order of the
Garter. It is stated that Richard I., at the siege of Acre, caused some
of his bravest officers to tie leathern thongs round their legs as a
distinction, and that Edward III. therefore made the Garter the badge
of his knightly order. Its common title, until the reign of Edward VI,
was the Order of St. George. The badge suspended from the collar of
gold is called "the George/' and consists of a figure of St. George OR
horseback, fighting the dragon. This " holy knight," the patron saint
of England, is a semi-mythical personage of the early Church the
story of whose exploits struck the imagination of the Crusaders. They
adopted him as one of their patrons, and introduced his worship into

242 THE BLACK DEATH. [1348 A.D.

Western Europe. In 1222, the Council of Oxford ordered that his
day, April 23, should be observed as a national holiday in England.
In 1349, the victor of Creey solemnly established the statutes of the
Order. High festival was held at Windsor, and the king, with twenty -
iive companion-knights, went in procession to the Chapel of St. George,
where the ceremonies of installation were performed. Edward III.,
who has been styled, from his dealings with the wool-trade of Eng-
land and Flanders, "the royal merchant," was also a great builder.
His chief architect was William of Wykeham, the famous founder of
Winchester School and of New College, Oxford, and the rebuilder of
Winchester Cathedral. In 1336 he became Bishop of Winchester,
and, in the following year, Chancellor of England. The king always
had a strong affection for Windsor, which he mentions, in a letter to
the Pope, as the place of his birth. He resolved to make the town
one of royal residence, and in 1356 appointed William of Wykeham to
superintend the erection of a new castle. The old building, with the
exception of three towers on the west, built by Henry III., was pulled
down, and a new palace, of which little now remains, was taken in
hand. It is worthy of notice, as a sign of the semi-serfdom of the
working-class, that letters-patent were issued by the king to press
hewers of stone, carpenters, and other artificers, and that the same
principle of impressing workmen was put in force during twenty years.
At the palace of Westminster, the famous Chapel of St. Stephen had
been completed with great magnificence in 1347. This building be-
came, under Edward VI., the House of Commons, which was destroyed
by fire in 1834.

The people of England had scarcely ceased to exult in the Continental
The successes of their arms when the land was stricken by the

Death" most terrible plague of sickness that has ever ravaged Europe.
1348-49. Such was the impression caused, that many charters and other
documents of 1349 are not dated as issued in the "23rd year of
Edward III.," but in "the year of the Great Pestilence." Within a
month after the jousts, banquets, and dances of Windsor, the disease,
having first come to our shores at the close of 1348, was raging with
full intensity. It first appeared in 1346 in Upper India and China,
and thence made its way through Asia and into Europe. The habits
of an age which knew nothing of the destructive nature of " dirt in the
wrong place," or of the merits of pure water and pure air, rendered
every street and house in the towns a hotbed for the propagation of
fever in the most deadly forms. The visitation of Italy by the pest in
1348 has been vividly described by Boccaccio in his introduction to the
Decameron. There was no country in which at least one-third of the
inhabitants were not destroyed. The population of England was then,
as far as can be judged, rather under four millions, and of these about
one-half were now swept away. The crops were left to rot for want of
labourers to cut them, and town and country were full of desolation,

1349-60 A.D.] LEGISLATION OF THL REIGN. ?

mourning, and woe. Most of the land became untilled for lack of
labour, and so great was the emigration of persons possessed of capital,
that, on December i, 1349, a roj^al order, addressed to the mayors and
bailiffs of all the seaports, directed that no man should be suffered
to leave the kingdom, except he were a messenger, a notary, or a
merchant.

The Black Death had far-reaching economical and legislative results.
For the first time in the history of the country, the free j^g.
labourers of England had the mastery in their hands, and lation of
the age of trades-unions was anticipated by five centuries. le rei 1L
War was declared by labour against capital. Hands were wanted on
all sides, not only to till the soil, but to tend the sheep and cattle.
The sudden rise of wages disorganised the whole industrial system,
and the land-owners of the country and the employers of craftsmen in
the towns saw nothing but ruin before them. An appeal to the arbi-
trary power of immediate legislation produced, in 1349, a royal order,
and in 1351, the famous enactment known as the Statute of Labourers.
The first of these required that all persons, men and women, bond and
free, under sixty years of age, who had no land of their own to till,
or no other means of livelihood, should work for any employer who
might demand their services. For such employment only such wages
could be asked as were given in his or her neighbourhood two years
before the appearance of the plague The penalty of imprisonment
was attached to any refusal to work. The Statute of Labourers went
far beyond this. A scale of wages was set forth to be paid by em-
ployers to all labourers in husbandry, and to all carpenters, masons,
tilers, arid others engaged in building. The labouring-class were also
once more bound to the soil, as in the old days of strict villenage and
serfdom. Imprisonment was the penalty for any toiler who might
leave his parish in search of better wages elsewhere. The struggle
which ensued between capital and labour was long and stubborn. The
statute was repeatedly passed, and reaction went so far as to decree
the branding of a fugitive labourer, and to revoke the old privilege of
escape from serfdom by residence within a chartered town. Attempts
were also made by landowners to bring back the full form of feudalism,
as regarded villenage, by annulling manumissions and insisting on the
performance of the feudal " services," in the way of unpaid labour,
from which exemption had long been obtained. The natural result of
the feeling thus aroused among the toilers will be seen in the armed
revolt of labour in the next reign. A premonition of this rising was
given in 1360, when a Kentish priest named John Ball began to preach
to the labourers and small farmers of his county the doctrine of social
equality, and to inquire why, since all came from Adam and Eve,
some were to be lords and others labourers, some to toil and others
to idle and enjoy, some to be clad in velvet and others in filthy
rags.

244 FRENCH AND SCOTCH AFFAIRS, [1355 A.D.

In 1351, the liberty of the subject was further defended against the
Other attacks of arbitrary sovereigns by the popular and excellent
statutes, enactment called the Statute of Treasons. The crime of treason
had hitherto been left vague. It was now laid down that, in order to
incur the penalties of treason, a subject must (i) compass (i.e. contrive)
the sovereign's death : (2) levy war against him within his realm : (3)
adhere to his enemies in his realm, or give them "aid and comfort" in
the realm or elsewhere : (4) counterfeit the great or privy seal : (5)
slay the chancellor, treasurer, or any of the king's higher judges when
in execution of his official duties. -In the same year, a blow was aimed
at Papal claims by the Statute of Provisors, which forbade all appli-
cations to the court of Rome for presentation to any benefice in
England, and further secured the rights of English patrons of church
preferment. An enactment of 1353 declared any person to be out-
lawed who should carry any law-case to the court of Rome on appeal
from the decision of an English court.

Philip of Yalois, or Philip VI. of France, died in 1350, leaving the
j throne to his son, John the Good. The country was harassed
of war by internal strife between the king and the partisans of
France Charles, king of Navarre, when the truce with England ended
and Scot- in 1355. The north and centre of France were in a condition
an ' 3 ' of mere anarchy, with troops disbanded, brigands roaming on
every side, a bankrupt treasury, and defenceless towns and castles.
The king of England did not forego the chance thus offered to his
arms. From north and south, by Calais and Guienne, unhappy France
was ravaged by her foes. Edward himself issued from the northern
fortress, and swept the country as far as the Somme, retiring then
from sheer lack of food. The seizure of the town of Berwick by the
Scots called him home. He marched northwards in the depth of
winter, retook the town and carried havoc through the Lothians,
Want of provisions here again caused retreat, when his fleet, laden
with stores, could not, for stress of weather, reach the port of Leith,
His son, Edward the Black Prince, had before this led an army from
his head-quarters at Bordeaux, and ravaged the country to the foot
of the Pyrenees. He then took a northern and easterly course,
laid in ashes cities and towns, and filled with desolation a fertile
land, which, for a hundred years of gay and prosperous life, had
seen nothing of the cruelties of war. The army, with its train of
greedy Gascons, returned laden with pillage seized 'in town, castle, and
farm.

In July 1356, Prince Edward again quitted Bordeaux, marching
Battle of nor th and east into Limousin and Auvergne. The crops that
Poitiers, stood in the soil were turning from green to gold, and the
ep . 1356. y j nes were thickly hung with clustering grapes. All was
destroyed by the advancing force, whom the Prince wished to lead as
far as Normandy, there to join an English army that was aiding the

FRANCE

in.
1360, and till 1453

TVott Longitude O* East Longitude

Stanford* &eog*-E*tob*, London.

1356 A.D.] BATTLE OF POITIERS. 245

friends of the king of Navarre. The invaders were already north of
the Loire, when the Black Prince had news of a great army advancing
against him. The French king, John, was in the field with sixty
thousand men, marching by routes unknown to his foe. Prudence
counselled a prompt retreat to Bordeaux. The English leader, with
but eight thousand men, found the way barred near Poitiers by the
great host of the enemy. The scene was one full of glorious memories
for France. At Vougle, near to Poitiers, eight and a half centuries
before, Clovis had utterly routed, and slain with his own hand, the
second Alaric, king of the Yisigoths, conquerors whose dominions were
then at their greatest extent. On the same fertile plains, in the broad
tract of land stretching north from Poitiers to Tours, watered by many
a fair stream that pays its tribute to the Loire, one of the great
triumphs of the Cross was won against the Crescent. More than six
centuries earlier than the day when the English prince found his
course stopped in retreat, Charles Martel had won the signal victory,
over a Saracen host, which rescued Europe from the power and faith
of Islam. Omens and odds alike were strong against the entrapped
invader, and for some hours he shrank from an encounter. When
Cardinal Pcrigord came from the French king to urge capitulation,
the Prince offered to give up his booty, and to engage not to bear arms
against France for the space of seven years. The personal surrender
of himself and a hundred knights was demanded, but this was promptly
refused. The English and Gascons were drawn up with great skill
on ground encumbered by hedges, vines, and bushes, and could only
be approached by a road with room for but four horsemen a-breast,
bounded on each side by high banks topped with hedges thickly lined
by England's deadly bowmen. On Monday, September 19, the great
encounter came. The French horse, after forcing their way with
severe loss along the lane, were charged on the open ground by the
Black Prince at the head of a picked force, including Chandos, and
Lord Audley, and the Earls of Warwick and Suffolk. Great dis-
order ensued. The four thousand archers in the little English army
had never ceased their volleys, and, at the critical moment of confusion,
a body of men-at-arms and bowmen, detached for the purpose, fell on
the French flank and rear. A panic ensued, and several commanders
set their divisions the example of flight. King John fought with great
valour, but was at last forced to surrender, with his young son Philip.
The conqueror gained higher fame in chivalry by the noble courtesy of
his demeanour to the captive king. A truce for two years was made,
and in May 1357, the Black Prince led his "friend the enemy" into
London, where Edward III. and his people received him with every
mark of respect that could assuage the pain of defeat and captivity.
The loss of the vanquished in this famous battle was over eleven
thousand slain and disabled, besides two thousand men-at-arms and
hundreds of nobles and knights taken prisoners.

246 THE FRENCH WAR. [1358-1360 A.D.

While the French king was an honoured guest in England, lodged
Treaty of ^ 1>s ^ ^t John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster's, palace of the
Bretigny, Savoy, and then at Windsor, his country was brought to the
State 13 of' extreme of misery. Heavy sums needed to be raised for
France. ransom of the prisoners of Poitiers, and the tillers of the
soil were ground down to the lowest point of penury by the lords
of the soil who had fled in terror before the English bowmen. In
May 1358, began the terrible insurrection of the French peasants
known as the Jacquerie, from the nickname of Jacques BonUomine
bestowed on the poor villeins of the land. The army of furious
ravagers, whose cry was " Death to the nobles and gentry/' reached
at last the number of one hundred thousand men, butchering and
burning in town and hamlet, chateau and farm. The highways were
strewn with dead, and wolves followed in the track of men as pitiless
as themselves. Aid was sought from Flanders and Hainault, and the
furious insurgents were also attacked by knights headed by Gaston
de Foix, one of Froissart's chivalrous heroes, and by Captal de Buche,
one of Edward III.'s Gascon knights, who rushed to the rescue of
the Duchesses of Normandy and Orleans. They had fled, with hundreds
of other ladies, for refuge in the castle of Meaux. A great slaughter
of the peasants was made, and the rising came to an end. In 1359,
the country was again attacked and ravaged by English troops. The
want of provisions forced Edward's retirement from before the walls
of Paris in March 1360, and a peace was concluded on May 8th at
a little place near Chartres. The chief terms of the Treaty of Bt'e-
tigny were these : The king of England resigned his pretensions to the
crown of France, and to the territories of Normandy, Anjou, Maine,
and Touraine. He was to be full sovereign lord of Aquitaine, including
Guienne, Gascony, Saintonge, Poitou, the Limousin, and Angoumois.
All conquered places were to be restored, except Calais, Guisnes, and
the county of Ponthieu, a part of Picardy, on the Lower Somme. The
French king was to be set free on promise of payment, within six
years, of three million gold crowns, amounting, as is supposed, to
about a million and a half pounds sterling. He met Edward at Calais,
where the peace was solemnly ratified, and they then parted with
many expressions of esteem and good-will. John was unable to raise
the money for his ransom from a country so drained of resources,
and the honour of chivalry bade him return to captivity. In the
first days of 1364 he was again in London, and this unfortunate
monarch soon afterwards sickened and died at the palace of the Savoy,
leaving to his son, Charles V., a country that moved the pity of all
humane persons who beheld her hapless condition. The close of the
war had flooded the land with bands of discharged soldiers, the Free
Competitions, who for twenty years had been fighting as separate bodies
under their own captains. Froissart tells us of the mischief done by
these gangs of pillaging " Almains (Germans), Brabanters, Flemings,

1361-1366 A.D.] HOME AFFAIRS. :M7

Hainanlters, Gascons, and bad Frenchmen," and Italy's great lyric poet,
Petrarca, then upon ambassador's work at Paris, declares that when he
viewed the land, he could not persuade himself that it was the same
he had formerly beheld fertile, rich, and nourishing. " Touched by
such mournful effects of the rage of man," he cries, " I could not
withhold my tears."

In 1361, a second attack of pestilence caused numerous deaths, but,
with this exception, the seventh decade of the century was a
prosperous time for England. She had her troubles in this affairs,
age of transition from serfdom to free labour, but her posi- 1361 " 67 -
tion was in strong contrast with that of the land beyond the Channel.
Not only were our fields left free from the ravages of war, but when-
ever a tax was demanded for carrying on the struggle, there was a
Parliament which ever turned round steadily upon the king, and for
money demanded money's worth extension of freedom or redress of
grievances. Again and again, as in 1340, 1348, and 1351, a firm
stand was made against illegal levying of money or men-at-arms, and
it was no longer a struggle merely between the king and the nobles.
The Commons had by degrees gained a real share in the government,
and before the end of the reign we shall find them strong enough to
remove an administration, and to impeach those whom they held to
be evil advisers of the crown. The powers thus obtained did, indeed,
remain long in abeyance under later monarchs, but, in our constitu-
tional system, the importance of the creation of precedents can hardly
be over-rated. They are the good seed from which springs a priceless
crop of established rights. There was a great increase of parliamentary
activity in the work of legislation, and one enactment is curious for
the evidence which it affords of the many distinctions of rank then
existing amongst the laity. The Statute of Apparel, passed in 1363,
had for its main purpose to restrain "the outrageous and excessive
apparel of divers persons against their estate and degree." Its pro-
visions afford the clearest proof of material prosperity in that age
amongst the class of mechanics, commercial servants, and labourers
in husbandry.

The sun of glory won by conquest for the English arms was now to
set in gloom. The new king of France, Charles V., was of Loss of
a widely different nature from his brave and chivalrous father, ^franco
Devoid of personal courage, he had shown his prudence on the 1367-1374. '
field of Poitiers in leaving his younger brother Philip to fight unaided
at the king his father's side. His practical sagacity, however, was
of much more value than any heroism in a contest with such foes as
Edward III. and the Black Prince. "There never was a king," cried
Edward, " who cared so little about arming himself, and yet gave me
so much to do as this Charles." During the few years of peace which
followed on the treaty of Bretigny, the French monarch was always on
the watch for a renewal of the contest to his own advantage. The

248 THE BLACK PRINCE IN SPAIN, [1367-1371 A.D.

Prince of Wales, with the title of Prince of Aquitaine, was governor of
the southern provinces ceded to England, and the cunning of Charles
V. aimed at incitements to revolt among the Gascons which should
afford him some chance of striking in against the English domination.
The imprudence of the Black Prince was his chief ally. The haughty
bearing of their ruler gave offence to the nobles of Guienne. The
people of the conquered provinces were indignant at their transfer in
complete sovereignty to England, and wise policy would have kept an
English ruler from adding to the causes of offence. In 1367, the
Black Prince became entangled, by his own act, in the affairs of Spain.
Peter I., king of Castile and Leon, had been driven from his throne
by his half-brother, Henry, assisted by a band of Free Companions,
under the command of the famous French leader, Bertrand du Guesclin.
The English prince determined to restore him, and led from Bordeaux
a great army of English, Gascons, and Normans, entering Spain by the
pass of Roncesvalles. The army of Henry and Du Guesclin was
totally defeated at the battle of N a jar a (or Navaretfa, two villages on
the right bank of the Ebro), in which the English leader showed even
more than his wonted skill. Never was a success more fatal to its
author. The restored tyrant Peter was soon again dethroned, and the
Black Prince was left unpaid for the heavy charges of his fruitless
expedition. He returned to his head-quarters in Bordeaux with a
starving army, and a frame infected with the malady that was to bring
him to the grave in the very prime of life. His necessities compelled
him to increase the heavy load of taxation for the Gascons, and then
the king of France blew the sparks of discontent into a flame of revolt.
In violation of the treaty of Br^tigny, Charles assumed the position of
feudal lord over Guienne, and summoned the English ruler to appear
before him. The Black Prince retorted that he would come to Paris,
but with sixty thousand lances at his back. In 1369, the war with
France was thus renewed, and the French ruler showed his real ability
in his method of conducting the struggle. All great encounters in the
open field were shunned. The Duke of Lancaster, who had landed at
Calais with a large force, was suffered to march on and do his worst.
In 1370, the French invaded Gas cony, and the failing health of Prince
Edward kept him from active exertion in the field. His temper had
been soured by his troubles, and a savage act of vengeance wrought
upon helpless and innocent people left a dark stain upon his memor} r .
The town of Limoges had been betrayed by the inhabitants to the
French, and the Black Prince, retaking it by storm after a month's
siege, ordered a massacre in cold blood of three thousand men, women,
and children. In the following year, 1371, ill-health recalled him to
England, and with his departure our interests in France went fast to
ruin. The brave Du Guesclin, the greatest hero of the age next to the
Black Prince, was in command against the Duke of Lancaster, the new
governor of Gascony. The French could not be tempted to any great

1369-1376 A.D.J JOHN OF GAUNT. 249

engagement, and in 1373 the English leader swept through France
from Calais to Bordeaux. A war of skirmishes and surprises, with the
capture of town after town, and fortress after fortress, as the chance
occurred, was most effective in the wearing-down of English power.
The campaign of the Black Prince in Spain had aroused the deadly
enmity of the new king of Castile, and a Spanish fleet, in 1372, was
for the time triumphant on the sea, and severed Gascony from that road
of communication with England. The forces of Du Guesclin were
constantly successful, and, in 1374, the king of England was glad to
make a truce. All his possessions in France were gone, save Bordeaux,
Bayonne, and Calais.

In 1369, Edward III. lost his queen, Philippa, his faithful wife for
more than forty years. He then fell under the evil influence Home
of a woman named Alice Ferrers, and in this, his time of affairs,
dotage, the chief power was in the hands of his fourth son, JOL^O?
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. The internal history of Gaunt,
the country is largely made up of his contests with a portion of the
Parliament, in which the power of the Commons was yearly growing.
The barons mainly followed the lead of Lancaster, and the political
situation was one in which the lay-barons asserted themselves against
the bishops, who had, as was conceived, by far too large a share of the
administration. At the same time, the baronage were always ready to
make a stand with the crown against the knights of the shire and
the burgesses. The material power and wealth of the Church had
greatly advanced, as her moral influence over the people declined. In
1371, the Duke of Lancaster's party drove from office the chancellor,
William of Wykeham, and other leading prelates. The Black Prince,
feeling his end near, and jealous of the power of John of Gaunt, who
was thought to aspire to the crown, took measures to assert the rights
of his son, Richard of Bordeaux, whose mother was his father's cousin,
Joan of Kent.

The Parliament of 1376, known as the "Good Parliament," from
the boldness of the stand made by the burgesses and county t^ e
members against the barons and the crown, began its vigorous "Good
work in April. The leader of the Commons, Peter de la Mare, nSenV
holding the office, though not the title, of " Speaker," came JJJJ^ of
forward to face the barons in a bold attack upon the ministers, Black
or lords of the king's council. The evil conduct of the war, Prince -
the heavy and useless taxation, and the misappropriation of the public
moneys, were strongly denounced, with special mention of the Duke of
Lancaster's responsibility. The contemptuous outburst of wrath in
which the Duke indulged was all unheeded, and two of the ministers
impeached, Lord Latimer, the chamberlain, and Richard Lyons, were
condemned by the lords to heavy fines and imprisonment. Alice Ferrers
was also sentenced to banishment from court and forfeiture of all her
ill-gotten wealth. This was followed by demands for the redress of

'250 DEATH OF EDWARD 111. [1317 A.D.

many grievances. The Commons asked for freedom of election for the
county members, and for yearly meetings of Parliament. On June 8,
the Black Prince died, and his son Richard was at once presented to
Parliament, and accepted by all as heir to the throne. When Parlia-
ment was dismissed in July, the influence of Lancaster resumed its
sway. Alice Perrers and the king's evil counsellors were recalled; Peter
de la Mare went to prison, and William of Wykeharn was despoiled of
his episcopal income. The good effected seemed to be all undone when
a packed House of Commons, early in the following year, annulled its
predecessor's legislative work ; but the powers once asserted by the
Commons were not forgotten, and the very next reign was to witness
a further advance towards constitutional freedom for the people as
against the arbitrary power of the crown.

The king died on June 21, 1377, in the 65th year of his age and the
Death of 5 IS ^ ^ ^ s re ^ n > an( ^ ^is remains were interred in the Abbey
Edward Church at Westminster. Of the seven sons and five daughters
1377. His born of Queen Philippa, the greater part died young. Only
children, three sons survived their father, John of Gaunt (born at Gand
or Ghent), Duke of Lancaster and father of Henry IV. ; Edmund, Duke
of York; and Thomas, Duke of Gloucester: The third son, Lionel, Duke
of Clarence, had died in 1368, leaving one daughter, married to Edmund
Mortimer, Earl of March.

A statute of the year 1322, passed in the I5th year of Edward II. 's
Parlia- reign, had fully recognised the power of the Commons, by
ment declaring that "matters to be established for the estate of the
Edward king and his heirs, and for the estate of the realm and of the
people, shall be treated, accorded, and established in Par-
liament by the king, and by the assent of the prelates, earls, and
barons, and the commonalty of the realm, according as has been before
accustomed." Under Edward III., the knights of the shire, who had
been hitherto political allies of the barons, with whom they were socially
connected, became the close associates in Parliament of the borough
members, and this connection, at an early part of the reign, caused the
two bodies to be together styled "The Commons." The actual division
of Parliament into the two Houses of Lords and Commons took place
in 1341. From this time we have a Parliament such as we know it
now a body in which, upon the whole, a certain community of political
sentiment and procedure is secured by the presence in the Commons of
a large number of landed gentry who are socially connected with the
peers. The House of Commons thus consists both of men representing
all shades of feeling in the commercial and the working classes, who
form the great bulk of the nation, and of those who, from their social
interests, friendships, and relations, are certain to be stout opponents
of revolutionary change. The legislative powers of the Commons were,
like other constitutional reforms in this land of the slow and steady
growth of long-enduring things, a matter of gradual development. The

1272-1377 A.D.] LEARNING OF THE PERIOD. 251

petitions of the Commons for the redress of grievances, ns a condition
of the granting of supplies of money by taxation, were, in effect, demands
for legislative change. These were sent up to the king, and his answers
were duly made. Each petition and its answer were, at the close of
every session, embodied in the form of a law, and entered on the roll
of statutes. The sovereign, in his replies to the petitions of the Commons,
would often change the sense therein expressed, and thus he used a
power of modifying bills before they passed into enactments. The
reign of Edward III. saw the establishment, in our system of govern-
ment, of three great principles. The first was, that money cannot
be legally raised, by taxation or otherwise, without the consent of
Parliament. The second was, that the concurrence of the two
Houses is required for all changes in the law, and in all matters
affecting the interests of the king, his heirs, and the people. The
third was, that the House of Coimnons has the right to inquire into
public abuses, and to impeach (that is, to accuse at the bar of the Lords)
any public counsellor or minister of the crown, for corrupt official
conduct, misgovernment, or other cause.

CHAPTER IV.

LITERATURE AND LEARNING UNDER THE THREE EDWARDS.

The scholastic Doctors ; Duns Scotus, Occam, Bradwardiue. Richard of Bury's
noble encouragement of learned men. His Pkilobiblon.

THE scholastic philosophy, which served the cause of sound learning and
human progress by its enforcement of verbal precision, lucid Learning
method, strict proof, and the superior claims of reason against and lite-
authority, produced some shining lights in the century of time O f the
that covers the reigns of the three Edwards. The labours of P^oo 1 .
these men prepared the human mind to reap due benefit in coming time
from the great revival of learning, and set an example to the world of
a bold defence of freedom of thought and opinion. John Duns, com-
monly called Duns Scotus, or the Subtle Doctor, was a native of the
British Isles, and died in 1308. He was first a Franciscan friar at
Newcastle, and then became a student at Merton College, Oxford.
His skill in theology, logic, mathematics, and the civil law caused his
appointment in 1301 as professor of divinity, and his fame drew large
numbers of students to the University. In 1304, he was a teacher of
theology at Paris, and died, in the same capacity, at Cologne. William
de Occam was born about 1270, in the Surrey village of that name.
He, too, was a Franciscan monk, a pupil of Duns Scotus, and gained

252 LEARNING OF THE PERIOD. [1272-1377 A.D.

the name of the Invincible Doctor. Little is known of the earlier half
of his life, in which he is said to have been a student at Oxford, and
then to have held preferment in the Church. The latter and more
distinguished part of his career was spent on the Continent. He
showed remarkable courage, for a monk of that age of history, in
supporting Philippe le Bel of France, when he asserted against the
Pope the independence of temporal princes in all secular affairs. He
was condemned by the Council of Avignon, and compelled to flee
from Paris, in 1328, for denouncing the vices of the rival Popes of the
day. He took refuge in Bavaria, where he died at Munich in 1347.
Occam was one of the best logicians of the Middle Ages, and deserves
high honour as a maintainer of liberty of thought against prejudice
and power. Tliomas Bradwardine, born in Sussex about 1290, was one
of the best men and ablest writers of the fourteenth century. His
great theological work, Tlie Cause of God pleaded against Pelagius, a
"heretic" who denied "original sin" in man, earned for him the title
of the Profound, Doctor. After being chancellor of the University of
Oxford, he became chaplain and confessor of Edward III., whom he
attended during his French wars. He was twice chosen Archbishop of
Canterbury by the clergy of the cathedral, but the first election was
annulled by the king, who declined to part with his services, declaring
that he " could ill spare so worthy a man." When the see again became
vacant, Bradwardine became Primate by the unanimous choice of the
Chapter, now confirmed by Edward. He was a noble example of the
union of religious contemplation and profound piety with active bene-
volence. The second year of the Black Death, 1349, was the date of
his elevation, and the new archbishop died of the plague within a few
weeks of his consecration, and before he was enthroned. Richard of
Bury, whose true name was Richard Aungervyle, was born in 1281 at
Bury St. Edmunds. He was one of the most distinguished men of the
age for learning, high character, and practical ability. After a brilliant
career at Oxford, he was made tutor to Prince Edward, afterwards
Edward III., under whom he became in succession Bishop of Durham
and Lord Chancellor. An able envoy, a generous user of great influence
and wealth, and a statesman who ever laboured for peace, Richard de
Bury is most to be honoured for his great devotion to learning. He
wrote a Latin treatise, called Philobiblon, on the love of books and the
right use of them. In the course of his life he collected the largest
library in England, by the use of his private fortune and of his political
and ecclesiastical influence, which caused the owners of valuable manu-
scripts to seek his favour by presents of what he most loved. For him
the libraries of foreign monasteries were searched by travelling friars,
and to him suitors in Chancery would offer a rare volume, in order to
gain a quicker hearing of their causes. De Bury's real love of literature
is shown by the noble use which he made of his treasures. He was the
friend of all scholars, and threw freely open to them the doors of his

1272-1377 A.D.] LEARNING OF THE PERIOD. 253

library at Durham, where they became his guests during the period
of their study and research. When he quitted political life for the
exclusive care of his diocese, he surrounded himself with the best
English scholars of the age as his chaplains and friends. One of these
was Bradwardine, who owed to him his appointment by Edward III.
to the post of confessor and chaplain. De Bury's books were bequeathed
to Durham College, Oxford, and there remained for the use of the
University until the dissolution of the house under Henry VIII. It
is remarkable, as a sign of the times which were soon to show forth a
AVyclif, that, in the Pliilobiblon, a bishop and ex-chancellor strongly
denounces the degraded moral state of the clergy, and the mental dark-
ness and evil life of monks and friars.

BOOK VIII.

THE AGE OF WYCLIF AND CHAUCER THE LANCASTRIAN
KINGS AND FRANCE.

CHAPTER I.

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND.

The new spirit of the time. Wyclif and the Lollards. Wyclif as a reformer. The
peasant-revolt. Legislation against Papal claims and action in Church and
State. Richard II. and Parliament. Foreign affairs. The King's tyranny and
deposition. His mysterious death. Literature : Gower and Chaucer.

DURING the minority of the young king, known as Richard of Bor-
deaux, from his birth in 1366 at the town where his father,
IL? the Black Prince, held sway as ruler of Guienne, the direc-

1377-1399. j.j on p U bii c affairs was mainly in the hands of John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the king's uncle, and of a council of nobles
appointed at the instance of the House of Commons. During the
earlier years of the reign, foreign affairs were going from bad to worse.
All attempts to recover French dominion failed, and united French
and Spanish fleets were defiant on the sea.

The great fact of the time was the stir of thought and feeling, which
first sought and found expression in the published words of
religious powerful writers, and then in the armed revolt of ignorant
social an( ^ passionate men striving for redress of social inequality,
spirit of The Church in England had grown corrupt from excess of
' wealth and power. The loose lives of many of the clergy,
monks and parish- priests alike, had brought contempt upon their
office. The arrogance of a privileged class, and the rapacious claims
made for dues payable to the church-courts, which held control over
many suits of deep import to the laity, had aroused a bitter feeling.
A public opinion was forming to the effect that the Church dignitaries
and the religious orders were more intent upon their own aggrandise-
ment, and the gratification of their own luxurious tastes, than upon
the upholding of the faith and duties of the Gospel. On no estates
did slavery linger so long in England as on those of the Benedictine
abbots and their convents, and the churchmen who, in better times,
had been urgent in obtaining freedom for slaves, were now the hardest
masters of these poor dependents. The friars, who had once been so

254

1360 A.I\] RISING SPIRIT OF REFORM. 255

devoted to the preaching of the Word, and to the personal relief of the
sick and the indigent, were now either dwellers in stately houses,
which rivalled the old monasteries in splendour, or, for the sake of
profit from fees, had usurped the places of the rectors and curates of
parishes. The system of seeking alms from house to house had been
so far abused that, long before the time of Wyclif, loud and deep
complaints were heard from all classes against the lusty begging friars.
Alongside of these evils connected with the Church, were the fierce
attempts of the lords of the soil to resume the old feudal control over
the peasant population.

The disorders in both Church and State are the subjects of keen
comment in the writings of the age. Chaucer aims his satire Piers the
against the monk, " full, fat, and in good point," the Friar, JJaE
" a wanton and a merry ; " the Prioress, of courtly manners, Vision,
with her love-motto inscribed on her brooch ; the Sumpnour, or
summoner, the minister of extortion for church-courts; and the
Pardoner, with his wallet " full of pardons come from Rome all hot."
The popular poet, William Langland, was a poor " clerk," born about
1330, who came to London in early manhood, and made a precarious
living by the performance of small ecclesiastical duties at funerals and
other church-offices. His Vision of Piers Plowman is a long allegory,
in the form of dreams, setting forth the divers conditions of men in
this life, and the duties to which they are severally bound as pilgrims
in search of Truth. The world of the poor, as it appeared to a poor
man in the latter half of the fourteenth century, is vividly brought
into view. The cold, cheerless hearth of the hungry toiler, the
narrow, wretched, and monotonous life of those who were at the
bottom of the social scale, are in sharp and saddening contrast with
the world of gaiety and wealth depicted in the page of Chaucer. A
cloud of dull despair broods over the social landscape of Langland, as,
amid suffering and sin, he urges all to earn bread by honest labour,
and threatens hunger to the idle and the wasteful. He warns the
knight that in the grave he cannot be known apart from the churl,
and that in heaven above the hireling may be more nobly placed than
he who paid, or who, perchance, withheld his wages upon earth. It is
declared to be safer to trust, for gaining heaven, to well-doing than
to passes from the Pope. The avarice arid luxury of churchmen are
denounced, and John of Gaunt receives a certain meed of praise as
leader of the nobles who, eager to curtail the wealth and power of the
Church, were to that extent, and for selfish ends, the defenders of the
poor.

The rising spirit of disaffection to the Church, caused both by
corrupt practices in her system and in the lives of her Lollardry
ministers, and by the application of free thought to some
parts of her doctrine, was shown forth in the sayings and doings
of the people called "Lollards." The name is a term of reproach

256 WYCLIF. [1366 A.D.

bestowed by opponents on those who were thereby charged either
with "sowing the tares" of heresy, or with uttering "vain babble."
Like the Puritans of a later age, the Lollards aimed at political and
social, as well as religious changes, and their ranks were reinforced
from every class by persons who were at issue with the real or fancied
evils of the time. The poor peasant that dreamed of social equality,
the fanatic eager for moral and religious reform, the noble who hated
the arrogant prelate, or who coveted ecclesiastical wealth, all were
adherents of the widespread movement that embodied the discontent
of the age.

The champion, if not the founder, of Lollardry, on its religious side,
was that great Englishman, John Wyclif. He was born
yc ' about 1324 at a village near Richmond, in Yorkshire, and
acquired his vast store of learning as a student in the " Arts," and in
the School of Theology at Oxford University. His rare knowledge of
the Scriptures obtained for him the title of the Evangelical Doctor.
In 1361, he was chosen master of Balliol College, and some years later
became a Doctor or Professor of Divinity. He was a worthy successor,
as a philosopher of bold originality of thought, of the great English
schoolmen, Duns Scotus and Occam, and, in piety and purity of life, as
well as in literary skill, he rivalled his predecessor Bradwardine. But
Wyclif was no mere scholar, "schoolman," or dialectician. He was
the hardest worker and the ablest statesman of the time. Tall and
spare in form, of quick and restless temper, ready wit, and winning
manners, the shrewd Yorkshireman, subtle in logic and eloquent in
speech, was full of the energy and courage, the firmness of conviction,
and the hatred of hypocrisy and wrong, that should be found in him
whose life-work it is to attack abuses, to be foremost in controversy, to
defy the world, if need be, in doing battle for moral, intellectual, and
religious reform. The literary gifts of this illustrious man included a
style now charged with persuasive power, and, in due season, keen in
irony, and strong in the invective that pleases the popular taste. With
all these resources he combined the worldly wisdom that enables the
skilled politician and partisan to make every kind of man an instrument
for his chosen work, and to refrain from playing into the hands of
those who oppose him.

It was in the fourteenth century that occurred the second great
Wyclif rising of the human intellect against the spiritual domination
Papa? 16 f R me - The great revolt, in Languedoc, that marked the
See. twelfth century, had been crushed by the Albigensian crusade,

and for the two succeeding generations the power of the Papacy had
been at its height. When Pope Boniface the Eighth fell before the
violence of Philip the Fourth of France, the seat of the Papal court
was carried beyond the Alps, and for severity years, at Avignon, the
Bishops of Borne became dependants of France. This age of schism
in the Western Church saw two Popes, each with a doubtful title,

1366-1378 A.D.] WYCLIF. 257

hurling at each other curses and invectives, as Rome declaimed against
the corruptions of Avignon, and Avignon flung well-deserved retorts
at Rome. The spiritual influence of the Papacy could not but rapidly
wane, and there were special reasons for such a decline being strongly
marked in. England. The people whose warriors had vanquished with
ease the soldiers of France on the fields of Crecy and Poitiers could
not, in their national pride, brook the control of French Popes, whom
all believed to be working in the interests of the national foe. It was
in 1366 that Wyclif took a prominent place in this matter, and from
that time till 1378 he stands forth as the great champion of English
independence against the claims of Rome. The king, Edward III.,
strongly supported by Parliament, was at issue with the Papal court
with regard to the homage and tribute exacted from King John.
Wyclif 's skilful reply to a monk, who came forward in the Papal cause,
made him well known at court, and procured for him the favour of
John of Gaunt. In 1374, he was one of the royal commissioners sent
to Bruges, to confer with the nuncio of Gregory XI. on the statute of
Provisors, and, being consulted by the government as to some fresh
claims made upon the kingdom during the tutelage of Richard II., he
pointed out in plain words " the asinine folly " of helping our enemies.
The position of Wyclif was in full agreement with the national spirit,
which rose in disgust against the annual export of large sums
of money collected by Papal agents in England for the enrichment
of Popes who were the creatures of France, and against the system of
Papal " provisions," by which foreigners were placed in possession of
English benefices. In defiance of English law, parishes were thus left
destitute of priests, and the rights of patrons were flung aside. In
1375, he was rewarded by the royal presentation to the rectory of
Lutterworth, which will ever be associated with the name of "the
morning-star of the Reformation," and by nomination as the king's
private chaplain or secretary. In 1378, Wyclif reached the height of
audacity as an assailant of the Papal see. On the death of Gregory
XI. , a double election to the vacant chair took place. The Papal court
had now returned to Rome, and the people caused the cardinals, most
of whom were Frenchmen, to elect an Italian, as Urban VI. The
French cardinals afterwards annulled this choice, and made another
Pope of their own body, as Clement VII. A civil war ensued, in
which Clement's party were defeated, and he made his escape to
Avignon, where he was supported by France, Spain, and Scotland,
while Germany, Italy, and England adhered to the claims of Urban.
Wyclif at once issued his spirited tract, called The Schism of the Popes.
In this he declared that Christ had "cloven the head of Antichrist,
and made the one part to fight against the other," and called upon
emperor and king to put down the temporal sovereignty of the Pope,
and take away the territory of the see in Italy, as being the source of
the evils that afflicted the Church.

258 WYCLIF AND JOHN OF GAUNT. [1377 A.D.

One of the deepest feelings of Wyclifs nature was his hatred of the
Wyclif monks. In their corrupt state, the monks were regarded at
Church Oxford with the same dislike as in modern times has been
reformer, displayed against the Jesuits. Surrounded as he was by
all the abuses of a feudalised hierarchy, the great pioneer of Church
reform looked on the wealth of the Church as an evil. In his famous
treatise on "The Kingdom of God" (De Dominio Divino) he declares
that they only have a right to exercise dominion who are in a state of
grace, and that mortal sin breaks the condition on which authority is
held from God. At the same time, he upholds the duty of obedience
to the civil power in all cases. He strikes at the feudal position of
the Church by showing that the spiritual office is a minister ium, and not
a dominium, and by declaring that kings may lawfully confiscate the
temporal wealth of churchmen who abuse its possession. Wyclif had
excited the wrath of the orthodox churchmen of the day by publicly
teaching in the theological school at Oxford that the Church of Rome
was not the head of Christian churches, and that no more power was
given by Christ to St. Peter than to any other apostle. He also
taught that the Gospel is sufficient as a rule of life for any Christian,
and that nothing of perfection can be added thereto by any rules laid
down for the use of religious orders.

It was the reformer's attack on the temporalities of the Church that
Wyclif, brought him into alliance with John of Gaunt. The Duke
John of of Lancaster was the leader of the baronial party that was
and tne jealous of the political power of the bishops in the Council,
bishops. anc | ea g er rob the Church of some part of her vast wealth.
When Wyclif startled the prelates by the boldness of his utterances in
speech and writing, and enraged the monks by his attacks upon their
lives of affluence, luxury, and ease, both parties joined in assailing him.
The bishops also sought to strike through him at his patron, John of
Gaunt. In February 1377, while the old king was yet alive, Wyclif
was summoned before Courtenay, Bishop of London, to answer for his
heretical declarations as to the rights of the civil nower over the
Church possessions. The cathedral was densely crowded when the
accused man made his way to the Consistory Court of St. Paul's,
having at his side the Duke of Lancaster, Lord Percy the Earl-
Marshal, and other powerful nobles. The matter came then to a
speedy and turbulent end. High words arose between the Bishop
and the Duke, who is said to have threatened Courtenay with personal
violence, and a tumult arose among the' people, who hated John of
Gaunt for his supposed designs on the crown at his father's death,
and were indignant at the insults offered to their bishop. In. the
following May, Pope Gregory XL issued three bulls, addressed to the
chancellor and University of Oxford, to Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop
of Canterbury, and to the Bishop of London, commanding them to take
proceedings against Wyclif, In the following month, Edward HI. died,

1380 A.D.] WYCLIF AS A REFORMER. 259

and in the end this attack also proved abortive. At the close of the
year, the reformer appeared before the Archbishop at Lambeth, but
the fierce attitude of the people, and a strong hint from the court-
party not to meddle with Wyclif, brought the session to a sudden
close.

The political career of Wyclif came to an end through the great
rising of the peasants in 1381. Fear of the people caused a wyclif
reaction, in which the nobles, lately so hostile to the Church, as a
were banded with the Church against the popular cause and i?|al
all who were held to be its partisans. He had long been reforn ier.
sending through the country the men known as his " poor preachers,"
or " poor priests," to do the work once undertaken and well discharged
by the begging friars. The party hostile to all reform declared that
these men were sowers of sedition,- and part of the odium fell upon
Wyclif. He was himself a man. of the people by birth, and in dress
and daily habit of life he was what the founders of the friars had
been, and what the friars had ceased to be. His true and final
position as a Protestant theologian is manifested by his two most
important acts as a divine the translation of the Bible into English,
and the denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation. By the former,
as an opponent declared, Wyclif " made the Gospel a common thing,
and more open to laymen and women who could read than it was wont
to be to clerks of moderate learning." By the latter, he struck a blow
at the fabric of priestly power. Just as all the mediaeval world, in its
social and political relations, hung upon the belief in natural distinctions
of rank, so did the mediaeval Church depend, for its control over the
minds and hearts of mankind, upon her claim to interpret Scripture,
and to work a miracle in the service of the mass. This great literary
work of translation, which, along with his English tracts, has justly
given to its author the title of "Father of English prose/' was soon
in great request, and copies were swiftly multiplied. The people
seemed to be of Wyclif's own opinion, as put forth in his preface, that
" Christian men and women, old and young, should study fast in the
New Testament, and that no simple man of wit, no man of small
knowledge, should be afraid immeasurably to study in the text of Holy
Writ." It was in 1380 that his translation of the Bible appeared, and
in 1381 he openly delivered, in the divinity school at Oxford, certain
Conclusions, in which he affirmed "that the consecrated host which
we see upon the altar is neither Christ, nor any part of him, but an
effectual sign of him." Being suspended from office as teacher of
divinity, by a decree of twelve doctors, who were chiefly members of
monastic orders, Wyclif appealed to the king in Parliament. The
matter ended with his condemnation as a heretic in 1382, through the
action of Courtenay, who had now become Archbishop of Canterbury.
Great disturbances took place at Oxford, where the reformer had
numerous followers among the students, but at last royal authority

260 DEATH OF WYCLIF. [1384 A.I>.

intervened with an order for the banishment from the University of
all his supporters, and the burning of all Lollard books. A synod
held at the house of the Black Friars in London declared that it was
heresy to affirm that the material substance of bread and wine remain
after consecration in the sacrament of the altar. Thus, for the first
time, the Church of England formally adopted the doctrine of transub-
stantiation, which, though generally received, had hitherto rested only
upon the Papal authority.

The great reformer, driven from his beloved Oxford, where free
Wyclifs opinion was being crushed by Courtenay, and abandoned by
aiSun- John of Gaunt and by the more timorous of his own disciples,
fluence. retired to his rectory at Lutterworth to die. Before the end
came, he completed and revised his translation of the Scriptures, and
sent forth pamphlet after pamphlet, in which he maintained his view
as to the Eucharist, and declared that the cause of men's falling into
this heresy (the doctrine of transubstantiation) was their want of faith
in the Gospel, and their taking, in its place, apocryphal legends and
the laws of Popes. This, he says, is the worst of all unfaithfulness,
and "the most direct apostasy from our true father abbot, the Lord
Jesus." A stroke of paralysis gave him cause to decline appearing
at Rome, on the summons of Urban VI., to defend himself from the
heresies laid to his charge. He was assisting at the celebration of the
holy communion in his church at Lutterworth on Innocents' Day,
December 28, 1384, when he was laid low by a second stroke, and
died on the last day of the year. The influence of his doctrines was
felt even in the distant kingdom of Bohemia, whither they were carried
by some natives of that country, who came into England with the first
queen of Richard II. In 1408, Archbishop Arundel, the successor of
Courtenay, condemned all Wyclifs writings in a synod held at Oxford,
and it was then made " heresy " to possess any version of the Bible not
authorised by the Church. Two years later, the University passed the
same sentence, and committed copies of his books to the flames.
Arundel's zeal for the cause of orthodoxy next induced him. to apply to
the Pope for permission to burn Wyclifs bones, but, for once, Rome was
more merciful, and less foolish, than Canterbury, and a refusal of this
request was accorded. The Council of Constance, in 1415, issued a
decree for the act of posthumous vengeance, and Pope Martin Y. sent
an order into England for its execution. At last, in 1428, nearly forty-
four years after the great offender's death, his mouldering remains were
taken up and committed to the flames by Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln,
who had in early life favoured his doctrines. The ashes were thrown
into the little river Swift, which flows by Lutterworth, and is a
tributary of Shakespeare's Avon. In the words of Thomas Fuller,
" This brook conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn
into the narrow seas, they into the wide ocean ; and thus the ashes of
Wyclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the

1377-1381 A.D.] RICHARD II, 261

world over." As Milman says, " He was the first that shook with any
lasting effect the dominion of the hierarchy; the harbinger at least,
if not the first apostle, of Teutonic Christianity." This great man
illustrates a brief period of free national life, and we may search the
history of England without finding, in her ecclesiastical affairs, any
character so complete and original, any intellectual force so vigorous,
vivid, and versatile, as the intellect and the character of the old Master
of Balliol and Rector of Lutterworth.

The accession of the boy-king, Richard II., was celebrated with much
splendour. On June 22, 1377, the day after the death of insurrec-
his grandfather, he made his entry into London, amidst jJheVe^s-
pageants and devices in every street, and conduits running ants, 1381.
with wine. On July i6th he was crowned at Westminster with un-
usual magnificence, and the beautiful son of the people's idol, the
lamented Black Prince, was welcomed to the throne amid a chorus of
praises of his goodness and wisdom, which were to be sorely belied in
the coming time. The reign opened with trouble and ill-success in
foreign affairs. France and Spain were active in hostilities, and the
Scots, in 1378, burnt Roxburgh and captured Berwick. The Duke of
Lancaster failed in an attack upon St. Malo, to the relief of which the
brave and vigilant Du Guesclin came with a large army, compelling the
English to retire to their ships. The cost of our failures was heavy,
and taxation caused great discontent. In addition to heavy duties on
wool and leather, a capitation-tax was granted by the House of Com-
mons in 1379. This, in principle, was an income-tax, affecting every
householder, from the Duke, assessed at 6, 135. 4^., equivalent to
more than a hundred pounds of present money, to the labourer, who
was called upon to pay fourpence for himself and his wife. In 1380, the
charges of a fruitless expedition to Brittany caused the imposition of
the famous poll-tax, which proved the last straw to the endurance of
the suffering peasantry. It was a levy of " three groats from every
person in the kingdom, male or female, of the age of fifteen, of what
state and condition soever, except beggars." This tax was as a match
applied to a mine in which explosive materials had long been accu-
mulating. We have seen that the system of serfdom or villenage
was tottering to its fall, and that the great class of labourers, and
small cultivators as tenants and yeomen, were finding out that they
had rights to maintain. The immediate cause of the worst outbreak
was an incident that occurred at Dartford, in Kent. A man named
Wat the Tyler, from his trade, was visited by a collector of the poll-
tax, who grossly insulted his daughter in a dispute as to her age,
when it was claimed that she was liable for the tax. The enraged
father laid the ruffian dead with a blow. The whole rural population
of the county at once flew to arms. The men of Essex had already
used violence to the tax-gatherers, and the same spirit of revolt
existed in Norfolk and Suffolk. Sussex, Surrey, Hertfordshire, and

262 INSURRECTION OF THE PEASANTRY. [1381 A.D.

Cambridgeshire, and even men from distant Somerset, swelled the
ranks of the insurrection. Wat the Tyler put himself at the head
of the men of Kent, after calling to his side the itinerant preacher,
John Ball, who had been excommunicated for preaching "errors, and
schisms, and scandals against the Pope, the archbishops, bishops, and
clergy." To him is assigned the authorship of the famous couplet
which runs in modern spelling, "When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman 1 " Without waiting for any answer to
this inquiry, the insurgents proceeded forthwith to exterminate the
" gentlemen " and their goods. Another priest, who assumed the name
of Jack Straw, was connected with the revolt in Essex. The doctrine
of Wyclif, that the clergy ought not to hold property, seems to have
become perverted by the ignorant, or by designing men who misled
them, into a theory that all property was unlawful. It seems, from
the simultaneous outbreak in counties far removed from each other,
that the insurrection had been carefully planned. The revolt extended
from the coast of Kent to the Humber, and was organised by letters
sent about the country, bearing the signatures of Jack the Miller, Jack
the Carter, Jack Trueman, and other assumed names. It is to be
noted that, in the rising of Hertfordshire, the slaves on the lands of
St. Alban's and other abbeys flocked to join the revolt, and to demand
their freedom from the monks.

The men of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, under Tyler and Ball, marched
The in- on London, assembling on Blackheath in June to the number,
in r Lon- tS ^ * s >sa ^> ^ a nnn clred thousand. One feature of the out-
don, break was the destruction of legal documents, in the hope of
removing all records that could be used in support of feudal claims for
the bondage or services of the labouring class. The hostility shown to
the clergy was probably based on the fact of their being keepers of such
documents as maintained the disabilities of the people, and it was in his
secular character as Chancellor, rather than as Archbishop, that Simon
of Sudbury fell a victim. As the great host neared London, the king,
with the members of his council, took refuge in the Tower. The young
monarch, now in his sixteenth year, showed at this crisis the courage
of his race. He had left Windsor to meet the danger, and descended
the river in his barge on June i2th. On passing London Bridge, he
was met with loud cries from the insurgents on the Rotherhithe bank.
On that night, Southwark and Lambeth saw the demolition of the
houses of the Marshalsea and of the King's Bench, and the sack of the
palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury. On the following morning
the rebels crossed London Bridge into the city. An especial hatred
was felt towards John of Gaunt, and, along with the destruction of
Newgate and the buildings of the Temple, they burnt the Duke's palace
of the Savoy. With the usual prejudice against foreigners, they
butchered the Flemish artisans, wherever they were found. Separate
bodies of the men of Essex and of Hertfordshire had also come down

1381 A.D.] DEATH OF WAT THE TYLER. 263

on the capital from the north and from the east. During the fearful
outrages of June 13th, the king remained in the Tower, hut on the
next day, when Tower Hill was filled with the multitude, a proclamation
was made by a herald that the king would meet them at Mile End, on
the Essex road. He there had conference with the men of Essex and
some of the Kent insurgents, and received the petition which they had
drawn up. Their demands included the abolition of slavery, the re-
duction of the rent of land to fourpence (from four to five shillings)
an acre, liberty to buy and sell, without tax or impost, at all markets
and fairs, and a general pardon for offences lately committed. The
claim as to markets and fairs was an assertion of the freedom of trade,
which was greatly hampered by the charters of towns, and by the tolls
which the lay and ecclesiastical lords exacted in every city and borough.
As there was no means of resistance at hand, these demands were
agreed to by the king, and the remaining hours of the day, and all
the succeeding night, were employed by many clerks in drawing up
charters, in the sense of the petition, for every parish and township.
They were then sealed, and the main body of the insurgents from
Essex and Hertfordshire then retired towards their homes. Meanwhile,
the Kentish rebels had continued a course of outrage in the city. The
Tower-gates were forced, and Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Can-
terbury, Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer, and other persons of high
position, were seized and beheaded. On June iyth came the famous
meeting in Smithfield between Tyler, heading his followers, and the
king, attended by a small retinue. The rebel leader was flushed with
success, and his tone and demeanour provoked the Lord Mayor, Sir
William Walworth, to draw his sword and strike him. The insurgents
bent their bows when their leader fell, and a massacre was imminent,
when Richard rode up to the angry multitude, and offered himself as
their leader in place of Tyler, who had now been dispatched by the
swords of the attendants. This courageous conduct induced them to
follow him out to the fields about the rural village of Islington. A
force of veteran troops and of armed citizens of London had by this
time gathered, but the king forbade them to attack the insurgents,
whom he dismissed to their homes with the same charters of freedom
as had been granted to their fellows from Essex and Hertfordshire,
In the eastern counties the movement was put down by Henry Spenser,
known as "the fighting Bishop of Norwich." This man is a represen-
tative of the martial churchman of mediaeval times, alluded to by
Shakespeare when he writes of Hotspur leading "ancient lords and
reverend bishops on To bloody battles and to bruising arms." He
soon afterwards levied troops, and led what was called a crusade against
the French and Flemings, to assert the cause of Urban VI. against his
French rival, Clement. After a series of actions and sieges at Grave-
lines, Dunkirk, and other towns in the Low Countries, he returned
with the reputation of great personal courage.

264 ANTI-PAPAL LEGISLATION. [1390 A.D.

On the retirement of the insurgents from London, the rebels in
End of other counties either laid down their arms and dispersed
the to their homes, or were put down by force. The king then

revolt. summoned the nobles and gentry, with their retainers, to his
standard, and took the field with a powerful army. The charters
were revoked, and the terrors of the law were let loose on the unhappy
peasantry. John Ball and many others were executed after trial by the
judges on circuit, but, in many parts of the country, the insurrection
was suppressed by means as violent and illegal as the outbreak. This
is proved by the fact that a statute of indemnity was passed in Parlia-
ment, for the benefit of those who " made divers punishments upon
the said villains and other traitors, without due process of the law."
The Parliament refused the king's request that they would pass a law
for the formal abolition of villenage or serfdom, but the institution
had, none the less, received its death-blow, and, when the reaction
caused by terror had subsided, the general movement towards personal
freedom for Englishmen went on in its appointed course.

We have seen that, by the Statute of Pro visors, a legislative resist-
Anti- ance had been made under Edward III. to the Pope's claim
Fe^nsla- ^ *ke right f appointment to benefices in England. Under
tion. Richard II., in 1380, it was declared by Parliament that the

statutes in this regard were not effectual, and that "benefices have
been given, against the will of the founders, to divers people of an-
other language." This protest against the appointment of Italians
and other foreigners to English livings complained that such persons
were non-resident, and were so unable "to hear confession, to preach,
and to teach the people." It was therefore provided that none should
farm benefices for such aliens, nor remit them money, or merchandise,
or letters of exchange, without license of the king. A few years
later, the court of Rome came to an open rupture with England upon
this question. In 1390, a statute was passed, declaring that if any
one brought into the realm any summons, sentence, or excommunica-
tion arising out of the statute of 1380, he should be punished with
" pain of life " and forfeiture of goods. In 1391, the Act of Edward I.'s
reign against giving lands in mortmain was renewed and enlarged.
The Pope, Boniface IX., set at defiance the statute of 1390, and
appointed an Italian cardinal to a prebendal stall at Wells, to which
the king had previously presented. A suit was instituted in England,
in which judgment was given for the king. The bishops supported
the decision of the king's court, and executed judgment accordingly.
The Pope excommunicated the bishops. Then the Commons of Eng-
land spoke out. They declared that the things so attempted by the
Pope were ''clearly against the king's crown and his regality," and
avowed their determination " to stand with our lord the king in the
cases aforesaid, and in all other cases attempted against him, in all
points, to live and to die.'' The House then desired the king to

1386 A.D.] HOME AFFAIRS. 265

seek the opinion of the Lords. The Lords temporal declared that
they would support the crown. The Lords spiritual followed suit, and
declared that they would " loyally uphold his crown, and in all other
cases touching his crown and his regality, as they were bound by
their allegiance." Then came the famous Statute of Praemunire, which
was, in fact, an assertion of what is now called the " royal supremacy,"
commonly thought to have been first introduced at the Reformation.
This great Act of Parliament was passed in 1392. The name is given
from the opening words of the writ issued against the offender guilty
of a contempt against the sovereign and government praemunire
facias A. J3. etc. (cause A. B. to be forewarned that lie appear before
us, etc.). Then the word praemunire was used to denote the offence of
maintaining the Papal power, by paying that obedience to any order or
process of the court of Rome which belongs to the king alone. The
statute declares that "whoever procures at Rome, or elsewhere, any
translations, processes, excommunications, bulls, instruments, or other
things, which touch the king, against him, his crown, and realm, and
all persons aiding therein, shall be put out of the king's protection,
their lands and goods forfeited to the king's use, and they shall be
attached by their bodies to answer to the king and his council ; or
process of praemunire facias shall be made out against them, as in any
other case of provisors."

The internal history of the first half of the reign is much concerned
with intrigues, family quarrels, and open variance, ending in Home
civil war, caused by the efforts of Richard to cope with the affairs,
authority assumed by his uncles John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
and Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. The king called to
his aid various ministers and favourites, including Michael de la Pole,
the chancellor, a man of low origin, who was created Earl of Suffolk,
and the dissolute Robert de Yere, Earl of Oxford. John of Gaunt was
again and again accused of conspiracy to dethrone his nephew, but no
proofs were forthcoming, and in 1386 he left England to assert his
claim to the crown of Castile, in right of his second wife, Constantia,
daughter of Peter the Cruel. His eldest daughter by his first wife
married John, king of Portugal. His daughter Catharine, who had
succeeded to her mother's claims, was wedded, in 1387, to Henry III.
of Castile, and the issue of John of Gaunt thus bore rule in Spain for
many generations. It would seem that the king was vainly impatient
of parliamentary control, and it is certain that the' Commons, in parti-
cular, persisted in asserting their rights. The king had married, in
1382, the Princess Anne of Bohemia, a prudent and amiable lady, who
restrained many of the impulses of his levity and fitful passions, but
there was one thing which she could not check the unbounded extra-
vagance of her husband's personal expenditure. In 1386, the Commons
demanded that the state of his household should be yearly looked into,
and amended at the discretion of certain high officials, but Richard

260 INTERNAL TROUBLES, [1387-1389 A.D.

rejected the proposal with disdain, and replied that he would not, at their
instance, remove the meanest scullion in. his kitchen. They then im-
peached the Earl of Suffolk for corruption, and forced the king to part
with his services for the time. The Commons then went a step farther,
and caused the king to appoint a Commission of Regency for one year,
armed with very large powers. The Duke of Gloucester bore a leading
part in this humiliating treatment of Richard, and it was bitterly
remembered against him by his nephew, when the time came for
revenge. In the summer of T387, the king made progresses in Cheshire
and Yorkshire, and was well received by the people. In August, he
held a council at Nottingham, which included De Yere, now created
Duke of Ireland ; the Earl of Suffolk ; the Chief-Justice Tresilian ; and
Sir Nicholas Brember, Lord Mayor of London. The king tried through
them to induce the sheriffs of many counties only to return to the
next Parliament such knights and burgesses as he should nominate,
but this attempt failed, and he then fell back upon the judges. The
Chief-Justice extorted from them an opinion that the Commission of
Regency was illegal, and that those were traitors who had promoted
its appointment. On November 10, Richard entered London, and was
received with acclamations by the citizens, owing to the influence of
the Lord Mayor. The Duke of Gloucester had been taking his measures,
and advanced on the capital with a large army, supported by the Earls
of Arundel and Nottingham, and by Henry of Bolingbroke, the future
king, now Earl of Derby, son of John of Gaunt. On November 17,
these nobles, called " lords appellants," accused of high treason before
the king at Westminster the councillors who had taken part in the
meeting at Nottingham. The Earl of Suffolk fled to France, but De
Yere, under authority of royal letters, raised an army and took the
field. His defeat at the battle of Radcot Bridge, on the upper Thames,
near Lechlade, drove him away to Ireland, and left the king helpless.
Tresilian, the Chief-Justice, and Sir Nicholas Brember, died on the
scaffold as traitors. Other executions, banishments, and confiscations
took place, under the authority of Parliament.

In 1389 a sudden change came over the scene. At a council
The kin ^eld i n May, the king suddenly asked his uncle Gloucester
becomes "How old am I?" The reply was, "Your highness is in.
master. y 0ur twenty-fourth year." Upon this, Richard declared his
opinion that he was old enough to manage his own affairs. No re-
sistance was made. Gloucester and his partisans retired from the
council, and William of Wykeham became Chancellor. The Duke of
Lancaster had returned from Spain, after selling his claim to the
crown of Castile for a round sum, and both he and his son, Boling-
broke, regained their influence under the king. In the Parliament of
1390, the Chancellor declared the king to be of full age, and that he
intended to govern his people in peace and quiet, to do justice to all
men, and that clergy and laity should enjoy all their liberties. We

1384-1388 A.D.] CHEVY CHASE. 267

shall see that all these professions only masked the purpose of grasp-
ing absolute power, or, if sincerely made at the time, the spirit which
dictated them was overridden by the development of a proud and
tyrannous disposition in the king's inconstant character.

In 1384, a truce was concluded with France, in which Scotland was
included by the French negotiators, but the Scots refused to Foreign
desist from warfare, as the English, under the Earls of Nor- affairs,
thumberland and Nottingham, had just made a destructive foray over
the border, slaughtering and burning as far as Edinburgh. A body
of knights from France arrived at this juncture, and marched with a
large Scottish army into England. The lands of the two Earls were
ravaged, and the Scots returned, driving before them a valuable booty
of cattle and prisoners. In 1385, the French sent an expedition of
a thousand horse and a thousand foot to Scotland, and a large sum
in gold, with a thousand stand of arms and armour, to encourage
another invasion. The English government, enraged by the news of
this French assistance, raised a great and well-furnished force, with
which the king marched northwards in person. Their numbers caused
the immediate retreat of the invading Scots and Frenchmen, who
moved aw^ay into Cumberland and Westmoreland, burning and plun-
dering on every side. Richard advanced into Scotland, and took
Edinburgh, finding no foe to oppose him, but was then forced to
retreat from lack of supplies. The Duke of Lancaster advised him
to return by way of Cumberland, and cut off, as he easily might, the
Scots and Frenchmen. Then the favourite, De la Pole, interposed
with a suggestion of treachery on the part of the Duke, and thus the
chance was lost. Such was the cruel and senseless warfare, without
any decisive result, waged for successive ages between the two neigh-
bouring nations. One incident of the fitful struggle has acquired fame
from its celebration in the ballad of " Chevy Chase." It arose out of
the hereditary enmity between the English and Scottish feudal lords,
the Percy and the Douglas. Lord Henry Percy, the young hero
styled Hotspur, had been appointed to keep the frontier of Nor-
thumberland. In the summer of 1388, the Scottish lords and knights
planned a great foray, and a detachment of three hundred men-at-arms
and two thousand footmen crossed the Tweed, under the command of
Douglas, and made their way to the gates of Durham. As they
returned laden with booty, they fell in with Percy and his men near
Newcastle. A skirmish ensued, in which the leaders met as if at a
tournament. Earl Douglas and Percy fought hand to hand, and the
Scottish leader took Percy's pennon, which he boasted that he " would
set 011 high on his castle of Dalkeith." Percy retorted that he should
not carry it out of England. The Scots then marched to Otterburn,
thirty miles from Newcastle, on the way to the Cheviots, and there
awaited the English attack. The marshy valley, and the hill where
the Scots fixed their camp, may still be traced. Harry Percy came on

268 MISRULE OF RICHARD II. [1394-1397 A.D.

to the attack, with the moon shining as bright as day, in hope of
winning back his pennon. A fierce engagement ensued, in which the
English were routed, and Percy taken prisoner, while the gallant
Douglas lay dead on the field. After the battle, the Bishop of Durham,
another warlike churchman of the age, came up with a large force, but
did not venture to attack the Scottish position. For the rest of the
rei^n, successive truces kept peace, in the main, between the two
countries. In 1394, Richard went to Ireland with a great army, and
remained there nine months. There had been revolt of the native
chiefs, and disaffection among the colonists, but the king's presence
and display of power pacified all for the time. He was thoroughly in
his element, while he gave sumptuous entertainments at Dublin, and
showed his regal magnificence to a wondering people.

In the same year, Richard lost by death the guiding influence of his
Kichard queen, called by the people " the good queen Anne." From
**' >S v'and that time, his course was a downward path to destruction,
downfall. In 1396, the king sought to confirm the existing terms of
truce with France by marriage with Isabella, daughter of Charles VI.,
a child but eight years of age. The Duke of Lancaster favoured the
alliance, but Gloucester, always openly or secretly hostile to his nephew,
made use of it to resume his intrigues, and stir up feeling against a
king who showed friendship to the old enemy of the nation. It is
said that the Count de St. Pol, a French envoy to England at this
time, encouraged Richard to take a bold course against his enemies, and
promised the help of the king of France. Since 1389, the English
monarch had acted with moderation, and remained on good terms with
Parliament, but now, from whatever cause, he aimed at, and, for a
time, achieved the possession of absolute power. In February 1397,
the House of Commons again made a remonstrance as to the extra-
vagant expenses of the king's household. Cowed by Richard's wrath at
their daring interference, they passed a bill to the effect that " whoever
moved the Commons of Parliament, or any others, to make remedy or
reformation of any kind appertaining to the king's person, rule, or
royalty, should be held for a traitor." The king soon turned on his
enemies among the nobles with the ferocious suddenness of a cmip
d'etat. In July, the Earls of Warwick and Arundel were arrested and
put into ward at Tintageland Carisbrook castles. The Duke of Glou-
cester was seized at his castle of Pleshey, in Essex, hurried to a barge in
the Thames, and then shipped off to a prison at Calais. On September
lyth, Richard met his now subservient Parliament, which seems to
have been packed with members who would vote anything that might
be demanded. Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, brother of the Earl
of Arundel, was impeached by the Commons for treason, and banished
for life. His brother the Earl was beheaded, and Warwick was con-
demned, but his life was spared. On the 24th, news came from Calais
that the Duke of Gloucester had died in prison, and Lancastrian par-

1398-9 A.D.] MISRULE OF RICHARD II. :_><;!)

tisans affirmed in the next reign that he was murdered there by the
king's orders. In all these proceedings, the king's uncles, the Dukes
of Lancaster and York, and his cousin Bolingbroke, were concurrent,
either from a prudent fear or from choice. In 1398, a statute was
made, which is really a solemn record of the establishment of a despotic
power, under the sanction of parliamentary forms. The proceedings
of 1387 in Parliament were annulled, as things done traitorously and
against the king's crown and dignity. It was declared that only such
business could be done in Parliament as the king approved, and that
impeachment of the king's officers was treasonable. A subsidy for life
was then granted in the shape of a tax upon wool and leather. Lastly,
the Lords and Commons handed over their powers to a small junto of
peers and commoners nominated by the king, who were to legislate
upon " all petitions, and matters contained in the same, as they shall
think best by their good advice and discretion." Thus armed with a
tyrant's power, the doomed king used it like a tyrant. " He kept in
his wages," says Froissart, "ten thousand archers, night and day that
waited on him," and "there was none so great in England that durst
speak against anything that the king did or would do." A quarrel
arose between the Duke of Norfolk and Bolingbroke, who had now
become Duke of Hereford. Each accused the other of treason, and the
king professed to allow them both to try the matter by "wager of
battle" in the lists at Coventry, in September 1398. When the dny
came, Richard flung down his warder and stayed the matter, as the
two champions were about to charge, and then banished the disputants,
Hereford for ten years, and Norfolk for life. Three months later,
John of Gaunt died, and Hereford became Duke of Lancaster. He was
much loved by the people, and the king acted with insane folly when
he confiscated all his estates. He had now made a deadly foe of his
most powerful subject, who might also be an able leader of other dis-
affected persons. In truth, the proceedings of Richard IT. had raised
up for him enemies in every quarter. Though an amnesty for all
offences had been granted, he robbed rich subjects by heavy fines for
imputed offences in connection with the brief rebellion in 1387, and
extorted money, on the same grounds, from several counties. The
course of justice was interrupted, and the whole people groaned under
a misgovernment which allowed robbers in great companies to roam
through the land, despoiling merchants of their goods, travellers of
their purses, and cultivators of the produce of their fields. In 1399,
Richard suddenly resolved on another visit to Ireland, to avenge the
loss of the Earl of March, who had been surprised and slain by a party
of the lawless natives. He left as regent his uncle, the Duke of York,
and parted with his child-wife Isabella at the door of St. George's
Chapel, Windsor, where they had been to hear mass. Lifting her up
in his arms, and kissing her, the king cried, "Adieu, madam, adieu till
we meet again." His absence left the way open for the action of his

270 DOWNFALL OF RICHARD II. [1399 A.D.

greatest enemy. The banished Archbishop Arundel journeyed from
Cologne to Paris, where Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, was then
residing at the French court. On July 4th, they landed at Ravenspur,
in Yorkshire, with a small party of men-at-arms. Richard is astounded,
amid a life of plenty and splendour at Dublin, by news that Henry of
Lancaster is in England, that the Percies and other great nobles have
joined him, that the regent, the Duke of York, has given a forced
adhesion to the rebel, and that the whole kingdom is at Lancaster's
feet in willing submission. The king landed on the Welsh coast, and,
after helpless wanderings, surrendered to the Earl of Northumberland
near Flint Castle, The Duke of Lancaster arrived next day with a
great force, and carried the king a prisoner to London. On September
29th, Richard subscribed a deed of resignation of the crown, in which
he absolved his subjects from their allegiance, and recommended his
"cousin of Lancaster" as his successor. On the next day, the Parlia-
ment, gathered in Westminster Hall, passed an Act of deposition, and
the Duke of Lancaster came forward, and claimed the throne on the
ground of his descent from Henry the Third, and of his having been
sent, " by God of his grace," to save a realm on the point of being
undone by evil ruling. He was then led by the two archbishops to the
royal chair of state, and his claim was solemnly recognised by Parliament,
The nearest heir was Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, a child in his
seventh year, son of Roger Mortimer, lately killed in Ireland. In thus
choosing a successor of the royal line, but not the next heir, according
to the rules of descent for ordinary estates, the Lords and Commons
were wielding the powers employed of old by the Witan, \ The de-
position of Richard II, was, in truth, a national act. The king, who
had misgoverned the country, and taken to himself arbitrary power,
was treated as a public delinquent, and the general good was set forth
as the ultimate end of all government.! The revolution of 1399, which
placed Henry IY. on the throne, wasTne result of a general agreement
of various orders of society, having a common interest in the main-
tenance of freedom. It is a striking proof of the growth of public
opinion, the power of which saved England from the despotism that, in
other countries, grew out of the mediaeval institutions. It was given
to this nation gradually to modify the spirit of their ancient consti-
tution without destroying it. At the very time when the Commons of
England would permit no tax to be levied without consent of the
people, the nobility of France had suffered the crown to impose taxes
at its will, provided they themselves were exempt. From that time,
the paths of the two nations diverged. The one advanced towards its
saving Revolution of 1688, and the other moved on, with inevitable
progress, slow but sure, towards the violent disruption and dissolution
of 1789.

It was decided by the new king and the peers that the deposed
monarch should be kept imprisoned " in safe and secret ward." Nothing

1400 A.D.] DEATH OK RICHARD II. -ill

more is known of his fate than that in February 1400, it was stated
that he had died in Pontefract Castle. A body was conveyed Richard's
thence to London, and shown as his at St. Paul's, where death,
the funeral obsequies were performed in the presence of Henry IV.
The corpse was then interred at King's Langley, and afterwards
removed to Westminster Abbey, by order of Henry V. It is likely
that Richard was put to death, as alleged, at Pontefract, and beyond
that nothing can be safely affirmed, from the lack of all trustworthy
evidence.

During the first twelve years of the reign of Richard II. there was
a constant growth of the power of the House of Commons. p a rlia-
The great constitutional principles of our government were ment
strikingly shown in their practical effect. The power of the Richard
Commons was more signally displayed than at any previous IL
period, in demanding administrative reform as the condition of voting
supplies; in the impeachment of those who were held to be evil ad-
visers of the crown ; and in insisting that the public liberties, as laid
down in charters and enactments, should not be infringed by the king.
The powers thus asserted by the Commons fell, for a time, into partial
abeyance under the last Plantagenet and the Tudor sovereigns, but
this retrogression was of minor importance in a country where the
champions of freedom made constant appeal to precedent, and de-
manded that the rights won in the past should be made the basis for
more changes in the way of constitutional reform. The three kings of
the House of Lancaster, who owed their throne to a parliamentary
title, saw further progress made in the power of the Commons, which
will be duly noticed under the reign of the last of those rulers.

John Gower, born about 1325 and dying in 1408, was the con-
temporary and friend of Chaucer, who calls him " the moral
Gower," from his grave and sententious style, even when he
writes upon topics which might well be treated in a lively and
manner. The French romances were the courtly reading Chaucer,
before Chaucer and Gower came with their more attractive English.
The demand for poetry and fiction is shown by an incident connected
with Gower's chief work, the Confessio Amantis. Richard II., the
luxurious king, is in his barge on the Thames, when he sees the poet
in a boat, invites him to come on board, and there desires him to
"book some new thing." Gower was a gentleman by birth, living in
the pleasant land, now blooming with hop-vines, at the village of
Otford, in Kent, where, in his time, the Archbishop of Canterbury
had a favourite old seat. He was a man of learning, who wrote with
ease in French and Latin, as well as in his native tongue. His best
poem, the Vox Clamantis, is an allegorical account, in Latin elegiacs,
of the peasant-revolt in 1381. Its object was that of setting men of
culture to the task of diagnosing the diseases of the body politic. The
vices of the higher clergy of the time are denounced their lives cf

272 CHAUCER. [1359-1386 A.D.

pride, wealth, and ease, and their utter contrast with their master^
Christ. He declares that the friar of the day obeys the devil's rule,
and gives some plain advice to the boy-king Richard, setting before
him the good example of his father, the Black Prince. The Papal
claims to absolute power in things temporal and spiritual are also
freely canvassed. The Confession of a Lover consists of seven sets of
stories in verse, directed against the seven deadly sins pride, envy,
anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. In Geoffrey Chaucer, the
"Father of English poetry," we have one of the great names of our
noble literature, a born poet of high genius and invention, keen per-
ception of human nature, dramatic power, and brilliant accomplish-
ments as a writer. He was the son of a London vintner or wine
merchant, but the date of his birth is unknown, and the authorities
differ as widely as 1328 and 1340. Of his early training little is
recorded. He seems to have held a post in the household of Prince
Lionel of Antwerp, second son of Edward III. The poet himself and
his work are specially connected with the friendship and patronage of
John of Gaunt. In that age the influence of Italy over literary form
was spreading through western Europe in the works of her great
writers Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The stanza of Chaucer was
based on the octave rhyme of this last brilliant author, and the Italian
prose of The Decameron, in its hundred stories of adventure and
character, suggested the design of the immortal Canterbury Tales.
Chaucer's earlier work was framed on French models in the shape of
court-poetry, but in the middle of his career the power of the great
Italian writers asserted itself in the development of the more matured
productions of the Englishman. The varied life and experience of
Chaucer gave him opportunities of insight into men and affairs which
his ability turned to great advantage in his literary work. He was
a courtier, a soldier, an envoy, a high official in the customs, and a
member of the House of Commons. In 1359, he sailed for France in
the great army of Edward III., and was taken prisoner, but released on
ransom in 1360, when the Peace of Bretigny was signed. In 1366,
he appears in a list of the king's esquires; in 1370, he was again
abroad on the king's service, arid in 1372 he was one of the com-
missioners who went to Genoa for the purpose of making a commercial
treaty with the great Italian republic. On his return, after two years
of work, travel, and observation, he was appointed, through the kindly
offices of John of Gaunt, to the post of Comptroller of the Customs for
wool and hides in the port of London. The revenue of this office,
along with a court-pension, grants from the Duke of Lancaster, and the
guardianship of a wealthy crown- ward, made the poet a wealthy man.
In 1376 and the following year, he was twice employed by the king on
secret service, and reached his highest position as a citizen in 1386,
when he sat in Parliament as one of the members for Kent. He
was now known throughout the land, and that not merely as the

1386 A.D.] CHAUCER. 273

courtier - poet who wrote The Court of Love, The Assembly of
Foules (or Parliament of Birds], and the Book of the Duchess,
lamenting the death of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, whom
he celebrates as a model of womanly grace and of wedded love.
His Troilus and Oressida had shown a great power of character-
painting, and a new freedom of expression, derived from the close study
of the Italian masters of poetry and prose. The House of Fame was a
brilliant effort of imaginative power, and The Legend of Good Women
showed the high esteem for womanly truth and purity felt by the poet,
who declares that, of all the flowers that bloom, he loves, and ever will,
the Daisy best. The Canterbury Tales is a great unfinished work, on
which the poet was employed, at intervals, for many years of his life.
Herein the wise, shrewd, and humorous author, with the forked beard,
face of kindly cunning, portly frame, and genial ways albeit silent
and devoted to his books displayed a power of insight into human
character, and a knowledge of the human heart, which have been
surpassed, in all our literature, by one man alone, and that the greatest
writer of the world. The joyous freedom of his song is full as pleasant
to the modern reader as it can have been to those who hailed it with
delight five hundred years ago. While the poetry of Chaucer reflects
the manners of an age which was, for all but the lowest class of toilers,
one of mirth, vivacity, and talk, it also sets before us, with amazing
power, the divers characters of men and women, discriminated by
countless subtle strokes of action and expression. The wide range of
the poet's sympathies, the dramatic skill of his portraiture, and the
lively style of his descriptions, charm the reader at every turn. Among
the pilgrims from the Tabard Inn at Southwark to the shrine of St.
Thomas at Canterbury, we have men and women of various ranks in
English society, riding together in the hearty fellowship brought about
by union in a religious undertaking which set aside, for the time, the
usual distinctions of worldly position. The " ploughman " is really
the small farmer, a man of "goods and chattels," no longer at the
bidding of a feudal lord. The attendant on the knight is a yeoman, in
"coat and hood of green," with his sheaf of arrows and mighty bow.
He has on his breast a silver image of St. Christopher, the patron of
field-sports, and is a specimen of the bold race that won Cr^cy and
Poitiers. He and his fellows, in hours of leisure, were shooting at the
butts on every common in England, while the French peasantry, de-
barred from manly exercises, were playing at dice and draughts like
their lords. The handicrafts of the time are represented by the
haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, and tapiser, or maker of tapestry.
Each is clothed in the livery of his craft-guild, and wears at his girdle
a knife mounted with silver. They have chattels and rent enough to
be aldermen, a dignity which their wives long for the husbands to
attain, in the hope to be called Madame. The franklin is the esquire
of the time, a great householder, whose hospitality was so lavish that

274 CHAUCER. [1386 A. D.

" it snewed in his house of meat and drink." He was a public man,
as a knight of the shire, and only below the knight in rank. The
sergeant-at-law is there, with impressive deportment and wise words ;
and the physician, in bright purple cloak and furred hood, with talk of
the ascendancy of the planets and of natural magic, but still learned
in his master Galen. The wife of Bath, one of the liveliest of the
group, was a cloth-maker, with great custom, wearing a head-dress of
finest quality, and scarlet hosen. The fantastic men's dress of the day
is shown in the young squire, the knight's son, who has been with his
father to the wars, but now has his locks curled, and wears a short
gown which has long, wide sleeves, and is embroidered with white and
red flowers " as it were a mead." One of the finest portraits is that
of " the poor parson of a town," " rich of holy thought and work," benign,
patient, gentle to sinners, but sharp with the obstinate ill-doer ; a man
who " taught the lore of Christ and his Apostles, but first he followed
it himself." Six more of the company belong to the ecclesiastical estab-
lishment a prioress, a monk, a friar, a " clerk " of Oxford, &sompnonr or
summoner of delinquents to the Church-courts, and a pardoner, who
dealt in pardons from the Pope. There are a " slender and choleric
reeve, 7 ' employed by some lord as steward or bailiff ; a merchant, in his
Flanders hat, " sounding alway the increase of his winning ; " and a ship-
ma?i, or sailor, in a tunic of coarse cloth, with a dagger or short sword
hung by a lace about his neck and under his arm. A cook, and a
manciple, or provider of victuals for the Inns of Court, make mirth
for the company by their quarrels and their jokes. A miller, big and
bony, one who "could well steal corn;" mine host of the Tabard,
Harry Bailly, a " right merry man ; " and the poet himself, whom the
host describes as one of elvish face, who " looked upon the ground as
he would find a hare," are the other chief persons of the motley array.
We have our ancestors restored to us, not as phantoms from the field
of battle or the scaffold, but in the full enjoyment of their social life.
The man who drew them for our entertainment and instruction lies
buried in the south aisle of the Abbey of Westminster, amid other
illustrious dead, and was described in after-time by Spenser, who lies
near him, as "That renowned Poet, Dan Chaucer, well of English
undefyled, On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be fyled."

1399-1401 A.D.] HENRY IV.

CHAPTER IT.

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION UNDER HENRY IV.

Owen Glendower, the Percies, and the Scots. Battles of Homildon Hill and Shrews-
bury. Other rebellions. The Lollards and Archbishop Arundel. Sawtrey, Badby,
and other victims. Scottish affairs. The Regent Albany. Prince James of
Scotland (James I. ) a prisoner in England.

THE first king of the house of Lancaster was soon called on to defend
by arms the throne which he had acquired by will of Parlia- Henrv
ment, representing the nation. The young Earl of March IV., 1399-
was in safe charge at Windsor Castle, but in less than three JSa r^- t3
months from Henry's accession, a number of nobles resolved hellions,
to attempt the restoration of Richard. The plot only hastened his
death, and the king scarcely needed to raise an army against the
plotters. The people took matters into their own hands. When the
conspirators marched to the west, proclaiming " King Richard " on
their way, the burghers of Cirencester attacked them in their quar-
ters, and the Earls of Kent and Salisbury were taken and beheaded.
The men of Bristol secured and dispatched Lords Lumley and Despenser.
Richard's half-brother, the Earl of Huntingdon, was killed by the
tenants at Pleshey, in Essex, and a few executions took place after
sentence by the courts of law. These events occurred in January
1400. The next trouble arose in Wales, where the late king had been
much beloved. The people there had been moved to pity by his fall and
death, and greatly angered by severe measures passed in Parliament
against the whole nation, on account of certain marauders who had
stolen cattle and robbed traders in adjacent English counties. No
Welshman was to be allowed to purchase land in England, or to become
a citizen or burgess in any English city or town. In 1401, another
Parliament enacted that no Welshman should bear arms or defensive
armour. The people rose at once, and found a leader in the famous
Owen Glendower. This gentleman was a great-grandson of the last
Prince Llewellyn, and had been an esquire in Richard II. 's household.
Educated at one of the Inns of Court in London, he possessed an
amount of knowledge which seemed portentous to his simple and
unlettered countrymen, who regarded him as invested with magical
powers. Some of his land had been seized by Lord Grey de Ruthyn,
a neighbouring English baron, and when Glendower applied to Parlia-
ment for redress, his petition was treated with contempt by the peers
as that of a " barefooted rascal." He then took arms, seized Lord Grey,
and wasted his barony. The spark of private feud blazed into a national
revolt, and the songs of the Welsh bards were sounding again on the
hills, as they hailed the new hero who was to restore the olden glory

276 HENRY IV. [1399-1402 A.D.

of the Britons. The Welsh students at Oxford and Cambridge hurried
home in 1401 to aid the rebellion, and Welsh labourers employed in
England escaped to join their countrymen. The English forces engaged
against the insurgents were under the charge of Harry Percy (Hotspur),
son of the Earl of Northumberland, and the nominal command of the
king's eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, then in his fourteenth year. In
1402, Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle to the young Earl of March, went
against Glendower, but was utterly defeated, and taken prisoner, in
[Radnorshire. The king then took the field in person, but the expedi-
tion entirely failed. It was the month of August, and, when the royal
army was exposed to storms of rain, snow, and hail in that tempestuous
summer, Glendower was alleged to have raised them by his wicked
sorcery. It was strategy, helped by the season, and not sorcery, that
baffled the English troops. Glendower carried on the war according
to the traditions of his forefathers, and, offering no chance of an
action in the open field, defied the enemy from his strongholds in the
mountains.

On all sides Henry IV. was surrounded with difficulty and danger,
according to the maxim put into his mouth by the great
king's dramatist, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
position, an( } Scotland refused him recognition as the sovereign

of England, and declared that their truces were with Richard, and not
with an usurper. Isabella, the child-widow of the late king, had been
taken back to Calais with ceremony almost as splendid as that which
attended her marriage five years before, but Henry, sorely needing
money himself, declined to restore the dowry which she had brought
with her to England. The French nobles and princes, regarding the
deposition of Richard as the act of the English nation, cried out for a
war of vengeance on a people so <; dangerous through its pride and
insolence." But France was rendered helpless by the condition of her
own affairs. Her king, Charles VI., father of the ex-queen Isabella,
was more or less insane, and the Armagnac and Bourguignon civil war
was raging between the factions of the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy.
Against Scotland the king's forces gained a marked success. After a
useless invasion made by Henry in 1400, when the English army,
according to precedent, dwindled away at last from lack of supplies, the
Scots invaded England, under the command of Earl Douglas, in 1402.
He made his way to Durham, as his father had done before the fatal
fight of Otterburn, and was then marching back to Scotland with his
booty, when he found his way barred by a large force under the Percies,
the Earl of Northumberland, and his son " Hotspur." The spot called
Homildon Hill lies about a mile north-west of Wooler, in Northumber-
land, near the foot of the Cheviots. There the Scottish warriors, ten
thousand of the best men in the land, took up their position for defence.
The English advanced to the attack, and their archers alone won the
day. The flight of their shafts was so terrible in its sustained swift-

1403 A.D.] BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY. -277

ness and strength that the enemy had no chance agaipst them. As
they stood in their ranks on the hill-sides, they were shot down by
hundreds, and, when they charged, the English bowmen retired a little,
and renewed their deadly fire. No English men-at-arms drew a sword
on that day of defeat for Scotland. Douglas was severely wounded, and
taken prisoner, along with many nobles and knights, including the son
and heir of the Duke of Albany, Regent of Scotland. A total rout
followed, and great numbers of the Scots were drowned in attempting
to pass the Tweed. This victory was won on September i4th.

Various reasons have been assigned for the discontent, ending in
open revolt, displayed by Northumberland and his son Hot-
spur. It is certain that they had incurred great expenses in of the 3
resistance to the Scots, and that the king's government, un- jgattl^'f
able to find money even to pay the troops in Wales, could Shrews-
not at the time reimburse the northern lords. The true cause bury > 1403>
was probably ambition, encouraged by the king's embarrassments,
which prompted them to set up another ruler, possibly the young Earl
of March, under whose nominal sway the Percies would be even greater
men than they were. The plans of the rebels were laid with such
secrecy that, while the king was marching northwards to join them in
invading Scotland, Harry Percy was coming down on Wales, by Lanca-
shire and Cheshire, proclaiming that Richard was alive. The Eurl of
Northumberland was lying ill at Berwick, but Douglas and his followers,
released by their captors, were in the army as Percy's allies against the
English king. Glendower, who was in the plot, was advancing from
Carmarthenshire to meet Percy and Douglas, and the issue of events
depended on the hindrance of the junction. The king had reached
Burton-upon-Trent before he knew of the revolt, and turned at once
to the westward, entering Shrewsbury on the 2oth of July. The Prince
of Wales had already joined him with his forces from the borders.
The battle was fought on Hately Field, three miles east of Shrews-
bury, on July 23rd. The armies each numbered about 14,000 men,
and a most obstinate struggle, of three hours' duration, ensued. The
king and his son, young Harry of Monmouth, fought with desperate
valour for throne and life. The Northumbrian archers, still flushed
with the brilliant success of Homildon Hill, now drew their bowstrings
against their English brothers, and the king's men fell "like leaves in
autumn on a night of frost." The Prince of Whales was shot in the
face, but fought on in the thickest of the battle. Percy and Douglas
charged home, but the royal troops rallied, and behaved with great
courage. The king himself was struck down by Douglas, but he was
raised by his attendants, and plunged again into the contest. At
length Hotspur fell, pierced by an arrow in the brain, and a panic set
in among the rebels. Douglas was taken prisoner, and few of the
Scots escaped death. Nearly half of the forces engaged lay dead or
wounded on the ground. The Earl of Worcester, brother of Northum-

278 PLOTS AND REBELLIONS. [1405-1408 A.D.

berland, and two other men of mark, were executed at Shrewsbury
market-cross as traitors. The politic Henry pardoned Northumberland
without inflicting even a fine.

The troubles of the king and country were not ended by the
Further great success at Shrewsbury. French descents harassed the
rebellfoi? southern coasts, and France made a treaty with Glen dower
1405-H08. ' as " Owen, Prince of Wales." The other " Prince of Wales "
kept up the war against him with some success, and the king was
about to join him with a large force in 1405, when a new revolt called
him to the north. The restless Northumberland was again in the
lield, and now in the plain interests of the young Earl of March, whom
he sought to place on the throne. He was joined by the Earl of
Nottingham, Lord Bardolf, and Scrope, Archbishop of York. Scrope
and Nottingham were entrapped, under pretence of a conference, by
the Earl of Westmoreland, and were then tried, condemned for treason,
and executed. This was the first instance of an archbishop dying by
sentence of the law. The Chief -Justice, Gascoigne, refused his sanc-
tion, on the ground that the lay-courts had no jurisdiction over a
prelate, and the Pope excommunicated all who were concerned in his
death, but afterwards withdrew the sentence. Northumberland and
Bardolf escaped to Scotland for the time, and invaded Northumberland
in 1408. Sir Thomas Ilokeby, sheriff of Yorkshire, defeated them in
battle at Bramham Moor, near Tadcaster. Northumberland died light-
ing, and Bardolf, taken prisoner, succumbed to the wounds received in
the action. This was the end of English attempts to get rid of the
energetic, vigilant, and able Henry of Lancaster. The great Welshman,
Owen Glendower, never yielded at all. Henry, the Prince of Wales,
by the efforts of four campaigns, subdued the southern part of the
land, but the bold chieftain was in arms amongst the hills of the
Siiowdon group, making occasional raids against his enemies, until his
death in the course of the next reign.

The lovers of religious freedom have always looked askance at the
Persecu- reign of the English king under whom was passed the first
the* f ^ aw by which men were put to death for their religious
Lollards, belief. It was a desire to conciliate the Church that led
Henry 1Y. to approve and to execute this statute. He had come to
the throne with the almost unanimous support of the hierarchy, his
great upholder being Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury. The son
of John of Gaunt, a strong supporter of Wyclif as an assailant of the
corruptions of the Church, was now used by the primate as an instru-
ment for the destruction of the Lollards. The activity of this half-
religious, half-political party did not cease with the death of Wyclif.
They were as restless and fanatical as the Puritans of a later age in
our history, and alarmed the government, though not the Church,
MS much by their meddling with public affairs as by their " heretical "
views in matters that concerned the religion of the day. Some of

1401 A.D.] PERSECUTION OF THE LOLLARDS. 279

the chief followers of Wyclif, such as Philip Repington, who after-
wards rose to be Bishop of Lincoln and cardinal, and the learned
and accomplished Nicholas Hereford, had recanted their opinions,
either wholly or in part, under pressure from the bold and energetic
Courtney. Nevertheless, the new opinions continued to spread amon**
all classes, and a chronicler of the time, Knyghton, a canon of
Leicester, complains that there you could not meet two persons in
the street but one of them was a Lollard. Among the laity of high
rank who favoured or openly adopted " Lollardry," were Montague,
Earl of Salisbury, who died in the first revolt against Henry, Sir-
Lewis Clifford, Sir Thomas Latimer, Sir William Neville, and others
whose r mes denote the possession of the best blood in England.
The death of Courtney in 1396 had raised to the primacy the im-
perious Arundel, a great bigot of small learning. We have seen
that he played a leading part in the usurpation of Henry IV., and
he preached the coronation-sermon from the text "This man shall
reign over my people," taking occasion thereby to contrast the manly
virtues of Bolingbroke with the childish follies of the fallen Richard.
The greatest danger to the Church lay in the gradual development
of a belief in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, as the sole
trustworthy source of religious truth. With this impalpable, but most
real, peril to the traditional and established faith, it was impossible
for persecution to cope. The seat of the malady could not be reached,
but religious bigots, like other quacks, care only for the suppres-
sion of symptoms, and to this work Arundel, with the full support of
the king, addressed himself with the utmost zeal. In 1401, Parlia-
ment passed the famous law De lieretico comburendo. It was directed
against all who should preach, write, or teach against the faith of
Holy Church, and all having in their possession books or writings of
such wicked doctrines and opinions. Offenders were to be proceeded
against by the bishop, and all persons who should refuse to abjure,
or, after abjuration, fall into relapse, should be left to the secular
court. The meaning of this was shown to be that the sheriff of a
county, or mayor or bailiffs of a city or borough, should receive such
persons after sentence, and cause them to be burnt before the people,
" that such punishment may strike in fear to the minds of others."
The first victim was William Sawtrey, a parish priest of St. Osyth's
in London, and formerly rector of St. Margaret's Church at King's
Lynn. He died by burning in February 1401, at the Smith field
which was hereafter to witness so many like scenes. The prisons in
the bishops' pnlaees, which had been hitherto simply places of con-
finement for ecclesiastical offenders, were now often provided with
instruments of torture. The Lollards' Tower at Lambeth Palace is a
memorial of the times, retaining in one room the iron rings to which
its prisoners were chained, and other signs of the captives whom it
once immured. The Bishop of Lincoln, in his palace at Woburn, had

280 PERSECUTION OF THE LOLLARDS. [H10 A.D.

a cell in his prison called Little-Ease, because it was so small that
those who were confined in it could neither stand upright nor lie at
length. The bishops, now armed, through the secular courts, with the
power of life and death, could still, at their discretion, inflict fine,
imprisonment, and other penalties. The persons who were convicted
of heresy were often doomed to the old Church penalty for homicide,
perpetual imprisonment within the walls of a monastery. Others
were branded on the cheek with a hot iron, and, if they dared to
hide the mark, they were liable to burning as relapsed heretics.
Others, again, were condemned to wear the device of a faggot worked
upon the sleeve of their clothing, in token of their narrow escape
from burning. One result of the persecution was that the Lollards
became less disposed to act the part of good subjects, and added to
their "heretical" opinions more and more of political disaffection.
Their friends in high places made a stir in their behalf. The Lords
and Commons, as a body, were jealous of any extension of the power
of the Church, and not a few were eager to share in Church plunder.
A party in the House of Commons were known as "the Lollard
members," and twice during the reign the House presented a petition
to the king for the sequestration of all Church property. One part
of the document is notable as containing the first proposal for a poor-
law, in suggesting that every township " should keep all poor people
of their own dwellers, which could not labour for their living." In
1410, the Commons prayed the king that the statute against "here-
tics " might be either repealed or mitigated. He replied that it was
not severe enough, and at once signed a warrant for the burning of
John Badby. This poor artisan of Evesham had been sent up to
Archbishop Arundel by the Bishop of Worcester, for refusing to abjure
the Lollard opinion as to the Eucharist. He was condemned to be
burnt at Smith field. The Prince of Wales, as President of the
Council, \vas there to witness the burning, and tried to persuade him
to recant and save his life. The offer was stoutly refused, and Badby
died as a martyr. Several more burnings took place during the reign,
as is proved by a grant, in the first year of Henry V., of the restora-
tion of forfeited property to the widows of four other victims of the
statute De Heretico, who had suffered before his own accession to
the throne.

The Stewart line of kings had now ascended the Scottish throne.
England ^ n ^ e death ^ David H. i n I 3?o> without leaving any issue,
and Scot- he was succeeded by Robert Stewart, son of Walter the High
land. Steward and Bobert Bruce's daughter, Marjory. Bobert II.

died in 1390, two years after the battle of Otterburn, and was followed
by his eldest son, John, who was crowned as Bobert III. He was a
ruler infirm alike in body and character, and quite unable to control
the turbulent nobles of his time. In 1398, Prince David, the king's
son, created Duke of Bothesay, was made regent for three years, with

1370-1424 A.D.] ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 281

full powers to restrain and punish disorder, and the Earl of Fife, the
king's brother, was made Duke of Albany, and appointed one of the
council by whom the Regent was to be guided in administration. This
is the first appearance of the ducal title in Scottish history. One of
these first holders of the rank, the Duke of Albany, was a man of
great and unscrupulous ambition. In 1402, he caused the king to
imprison Rothesay in Falkland Palace, Fifeshire, where he soon after-
wards died in a dungeon. The general belief of the time accused
Albany c c causing the end of his nephew by starvation. The duke
then became Regent. His way to the throne, on the king's death, was
barred by the existence of Prince James, a lad of eleven. The king
resolved to send him to France for safety, and he sailed from the Forth
in March 1405. Many persons believed that the contrivance of Albany
was seen in the fact of the vessel which bore the prince being taken
by an English ship-of-war off Flamborough Head. The prisoner was
taken to London, and put into the hands of Henry IV., who kept him
in defiance of the truce existing between the two countries. He re-
mained in honourable captivity for nineteen years. In 1406, when his
father, Robert III., died of grief at the fate of his two sons, James
was acknowledged in Scotland as king, with the title of James I., and
Albany continued to govern as Regent. The young monarch was well
treated by his English captors, apart from the fact of detention away
from his country and his throne, and both he and his people were, in
the end, the better for his mishap. The Scotland of that age was not
a land distinguished by devotion to order, law, and culture. At the
English court, under the rule both of Henry IV. and Henry V., the
young James Stewart received an excellent training in all the learning
and accomplishments of the time. He observed the practice of English
politics and the working of English law. Under Henry V., he shared
the society and learned the views and experience of the ablest statesmen
both of England and France, and he was thus fitted to become in due
season the able and enlightened ruler of his own people, lamented in
his death, and enshrined with high and just eulogy in the records of
his country. The year 1411 was marked by the defeat at the battle of
Harlaw of a great host of Highland marauders, led by Donald, " Lord
of the Isles," who was bringing the ravages of fire and sword to the
south and east of the Grampians. The Scottish king, in his retirement
at Windsor, saw and loved the Lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the
Earl of Somerset, and niece of Henry IV. His poem in her honour,
entitled The King's Quair (or, little book), is a charming production
written in the style and stanza of Chaucer, and has given to its author .
a niche in the history of our literature. James married the lady, was
released on ransom, and crowned with his queen at Scone, in 1424.

The health of the king had been declining for some time before the
approach of the year 1413. Prince Henry, who enjoyed great public
favour, is said to have aroused his father's jealousy, and to have been

282 THE LOLLARDS. [1413 A.D.

for that reason excluded from all public employment, but there is little
D th f trustworthy evidence as to the relations existing between him
Henry and the king. The first Lancastrian monarch died at West-
IV., 1413. m i ns ter on March 20, 1413. Besides the Prince of Wales,
he left three sons, also children of his first wife, Mary de Bohim. These
were Thomas, Duke of Clarence ; John, Duke of Bedford ; and Hum-
phrey, Duke of Gloucester. His second wife, Joan of Navarre, was
childless.

CHAPTER III.

HENRY THE FIFTH CONQUERS FRANCE.

The king and the Lollards. War with France. The English armament. Capture
of Harfleur. The victory of Agincourt. The helpless state of France. Capture
of Rouen. Treaty of Troves. The king's marriage and death.

THE gallant, accomplished, and energetic Henry of Monuiouth came to
Henry ^ ie throne ^ n n ^ s 2 5 tn year. In face, form, demeanour, and
V. 1413- speech he was gifted with all that could charm his subjects,
1422t whether citizens or soldiers, and there was only one party in

the state that was likely to be a source of trouble. The new monarch
met his Parliament in May in a friendly spirit, and showed a wise
magnanimity in the first acts of his reign. The Earl of March was
freed from prison, and the son of the late rebellious Henry Percy was
restored to his inheritance.

The matter of the Lollards, both as a religious and as a political
T . party, at once came to the front. The clergy hated them for

Lollards, heresy, and the civil power feared them for disaffection.
1413-1418. Among the men of good position in the country who had
become strong supporters of Lollardry was Sir John Oldcastle, a Here-
fordshire knight. He married the heiress of Lord Cobham, of Cow-
ling Castle, near Rochester, and, as Lord Cobham, he had summons to
Parliament in right of his wife's barony. He had been in the public
service under Richard II. and Henry IV., and was highly esteemed
by the new king both in his military and his private capacity. At
the instance of the bishops, Henry spoke to his friend at Windsor, but
Cobham used strong language against the Pope, and the king then
allowed the archbishop to proceed according to law. The Lollard lord
.avoided service of summons by shutting himself up in Cowling Castle,
and set the ecclesiastical power at defiance. Henry then felt obliged
to intervene, and Cobham went as a prisoner to the Tower. A court
held at the chapter-house of St. Paul's, and then adjourned to the
house of the Black Friars, could not induce him to recant, and the
obstinate defendant finished his speech by declaring that " the Pope

1413-1415 A.D.] THE FRENCH WAR. 283

himself, the archbishops and prelates, are the head and tail of Anti-
christ." He was then condemned as a heretic, and delivered over to
the secular power for execution. A respite of fifty days was granted
by Henry, and Cobhani, in September 1413, made his escape from
the Tower. Rumours then arose of a Lollard plot to destroy king,
lords, a r d clergy, and in January 1414, Henry went forth from the
city-gates with a great force into St. Giles' Fields, then open country
stretching out to the hills of Hampstead and Highgate. He found a
few score persons assembled. Sir Roger Acton, a friend of Cobham's,
and Beverley, a Lollard preacher, with some others, were taken, con-
demned, and beheaded as traitors. Cobham escaped for the time, but
was taken in Wales in December 1417, after a desperate resistance,
and brought up to London, a wounded prisoner. The king was in
France at this time ; but Parliament was sitting, and by them he was
sentenced to be hanged and burnt as a heretic and traitor. The
Lollard leader was then drawn on a hurdle from the Tower to a
gallows erected in St. Giles' Fields. On this his body was fastened
horizontally in chains, and he was burnt to death in that position.
This was the end of Lollardry as a political force. The persecution of
their religious heresy was continued by the bishops, and the disease,
according to precedent, was thus driven inwards, where it lurked and
worked until the later days of open rupture with the court of Rome.

An evil ambition, and a fair opportunity, urged the warlike young
king into a renewal of the old struggle with France. That .^
country was still sorely troubled by the lunacy of her inon- French
arch, Charles VI., and by the desolating contest for the war> 1415<
regency that was being waged between the factions of the Burgundians
and the Armagriacs, headed by the king's cousin, the Duke of Bur-
gundy, and the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans. The English
nobles and people were both eager for war, and in 1414 Henry put
in a claim to the crown of France, based upon the old pretensions of
Edward III. Nothing could be more absurd than such a contention,
for, granting that Edward's claim was well founded, the inheritance of
the old French dominions belonged to the Earls of March, the family
of Mortimer, descended from Lionel, third son of Edward, instead of
to the Lancastrian line, which was reigning in England by a Parlia-
mentary title only, and was descended from Edward's fourth son. The
attack of Henry V. on France was, in fact, the mere wantonness of
aggression, in which nation and king sought to revive olden glories,
and to wipe out the stain of humiliation received under Richard II.
All his claims were rejected by the French, including one for the
cession of Normandy. Maine, and Anjou, and on April 16, 1415, Henry
announced at a great council his determination to recover ''his inheri-
tance." The supply of money just granted by Parliament was used
for the purpose of invasion, though it had been expressly limited as
given "for the defence of the kingdom of England and the safety

284 THE FRENCH WAR. [1415 A.D.

of the seas." The king's brother, the Duke of Bedford, was named
"lieutenant" of the kingdom during Henry's absence, and for the
next three months preparations for war were made.

The party opposed to the Lancastrian line now engaged in a last
A new attempt to obtain the throne for the Earl of March. The
crushed chief conspirators were the king's cousin, Richard, Earl of
July 1415. Cambridge, younger son of Edmund Langley, Duke of York,
who died in 1402; Lord Scrope, Henry's "familiar friend," and Sir
Thomas Grey, of Heton. The plot was revealed by the Earl of March
himself, for which he was taken into favour, and permitted to join the
French expedition. Cambridge, Scrope, and Grey were convicted and
beheaded as traitors.

The feudal terms of service for forty days in the field had now
The anna- become exchanged for those of enlistment with regular pay,
agldnst according to the usage of modern armies. When Henry V.
France. raised his great force for the invasion of France, it was settled
that a duke should receive one mark, or 133. ^d. per day; an earl,
half-a-mark, 6s. 8d, ; a baron, 4$., a knight, 2s. every other man-at-arms,
or mailed horseman, is., and an archer, 6d. Great nobles and others
contracted to furnish large bodies of troops at this rate, well mounted,
armed, and arrayed. The first quarter's wages were required to be
paid in advance, and pledges were given for the payment of the second
quarter. Contracts were made for carpenters and other artisans, and
for waggons, bows, and arrows. For the performance of some of these
contracts the king pledged jewels, and he raised large sums as loans
upon jewels and plate. Ships and sailors were impressed for the
service, and a staff of surgeons was provided. Many officers of the
royal household were to attend the king, with a band of fifteen
minstrels. On June i8th, Henry set out from Westminster, going
in procession to St. Paul's, accompanied by the Lord Mayor, and
citizens walking in array of their guilds. At Winchester he waited
the arrival of an embassy from France, but all efforts for a settlement
failed, and on July 26th the envoys returned to Paris, reporting that
all Henry's peaceable professions covered a malicious purpose. The
king's will was made, concluding with the words in his own hand
"This is my last will, subscribed with my own hand, R. H. (i.e. Rex
Henricus). Jesu mercy and gremercy Ladie Marie help. 7 '

The truce with France expired on August 2nd, and the army then
The in- embarked on fifteen hundred small ships, gathered in South-
vasion. ampton Water. On Saturday, August loth, Henry stepped
on board his own vessel, the Trinity, lying between Southampton and
Portsmouth. The ships of the numerous fleet varied in bulk from
twenty tons to three hundred. On Sunday all put to sea. Tuesday's
noon-day sun saw the royal ship entering the mouth of the Seine, and
the whole fleet came to anchor about three miles from Harfleur. The
army was landed on the following day without resistance, and then the

1415 A.D.] BATTLE OF AGINCOURT. 285

siege of Harfleur began. The town was defended by embattled walls,
having three strong gates with bulwarks, and wide ditches, deeply
filled by the waters of the Seine. A close blockade was maintained on
the side of the sea, and the place was soon invested in all quarters.
Cannon and other engines were used for battering the works, and mines
were maae, met by countermines, in which the workers fiercely fought
underground. The rude artillery of the time made little impression
on the defences, and disease raged in the English camp. Courtenay,
Bishop of Norwich, and the Earl of Suffolk, died in the middle of
September, and Henry, seeing his men perish by thousands from
dysentery, resolved on a desperate attempt to storm the town. The
garrison, summoned to submit, would not risk, the horrors of a suc-
cessful assault, and agreed to yield on September 22nd, if no relief
came from outside. The French government was not yet ready with
an army to take the field, and Harfleur was surrendered on the day
appointed, after a siege of thirty-six days.

The capture of Harfleur found the invader in a position of terrible
risk. Only nine thousand men fit for service were left of an Battle of
army that started with six thousand men-at-arms, and twenty- Agin-
four thousand foot. A council of war was held on October October
5th, and there the king was strongly urged to return by sea at 2 ^ 1415t
once to England, with the remnant of his forces. The French, it was
truly said, were gathering every day, and nothing but death or sur-
render was before the English army. This advice was not only
specious, but thoroughly sound, in a military sense, and yet Henry of
Monmouth did not dare to follow it. How could the warrior-king
return, in virtual defeat, with but one-third of the host that had
.followed him for the conquest of France ? The resolve of Henry seems
to savour of reckless folly, but it was the only course open to such a
man in that age. He sent away the fleet, with orders to await him
at Calais, and on October 8th started on his daring march through
Normandy, Picardy, and Artois, all in full possession of the enemy's
troops. Provisions were taken from Harfleur, and no plunder or
ravage was permitted, save the seizure of bare food and other neces-
saries. The line of march lay near the coast, by Fecamp and through
Dieppe. At Eu an attack was easily repulsed, and Abbeville was
reached on Sunday, October 1 3th. Henry V. was now confronted by
the same difficulty as that which met Edward III. before Crecy the
passage of the Somme. The old ford at Blanchetaque was found of no
avail, as the road was broken up, and the French were in force beyond
the river. The search for a passage lasted during a two days' march
to Amiens, where a little bread, and plenty of wine from the new
vintage, were obtained. At Corby, a soldier was hanged for stealing
a sacred vessel from the church. There the king gave his famous
order that every archer should provide himself with a stake, sharpened
at each end, to plant in the ground when about to be attacked by

28G BATTLE OF AGINCOURT. [1415 A.D.

cavalry. More than forty miles above Amiens, the river was at last
crossed in safety, and Henry started again, in perfect order, for Calais.
A French army of sixty thousand men was in advance of him, falling
ever back, until they made a stand on the plain near the villages of
Ruisseauville and Agincourt, in Artois, ten miles north-west of the
town of St. Pol. The English king lay on the night of October 24th at
the village of Maisoncelles. There was little sleep in the camp of men
whose destruction on the morrow seemed sure. While their priests
were confessing penitents, and the armourers were working on weapons
and rivets, the confident knights in the French host were playing at
dice, with the ransoms of expected prisoners for the stakes. The scene
of action was but twenty miles from the field of Crecy, and it was
from the memories of Crecy that the French commanders took counsel
in their arrangements for the day of Agincourt. There the army of
greater numbers was beaten in attack, and defence was to be now the
order of the day. A host of men, at least six to one of the nine
thousand English, was drawn up in great depth on a narrow front
between the woods of Tramecourt and Agincourt. In advance were
nearly the whole of the French nobility, with eight thousand knights
and esquires, and a force of archers and cross-bowmen. The main
body was crowded together in a way that largely affected the issue.
The English king rose with the dawn on October 25th, the feast of
St. Crispin; and, having heard three masses, was fully armed for the
encounter, wearing for distinction on his helmet a splendid crown.
He drew up his little force in one line, with men-at-arms in the centre,
and archers posted on the wings, their stakes fixed before them.
When the enemy would not stir, after several hours' waiting, Henry
ordered an advance. The fire of his archers was such as to force the
French from their defensive attitude, and their forward movement
was the first step to ruin. The English bowmen halted, planted their
stakes firmly, and poured in volley after volley. The charging French
horsemen were hampered by the heavy soil of clay, wetted by recent
rain, and the sting of the shafts drove back the steeds upon the
second line. Confusion was setting in, when Henry rushed to the
encounter with his mounted men, followed by his archers, who flung
away their bows, and fought with sword and bill. Other English
bowmen kept up a fire from the flanks, and not an arrow could miss
the crowded foe. A desperate contest ensued between the French and
English chivalry. Henry behaved like the hero that he was. Struck
down once by a blow from a French mace, he rose, rallied, and fought
fiercely on. The crown on his helmet was split by the sword of the
Duke of Alen^on, who was then killed by Henry's followers, in spite of
the king's efforts to save him. The struggle of three hours became at
last a mere massacre. The rear took to flight when the best French
fighters were all killed, disabled, or taken, and the great field of Agin-
court was won. The losses of the vanquished were enormous. Seven

1416-1419 A.D.] CONTINUANCE OF THE WAR. -_S7

princes of the blood had fallen, with over a hundred other nobles, eight
thousand of the French gentry, and some thousands of lower' rank.
The prisoners included the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, and far
exceeded in number the whole of the victors. Of the English, about
sixteen hundred fell, among whom were the Duke of York arid the Earl
of Suffolk. Four days later, the bells of every church in London were
ringing in response to the triumphal shouts of joy from the citizens,
and the return of the king from Calais to Dover on November i yth was
welcomed by a crowd who rushed into the sea, and carried their hero
ashore in their arms. A triumphal entry into London a few days
later presented a spectacle of splendour such as the capital had never
yet witnessed, while maidens and youths, from arches and towers
erected for the occasion, showered boughs of bay and leaves of gold
upon the head of the conquering king.

During 1416, the war continued in Normandy with the siege of
Harfleur by the French, the garrison being reduced to great c ..
straits until relieved from blockade by capture of the French ance*?? ~
fleet at the mouth of the Seine. The state of France, amidst the war<
civil broils and general brigandage, was mere chaos, and Henry was
preparing for a new effort at conquest of that distracted 'land. On
July 23, 1417, he embarked again at Southampton with the greatest
force that had ever left English shores. More than forty thousand
men, having with them miners and cannon, landed at the mouth of the
Seine in the first days of August. The king's immediate object was the
mastery of Normandy, and, as he advanced, he strove to rouse the
people by reminders of his descent from their great chieftain Rollo, and
of their duty of sympathy with those who were connected in blood with
the Norman conquerors of England. To such appeals no answer was
now forthcoming. Three centuries and a half had passed away since
the great exploit of Duke William, and the men of Normandy had now
become a part of the great French nation, just as the descendants of
William's followers had for many a year grown English in language
and feeling, with a large mixture of English blood. The argument
drawn from the past failed, but the arms of England, directed by Henry
with masterly skill and patient resolution, proved more successful than
ever. It was a war of assaults and blockades. On September 4th Caen
was taken by storm, and then Bayeux opened her gates. Falaise and
Alencon next succumbed, and the reduction of Louviers, Lisieux, Evreux
and other towns of lower Normandy, paved the way for an attack on
Rouen, the capital, then the greatest and richest town of France.
Large reinforcements had arrived from England, and Henry, crossing
the Seine at Pont de 1'Arche, invested the place on July 30, 1418.
The town was powerfully defended, and only surrendered from sheer
famine in January 1419. The king built a .palace, in which he held
court as Duke of Normandy, and then strove to bring the French
government to terms, as he advanced with his army towards Paris.

288 THE TREATY OF TROVES. [1420-1422 A.D.

All negotiations failed, and the disorders of the unhappy country
culminated in the treacherous murder of the Duke of Burgundy by
the Dauphin, Prince Charles, on August i2th, in a conference held
at Montereau.

The French were now helpless in presence of Henry's formidable and
Peace victorious army, and the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip "the
made. Good," having in his hands the French king, queen, and
princesses, hastened to make terms which should exclude the Dauphin
from the throne. The Treaty of Troyes was concluded on May 21, 1420,
and was a complete triumph for the English king. Henry was to
marry, as he did a few days later, the French king's eldest daughter
Catharine, and to be at once Regent of the kingdom. On the death of
Qharles VI., he was to succeed him on the throne of France. Such was
the abyss of ruin into which factious nobles had plunged a great and
powerful nation. The bridal month of Henry and his queen was passed
in the reduction of towns held by the Dauphin. In November, the two
kings rode side by side into Paris, and the three estates of France
solemnly ratified the treaty of Troyes. Early in 1421, Henry held
a Parliament at Rouen, and coinage was issued bearing the inscription
" Heres Franciae." The king and queen then went to England, and
Catharine was crowned at Westminster, with feasts and pageants of
great splendour. Many estates in Normandy had been bestowed on
English lords, and the danger of continental dominion from which
England had been saved by the weakness of John was now, as it seemed,
to be renewed by the strength of Henry V. A speedy death of the
conqueror, an infant successor, a civil war, a woman's courage and
fanaticism, and a revival of patriotic feeling in France, were to be the
instruments of solid good for England, evolved from a storm of disgrace
and disaster in the following reign.

The English king and queen were making a progress through the
Tne kingdom, and had arrived at York, the northern capital,

Scots in when ill news from France caused Henry to return thither
France. w jth all speed. The Dauphin's party in France had appealed
for help to Scotland, the old ally, and in 1421 a force of seven thou-
sand Scots, evading the English cruisers, landed under the command
of the Earl of Buchan. Henry had left his brother, the Duke of
Clarence, as his lieutenant in Normandy, and he, while he was
engaged in wasting Anjon, was surprised, defeated, and slain, on
March 22nd, at the battle of Beauje". The French were encouraged to
new efforts, and Henry landed at Calais, with a new army of nearly
thirty thousand men, on June i2th. Meaux was taken after a long and
expensive siege, and in the end the English were masters of most of
France to the north of the Loire.

The queen had already borne a son, and joined the king in Paris,
where there was a brief time of festivity at Whitsuntide, 1422.
Henry was at the height of fame, won by the most brilliant success

1422 A.D.] DEATH OF HENRY V. 289

in policy and war, when the hand of death was laid upon him. He
had long been suffering from pleurisy, which he met with Death of
the same iron will as he had ever shown against difficulty Henry V.
and danger. He was on his way to raise the siege of Caen, when he
was mastered by a fresh attack, and was carried back on a litter to
Vincennes. He died there on August 31, 1422, showing the same
composure as had been ever noted by those who were with him in the
hour of battle. The regency of France was delivered to his brother
John, Duke of Bedford, one of the best soldiers of the age. England
was commended to the charge of his brother Humphrey, Duke of
Gloucester; the care of the infant king Henry was assigned to the
Earl of Warwick. The remains of the young hero and statesman, after
a solemn service at St. Paul's, in presence of the Lords and Commons,
were laid in the Confessor's chapel at Westminster. His widow,
Catharine, married a Welsh gentleman, named Owen Tudor, and from
this union sprang the line of kings and queens. The great service
rendered by Henry V. to the nation which he ruled in his brief career
of glory was the final establishment of the fact of English prowess in
the face of France and all the European world. No dream could now
arise that the island where such a people dwelt, indomitable in courage
and trained to .arms, could be the victim of subjugation from abroad.
The coming civil wars of the land never tempted a king of France to
the thought of avenging Agincourt by wearing the crown of England
in right of conquest. For the safety of our fields from the ravages of
foreign foes, and for the power to work out her future unhampered by
foreign intervention, the nation was in no small degree indebted to
the strong arms and well-aimed shafts of those who drew the bow at
Agincourt.

CHAPTER IV.

END OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.

England under a Regency. France makes an effort for freedom. Jeanne Dare at
Orleans. French successes. Fate of the heroine. Affairs in England. Character
of Henry YI. Loss of French dominions. Troubles at home. Jack Cade.
The nobles. Parliament under Henry YI.

THE succession of the infant Henry of Windsor gave occasion for
the assertion of a great constitutional principle, that a king Henr y
could not appoint a regent for the minority of his successor, VL,
and that no person could exercise the royal prerogative l
during a king's infancy, except by the choice of Parliament, and
under the limitations prescribed by the Lords and Commons for the
conduct of the executive government. In spite of Henry Y.'s personal
popularity, the arrangements made by him on his deathbed were
altered by the Parliament which was called together by some of the

290 HENRY VI. [1422 A.&.

leading peers, as soon as his death was known in London. It was
now decided that the Duke of Bedford, or, in his absence beyond sea,
the Duke of Gloucester, should be "protector and defender" of the
kingdom. This title was chosen with the intended exclusion of such
terms as "lieutenant," " governor," or "regent," and of any other
name that should import governance of the land. The growing power
of Parliament is strikingly shown at this juncture. Gloucester was to
be chief of the council in the absence of Bedford, but the substan-
tial powers of government were invested in a committee of nineteen
members of the Lords and Commons. The reign of Henry VI. can, in
truth, only be well understood when we .regard it as one long minority,
first of a child of tender years, and then of a man of feeble mind and
character. The result was that the great families and leading nobles
had more power in the state than they ever possessed before, or
have ever wielded since. The state became for a season merely an
arena for their struggles, stirred by the passions of ambition, jealousy,
and revenge. Nevilles, Staffords, Beauforts, De la Poles, Yorkists,
Lancastrians, are ever striving for mastery in a scene at once con-
temptible and tragical, first of intrigue and treachery, and then of
cruel and relentless warfare, followed by the most dastardly displays of
cold-blooded and pitiless retaliation. The regency of France remained,
as the late king had appointed, in the hands of the Duke of Bedford,
but the person and education of the young king were entrusted to the
chancellor, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and afterwards
Cardinal. He was the ablest of John of Gaunt's three sons that were
born of Catharine Swinford, and were made legitimate by royal letters-
patent, and by an Act of Parliament, under Richard II. Beaufort
was a great opponent of Gloucester, and the internal politics of the
earlier part of the reign are much concerned with the fierce quarrels of
these ambitious and unscrupulous men. Beaufort's eldest brother, John,
was Earl of Somerset, and his youngest, Thomas, was Duke of Exeter.
In less than two months after the death of Henry V., the insane king
French ^ France, Charles VI., whose reign of forty-two years had seen
affairs, so much disaster, also passed away, and the Dauphin, ruling
2 ' south of the Loire, was crowned at Poitiers as Charles VII.
The little Henry of England had also been proclaimed at St. Denis as
" King of France and England," and may be regarded as king to the
north of the Loire. The Duke of Gloucester favoured the policy of
striving to conquer all France ; Beaufort insisted that Bedford's duty
was to keep, if he could, on terms of peace with the new French king,
and secure the possessions already won by England. Bedford was not
only an able general, but a man of skilful policy. He was in alliance
with the Dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, and he sought to detach
the Scots from their friendship with France, or, at least, to conciliate
Scottish goodwill for England, by bringing about, through the English
Council, the release of their captive king, James I., and his marriage to

1428-29 A. D.] THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS. 1^91

Lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset. The assump-
tion of royalty in France by Charles VII. was an open violation of the
treaty of Troyes, and Bedford maintained the war with vigour, in tho
hope of subduing the whole country for England. In 1423, the Earl
of Salisbury signally defeated the French and their Scottish allies at
Crevant, in Burgundy, and in the following year Bedford utterly
routed the French and Scots at Verneuil, in Normandy, in an engage-
ment recorded in the rolls of Parliament as " the greatest deed done
by Englishmen in our days, save the battle of Agincourt." The greater
part of the Scottish brigade fell in the action, and the French never
forgot the help received from the northern part of our island. Out
of the remnant of the Scottish warriors the famous Scots Guard was
formed, and a right of common citizenship was established between the
two countries. In 1427, the forces of the English duke sustained a
severe defeat, and were compelled to raise the siege of Montargis, but
the cause of the French king was little advanced by this success, and
Bedford, in the following year, prepared to cross the Loire, and carry
his arms into the south-west of France, the territory ruled of old by
English kings.

A crisis in the history of France and England now came in the
siege of Orleans. That town commanded the passage of the The
Loire, and was the key of southern France. If the fortress orSani?
fell, it might well be feared by the French that complete con- 1428-29. '
quest would ensue. The adherents of the French king were at strife
among themselves, his coffers were empty, his people suffering from
famine and disease. The one gleam of hope lay in the fact that, while
nobles were faithless or faint-hearted, a feeling of patriotism had begun
to reappear among the common people, to whose affection, in lack of
other help, the French monarch had lately addressed himself. The
Earl of Salisbury, one of the bravest, best skilled, and most experi-
enced of the English generals, trained to war under Henry V., was
chosen by Bedford for the task of reducing the last stronghold of the
French national party. On October 12, 1428, he appeared with his
army before its walls. Zealous preparations had been made for defence.
The city of Orleans itself was on the north, or right bank, of the Loire,
but its suburbs extended far on the southern side, connected with the
town by a strong bridge, defended at its southern end by works, in-
cluding two towers called the Tourelles. This post was carried by
storm on October 23rd, and the French then broke down the bridge at
its northern end, and cut off access to the town. It was in this siege
that, for the first time, any great use was made of artillery, and the
possession of the Tourelles enabled the English to inflict great loss
on the defenders by a battery which, firing its balls across the river,
commanded some of the principal streets. The hopes of the men of
Orleans rose when Dunois and La Hire, two of the bravest French
commanders, arrived with reinforcements, and the English general,

292 BATTLE OF HERRINGS. [1429 A.D.

Salisbury, died of a wound received from a cannon-ball. He was suc-
ceeded in the command by William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. The
thought of capturing the place by force was renounced by the English
leaders, and they now aimed, like most besiegers of that age attacking
a well- walled town, at compelling the surrender of Orleans by famine.
By the spring of 1429, a line of entrenchments round the town was
nearly completed, and the approach of want began to be felt by the
besieged. One incident of the long and obstinate struggle was the
famous Battle of Herrings. The English were badly off for stores and
provisions, and the Duke of Bedford despatched for their relief an
immense convoy from Paris. The French determined to cut off this
supply, which was guarded by a force of sixteen hundred men, under
the command of the able and resolute Sir John Fastolfe. The attack
was made by a body of eight thousand men, partly detached from the
garrison of Orleans, and partly composed of French and Scots outside
the walls. The assailants were brilliantly defeated at Rouvrai, and in
the first days of Lent the store of salted fish, with other large supplies,
arrived in the English camp. The fate of Orleans seemed to be settled,
as the place must soon submit to famine, when a young woman, backed
by the power which the pious exalt as faith, and sceptics decry as
superstition, came to the rescue of the beleaguered city, with an issue
that amazed the world, and won for herself a deathless name.

Mingled wonder and contempt were felt by the English leaders when,
Jeanne ^ n the ^ as ^ week of April, a herald brought a letter couched in
Dare. strange terms, from a girl of whom they had long heard as
La Pucelle, or The Maid. In this missive the king of England, " and
you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself Regent of the kingdom of
France ; you, William de la Pole, Count of Suffolk ; you, John Lord
Talbot, and you, Thomas Lord Scales, who call yourselves lieutenants
of the said Duke of Bedford," were commanded to "do right to
the King of Heaven," and to render to "the Pucelle, who is sent
hither by God, the keys of the good cities you have taken and
plundered in France." The English soldiers were then bidden to go
their way to their own country," for, said the Maid, "I am sent by
the King of Heaven to drive you out of all France." The rough
yeomen in the English camp were awestruck at her advent. A pro-
phecy had long been current that a damsel from Lorraine was to save
France. Stories were rife of miracles wrought by the wondrous girl,
and many priests and friars had been passing through the towns and
rural districts of the land, proclaiming that the people must seek
from Heaven a deliverance from the pillage of the soldiery, and the
insolence of the foreign oppressors. The Church of that age taught,
and the people of that age believed in, special interpositions of unseen
powers of good and evil. The French hailed the Maid as an in-
strument of Heaven, the English dreaded the power of one leagued by
witchcraft and sorcery with the great enemy of man. The girl named

1429 A.D.] THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 293

Jeanne Dare, absurdly rendered in English as "Joan of Arc," was
daughter of a small farmer in the hamlet of Domre'my, on the borders
of Champagne and Lorraine. Her youthful mind, keenly susceptible,
was nurtured on legends of saints and tales of fairies, and her lonely,
dreamy life in the fields, as she tended her father's flocks, was well
suited to develop in such a character all the fervour of enthusiastic
belief. She was gentle, compassionate, and devout beyond all the girls
of the countryside, and her tender nature was moved to pity for the
miseries of her people, mingled with anger against the English foe.
Day and night she mused and dreamed of delivering France from the
grasp of her enemies. At the age of thirteen, as she declared in after
days, with death by burning before her view, she began to hear "a
voice from God," and to see "a bright light." Then St. Michael,
St. Margaret, and St. Catharine appeared from time to time, and told
her that France would be saved, arid that she was to save it. She
was in her eighteenth year when tidings of the siege of Orleans
reached Domremy. She was moved to make her way to the king
of France, and announce her heavenly mission. No tears, entreaties,
ridicule, or threats from her parents or others could prevail, and
she journeyed, in soldier's garb, to Chinon, in Touraine, and reached
the presence of Charles. The king heard her story, but would not
profess belief, or accept her offer to lead an army to the rescue of
Orleans, until full inquiry had been made as to her truth and purity.
He feared to incur the odium of being in league with a sorceress.
The most rigid investigation made by learned doctors of the Church,
and by shrewd counsellors of the laity, proved beyond a doubt that
Jeanne was perfectly orthodox in belief, and strictly virtuous in
life. The state of affairs at Orleans was now such that no failure
of attempts at relief could possibly harm the defenders, and the
king and his advisers resolved to employ the strange instrument that
had come to their hands. The people and the soldiery fully believed
in her mission as one inspired and aided by Heaven, and she was sent
to head a small force which had been assembled at Blois under La
Hire, Dunois, and other chiefs. A convoy of provisions was prepared,
and the Maid rode into the camp at Blois, clad in a new suit of white
armour, mounted on a black war horse, and bearing a lance in her
right hand. Her unhelmeted head displayed to all her fair, expressive
features, deep-set and earnest eyes, and long black hair. A small
battle-axe, and a consecrated sword, taken at her bidding from one of
the shrines of St. Catharine, completed her personal equipment. A
page carried before her a banner of white satin, strewn with the lilies
of France, and bearing the words " Jhesus Maria." She won at the
outset the hearts of the troops who saw her comely figure, the skill
with which she managed her horse, and her grace and ease in handling
her weapons. In truth, the famous Maid of Orleans owed her success
iu no small degree to natural powers of body, and to shrewdness of

294 THE MAID OF ORLEANS. [1429 A.D.

inind, such as belong to many of her sex who are not destined to win
fame as heroines and deliverers of their country, She had well
employed her brief time of training in the use of arms. Her good
sense taught her to leave technical details as to the movement of
troops to Dunois and other skilled leaders. Her only leadership was
to bid the soldiers go straight at the enemy, and then dash in boldly
herself. In one point, however, she rendered essential service to the
French army. She insisted upon a strict discipline, and upon the out-
ward display, at least, of regard for morality and religion. All loose
characters were driven away from the camp. Generals and soldiers
made regular confession, and her own chaplain and other priests said
mass at every halt. A new spirit was thus given to men who hoped
by a changed life to earn, like the Maid, the favour of Heaven.

On the night of April 28th, amid a storm of thunder and rain, the
The Maid renev i n force entered Orleans, and boats loaded w r ith sup-
enters plies made their way up the river. Four days later, another
Orleans, body of soldiers and a fresh supply of stores openly entered
the town, escorted by Jeanne and La Hire, while the English remained
behind their works, and did not venture an attack. The moral effect
wrought on the besiegers was such that a keen observer could already
foresee the end. On that very day, Dunois assaulted one of the English
forts. A fierce resistance was made. The assailants had recoiled, and
were streaming back to the city gate, when Jeanne rode out to meet
them. At sight of the white banner they rallied and went on again, and
the post was at once stormed. Two days later, two of the English
"bastilles " to the south of the river were taken after severe fighting,
and the Tourelles was the only post left to the besiegers on that side
of the town. It was a place of formidable strength, and on its pos-
session now turned the issue of the siege. A fresh English army under
Fastolfe, the victor of Rouvrai, was approaching, and time was of the
greatest value. Five hundred archers and men-at-arms, under Sir
John Gladsdale, occupied the fort. On the morning of May yth, the
French advanced to the attack. A stubborn fight ended in a repulse,
and the Maid was wounded in the neck by an arrow as she mounted
the first ladder planted against the wall. Dunois ordered the trumpet
to sound a retreat, but Jeanne, when her hurt was dressed, insisted
upon another attempt, after an interval for rest and food. She then
headed a new assault, in which the English, who thought her slain,
were confounded at her reappearance. The French pressed furiously
on, and a party of their friends in the town attacked the enemy on the
opposite side. As Gladsdale withdrew his men from an outwork by a
drawbridge, a cannon-shot from the walls carried it away, and the bold
English leader perished in the river. The English then yielded the
post, after three hundred men had fallen. The pealing of bells from
the churches of Orleans was as a knell of doomed failure to the be-
siegers. After a night lit up by the blaze of bonfires in the town, the

1429 A.D.] THE MAID OF ORLEANS 295

English generals resolved on retreat. The great wooden forts in the
lines were set on fire, the stores and munitions were destroyed, and on
Sunday, the 8th of May, the baffled foe slowly and sullenly retired.
in eleven days, by sheer boldness in attack, and contempt for the
cautious measures of military science, the Maid had used the forces of
enthusiasm and superstition, aided by shrewdness and sound sense, to
strike terror into a foe that had been the dread of France for eleven
long years of suffering and shame. It was not three months from
the day of her first interview with the king, when she thus fulfilled
the first part of her promise, in the raising of the siege of Orleans.

Jeanne had now another task to discharge. She had declared to
Charles VII. that she would cause him to be crowned at
Rheims. She held him to be no true monarch of France, Maid's

until the diadem should be placed on his head in the cathe-
dral of that ancient city where all the kings of the land for and
three centuries had been consecrated. The French leaders deatlL
would have remained inactive after the great blow struck at Orleans,
but the zealous heroine urged them to advance. The way between
Orleans and Rheims was filled with the enemies of France, but the
counsels of courage at last prevailed, and Jeanne's standard was again
floating at the head of a French army, On June nth, the Duke of
Alen^on arrived in haste before the walls of Jargeau, held by the Earl
of Suffolk. A battle was fought outside the town, and the French
were driven back. Another charge was ordered by the Maid, and
Suffolk retired within the walls. After a bombardment of three days,
a breach was made in the defences. The storming column was led by
Jeanne, the place fell, and Suffolk became a prisoner. On June i8th,
the English were beaten at the battle of Patay, and Lords Talbot and
Scales were captured. Fastolfe was in command, and, when he joined
Bedford at Corbeil, he was deprived of what was then a token of
real merit and distinction, the Riband of the Garter. Bedford wrote
a letter to the Council in London, in which he expressed a real or
affected belief that the powers of darkness were fighting against the
English. He declared that the " great stroke " at Orleans had been
caused in part by the confidence that "our enemies have in a disciple
and limb of the devil, called the PucelJe, that used false enchantments
and sorcery." The only effect of this was to further discourage the
English troops, while the French newly proclaimed her to be one
favoured of Heaven, who showed as much piety as courage. At this
juncture, Bedford again secured the alliance of the Duke of Burgundy,
and was aided also by a body of troops which Cardinal Beaufort had
raised for a crusade against the Hussites in Bohemia. He took the
field with new hope, but nothing could stay the progress of the French
arms. Early in July, the garrison of Troyes surrendered the place
to Jeanne on the mere display of her famous white banner, and the
gathering of her men for an assault. Chalons was the next place to

296 DEATH OF THE MAID OF ORLEANS. [1431 A.D.

fall without resistance. Then the army approached Rheims, and the
peasants came in crowds to look upon the wondrous girl, whom they
knew as the shepherdess accounted mad by the wise. The gates of
Rheims were thrown open on summons, and on July iyth Charles
VII. was crowned in its ancient church. At the king's side, by the
high altar, stood the Maid with her victorious banner, her main work
done, her promise fulfilled, her country saved, her fame secure. The
coronation of Charles at Rheims was no mere ceremonial of display.
The deliverance of France was now ensured in the greater force of
union given to national feeling by the fact of the religious inaugura-
tion of her king. The prince who had ruled with mere human
authority over a part of the country was now regarded as monarch
of all by the grace and sanction of Heaven. He who had been de-
nounced as no true son of the royal line of France was regarded as
the legitimate successor to the crown of St. Louis, and this belief
was mainly created, in the minds of Frenchmen hitherto sceptical, by
the victories of Jeanne, and the fulfilment of her pledge as to the
king's coronation. The Maid then desired to return to her home,
her parents, and her sheep and cattle, but the king and his generals
1 were unwilling to lose the advantage of her presence with the army.
Her own belief was that certain victory was for her now at an end,
and that the special protection of Heaven was withdrawn. There were
ebbs and flows in the tide of success. Laon, Soissons, Compiegne,
and Beauvais were taken, and in September the king marched for
Paris. An assault on the town was repulsed, Jeanne was severely
wounded, and Charles retreated to the Loire, and passed the winter
at Bourges. In the spring of 1430, the French army moved to the
relief of Compiegne, then besieged by the Duke of Burgundy. The
Maid got into the town on May 26th, headed a sortie on the same
day, and was taken prisoner by the Burgundians. After some months'
captivity she was given up, for a large sum, to the English at Rouen.
At the instance of the University of Paris, she was tried by Pierre
Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, and condemned to be burnt as a sorceress
and heretic. During her trial, protracted for several months, she
behaved with perfect composure, and was never at a loss for answers
to accusations. But her nervous system had suffered under imprison-
ment, and the mental and spiritual torture of the long inquisition.
When the sentence of death by fire was read to her by the bishop
on a public scaffold at Rouen, she gave way for the moment, and
declared herself deluded. She was then sentenced to perpetual im-
prisonment, but, two days later, her confidence returned, and she re-
affirmed her belief that her voices came from God. As "a relapsed
heretic," she was at once doomed to the burning, and on May 30, 1431,
she died by fire in the market-place of Rouen, in presence of soldiers,
people, nobles and prelates, including Cardinal Beaufort. Jeanne, the
Maid of Domrcmy and victor of Orleans, Jeanne the patriot, heroine, and

1427-1435 A.D.] EARLY YEARS OF HENRY VI. 297

martyr to her own sincere belief in heavenly guidance of her acts to
high and worthy ends, was the noble and hapless victim of the cruel
secular vengeance and the blind religious bigotry which, for France
and England alike, marked the age in which was cast her brief and
glorious career.

The quarrels of Gloucester and Beaufort rose at times almost to
the height of civil war. Their retainers, and those of their
partisans among the nobles, came in arms to meetings of the affairs,
Parliament. In October 1426, Beaufort went forth from his 1425 - 1448 -
palace at South wark, with archers and men-at-arms, and assaulted the
gate of London Bridge, closed against him at the request of Gloucester,
who was favoured by the citizens. Bedford came over from France,
and brought about a show of amity in a Parliament held at Leicester.
The servants of all members had been forbidden to come armed with
the usual weapons, but this very assembly was known as the Parlia-
ment of Bats (i.e., Clubs) because the retainers came provided with
heavy sticks. When these were forbidden to be carried, they brought
supplies of stones and lumps of lead hidden in their clothes. At this
time Beaufort resigned the chancellorship, and went abroad for a
season, consoled by the Pope of the clay with the red hat of a cardinal.
The quarrel was soon renewed on Beaufort's return to England, and
the Cardinal was finally successful in the long and bitter contest for
supremacy.

At six years of age, in 1427, the king was placed under the care of
his father's friend and companion in arms, the Earl of War- The king,
wick. He was a man of great valour and experience, who years of
had fought at Shrewsbury under Henry IV., had visited the reign.
Holy Land as a pilgrim, and travelled in Prussia, Poland, and Russia.
For ten years he held the office of tutor to Henry, and was supported
by the Council in his use of the strict discipline of the age. No
method of training could have given strength of character to the king.
It seems likely that he inherited some of the mental disease of his
mother's father, Charles VI. of France, but it was rather weakness of
purpose, and fear of responsibility, than actual unsoundness of mind,
that caused his life to be a long state of pupilage. The wonderful
energy and fiery passion of the Plantagenet race seemed utterly dulled
and quenched in the Lancastrian king who was calmly indifferent to
good and evil fortune, and patiently submissive to stronger wills than
his own. He was a slave by turns to his uncles, his preceptor, his
wife, and his wife's creatures and favourites. We are allowed to
believe that his hard lot was solaced by that religious faith which
lightens the burdens of the wretched, on a throne or in a prison. His
name is nobly connected with the foundation of Eton School and of
King's College, Cambridge, which are memorials of the meekest and
one of the most hapless of our kings. In December 1430, as a reply
to the coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims, the young English king

298 HENRY'S MARRIAGE. [1445 A.D.

made a public entry into Paris, and was crowned at Notre Dame. In
1435, ne ^ os ^ n * s a ^ es ^ subject by the death of his uncle Bedford, and
the contest for power between Beaufort and Gloucester raged with
more virulence than ever.

In 1444, the question of Henry's marriage came before the Council.
, Gloucester was in favour of a daughter of the Count of
mar- Armagnac, but Beaufort and his great supporter, the Earl

riage. o f Suffolk, wished to make proposals to the daughter of
Rene, Count of Provence, and titular Duke of Maine and Anjon.
They were aiming at peace with France in the cession of Maine as
the price of the lady's hand, and also at securing for the king as a
partner the most able, determined, and accomplished woman of the
time. The marriage of Henry with Margaret of Anjou took place in
April 1445, and all English claims both to Anjou and Maine were
surrendered. Suffolk became a duke, and the queen was the political
ally of the party of Cardinal Beaufort against the Duke of Gloucester.
In 1440, the powerful churchman had won a victory in the Council
over the lay prince of the blood, in bringing about the release of the
Duke of Orleans, a prisoner in the Tower for five-and-twenty years
since the fatal day of Agincourt. With Margaret's influence at their
backs, the Beaufort party resolved on making an end of the duke. A
blow had been already aimed at him through his wife, who had been a
person of low position and character, named Eleanor Cobham. The
superstition of the age had been called in to ruin a worthless woman,
as it had been used to bring to the burning, a few years before, the
noblest of her sex. The Duchess of Gloucester was accused of witch-
craft, and condemned by the two archbishops and several other prelates
to do penance in the streets of London before all the people, and then
to undergo imprisonment for life. This grievous humiliation had been
inflicted on Gloucester in 1441. In a Parliament held at Bury St.
Edmund's in February 1447, the duke was arrested, and, seventeen
clays later, was found dead in bed at his lodgings in the town. The
body was exposed to public view, and no marks of violence were seen,
but few have doubted that Humphrey of Gloucester was the victim of
deliberate murder, instigated by the ambition of cruel and unscrupulous
foes. The Cardinal, his great enemy, died a few weeks later, and the
chief power in public affairs now lay in the hands of Suffolk and the
queen.

After the death of Jeanne, the English cause in France continued
The loss t decline. Harfleur was retaken by the French, The
of French alliance of the Duke of Burgundy with Bedford was fast
ions, 1 ^!- slipping away, and every year added to the strength of the
1453. national party. The demands of Charles VII. rose higher

at every conference held in the interests of peace. In 1435, a ^ ^he
Congress of Arras, the French demanded the surrender of all territory
save Normandy and Guienne, with abandonment of all claim to the

1436-1453 A.D.] END OF THE FRENCH AVAR. 299

French crown. This was refused, and the Duke of Burgundy formed
a close alliance with Charles. In the autumn of the same year came
the death of the great Duke of Bedford. In 1436, the people of Paris
rose against the English garrison, and opened the gates of the city to
the forces of Charles. The command in France was now in the hands
of the new Regent, Richard, Duke of York, and of the brave Lord
Talbot. The English troops fought with the old stubborn courage,
and it was only by slow steps that the land was won back by the
natives. From time to time victory came back to our standards. In
1437. Talbot laid waste the lands of Burgundy: in 1440, Picardy was
ravaged, and then Harfleur was retaken. In 1444, we still held
Normandy, Maine, and Guienne. In 1448, as we have seen, Maine
was given up after Henry's marriage with Margaret, and Maine was
the key to the possession of Normandy. In 1449, the French king
marched to the attack of our forces in the old duchy, and was greatly
aided in his efforts by the division of English counsels, and the
enfeebled state of our garrisons. The people of Rouen, the capital,
rose with the same success as those of Paris a few years before, and in
1450, the last English hold on Normandy was lost in the capture of
Cherbourg. The French king then turned his arms against Guienne,
and the hopeless struggle was prolonged by the English for three
years more. The province, indeed, declared at once for Charles, but
Fronsac, Bordeaux, and Bayonne were held by English garrisons, and
the people of Gascony soon turned against their new masters. Old
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, landed near Bordeaux with four thousand
men in 1452. but was defeated and slain at the battle of Castillon, in
the following spring, when he encountered a far larger French army,
well supplied with cannon. Talbot was the last of the great English
captains, and a few months later, in October 1453, Bordeaux, the last
fortress in English hands, save Calais, surrendered to the French.
Aqiiitaine, the brilliant dowry of Henry II. 's queen, was disunited
from the crown of England, and the dream of the conquest of France,
which had lasted for more than a hundred years, was happily at an
end.

The last half of the fifteenth century was the age, for England and
her policy, of great and powerful nobles. The baronage Home
reached its highest point of influence in the reign o c a feeble affairs,
king, and then fell with a great fall, well-nigh brought to
extinction in the internecine struggle known as the Wars of the
Roses. On the deaths of Gloucester and Beaufort, two great factions
were seen among the nobles. De la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, was a great
supporter of Queen Margaret, whose marriage with the king was due
to his diplomacy. With him was ranked Edmund Beaufort, Duke of
Somerset, a descendant of John of Gaunt. On the other side appeared
the future claimant of the crown, Richard, Duke of York. This
wealthy and popular noble was descended, on his father's side, from

300 PUBLIC DISCONTENT. [1450 A.D.

Edmund, Duke of York, fifth son of Edward III. ; by his mother,
be came, through Mortimer Earl of March, from Lionel, Duke of
Clarence, third son of Edward III. On his mother's side, therefore,
he bad a higher claim, derived from Edward III., than the king,
Henry VI., descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, fourth
son of Edward. With Richard Plantagenet of York were closely
allied, in the bonds of friendship and intermarriage, two other Richards.
These were Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and his son, Richard
Neville, Earl of Warwick. Cicely, Duchess of York, was sister to the
Earl of Salisbury. Warwick, the coming king-maker, was very popular
from his vast wealth and munificence. The dependents whom he daily
fed at his manor-houses and castles are reckoned by tens of thousands,
and he had only to give his orders, and to open his coffers, in order to
place a large army in the field.

The people of England had been stirred to wrath by the issues of
policy in France. The queen, whose coming was coupled with
discon- the serious loss of Maine, was regarded as a public enemy,
tent< and Suffolk, the promoter of the union, was made the mark

of public vengeance, and blamed, with gross injustice, for failures in
every department of affairs. To Suffolk, according to his many
enemies, were due alike the disasters in France, and the great debts of
the king, which forced the government to severe and illegal exactions
in order to maintain the royal household. In the spring of 1450, he
was impeached by the Commons for treason, and Henry, in order to
save his life, sent him abroad with a sentence of five years' banishment.
It was a time of serious alarm from the temper of the people. At
the beginning of the year, Moleyne, Bishop of Chichester, a minister
under Suffolk, had been murdered by sailors at Portsmouth, in a
dispute concerning their pay. The king's intervention did not save
his fallen friend. Suffolk hurried away from London, and sailed from
Ipswich with two ships at the end of April. A close watch had been
kept on his movements, and his enemies sent a vessel which cut him
off near Dover. He was there and then beheaded with a rusty sword
on the side of a boat, and his body was flung into the sea. The deed
passed without inquiry, and was sung with taunting triumph in a
popular ditty of the day. "

In the holiday- week of Whitsuntide, 1450, there was a more serious
The Jack game playing in Blackheath than the usual morris-dances and
SeUion 6 " bear-baitings. An army of twenty thousand men lay there
1450. encamped, composed of insurgents from Kent, Surrey, and

Sussex. Several score of the gentry were with them, and some great
landowners openly befriended the rising. The matter is thought to
have had a Yorkist origin, from the fact that the leader, John Cade,
a soldier who had served in the French wars, took to himself the name
"Mortimer." The rebels put forth a statement of grievances, in which
they demanded reforms in the mode of government, including a change

1450^1452 A.D.] THE JACK CADE REBELLION. 301

of ministers, a more careful expenditure of the money raised by the
heavy taxation, and non-interference with the election of members to
the House of Commons. Nothing was said as to villenage and serfage,
concerning which the social condition of the people had undergone so
great a change during the seventy years that had passed since Wat
Tyler's revolt. The repeal of the Statute of Labourers was demanded,
and it is clear that one of the causes of the rising was the disloca-
tion of the labour system caused by changes in the tillage of the
soil. Corn-lands had been turned into pasture, needing fewer hands
for tendance, and great numbers of small allotments of land had dis-
appeared by incorporation into the large holdings of a new class of
tenant-farmers. There was thus a great roving body of unemployed
labourers, whose ranks were swelled by discharged retainers of the
great nobles, and by soldiers thrown out of a career by the cessation of
the warfare in France. The Council paid no heed to the " Complaint
of the Commons of Kent," as the document was called, and raised a
force to disperse the rebels. After a retreat to Sevenoaks, they
defeated on June 27th a detachment of troops sent against them, and
killed the commander, Sir Humphrey Stafford. The ministers, in
their alarm, sent to the Tower Lord Say, one of the most unpopular of
their number, and Henry retired with the court to Kenilworth. Cade
then marched on London, and entered the city on July 2nd. "We read
that when he came to London Stone, still to be seen by St. Swithin's
Church, he struck it with his sword and cried, " Now is Mortimer lord
of this city." Lord Say was brought from the Tower, and beheaded
by the rebels in Cheapside. Some acts of plunder made the citizens
rise in arms, and, after a great fight on London Bridge on the night of
July 5th, Cade retired with his men. He was shortly afterwards killed
in Sussex, pursued by the men of the sheriff of Kent.

The Duke of Somerset succeeded to the power lately wielded by the
unfortunate Suffolk. The king and queen were still childless, Rival
and the ambition of Somerset, as representing the line of Lan- nobles,
caster, was now probably turned towards the succession to the throne.
His great rival, the Duke of York, had been lately removed to a scene
of action distant from London, being sent, as lieutenant of Ireland, to
quell a rebellion in 1449. His excellent qualities of justice, moderate
dealing, and firmness so won the people that the country was com-
pletely pacified, and his name and family were long there held in the
greatest affection and esteem. In 1450, York returned from his Irish
command, and, at the head of an armed force in London, demanded
right against Somerset, who was sent, on the Commons' petition, to the
Tower. He was soon released, and maintained in power by help of
the Queen. In 1452, York again marched on London, requiring the
removal of Somerset. The matter ended for the time in the Duke of
York's submission, and his retirement to his castle of Wigmore, on the
Welsh border.

3$3 PARLIAMENT UNDER HENRY VI. [1422-1461 A.D.

The powers of the Houses received farther developments of impor-
Parlia- tance in the reign of Henry VI. The practice was now iiitro-
ment duced of either House originating statutes, under the name
Heiiry. of bills, and these proposed measures, after being passed, or
VL approved by a majority of votes, in both Lords arid Commons,

were presented to the sovereign for his assent without his alteration of
their terms. It was also established that the sovereign should in no
way interfere with matters under discussion in Parliament, and that
freedom of speech in debate should be enjoyed by the members of the
Commons. Towards the end of the reign, we find the judges fully
recognising Parliamentary rights. An appeal was made to them by
the Lords on a matter of privilege, and their reply was that "they
ought not to answer that question, for it hath not been used that the
justices shall in any wise determine the privileges of the High Court of
Parliament ; for it is so high and mighty in its nature, that it may
make law, and what is law it may make no law." It was by this time
fully settled that the Commons alone possessed the right of originat-
ing all bills for raising money by taxation, and also of procuring the
punishment of corrupt and pernicious ministers by impeachment of
them at the bar of the Lords. At the same time, the number of those
persons who could vote for members of the House of Commons became
much restricted, partly from the growth of privilege in the boroughs,
and partly from legislation directly bearing on county elections. In
the towns, the old burgesses, representing the trade companies which
had risen to civic importance on the ruins of the merchant guilds,
sought to restrict their numbers by means of clauses inserted in charters
obtained from the Crown. Henceforth none could be a burgess, except
by right of birth, or by serving a lengthy apprenticeship to one of the
chartered trades. All members even of this privileged body did not
possess the franchise for the purpose of Parliamentary elections. The
only voters for members of the House of Commons were, as a rule,
those who were chosen as borough councillors. Thus the mass of the
people was deprived of all direct representation, and a condition of
things arose in the towns which pointed forward to the time of "rotten
boroughs," controlled by great landowners or by the Crown, in their
choice of representatives, and finally dealt with in the Reform Act of
1832. It was in 1430 that, on the petition of the House of Commons
itself, the famous Act was passed restricting the county franchise
to " forty shilling freeholders." The great bulk of the people, those of
small substance, had now passed out of the servile condition into the
free, and all claimed, as freemen, the right of voting for knights of the
shire, in the assembly called the shire court. The votes of the gentry
were utterly swamped under such a system, and it was also found that,
in many shires, nobles with large numbers of dependents were masters,
through their votes, of the choice of county members. It was now
enacted that such members should be chosen in every county only by

1422-1461 A.D.] PARLIAMENT UNDER HENRY VI. 303

"people dwelling and resident in the same, whereof every one of them
shall have free land or tenement to the value of forty shillings by the
year, at the least, above all charges." In those days, the owner of a
forty shilling freehold, the value of which represents perhaps a hundred
a year now, was a person of some importance. By this statute the
majority of the voters, including all the tenants of leasehold and copy-
hold property, were in fact deprived of the franchise. One result of
this change was, however, that in the contests of coming times for
constitutional liberty, the spirit of freedom was found to reside among
the county members, chosen by these freeholders, to whom such posses-
sion gave a certain independence of position and character.

BOOK IX.

THE FIGHT FOR THE CROWN.

CHAPTEK I.
HENRY SUCCUMBS TO EDWARD OF YORK.

Character of the civil war. Birth of a prince. The struggle begins. Yorkist
victories. Death of Richard of York at Wakefield. His son Edward comes
to the front. Edward's victories win the throne.

THE dreary and ignoble civil strife called, from the white rose of York,
Wars an ^ *he rec ^ rose f Lancaster, the Wars of the Roses, makes
of the a foul blot on the national records. The scene which is here
begin, presented is dreary from the general absence of picturesque
1455. an( j chivalrous elements, and it is rendered thoroughly ignoble

by the meanness of its motives, the baseness of its treacheries, and
the ruthlessness of its acts of revenge. The war of the rival houses
and their partisans was a contest for men, not for measures ; a mere
struggle for power, conducted with infinite passion, but void of all
concern with principle. The immediate result was the succession to the
throne of three princes of the house of York. The destruction of the
greater part of the old nobility of England had far more important
issues in the added power given to the Crown under Tudor sovereigns,
and in the almost complete extinction of the decaying feudal system.
The contest was rather a series of groups of battles followed by long
intervals of peace, than a war as commonly understood. The actual
period of fighting, during the thirty years from 1455 to 1485, amounts
altogether to the space of something less than two years. The
struggle presents, indeed, one good feature. It caused no general
disorder in the framework of society. The internal administration
of England proceeded with the same regularity as if the contest for
supremacy were raging on the fair fields of France, instead of amidst
the hills and vales, and around the towns and hamlets, of England.
There was no general ravage, no widespread and costly destruction.
The tillage of the soil, the simple handicrafts in the homes of the
people, were carried on as usual. In the words of a great historian,
u in a week the peasant was driving his team and the esquire flying
his hawks over the field of Towton or of Bosworth, as if no extra-

ENGLAND & SCOTLAND

1455-1642

1454 A.D.] THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 305

ordinary event had interrupted the regular course of human life."
The courts of law continued to sit, and men litigated for disputed
rights, devoid of all fear for the general peril of property. The
elections of burgesses and knights of the shire sent men to sit in
Parliament just as in times of perfect peace. The nobles were slaying
and being slain, and the ground was drenched from time to time with
the blood of Englishmen of every rank, but the country prospered in
the increase of material wealth, and, while the great families were
brought to desolation by slaughter on the battlefield and the scaffold,
there is no evidence of ultimate decrease in the population of the land.
We have here the contemporary evidence of a very acute and accom-
plished observer. The famous diplomatist and historian Philippe de
Comines, writing of this period, declares England to be the best
governed country in Europe, and to have "this peculiar grace, that
neither the country, nov the people, nor the houses, are wasted,
destroyed, or demolished ; but the calamities and misfortunes of the
war fall only upon the soldiers, and especially on the nobility."

The immediate occasion of the Wars of the Roses was an event
which, in just and reasonable men, would at once have put an opening
end to all thoughts of a contest for the throne. In October of strife.
1453, Queen Margaret was blest, as she vainly fancied, in the birth of
a son and heir. Whatever might be the genealogical pretensions of
the Duke of York, the claim of the house of Lancaster was based upon
a sound Parliamentary title, confirmed by a possession of over fifty
years. The young prince received the name of Edward. Not long
before his birth at Westminster, his unhappy father had sunk into
an imbecile condition, and so remained for many months at Windsor.
The Yorkist party became for the time supreme. The Council again
placed Somerset as a prisoner in the Tower, and the Duke of York was
made Protector of the kingdom for the period of Henry's incapacity.
A letter of the time gives us a vivid picture of the disquiet, suspicion,
and preparation for warfare which marked this crisis. The Duke of
Norfolk is therein warned against the treachery of Somerset, who has
his spies " in every lord's house of this land." Cardinal Kempe, the
Chancellor, and Archbishop of Canterbury, a great supporter of the
cause of Somerset and the queen, has armed all his servants with bow
and arrows, sword and buckler. The Duke of Exeter and the Earl
of Egremont have been in the north country, confederating with other
Lancastrian lords for a march in force on London. In accordance
with this statement, we find that throughout the contest, the strength
of the Lancastrian cause lies in the north of England, and it is thither
that Margaret ever turns for help against the hour of battle, and for
refuge in the dark day of defeat. The Duke of Buckingham, Humphrey
Stafford, a man who has estates in twenty-seven counties, is waiting
upon events to decide his course, but has already ordered two thousand
scarves as badges for his retainers. The queen, it is said, aims at

306 FIRST BATTLE OF ST. ALBAN'S. [1455 A.D.

winning all power for herself the appointment of all officials, and the
choice of men for all Church benefices. On the other side, York and
his partisans are coming to London "with a fellowship of good men,"
and their helmets and other " harness " are coming in carts. Salisbury,
Warwick, Richmond, and Pembroke, each with a small army at his
back, are coming up with the Duke of York. This account of affairs
is dated in January 1454, and enables us well to understand how the
Parliament held in the following month, to which great Yorkist nobles
had come in such overwhelming array, appointed the Duke of York to
take charge of the realm. In February 1455, the king recovered his
wits for a time, and a sudden change of affairs occurred. The " pro-
tectorate " of York was at an end, and he also ceased to be governor of
Calais. Somerset came forth from the Tower, filled with bitter and
natural hostility to his rival, who gathered his forces together and
inarched on the capital. He still professed the most loyal intentions
towards the king, but declared that he must protect himself from the
violence of his enemies. Henry took the field on May 2oth, leaving
the palace at Westminster with Somerset and other nobles, to meet
York in arms before he could reach London. The Wars of the Roses
had begun.

On May 22nd, Henry reached St. Al ban's with about two thousand
. men, and on the same day York encamped in the fields near

battle the town, with an army of three thousand. A demand for
Alban's ^e sm>ren der f Somerset, as an " enemy to all the realm,"
May 22,' was refused by the king, and the Yorkists prepared to assault
the barricaded town. After several repulses on the north,
Warwick made his way in by an attack on the east, and a skirmish
took place in the streets, with no great slaughter of men, but with
important results to the leaders. The Yorkists won the fight, and the
king's men fled in disorder. The Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Nor-
thumberland, and Lord Clifford were killed on the Lancastrian side.
The king was wounded in the neck by an arrow, and taken prisoner "in
the house of a tanner." On the following day, the Duke of York, with
all outward marks of reverence, conducted Henry to London, where
Parliament met in July.

An amnesty was now granted by statute to all those who had taken
Affairs arms, and all the blame of the late bloodshed was thrown
till 1459. upon Somerset and his adherents. In the famous Paston
Letters we have a strong light thrown upon the growing influence of
the House of Commons. The Duchess of Norfolk, wife of one of the
Yorkist peers, writes to John Paston, bidding him exert his influence
in procuring the return of two of the Norfolk household to be knights
of the shire, "forasmuch as it is thought right necessary for divers
causes that my lord have at this time in the parliament such persons
as belong to him, and be of his menial servants." The Parliament
was prorogued to November, and, on the king's relapse in health, the

1456-1459 A.D.] BATTLE OF BLOREHEATH. :5<>7

Commons three times urged on the Peers the appointment of a Protector.
The Duke of York again received this office, but especial care was taken
of the rights of Henry's son, the young prince Edward. In February
1456, when the king partly recovered, the duke's commission was super-
seded, and he retired with his adherents to the privacy of his own
estates. For nearly three years outward peace was maintained, and in
1458 Henry summoned the great nobles to a meeting in London, with
a view to a general reconciliation. The Duke of York lodged in his own
fortified mansion of Baynard's Castle, on the bank of the Thames, below
St. Paul's. Warwick came over from his government of Calais, "with
a great band of men, all arrayed in red jackets with white ragged staves
upon them," and was lodged at the Grey Friars. The Lord Mayor <; had
daily in harness five thousand citizens, and rode about the city and
suburbs, to see that the king's peace were kept." The London of that
day was a rich and populous city, full of splendid ecclesiastical buildings,
and stately mansions of nobles. From the Tower to the palace of West-
minster, the Thames formed the great ( " silent highway," on which
looked down the lofty spire of the Gothic cathedral of St. Paul's. To the
great church went a procession of illustrious persons in " dissimuled
unity and concord," as the chronicler, Alderman Fabyan, holds. The
king followed the rival nobles, walking before him hand-in-hand. The
queen, proud Margaret of Anjou, was led along by her greatest foe, the
Duke of York The show of amity did not long endure. In November
of the same year, a quarrel arose between the retinue of Richard, Eai 1
of Warwick, and some of the king's household, and a fight ensued in
London, in which the earl was in danger of his life. He escaped to his
barge, and departed for Calais. He was superseded in his government
there by the young Duke of Somerset, but refused to resign under the
king's writ, and maintained that he was appointed by authority of
Parliament. In 1459, the civil war broke out afresh, in spite of all
Henry's efforts to reconcile the factious nobles.

The war now assumed a character which left no doubt that the issue
to be tried in the wager of battle was whether Henry or The
Richard of York should be king of England. The Earl of %f$g re _
Salisbury, Warwick's father, marched southward from the heath,
ancestral abode of the Nevilles, Middleham Castle in York- ggg 11 "
shire, with intent to unite his forces with those of the Duke 1459 -
of York, lying within the Welsh marches, around Ludlow Castle. He
found his way barred by a larger Lancastrian army, commanded by
Lord Audley. On September 23rd the forces met at Bloreheath, in
Staffordshire, about two miles from Market Drayton. The Lancastrians
were well beaten, through the military skill of Salisbury, and Audley
fell, with two thousand of his men. The conflict was viewed by Queen
Margaret from the neighbouring church-tower of Mucklestone. The
victor then joined York, and Warwick arrived with a body of men
from Calais. A proclamation was issued, in which they still maintained

308 BATTLE OF NORTHAMPTON. [1460 A.D.

that they were in arms to reform the government, but not to overthrow
it. Then came another change of fortune. Henry's army advanced to
the scene of tha late defeat, and on October i3th was in presence of
the Yorkists. The Lancastrian army was greatly superior in numbers,
and a Yorkist general, Sir Andrew Trollope, carried a large body of the
Calais troops under his command over to the rival camp. The Yorkists
at once dispersed, and the duke fled to Ireland, while Salisbury and his
son took refuge at Calais. A Parliament held at Coventry in November
declared them all to be traitors, with confiscation of all their possessions.
The young Edward, Earl of March, son of the Duke of York, was with
his father's friends at Calais, where the town and fortress were kept
against all attacks in the spring of 1460.

The proceedings of the Coventry Parliament had left Richard of
Battle of York no choice between remaining an attainted outcast, and
North- venturing for the crown of England. In June 1460, a force
jSj^ioJ' under Warwick passed over from Calais to Sandwich. The
1460. men O f Kent rose for the Yorkist cause, and the army was

so increased during the march to London, that Warwick entered the
capital with forty thousand men. An advance was made into the
Midlands, where a Lancastrian army lay at Northampton with the
king and queen in their midst. The two armies came face to face
on July loth. The royal forces were intrenched in the meadows to
the south of the town, on the bank of the sluggish river Nen. Their
enemy, led by Warwick, Faulconbridge, and the young Edward of
York, now in his nineteenth year, and already an athletic man and
accomplished soldier, attacked the camp with great impetuosity, and
won a complete victory. Margaret and her son Edward fled to the
north of England. The unhappy king sat alone in his tent, and
became the prisoner of Warwick and Edward, who bowed low before
him, and professed to hold him in all reverence. The fight at North-
ampton was in other ways a serious blow to the Lancastrian cause.
The Duke of Buckingham, Lords Egremont and Beaumont, and three
hundred knights and gentlemen fell. A picture of the times is shown
us at this crisis in the condition of Cicely, Duchess of York. Soon
after the battle of Northampton, with her husband still in exile,
under a traitor's ban, she takes refuge in London, in chambers at
the Temple, belonging to a friend of her family, John Paston. News
arrives of the landing of her husband at Chester, on his way from
Ireland, and she is summoned to meet him at Hereford. Over the
rough ways of the period she takes her journey, leaving most of her
children behind. The eldest, Edward, Earl of March, is a man and
a warrior, with the flush of victory fresh on his brow. He has arrived
in London with the Yorkists from Northampton. The Tower has been
surrendered, and its governor, Lord Scales, cruelly put to death. Edward
is domiciled, no doubt, under the roof of the Earl of Warwick, and "he
cometh every day," says the writer, to see his two young brothers and

1460 A.D.] BATTLE OF WAKEFIELD. 309

his sister. The second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, now seventeen
years of age, had been with his father in Ireland, being included in the
attainder pronounced by Parliament at Coventry. A day of doom is
before him, ere the year shall close, but now he is coming home with
his father, Richard of York, as a happy result of the late success. The
two younger boys, and their sister Margaret, are left alone in those
Temple chambers. The boys are yet to fill a large space in the annals
of England : now they are helpless children, nurtured amidst the
bitterness of faction, and filled with a precocious sense of hatreds
and revenges. George, soon to be Duke of Clarence, is barely eleven
years of age : Richard, the coming Duke of Gloucester, terrible hero
of the tragic scene, has just completed his eighth year. The girl is
fifteen years old, and is yet to become widely known as Margaret,
Duchess of Burgundy, wife of Charles the Bold, the man of the
stricken fields of Gran son, Morat, and Nancy.

On October yth, 1460, Parliament met at Westminster, and two days
later the Duke of York was in London. In a week more, he The
entered the chamber of Peers, and now at last he put forth a S?^ 16 of
solemn claim to the crown. There was a deliberate inquisition field,
made into his genealogical title, which could not be disputed Jlr^'
upon the principle of direct succession. The decision seems 1460.
to have rested with the Lords. It could not be denied that the claimant
of the throne had again and again sworn fealty to the reigning sove-
reign, and that the violent disturbance of a dynasty which had endured
for sixty years was, at the best, a doubtful measure in the interests of
peace. They resolved upon a compromise of the conflicting claims and
pretensions. Henry was to retain the crown for his life, and the Duko
of York and his heirs were to succeed to the throne after Henry's death.
No arrangement could be better, as between the king and the Duke of
York. But it had one fatal defect. It took no account of the interests
of the king's son, and of the proud spirit of a courageous and energetic
woman, roused to fury by the contemptuous disregard of the rights of
her child. The beaten but unconquered Margaret was busy in the north
among the Lancastrian lords, and soon headed a new army of twenty
thousand men. The administration of the government had been placed
by Parliament in the hands of the Duke of York, and, in all the con-
fidence of success, he left London with a force of but five thousand men,
as if to crush -what he thought to be an unimportant rising. After
keeping the festival of Christmas at his castle of Sandal, near Wake-
field, he found himself invested there by a Lancastrian army of over
three times his force, commanded by the young Duke of Somerset, and
the Earls of Durham and Northumberland. His son Edward, Earl of
March, was at Shrewsbury, and he had only to await the arrival of re-
inforcements. In an hour of rashness, inspired perhaps by the dying
spirit of chivalry, he resolved to go forth from his castle and meet the
foe on an appointed day of combat. The Lancastrian lords paid no

310 SECOND BATTLE OF ST. ALBAN'S. [1461 A.D.

heed to the time arranged, and made a sudden attack, on the ground
between the town and the castle, then called Wakefield Green. The
result was a fearful disaster for the Yorkists. The small army was
utterly beaten, and York and his second son, the Earl of Rutland, were
killed. A day or two later, the Earl of Salisbury and other leaders,
taken in pursuit, were beheaded at Pontefract, and the cause seemed
utterly lost. But the eldest son, who now succeeded to the titles and
honours of his father, had already given proof of the courage and
capacity which were soon to make him the foremost general of the age.
Edward Plantagenet, the late Earl of March, now become Duke of
York, called to his standard the men of the Welsh border, and resolved
on a bold march for London, where the citizens were thoroughly devoted
to the cause of the White Rose.

Margaret, after the great success at Wakefield, had made a division

of her forces. One part was sent against the young Duke of
of Morti- York, commanded by Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, and
Crop's half-brother to the king. With the larger portion she herself
February made for the capital. Edward found himself obliged to fight
1, 1461. k e force of Tudor, which was hampering his progress, and the
encounter took place at Mortimer's Cross, a few miles north-west of
Leominster. The place derives its name from the intersection of two
roads one of them being the old Roman Wailing Street near the
village of Kingsland, on an estate belonging to the Mortimer family.
Tudor was completely defeated, and the victory was followed by the
same course of cruel executions as those of Wakefield. One of the
victims was Sir Owen Tudor, father of Pembroke, and founder of the
coming line of sovereigns.

The queen had been pursuing her march towards London, and in

the third week of February she was near the old scene of
battle conflict at St. Alban's. The Earl of Warwick had gone out
Allan's * mee t ner from London, taking with him the poor helpless
February king. The battle took place on Barnard's Heath, between
17, 1461. gk Alban's and Barnet, and Warwick's men were routed.
The king was left on the field in his tent, and was now again in his
wife's hands.

This success was of no advantage to the royal cause. Edward was
Edward now on ^ e scene ^ Action, and, with the forces fresh from
of York victory at Mortimer's Cross, he made a junction with the
kingf 16 rallied remnant of Warwick's army, and entered London on
March February 28th. He was met with a warm welcome from

the citizens, who saw in him a more daring spirit than that
of his father. The new leader of the White Rose went straight to
the aim of his ambition. An assembly of Yorkist peers, prelates, and
citizens was held on March 3rd, and at this kind of Parliament he
demanded the crown of England as his right. It was resolved that
Henry, by joining the queen's forces, had set aside the award made in

1400-1485 A.D.] LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD. 311

the preceding autumn, and had forfeited the throne of which he
had been granted the occupancy for life. Henry was then formally
dethroned, and Edward was proclaimed king as Edward IV. on the
same day. Margaret was at present in no condition to meet Edward's
forces, and started for the north, to seek the means of again asserting
in battle the rights of her husband and her son.

CHAPTER II.

LITERATURE OF THE LANCASTRIAN PERIOD.

Satirical verse : Lydgate, Occleve. Bishop Pecock and the clergy. Humphrey, Duke
of Gloucester, as a patron of learning. Fortescue on English law. The Pa&ton
Letters, their matter and style.

IT is a relief to turn for a time from the furious din and bloodstained
battle-ground of angry factions to the peaceful page and uterar
flowery fields of literature and learning. There are no great ture
names like those of Wyclif and Chaucer, but matter of much Jancas-
interest and value in the intellectual history of the land comes trian
before us in the age that closes with the great invention of gs '
printing. Early in the fifteenth century, John Lydgate, a native of
Suffolk, was a priest in the Benedictine Monastery at Bury St. Edmund's.
He had been a student at the universities of Padua, Paris, and Oxford,
and the growth of a taste for letters is shown in the fact of his be-
coming famous as the Monk of Bury who had a school of rhetoric for
instruction in literature and in the art of versifying. Lydgate was no
poet in any high sense of the word, but a man of learning, accomplish-
ments, and taste, who could write easy, pleasant verse in every style
then current ballads, hymns, the legends of saints, masques, the tales
of Troy and Thebes, and moral stories in rhyme. His London Lick-
penny is a popular satirical song of a poor man who came to town in
the vain hope of getting help and justice in his wrong without a full
purse in his girdle. It contains a lively description of the street-cries
uttered by the hawkers and shopkeepers of the day. Thomas Occleve
was a Londoner of the same age as Lydgate, and his chief poem is
based upon a Latin work on the duties of princes. As a government
clerk in the Privy Seal Office, he was involved in trouble by the non-
payment of his salary, and took occasion, while he wrote under Henry
V., to deprecate the war with France, and to call upon a Christian
king to fight only with the enemies of Christ. His strokes of satire
are dealt at all the evils of his time, from the absurd extravagance
of dress to the corruption and self-seeking of churchmen. Reginald
Fccuck, a student of Oriel College, Oxford, became Bishop of St. Asaph

312 LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD. [1400-1485 A.IX

in 1444, by the patronage of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. His
chief work, entitled The Represser of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy,
is the most important book in prose written under Henry VI. It
was meant as a defence of the higher clergy against the aspersions of
the Lollards, but it aroused against the author the hostility of his own
order. Pecock's offence lay in the fact that, while he defended the use
of images, the holding of land by the clergy, the papal and episcopal
authority, and the existence of religious orders, he laid matters before
the English people by discussing them in the English tongue. This
was a concession to the laity that the haughty churchmen of the day
could by no means brook. In another work, Pecock granted to the
adversary that the only rule of religious faith was to be found in
Scripture, and declared that doctrine should be proved therefrom by
reason. It is clear that in Bishop Pecock we have a thinker who, like
Wyclif, was preparing the way for the coming Reformation. He was
a man of genius and learning, skilful in logic, and eloquent in ex-
pression, but these gifts, in that age, were but dangers to the man who
could not blindly follow the " traditions of the elders." Pecock became
Bishop of Chichester in 1449, an ^ continued his attempts to bring over
the Lollards by argument rather than by persecution. In 1457, he
was expelled from the House of Lords, prosecuted by the bishops for
heresy, and compelled to recant at St. Paul's Cross. Some of his
writings were burnt in his presence, including a copy of the Represser,
and a few months later he was deprived of his see. He tried to obtain
the interest of the Pope for his restoration, and was then, perhaps
under the Statute of pra&niunire, sentenced to perpetual imprisonment
at Thorney Abbey in Cambridgeshire. A literary feature of the time
is found in the increased interest which the laity take in books, and
in the decline of learning amongst the clergy. The monasteries were
now the seats of wealth, luxury, and sensuality, rather than of study,
acquirement, and literary production. The age of real science was yet
distant, and men who cared for the secrets of nature were busy with
alchemy and magic, and with other superstitious absurdities of the
time which had seen the burning of the Maid, and the condemnation
for witch -craft of Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester. In the
ranks of the nobles were found many promoters and patrons of learn-
ing and authorship. Humphrey of Gloucester gathered what was
then the splendid library of six hundred volumes of manuscripts.
The ranks of the law produced a notable writer in Sir John Fortescue,
a native of Devonshire, who was Chief Justice of the King's Bench
from 1442 to 1460. He fought at Towton as a zealous Lancastrian,
and was attainted by Edward IV. as a traitor. During his exile in
Lorraine with Queen Margaret, he wrote in 1463, for the use of the
young Prince Edward, his De Laudibus Legum Angliae, a Latin
treatise on the principles of English law. He afterwards produced
in English a work in favour of constitutional government, entitled

LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD. :N :\

Difference between Absolute and Limited Monarchy. In this book
Fortescue declared that he could not, go back as far as he would, find
or conceive an English nation subject to despotic, irresponsible rule.
The prince could neither make laws, nor, except with consent of the
subject, raise money by taxation. By far the most interesting and
valuable historical and literary monument of the fifteenth century
in England is found in the famous Paston Letters, first given to the
public in 1787, and at once hailed with the highest praise by that
great literary epicure, Horace Walpole. The letters form a large
body of friendly and family correspondence, written by and to suc-
cessive generations of the Fastens, from 1422 to 1505. They were a
family of country gentlemen in Norfolk, settled at the village of
their name, on the coast near Cromer. William Paston became a
Judge in the early days of Henry VI., and at a later date we find the
family in close connection, partly by blood, with that great military
captain Sir John Fastolf, who came, full of years and glory, to spend
his last days at his noble new castle of Caistor, near Yarmouth. The
letters are written in the most free and communicative tone, laying
open domestic affairs, public movements, election intrigues, family
lawsuits, and all the relations of English life. We here see, amongst
many other interesting glimpses of manners, the subjection of the
daughters of the house to that strict discipline which then, and long
after, marked the relations of child and parent. We find that the
ladies of that age were well instructed, it' we may judge from the
number of excellent letters written by women, both married and single.
On the literary side, the Paston Letters are remarkable for the correct-
ness of their grammar, and the liveliness and ease of their style. The
public character of the age of the Wars of the Koses is shown in the
wanton and lawless armed attacks made upon the lands and houses
of the Pastons by their powerful neighbours, the Dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk. It was a time of private, as well as public, warfare, and such
disorders and wrongs had no small influence in causing the nation,
under the Tudors, to submit to encroachments on constitutional freedom
for the sake of internal peace, and for the safety of property from the
grasp of all except the monarch.

314 EDWARD IV. [1461-1483 A.D.

CHAPTER III.
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOU11TH.

Battle of Tow tou. Havoc among nobles. Lancastrians again in arms. Warwick's
quarrel with Edward. The king's flight and return. Battles of Barnet and
Tewkesbury. Edward's arbitrary rule. Eoreign affairs. Scottish history.
Death of the king. Literature : Caxton and the printing-press.

THE new king, who was an able statesman, the best general and one
Edward ^ e bravest warriors of the time, vigilant, resolute, prompt,
IV. 1461- and pitiless, was in all points well fitted to guard the power
1483 ' which he had won. He had but scanty time for repose after

his entry into London and reception as king. A procession to St.
Paul's, a speech from the throne, a solemn recognition before the great
altar of the Abbey at Westminster, were the brief ceremonies with
which Edward assumed royalty. It was no time for the feasting and
revelry which were dear to the heart of the handsome young monarch,
as gay in demeanour, and charmingly careless of manner in his hours
of ease, as he was fierce, cruel, and determined in time of stress and
peril. The undaunted Margaret was again in the field, heading a
force of sixty thousand men in Yorkshire.

No time was lost by the king and his supporters. The Duke of
Battle of Norfolk went to his country to raise his men. On March 6th
March 11 ' Warwick left London for the north, and was soon followed
29, 1461. by a great host of men from Kent and Wales. On the I2th
Edward marched out of the city at Bishopsgate, and in a fortnight's
time was close to the coming scene of action. In a skirmish at Ferry-
bridge, on the river Aire, near Pontefract, the advanced columns of
the Yorkists were repulsed, but Edward was consoled by the death of
a Lancastrian leader, Lord Clifford, who had cruelly slain the king's
brother, the young Earl of Rutland, on the fatal day of Wakefield.
On March 2gtli, the main bodies of the two armies met at Towton, near
Tadcaster, a few miles south-west of York. Never before or since in
England was such a mighty host of the children of the soil gathered
together for the horrors of civil warfare. The united forces exceeded
in number those who fought near Hastings, and the struggle equalled
in duration and obstinacy, and far surpassed in bloodshed, the mo-
mentous wager of battle between Harold and Duke William. The
sixty thousand Lancastrians were the hardy men of the north, bred
on the mountain and the moor, their ranks swelled by the borderers
whose life was made up of foray and fight. The leaders included the
Duke of Somerset, and the Earls of Northumberland, Westmoreland,
Devonshire, and Wiltshire, they and their following alike ready to
fight to the death. Margaret and Henry awaited the issue at York,

1461 A.D.] BATTLE OF TOWTON. 315

The army led by Edward numbered about fifty thousand men. Among
the badges and banners that fluttered in. the cold March wind on. that
Palm-Sunday were those of the houses of York, Warwick, Norfolk,
Fauconberg, Scrope, Lord Grey of Ruthyn, Bourchier, and Stanley.
The men of the towns were there in support of their favourite White
Rose, the badge of the monarch who, with all his vices, was the
pioneer of a new order of things, an England of trade, progress,
enlightenment, and internal peace based on the extinction or suppres-
sion of turbulent feudal lords. The banners of the towns seen in
Edward's ranks at Towton displayed the White Ship of Bristol, the
Leopard of Salisbury, the Black Ram of Coventry, the Wolf of Wor-
cester, the Dragon of Gloucester, the Griffin of Leicester, the Rat of
Northampton, and the George of Nottingham. The battle began at
nine in the morning, in the midst of a violent storm of snow, which
came at the backs of the Yorkists and drove full in the faces of the
Lancastrian archers. Their aim was baffled, while the enemy's shafts
were driven home by the force of the wind. For six long hours the
fight was fought with the utmost courage on each side, but at three
o'clock a fresh force for Edward arrived on the ground under the Duke
of Norfolk, and the Lancastrians at last gave way, after suffering fear-
ful losses. The retreat became a rout, in which no quarter was given,
and the battle of Towton ended when nearly forty thousand men lay
dead and maimed on the ground. Every stream on the field ran red
with blood on that day of carnage, and so terrible and lasting was the
impression made on the minds of the peasantry, that three hundred
and fifty years later the old men of the hamlets would still talk of the
gory brooks as tales handed down through their sires. The usual
vengeance was wreaked on survivors of the contest. The day after
the battle saw the beheading of the Earls of Wiltshire and Devon-
shire, with many other men of mark, while the dethroned king and
Margaret made their way to Scotland, and Somerset fled for safety
abroad.

On June 29th, Edward IY. was crowned at Westminster by Thomas
Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. His brother George Edward
was then created Duke of Clarence, and Richard became Duke from
of Gloucester. A progress made through the south and west 1461 ~ 14
was enlivened for the king by banquets, pageants, and the executions
of fallen Lancastrians. In November, Parliament met and passed an
Act of Attainder against the late king and queen, and many Lancas-
trian peers and knights. Henry VI. , Margaret, and Prince Edward
were attainted for the death of Richard, Duke of York, and for
delivering up Berwick to the Scots on April 25th, after the flight
from Towton. Dukes, earls, knights, and esquires were condemned
for taking part in the death of the Duke of York, for being against
King Edward at Towton-field, and for recent armed movements in
Durham and Wales. A statute declared all the Lancastrian princes

316 LANCASTRIAN EFFORTS. [1462-1466 A.D.

to have been " kings in deed and not of right," arid recognised the
title of Edward, by his descent through the family of Mortimer. The
estates of the attainted Lancastrians were either taken by the king, or
bestowed upon his friends, and other supporters of the late sovereign
strove to make their peace by abandoning the cause of Henry, and
making submission to Edward. Some of the greatest nobles, includ-
ing men of the blood royal, were reduced to extreme humiliation and
penury. Philippe de Comines saw the Duke of Exeter, of the house
of Lancaster, "following the Duke of Burgundy's train, bare-foot and
bare-legged, begging his bread from door to door." The widow and
infant son of the cruel Lord Clifford that fell at Towton fled to the
wilds, and the boy grew up as a shepherd. In the first year of Henry
VII. , he was restored to his title and estates, and entered the House of
Peers unable to read or write. In the time of adversity he had learnt
purer and wiser lessons than those of hatred and revenge, and became
known as "the good Lord Clifford."

The unconquerable activity and courage of Queen Margaret kept
Lancas- alive the spirit of the Lancastrian party even after the great
efforts defeat. The people of England were against them, and they
1462-1466. strove for foreign aid. In 1462, Margaret raised in France
an army of adventurers, and landed on the northern coast in October.
The fortresses of Bamborough, Alnwick, and Dunstanburgh were taken
by her partisans, but the forces of Edward were soon in the field.
Margaret was obliged to flee to her ships, and make her escape to
Berwick. Some of the foreign troops were cast by a storm on Holy
Island, whither they were pursued and destroyed. The Earl of War-
wick received the surrender of the three northern castles, of which
Bamborough and Dunstanburgh were yielded by the Duke of Somer-
set and Sir Richard Percy, with the condition that they should recover
their forfeited rank and estates, on swearing fealty to Edward. Parlia-
ment then reversed their attainders, and Somerset was, for the time, a
Yorkist. Abandoned by two of her chief supporters, Margaret sought
shelter in her father's territory of Lorraine in the spring of 1463.
Her son Edward was with her, being then about eleven years of age.
Early in 1464, the Lancastrians were again moving, and risings in
Cheshire and Lancashire were followed by suppression and executions.
Margaret was again in Scotland, and was joined by Percy and Somer-
set, who had so lately left her cause. They headed a large force of
Scots and English exiles, and came again into possession of the three
castles yielded in 1462. Lord Montacute or Montague, brother of
Warwick, promptly marched against them, and on April 25th Percy
was defeated and killed at the battle of Hedgeley Moor, south-east of
Wooler, in Northumberland. On May i5th, Montacute won a decisive
victory over the army of Margaret at the battle of Hexham, on the
south bank of the Tyne. The fortunes of the house of Lancaster sank
to the lowest point. The Duke of Somerset and two other lords were

1464 A.D.] MARRIAGE OF EDWARD IV. 317

taken in the pursuit, and at once beheaded. The usual attainders,
imprisonments, and executions followed. Bamborough Castle, with
Sir Halph Gray, surrendered to Warwick, and Gray's head fell at
Doncaster. The estates of Percy were given to the victorious Monta-
cute, with the title of Earl of Northumberland. An attempt was made
by Edward to cut off from his rivals all hope of Scottish aid by the
conclusion of a truce for fifteen years, with the stipulation that the
Lancastrians should receive neither help nor shelter from the Scots.
The dethroned Henry lay hid for a year among the moors of West-
moreland and Lancashire, and then fell into the hands of the Yorkists.
He was taken to London, where he remained for over five years a
captive in the Tower.

For some years after the battle of Hexharn, no Lancastrian force was
in the field. The repose thus secured was not favourable to Edward
the improvement of the king's character. In the rush of riage mar "
war, as we have often seen, he was eminently brave and 1464.
daring. In peace, the same energy became wild licentiousness and
profusion. The possessions wrested from the defeated Lancastrians
were insufficient for the supply of his extravagance, and in 1464 he
sought profit by what a great writer has called the "shallow and
impudent artifice of lowering the standard" of the coinage. A new
gold coin called an angel was issued, to have the same current value as
the old noble ; but the angel had but eighty grains of gold against one
hundred and eight in the noble, which had already been reduced by
Henry IV. from the old standard of one hundred and twenty. The
public were thus robbed for a short-lived benefit to the royal treasury,
and the needs of the passing hour were met with serious damage to the
commercial interests of the land. By his natural manner, or the artful
assumption of familiar ease towards every one of high and low degree,
Edward won and kept much popularity. This demeanour might be
offensive to the pride of decaying feudal power, but, as with Henry
the Eighth and Charles the Second, it stood to the king in the stead of
many higher qualities. The ballads of the time deal with that frank
and genial humour which, in such an age, might well be a real support
to the throne. The rashest act of Edward IV. 's career was his mar-
riage to a charming widow. Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Richard
Woodville and of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Dowager- Duchess of Bed-
ford, had been married to Sir John Grey, a Lancastrian, who was
killed at the second battle of St. Alban's, in 1461. His estates were
confiscated, and the young widow retired with her two children to live
at her father's seat of Grafton, in Northamptonshire. The king saw
her by chance when he came to the house after a day's hunting, and
soon offered her his hand and the title of queen. A private mar-
riage took place at Grafton, and the union was avowed by Edward
at Michaelmas, 1464. In May of the following year, the lady was
solemnly crowned at Westminster.

318 DISCONTENT OF WARWICK. [1465-1470 A.D.

The marriage of the king was the beginning of estrangement between
Growing n ^ m an ^ n ^ s powerful subject, the Earl of Warwick. The
discon- irfluence of Warwick's father, the Earl of Salisbury, had been
Warwick, a chief support of the cause of Edward's father, Richard of
1465-1470. York. The services of Warwick and his brother, Lord
Montague, had been both brilliant in themselves, and of great and solid
value in raising Edward to the throne and maintaining him there in
safety. The wealth, power, and influence of this " last of the barons "
were such as no English noble ever possessed before or since his day.
Besides the lands attached to his own earldoms of Salisbury and
Warwick, he had received from Edward vast estates of attainted
Lancastrians. He was Warden of the Western Marches, Admiral of
the Channel Fleet, and Governor of Calais. A younger brother, George
Neville, was Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor. As head of the
house of Neville, he could wield the influence of his uncles, Lords
Latimer, Fauconberg, and Abergavenny, also enriched by Lancastrian
spoils. Such a man, backed by claims so real and influential, and
possessed of a genius for subtle policies, combinations, and intrigues,
stood on the very steps of the throne, and could not bear even the
thought of a rival. By his king's passion for a pretty face Warwick
saw himself ousted at once from his place of pride and power. The
lady Elizabeth Grey, now become queen of England, brought with her
to court not only her two sons by Sir John Grey of Groby, but a
father, and brothers, and sisters. On them honours and wealth were
lavishly bestowed by the king, and it was the queen and her relatives,
instead of Warwick and his friends, who had ready access to Edward's
ear. The queen's three brothers and five sisters were married into
noble houses, and her father, Sir Richard Woodville, became Earl
Rivers and Lord Treasurer. The Woodvilles had supplanted the
Nevilles, and Warwick, with many other nobles of the old houses,
regarded the upstarts with envy and hatred. A fresh offence was
given to the great noble in the union of Charles the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy, with the king's sister Margaret, in 1468. Warwick was
an enemy of the foreign duke, and had planned a match for Margaret
with one of the French princes. From that time he plotted against
Edward, and soon had in his toils the king's brother, the Duke of
Clarence, who was married at Calais, in July 1469, to Isabel, eldest
daughter of Warwick. Edward had been decidedly opposed to the
match, and the breach between king and subject was now sensibly
widened.

Within a fortnight of the marriage of Clarence, a rising of peasantry
ewal t k P^ ace i n Yorkshire, under a leader named Robin of
of civil Ricldesdale. It was at first, probably, a mere resistance of
war, 1469. ^ Q p eO pi e ^o some local impost, and its author was taken
and beheaded. Then the name of Warwick began to be used; a
demand arose for the removal of the Woodvilles from power ; and

1469 A.D.] RENEWAL OF CIVIL WAR. 319

two of the great earl's relations took their place at the head of the
movement. At last sixty thousand men were in the field, and the
king, who had marched north, was obliged to seek refuge in Nottingham
Castle. The rebels, moving southwards, met and defeated, in the battle
of Edgecote, near Banbuiy, on July 26th, the king's army under the Earl
of Pembroke, who fell with a large number of men. The queen's father,
Lord Rivers, and her brother, Sir John Woodville, were taken prisoners
and soon beheaded. The earl arrived in England from Calais, with
Clarence, and Neville, Archbishop of York, and for a time Edward was
in Warwick's hands, either as nominal guest or avowed prisoner, in
his castle at Middleham, in Yorkshire. His release was followed by
pretended amity, while Warwick bided his time for a new effort. The
earl's difficulty was, that he wanted the throne for his son-in-law
Clarence, whereas the Lancastrians would hear of nothing but the
restoration of Henry. In the spring of 1470, a new revolt broke
out in Lincolnshire, but this was at once suppressed by Edward in
the battle of Erpingham or Empingham, in Rutlandshire. The cry
of the rebels was "a Clarence! a Clarence! a Warwick! " and the
confession made by Sir Robert Willes, the leader, and his friends,
before they were beheaded, leaves little doubt as to the real promoters
of the treason. At the very time of the battle, Warwick and Clarence,
armed with the king's commission to put down the revolt, were writing
" pleasant letters " to Edward, as they moved on to join his foes. The
king, with his usual energy in time of trouble, turned at once upon
his brother and the earl, and drove Warwick's forces into Yorkshire.
Clarence and Warwick made for the south, and took ship at Dart-
mouth for Calais, which was closed against them by the deputy-
governor. They landed at Harfleur, and Warwick at once opened
negotiations, through Louis XI. of France, with his old enemy, Mar-
garet of Anjou.

The ex-queen came to meet him at the castle of Amboise, and their
common hatred of Edward IV., and common interests and pj^t of
hopes for the future, soon brought about an arrangement. Edward
Warwick engaged, in case of success, to replace Henry on IV>> 1470t
the throne, and prince Edward, the heir, was to marry the Lady Anne
Neville, Warwick's younger daughter. At this crisis, Edward seems
to have acted with a rash confidence in the friendship of fortune. He
despised all the warnings which he kept receiving from his brother-
in-law, Charles of Burgundy. Comines declares that " he never was
concerned at anything, but still followed his hunting." He was soon
to become hunted himself. On September 13, 1470, Warwick landed at
Dartmouth, escorted by a French fleet, and supplied with money and
men by Louis. With him came Clarence, and the Earls of Oxford and
Pembroke. Edward was in the north of England, engaged with a
Lancastrian rising, and Warwick's presence on English soil, with the
proclamation of Henry VL, drew vast numbers to his standard. Six

320 BATTLE OF BARNET. [1471 A.I>.

thousand of Edward's men at Doncaster, at the prompting of Lord
Montacute, flung away the badge of the White Rose, and raised a
shout for "King Henry." There was no resource for him but flight.
He rode in all haste to King's Lynn, where he took ship for the
Netherlands, on October 3rd, seeking refuge with Charles of Burgundy.
His queen was residing in the Tower at London, and took sanctuary at
Westminster, when she heard of the landing of Warwick. On November
4th, the first son of the fugitive king was born, in a time of peril and
disaster ominous of his coming fate.

Only twenty days had passed from the time of his landing on the
Devonshire coast, when Warwick was master of the realm of
Warwick, England. The Lancastrian army entered London in triumph
14 ^ 1> on October 6th, and Henry came forth from the Tower to West-

minster, a king again instead of a captive. The only victim made was
the Earl of Worcester, a scholar, and patron of Caxton. He was styled
"the butcher of England" for his cruelty during the civil wars, and
was promptly beheaded by Warwick on Henry's restoration to power.
Nothing could seem more helpless than the present position of Edward
Plantagenet, late Yorkist king of England. He had neither men nor
money to raise them, and his brother-in-law, fearing the hostility of the
Earl of Warwick, was at first very loth to help him. A turn of fortune
was soon to come. On March 2, 1471, Edward embarked, with two
thousand English supporters of the White Rose, on a little fleet in the
harbour of Flushing. Charles of Burgundy had found the means for
this last effort in the cause of the house of York.

Delayed for several days by the wind, and with the squadron at last
Battle of dispersed by a storm, Edward landed on March i4th, with a
Apr5 e i4 Ver 7 f ew followers, at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, on the north
1471. side of the Humber. At the same spot Henry of Bolingbroke

had landed, when he came to dethrone Richard II. The place has long
since vanished beneath the encroaching waters of the North Sea, but
was then a frequent place of passage to or from the Continent. The
returning exile's best ally, his brave and astute brother Richard, Duke
of Gloucester, landed about four miles from Ravenspur, and the queen's
brother, Lord Rivers, came ashore at a distance of fourteen miles.
When a junction was made of the little band, Edward put forth a
cunning proclamation that he was not come to claim the realm, but only
his own dukedom of York. With cautious courage he continued to
advance, and was joined by numbers of men as he passed by Wakefield
and Doncaster to Nottingham, and thence to Leicester and Coventry.
In this last place lay the Earl of Warwick with a few thousand men.
Some fruitless diplomacy ensued, and Edward marched to the town of
Warwick, where he was received as king, "and so made proclamation
from that time forward." The faithless Clarence had long been planning
a new desertion, and now joined Edward with four thousand men. All
continued to go well, and on April nth, the Yorkist king had a warm

1471 A.D.] BATTLE OF TEWKESBURY. 32t

welcome in London, where he received Henry as a prisoner from the
hands of Warwick's brother, Neville, Archbishop of York. The earl had
followed Edward's march towards London, and on Easter Eve, April I3th,
the king went forth to meet him. The advanced guard of the Yorkists
drove the Lancastrian outposts from the town of Barnet towards the
main army of Warwick, encamped on Gladsmoor Heath, now known
as Hadley Common. The night was dark and misty, and as Edward's
men advanced to take up a position for attack on the following day, the
gloom was lit by the frequent flashes of some heavy clumsy cannon firing
shot from Warwick's front over the heads of men who lay on lower
ground. The dawn of Easter Sunday was obscured by fog, and the
three hours' battle was a confused and disorderly struggle. The left
wing of the Yorkists was routed, while Edward, all unaware of the
fact, was charging Warwick's centre. At this time, the Lancastrian
archers fired in ignorance on their own men, inflicting serious loss, and
Gloucester attacked with success the enemy's right wing. Warwick
and Lord Montacute fell, and the battle ended with the defeat of the
Lancastrians, and the loss of many thousand men in the action, and in
a pursuit where no quarter was given. Edward rode back to London,
and went in thanksgiving to St. Paul's, while all the city steeples gave
forth their merry peals.

The great struggle was not yet over. Queen Margaret had gathered
a large army of foreigners and Lancastrian exiles, and she landed at
Wey mouth, with her son Edward, on the very day that Warwick ended
his career at Barnet. Her fleet had sailed from Honfleur on March 24th,
but had again and again been driven back to port by foul Battle of
weather. She was soon joined by the new Duke of Somerset, Tewkes-
the Earl of Devonshire, and other staunch friends, and the May 4,
ranks of her army were increased by the men of the south- 147L
western counties, where the Lancastrian cause had ever been popular.
The news of the battle of Barnet came as a heavy shock to her hopes,
and one chronicler tells that " like a woman all dismayed for fear she fell
to the ground." Her masculine spirit soon revived in all its energy and
power, and she marched for the Welsh border, intent to join the forces
under Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. The victorious Edward prepared
at once to encounter the new danger. He reorganised the army of
Barnet, and assembled his forces around him at Windsor, where he
kept the feast of St. George on April 23rd. On the next day he started
for the west, with the object of cutting off Margaret from all access to
the north of England, where she so often had found powerful aid for
her cause. The queen passed through Bath into Gloucestershire, and
then found her progress barred by the Severn near Tewkesbury, as the
countryfolk had broken down all the bridges. Before any means of
crossing could be devised, the warrior-king was at hand, with his brothers
Gloucester and Clarence, and a powerful army. The Lancastrian forces
were drawn up in the fields east of the town of Tewkesbury, defended

322 DEATH OF HENRY VI. [1471 A.D.

in front and flank by " foul lanes, and deep dikes, and many hedges,
and hills and valleys, a right-evil place to approach." But the position
could not be found that Edward Plantagenet and Richard of Gloucester
would not venture to assault with the impetuous fury that, sooner or
later, swept all before it in the shock of arms. The battle took place
on Saturday, May 4th. A first Yorkist attack was repulsed, and Somer-
set then showed both courage and military skill in fiercely assailing
Edward's flank. It was a bold move, which failed from lack of due
and promised support on the part of his comrade, Lord Wenlock. The
Lancastrian leader was overpowered, and driven back to his intrench-
ments with great slaughter. Then Edward and Richard broke in upon
the foe with conquering force, and an utter Lancastrian rout ensued, in
which men were drowned at a mill-stream, t in the meadow fast by the
town," and Margaret's last army fled to the town, the church, the abbey,
and into lanes, dykes, hedgerows, and woods, wherever they best might
escape close and vengeful chase. The kingdom was won at last, and
Edward IV. was firmly placed on the throne. The young Prince Edward
fell either in the battle or in the pursuit, for we need not accept the
usual story, derived from Lancastrian sources, that he was brutally
murdered in Edward's tent after the battle. The Duke of Somerset
and other Lancastrian leaders were tried for treason and beheaded.
These judicial slaughters were rendered more atrocious by the fact that
the victims were dragged from the sanctuary of Tewkesbury Abbey,
in spite of the king's promise that all such refugees should be par-
doned. Margaret of Anjou took shelter in a small "house of religion "
at Coventry, where she fell into the hands of Edward, and was taken
to London a captive in his train. On May 2ist, the victorious king
marched into London at the head of thirty thousand men. On that
night or the next, Henry VI. ended his unhappy life, a captive in the
Tower. Lancastrian writers say that he was murdered there by the
Duke of Gloucester. Yorkists affirm that he died of grief on hearing of
the fatal issue of Tewkesbury. The one account is just as likely to be
true as the other, and no trustworthy evidence exists. The body of
Henry VI. was buried first at Chertsey Abbey, but was removed by
Richard III., and has lain ever since, by the side of his rival, Edward
IV., in the royal vault of St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The "meek
Usurper " had found rest at last.

All the enemies of the House of York had now been swept away by
Arbitrary the sword or the axe, or lay in prison, or wandered in exile.
Edward Margaret of Anjou, the most formidable of Edward's foes,
IV. was safe in the Tower. The Duke of Exeter, who had escaped

from Barnet to the sanctuary of Westminster, perished at sea in 1472.
The Earl of Pembroke, with his nephew, the young Earl of Richmond,
were cast by a storm on the coast of Brittany, and in that country
they remained for the rest of Ed ward's reign. Safe on the throne,
the English king indulged his taste for magnificence and luxury until

ARBITRARY RULE OF EDWARD IV. 323

his court became renowned for its gaiety and splendour. His repose
was somewhat disturbed by quarrels between his brothers, Clarence
and Gloucester. The elder brother, married to Warwick's elder
daughter, Isabel, wished to secure for his wife and himself the whole
of the " king-maker's " vast possessions, and strongly opposed Richard's
desire to marry the younger daughter Anne, who had been the be-
trothed of the young Prince Edward slain at Tewkesbury. Gloucester
did marry as he wished, and in 1474 Parliament divided the great
fortune of Warwick between the two royal brothers. A son and only
child of Richard and Anne was born at Middleham Castle in 1473.
One of the chief facts of the reign of Edward is the assumption of
arbitrary power by which he set aside the acquired rights of the House
of Commons, and treated with scant respect principles laid down in
the Great Charter. He was enabled to govern much in accordance
with his own will by the removal of those restraints which had hitherto
curbed the spirit, and checked the purposes, of the sovereigns of
England. Just after the time when, under Henry VI., Parliament
had used its powers more freely than ever before, in such wise as
amply to justify the boast of Sir John Fortescue that Englishmen
lived under a monarchy limited by law and by the will of the nation,
as expressed through Parliament, we find the law and the powers of
the Houses falling into abeyance, and the progress of freedom stayed
for over a hundred years. The truth is that, while the House of
Commons had secured and exercised the right of settling the amount of
aids in money to be levied, and the mode of levying the taxes, and had
freely used the power of impeaching and so removing evil ministers,
it had been to a large extent, as it is to this day, an aristocratic
assembly, composed of men closely connected by blood and interest
with the lords, and of "worshipful" men of good position and estate.
The burgesses, or borough members, alone were in any wise connected
with trade, representing a " middle class " of the community as yet
insignificant in numbers and influence. These borough members,
engaged at home in their own business, and living in an age when
travelling was slow, costly, and dangerous, were lax in their attend-
ance, and thus the House of Commons mainly depended for its power
on the aristocratic element which it contained. Whatever depressed
or destroyed the baronage of England was a blow aimed at the power
of Parliament to oppose and thwart the arbitrary will of the sovereign.
It was in the temporal and the spiritual lords, the barons and the
bishops, that the advisers of the Crown had been found in all im-
portant affairs. In them, under the sovereign, all the functions of
government had been vested, as the king's ministers and high state-
officials. We have seen how the barons, relying on the use of their
feudal armies, often defied the power of great Plantagenet kings. The
time had been when the Church, strong with the strength of intel-
lectual and spiritual influence, shared with the temporal lords the duty

324 ARBITRARY RULE OF EDWARD IV.

of opposing a firm front to the encroachments of regal tyranny. With
these matters in view, we find the full explanation of Edward IV.'s new
system of rule in the condition of the baronage and the Church when
the fatal fields of Barnet and Tewkesbury gave him a firm grasp of the
reins of government. The old baronage of England had almost dis-
appeared in the civil war, and the Church had, after a long decline,
reached its lowest point of authority. It was a corporation of vast
wealth, which had now little else than its wealth to rely upon. The
people of England were finding the Church out. Wyclif and his
successors had shaken the old belief, not so much in the doctrine, as
in the practice, and the fitness to wield spiritual power, of the great
ecclesiastical body. Knowledge was spreading among the laity, and
men were beginning to think for themselves, and desire reasons for
the faith which had hitherto been blindly accorded. Many great
laymen were eager for the plunder of the Church, and bishops and
abbots were ready to give large powers to a sovereign who would save
their possessions from the grasp of greedy and unscrupulous men. The
civil war had made internal peace and order the things most to be
desired by the merchant, the small trader, and the proprietor and tiller
of land, and all were willing to abate much of the claims of constitu-
tional freedom in favour of a king who was strong enough to restore
and maintain social tranquillity. The tyranny of one man is always to
be preferred to revolutionary violence and anarchy, and, under Edward
IV. and the Tudor sovereigns, the English people had always, in the
last resort, a sure resource against tyranny in the good right arms
which had not forgotten the use of weapons. The result of all was
that the two Houses of Parliament almost ceased to meet for the
purpose of legislation. The will of the king was expressed in the
Orders issued by the Council. The land swarmed with spies and
informers, and the utterers of rash words, and all others who incurred
the suspicion or resentment of the government, were subject to arrest
and detention without trial, in defiance of the freedom won by the
barons from John. The king had been greatly enriched by the con-
fiscations of the civil war, and had far less need than his predecessors
to call together the Houses for the raising of money by taxation. The
warlike Edward had also a resource which seems little in accordance
with his character either as a soldier or a voluptuary. He was an
enterprising and successful merchant. The commerce of England had
been long growing in extent, and the trade which had once been wholly
managed by natives of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, was now
coming under English control. When the extravagance of his costly
court demanded further supplies of money, Edward resorted to a plan
as simple and effectual as it was grossly illegal and oppressive. He
raised money, by loans never repaid, from the wealthier men in the
trading class, and the merchants were asked to make gifts to the sove-
reign, under the name of " benevolences." It was useless to complain,

1475 A.D.] EDWARD'S INVASION OF FRANCE. 325

and perilous to refuse, and in this way the Wars of the Roses had led
up to a financial tyranny that was even more insulting in form than it
was unjust in principle and injurious in effect.

The life of ignoble and vicious ease which was led by the Yorkist
king during the last half of his reign was marked by only E<j ward
three events worthy of note. These were a futile invasion of IV.,
France, the death of Clarence, and a renewal of the old strife andPscbt-
with Scotland. In 1473 and the following year Edward pre- land
pared for a new conquest of the provinces lost under Henry VI. War
with France had great attractions for many Englishmen, and Parliament
voted large supplies, to the disgust of some thrifty taxpayers. In
June 1475, Edward sailed from Sandwich with a large army, after
despatching a letter to Louis XL, demanding the French crown as his
right and inheritance. The story of what follows, as related by Comines,
is a rare piece of comedy, The Duke of Burgundy had incited Edward
to the war, with a promise of substantial help. When the English
king arrived, he met with a cold and scanty welcome. The crafty
Louis, an adept at all the cunning diplomacy of the age, knew some-
thing of his invader's character, and he resolved to do anything rather
than fight. An envoy was sent to the English camp, and commissioners
were soon in treaty for a truce. Edward's claim to the whole of France
dwindled to a demand for Normandy and Gascony. A great feast was
given at Amiens to all the English host. Three hundred cartloads of
the finest French wines arrived as a present for Edward. French gold
was freely used among the nobles who surrounded the English king.
At last, it was hinted to Edward that, if he would leave France with
his army, a good "pension" would be forthcoming. Edward jumped
at the bait, and met the French king at Pecquigny, near Amiens.
The treacheries of the time, and, in this case, of the men, are illustrated
by the precautions taken when the two monarchs came to conference.
A bridge was thrown across the Somme, crossed in the middle by a
strong wooden grating. The monarchs advanced to this barrier, and
shook hands through one of the openings. The terms of the treaty of
Pecquigny were, a large sum of money paid down to Edward, a large
sum yearly to be paid during the truce ; a marriage of the French
Dauphin to Edward's eldest daughter, Elizabeth ; and the release, for a
.substantial ransom, of Margaret of Anjou. This was the only honour-
able part of the arrangement. The widow of Henry retired to France
after four years' imprisonment in the Tower, and closed her life in
peace in 1482. The disgraceful surrender of his "claims" made by the
English king was regarded with deep displeasure by one man in the
English camp, his brother, Richard of Gloucester. He declined to be
present at the interview between the monarchs, and " stood upon the
side of honour." The meeting of the two kings at Pecquigny was
more than a mere farce of bribery and cajolery, of heartless and hollow
friendships and compacts. It was the mark of a new epoch. The age

326 REVIEW OF SCOTTISH HISTORY. [1424 A.D.

of chivalry had come to an end. The pageant was played out. The
world was now to be governed by state-craft, and the deceits of modern
diplomacy were all embodied in the person of one of its earliest and
greatest masters, Louis the Eleventh of France.

It seems probable that Edward had never forgiven Clarence for
Death of former desertion of his cause. Other matters of offence arose
Clarence, between the brothers. The duke lost his wife Isabel by poison ;
and in 1477 desired to marry the only daughter and heir of Charles of
Burgundy, who had lately perished after the defeat of Nancy. The
king was strongly opposed to the match, though it was favoured by
his widowed sister Margaret, stepmother of the Princess of Burgundy.
Clarence withdrew from court, and then a fresh trouble came. Two
gentlemen of his household were accused, according to the superstition
of the time, of plotting the king's death by "art-magic, necromancy,
and astronomy." The duke used high words in their favour before
the Council, but they were condemned and executed. The arrest of
Clarence himself, on a charge of treason, took place in January 1478.
Edward appeared against him in person ; the peers were ready with a
vote of " guilty," and the Duke of Buckingham, acting as high steward,
pronounced sentence of death. The servile House of Commons asked
for execution, and Clarence died in February, by unknown means,
within the Tower. The " malmsey-butt " is a mere rumour : the charge
against Gloucester of procuring his brother's death is a baseless calumny
aimed at a man whose character has been persistently blackened by
Lancastrian party writers.

The reign of James I. was an era in the history of Scotland. He
Review of Brought w ^h him to the rule of his country the literary
Scottish culture and political knowledge gained by study and observa-
nistory. tion during his long sojourn in England, and the great object
of his life was to use these resources for the benefit of the nation.
Under the rule of the Regent Albany, and of his successor Murdoch, the
land had been in a turbulent state. Much of the Crown property
had come into the hands of the nobles, who were ever engaged in
feuds with each other, varied by oppression of the middle and lower
classes. Immediately after the king's coronation in 1424, the work of
reform was taken in hand with enlightened zeal and vigour. The laws
were put forth in the native tongue of the people, and judges and
magistrates were strictly held to the impartial administration of jus-
tice. Owners of land were compelled to show the deeds and charters
under which they claimed, and a new survey and valuation of property
provided a basis for just taxation. The weights, measures, and coinage
were regulated, and the authority of strict law dealt with beggars,
vagrants, and all able-bodied idlers who had been living in swarms on
the fruits of other men's labour. The military organisation of the
country was dealt with, and an attempt was made to rival the formid-
able weapon of the English foot-soldiers by the establishment of schools

1427-1440 A.D.] REVIEW OF SCOTTISH HISTORY. 327

of archery in every parish. A severe example was made of those re-
sponsible for the late disorders of the realm by the trial and execution
of Duke Murdoch of Albany and his two sons. Alexander, Lord of the
Isles, who had assumed an independent power over the wild west and
north of Scotland, was forced to a humble submission in 1427, and
went as a prisoner to the strong storm-beaten fortress of Tantallon
Castle, whose grey ivy- clad ruins adorn yet the entrance of the Firth
of Forth. In 1431, a rising in the Highlands was crushed, and James
was complete master of Scotland. The lawless nobles regarded as a
tyrant the monarch whom the mass of the nation highly esteemed for his
vindication of the rights of industry, property, and civil freedom. A con-
spiracy for his violent removal was formed, and a chance was offered to
the traitors when the king kept Christmas at Perth, in the monastery
of the Black Friars, in 1436. In February 1437, at the close of a day of
sport and revelry, as James talked with the queen and her ladies over
the fire, a body of Highlanders broke into the monastery, led by Robert
Graham, who had been banished for violent language used in Parliament
against the king. The great bolt of the room-door had been removed,
but Catharine Douglass thrust her arm through the staple, and for a
minute or two, until the limb was broken, kept the assassins out, while
James broke through the floor and escaped for the time to a vault
beneath. The band searched the monastery, and then returned to the
room, observed the mode of escape, descended after the king, and
stabbed him to death with sixteen wounds from dagger and sword.
The murderers were afterwards taken in the mountains, and the fierce
justice of the age wreaked vengeance in death inflicted with cruel
torture. For many years after the death of James I., the curse of
Scotland lay in the long minority of her kings, and the strife of factions
among her nobles. The new king, James II., was but six years of age.
The quarrels of the nobles for supremacy were renewed. The young
Earl of Douglas and his brother, representing the most powerful of
the great houses, were treacherously murdered at Edinburgh Castle, in
1440, by Sir William Crichton, the governor, and Livingston, gover-
nor of Stirling. These men were rivals with each other, but gladly
combined to be rid of those who could control them both. In truth,
the power of the Douglases overshadowed that of the throne. They
were dear to the people on account of their patriotism. One Douglas
had, as we have seen, supported Wallace in his great contest for
Scottish independence. Another Douglas, the k 'good Lord James,"
had ever fought at the side of Bruce through his heroic and adventur-
ous career, and had perished in action against the Moors, in charge of
the heart of the dead warrior-king. Another had died fighting in the
victorious action of Otterburn. In the border warfare, the Douglases
were ever to the front against the Percies of England. They had
fought bravely against the old foe on French soil, and Archibald
Douglas, the father of the two murdered lads, had won there the

328 REVIEW OF SCOTTISH HISTORY. [1443-1474 A.D.

dukedom of Touraine. The lands of the house of Douglas were to be
found in many parts of the realm, and the country south of the Forth
was largely subject to their sway. In 1443, they rose again into
importance in the person of William Douglas, uncle of the victims of
Crichton and Livingston. He formed an alliance with the governor
of Stirling, and was made lieutenant-general of the kingdom. In 1449,
at the age of eighteen, James II. married a daughter of the Duke of
Gueldres, and the visitors from the Netherlands were struck with
amazement at the power and pride of the Douglas, who came to court
with five thousand armed retainers at his back. The young king soon
found that Scotland was not spacious enough for the energies of
himself and his haughty subject, who set the royal authority at defiance,
and seemed to aim at the throne. In 1452, he invited Douglas, under
a safe-conduct, to a personal conference at Stirling Castle. A quarrel
ensued after supper, and the king stabbed the noble, who was then
despatched by Sir Patrick Grey. Civil war ensued, but peace came at
last in a quarrel between two branches of the Douglas family, who
neutralised each other, and brought about the submission of both to
the royal power. In 1460, while the Wars of the Roses were rife in
England, James II. resolved to try and recover the fortresses of
Roxburgh and Berwick. At the siege of the former, he met his death
by an accident to a rudely-made monster cannon in his own siege-train.
Another long minority followed. The new king, James III., was a
lad of but eight years, but until 1465 there was a fair show of peace
and order under the rule of the able and excellent Kennedy, Bishop of
St. Andrews. The death of the prelate brought to the front a new
family of ambitious aims, called the Boyds. Lord Boyd, in 1466,
became guardian of the king's person and governor of the royal
fortresses, and his son Thomas was created Earl of Arran, and married
to the king's sister. The influence of the house of the Boyds was very
short-lived. In 1469, James III. married the daughter of Christian
I., King of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and a part of the bride's
dowry, the Orkney and Shetland Isles, hitherto under Norse dominion,
became annexed to Scotland. During the Earl of Arran's absence in
Denmark on the mission to conclude the arrangements for the marriage,
a league of Scottish nobles was formed against the Boyds, and the king
became their enemy. Arran received warning, and escaped back to
Denmark. A condemnation for treason was followed by the forfeiture
of all the estates of the family. Lord Boyd fled to England, and his
brother Alexander died by beheading at Edinburgh. It was in 1474
that Scotland again came into direct relations with England. The
Princess Cecilia, daughter of Edward IV., was betrothed to the young
Prince James, and all seemed to promise a prosperous reign for James
III. Scottish dominion had been enlarged by the acquisition of
Roxburgh, Berwick, and the northern isles. In 1472, the Scottish
Church became independent by the advancement of the see of St.

1483 A.D.] DEATH OF EDWARD IV, 329

Andrews to the position of .an archbishopric. The prospect was soon
overclouded as the king's character became developed. The Scotland
of that age needed, above all, a ruler of sturdy character and martial
tastes. James III. was artistic, studious, and refined, delighting in
the society of men of culture in every kind. The rough, ignorant, and
haughty nobles despised such a monarch, and gave their adherence to
his brothers the Duke of Albany and the Earl of Mar, men of like
pursuits with themselves. The jealousy of the king was aroused.
Mar was seized, and died in prison, not without rumours of violence.
Albany, in the end, escaped to France, and then to England, where he
roused against his brother the enmity of Edward IV., while Louis XI.
of France stirred up the Scots against England. The marriage treaty was
broken off, and this was followed by border warfare in 1480. In 1482,
the Scottish nobles hanged Cochrane, Earl of Mar, and other favourites
of their king. In the same year, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, retook
the fortress of Berwick, which ever after remained in English hands.

In 1483, Louis of France broke one of the chief articles of the
treaty of Pecquigny, and declined to carry out the contract Deatll of
of marriage between the Dauphin and the English princess Edward
Elizabeth. Edward was enraged, and prepared for war, but '' 4 3>
his body, enfeebled by excessive indulgence in evil pleasure, soon suc-
cumbed to an attack of illness. He died on April 9, 1483, and was
buried in the new chapel at Windsor, dedicated to St. George. He
left five daughters and two sons, Edward, Prince of Wales, a lad
in his thirteenth year, and Richard, Duke of York, about two years
younger.

The king and some of the nobles who fought with courage so ferocious
in the civil war were by no means destitute of literary tastes. Literary
Edward IV. was himself a reader. In his " wardrobe ac- tastes of
counts " we find entries for the charges of binding his Titus Printnfg.
Livius, his Froissart, and his Joseph us, and of repairing Caxton -
chests to remove his books from London to Eltham. The queen's
brother was a patron of Caxton, who brought his art to England in
1475, and it was for Caxton's press that the same accomplished man,
Earl Rivers, translated " The Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers,"
printed at Westminster in 1477. The time had arrived for knowledge
acquired by reading to be spread more widely amongst the people.
Never had books been more freely multiplied by manuscript copies.
The material for books had been cheapened in the substitution of linen-
paper for parchment, and before the end of the century the earliest
paper-mill in England was set up at Stevenage, in Hertfordshire. It
was about the middle of the century that the art of printing first
acquired great practical use in the substitution of movable types of
metal for the wooden block pages. In 1455, the year of the first
battle of St. Alban's, the famous " Mazarin " Bible was printed with
such types at Mayence by John Gutenberg and John Fust, or Faust.

330 CAXTON. [1441-1492 A.D.

Thence the art passed to Haarlem, Strasburg, Home, Naples, Paris,
and Cologne, and by 1472 it was practised in all the leading cities
of the Continent. The father of English typography, our own great
William Caxton, was born in the Weald of Kent about 1420, and
became a mercer's apprentice in London. By energy, skill, arid
industry he steadily rose in life, and was appointed in. 1464 a royal
commissioner to settle a treaty of commerce with Philip the Good,
Duke of Burgundy. He became consul for the English merchants at
Bruges, his life for more than thirty years from 1441 being chiefly
spent in the Netherlands. His love of literature and learning caused
him to acquire a perfect knowledge of French, and some acquaintance
with Flemish. He translated a "History of Troy" from the French
for Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, and appears to have been in
Cologne from 1469 to 1471. He may have there learnt the art of
printing from those who acquired it at Mayence, and this knowledge
he improved through his friend, Colard Mansion, the printer at Bruges,
a man eager, like Caxton, for the spread of knowledge among the
people. About 1472, Caxton returned to his native land, and the first
English printing-press was soon at work in a spot close to the great
Abbey at Westminster. Edward IV. and his brothers took much
interest in the new art, and so rapid was the progress made that, in a
single collection of books bequeathed a few years ago to the library of
Trinity College, Cambridge, there are not less than a thousand books
printed, in various countries, before the year 1500. Caxton was a
busy translator as well as a printer, and, after issuing the Canterbury
Tales and the works of Gower and Lydgate, he printed many books
turned from the French by his own pen. His labour continued into
the reign of Henry VII., and he died about 1492.

CHAPTER IV.

THE END OF THE HOUSE OF YORK.

Edward the Fifth's brief career. Eichard of Gloucester takes the throne. The
mysterious death of the royal brothers. Parliament under Richard III. The
Earl of Richmond takes the field. Richard dies fighting at Bosworth.

AT the time of his father's death, Edward, Prince of Wales, now
Edward become Edward V., was residing at Ludlow Castle, in charge
to' June* 1 ^ n * s maternal uncle, Earl Rivers, his half-brother, Sir
1483. Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Sir William Stanley,

and other gentlemen. The Duke of Gloucester was in the north, dis-
charging his duties as Warden of the Scottish Marches. The events
which follow can. only be understood in the light thrown upon them by

1483 A.D.] EDWARD V. 331

a consideration of what had occurred in the previous forty years. The
whole system of English government had been a contest for dominion
between unscrupulous and selfish men and factions, without any lead-
ing principle of public good to give even a colour to the course of
intrigue, insurrection, and civil war. At the moment of Edward's
death, we find the heir to the throne surrounded exclusively by the
queen's relations and friends, the Woodville party who had aroused
against them the bitter jealousy of the old nobility. During the life
of Edward, this hostile feeling had been, for safety's sake, suppressed.
The strong king's removal opened the floodgates of passion against the
upstarts, and to this we must ascribe the fact that no man raised his
voice or lifted an arm in defence of the only protectors of the helpless
young monarch and his brother. Their uncle, Richard of Gloucester,
was far from being the mere fiend and monster drawn in the libellous
caricature of the great dramatist's play, but his daring, ambitious,
crafty, and cruel spirit had already conceived the plan of securing the
throne for himself, and the brief reign of Edward Y. is nothing but
the record of the successive strokes of bold and tragical action by which
that plan was carried to a successful issue.

As soon as the news of the king's death was received, Edward and
Richard, each with his own friends, started for London. On Glouces _
April 24th Edward V. left Ludlow with Rivers, Yaughan, and ter's pro-
Grey, and they travelled on until they reached Northampton. (
There Gloucester and his chief supporter, the Duke of Buckingham,
arrived on the same day, but the king had gone forward to Stony-
Stratford, while Rivers remained at Northampton, to show his respect
for Gloucester. Each party was trying to out-man osuvre the other.
The queen's faction were resolved, as it seems, to retain the govern-
ment in their own hands, for in commissions issued on May ist no
mention is made of the two most important men in the country, the
Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham, both of the blood royal, while
the names of the queen's nearest relatives, the Marquis of Dorset, and
Earl Rivers, are prominent. On April 3oth Gloucester and Bucking-
ham, who had spent the previous evening in social companionship
with Rivers at Northampton, suddenly threw off the mask. The
earl was arrested at his inn, and the two dukes then rode off to
Stony- Stratford, and secured Grey, Yaughan, and the young king.
The news was carried quickly to London, and the fears of the queen
drove her to leave the palace of Westminster, and take refuge in the
Sanctuary with the young Prince Richard. London was all in com-
motion. The Thames was crowded with boats, having on board the
Duke of Gloucester's partisans : the citizens stood in groups, to discourse
of what was passing : lords, knights, and gentlemen put on their armour
and assembled in companies. On May 4th the young king publicly
entered the city, escorted by Gloucester " with all semblance of lowli-
ness." The peers took the oath of fealty to Edward, and at a great

332 GLOUCESTER'S PROCEEDINGS. [1483 A.D.

council of prelates, nobles, and citizens, the Duke was appointed
" Protector of England." The official documents of the day declare
that " Edward, by the grace of God king of England and France and
lord of Ireland" acts "by the advice of our most entirely beloved
uncle the Duke of Gloucester, protector and defender of this our realm
of England during our young age."

The young king had been placed in his palace of the Tower, and his
Glou- coronation settled for June 22nd. Buckingham was made
toeccSnes governor of Wales, constable of royal castles, and keeper of
king. royal forests. All the chief friends of Gloucester were pro-
moted and rewarded. Northumberland became warden of the Scottish
Marches and captain of Berwick; Lovell received the castle of Walling-
ford ; Catesby was made chancellor of the Earldom of March ; Lord
Howard, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, was steward of the Duchy of
Lancaster. Thus the Protector, in the name of his nephew, was
building up his own power, and the smallest offices, as those of keeper
of a gaol, or bailiff of a park, were filled up by his nominees. The
opening of Parliament was fixed for June 25th, and the Lord Chancellor,
John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, prepared a speech for the occasion,
the draft of which remains amongst the Cotton MSS. in the British
Museum. The passage which states that one of the causes for
assembling the Parliament was to establish the authority of the Lord
Protector, shows that the Chancellor, the chief officer of the govern-
ment, knew nothing of the plot for raising Gloucester to the throne.
On Friday, June I3th, an event occurred which was ominous of impend-
ing change. Lord Hastings, a close friend of Edward IV., had gone
along with Gloucester and Buckingham in the arrest of the queen's
kindred and friends, but he was thoroughly loyal, as Richard had
found, to the new king. The scene that passed within the Tower has
been reproduced by More and Shakespeare in colours that never can
fade. Many lords are there, engaged in arranging the solemnity of
the coronation. At nine o'clock, the Protector enters, with excuses
for his late attendance, and desires Morton, Bishop of Ely, to send for
a dish of his " good strawberries " now ripe at his garden in Holborn.
Gloucester then sets the lords to debate, and in an hour or two returns
with a disordered look. In fierce words he charges the queen, and
"that other witch" Jane Shore, with having withered his arm by
witchcraft. Hastings is dragged into the matter, and denounced as
part and parcel of the crime. The Protector smites his fist on the
table, a cry of "treason" is heard without, men in harness rush in,
and Hastings, on the mere order of Gloucester, is at once beheaded in
the Tower yard. Morton and Lord Stanley were arrested, while
Richard declared that Hastings and others had plotted the murder of
himself and Buckingham on that very day in the chamber of council.
The Duke of Gloucester was living at the house called Crosby Place,
near to Bishopsgate, in the City, and there he held special meetings of

1483 A.D.] GLOUCESTER BECOMES KING. 333

his own adherents. On June i6th, the queen was induced to surrender
the person of the young Duke of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Cardinal Bourchier, pledging himself for the boy's safety. The removal
of the prince from the Sanctuary at Westminster to the Tower of
London was a public act, arranged at Westminster Hall in the presence
of many lords and prelates, who seem to have concurred in all the
proceedings of Gloucester. It was at this time that the Bishop of Bath
and Wells, Robert Stillington, who had been Chancellor under Edward
IV. , revealed a secret to the Protector. He declared that, prior to the
late king's marriage with the Lady Elizabeth Woodville (or Grey) he
had married Edward to a beautiful young lady. Of the truth of this
statement nothing is known, but it seems to have furnished Gloucester
with an excuse for claiming the crown as his right. On June 22nd,
a certain Doctor Ralph Shaw, brother of the Lord Mayor, delivered
a sermon at Paul's Cross in presence of the Protector, the Duke of
Buckingham and other lords. The story of Edward's previous marriage
was brought forward, and Edward Y. and the young Duke of York
were denounced as illegitimate. In all these matters, we probably see
the craft of a strong-willed usurper working upon the credulity, or the
fears, or the self-interest, of the foolish, cowardly, or base persons who
might serve his turn. The plot went on apace, and on June 24th, the
Duke of Buckingham, himself a descendant of Edward III., through
the Duke of Gloucester who died at Calais in 1397, harangued the
citizens at Guildhall, and set forth Gloucester's right to the crown.
On the next day, June 25th, the day for which the Parliament had
been summoned, Buckingham, the Lord Mayor, and many others went
to the Protector at Baynard's Castle, and made him an open offer of
the crown. It is likely that many members of both Houses were
present on this occasion, but it was no true Parliament, because a writ
had been previously issued, postponing the meeting called for June 25th.
With feigned reluctance Gloucester accepted the offer, and on June
26th he sat down in the state chair of Westminster Hall as Richard
III., King of England. The accession of the usurper was followed by
the beheading at Pomfret Castle of the Earl of Rivers, Sir Richard
Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, and Sir Richard Hawte. On July 6th,
Richard, and Anne, his queen, were crowned at Westminster with the
usual splendour of display, and the great number of persons of rank
present seemed to show a general acquiescence in the new monarch's
claim, on the part of men highly placed in Church and State. The
queen's train was borne by Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond,
mother of the coming Henry VII.

Another tragedy was to follow the executions at Pontefract, and
here we have brought before us one of the vexed questions of Did
our history. On the assumption that Edward IV. had been Jilfthe
previously contracted or married to the Lady Eleanor Butler, princes ?
daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the two young princes were

334 RICHARD III. [1483-1485 A.D.

illegitimate, and no motive for their removal could exist. The story
of the previous marriage was freely accepted by those who offered the
crown to the Duke of Gloucester, and with this we might assume that
the usurper would be content. The statement made in 1493, a * the
instance of Henry VII., who had the strongest reasons for desiring to
prove that the princes were murdered, proceeded from two persons
named Sir James Tyrrel and John Dighton. They declared that
Richard III., having directed a warrant to Sir Robert Brackenbury,
lieutenant of the Tower, to put the boys to death, w r as by him refused :
that the king then sent a warrant to Sir James Tyrrel to receive the
keys of the Tower for one night, for the king's special service ; that
Tyrrel with his two servants, Miles Forest and John Dighton, repaired
to the Tower, and that he stood at the stair-foot, whilst they executed
the murder, by smothering the boys in their beds; that Tyrrel saw
their dead bodies, which were buried under the stairs ; and that when
Richard took exception to the dishonourable place of their burial, the
bodies were removed by the priest of the Tower to some other place,
which could not be known. This statement was first printed in 1543,
half a century after it was made, and it is open to the gravest doubts.
It does not appear that Henry VII. made any public use of it, and it
was left to John Dighton to spread abroad the story on his own re-
sponsibility. The general belief of the time was that the two young
princes were murdered, but, in the absence of their bodies, no legal
evidence could be said to exist. After the lapse of nearly two centuries,
in 1674, a circumstance occurred which has been held to be decisive of
the alleged fact of the death of the two sons of Edward IV. by foul
means within the Tower. In that year, some alterations were being
made in the White Tower, to prepare it for the reception of papers
from a public office. In making a new staircase into the chapel of
that tower, some bones were found under the old staircase, and their
proportions were found to be " answerable to the ages of the royal
youths." No doubt was felt on the subject, and Charles II. caused the
remains to be removed to Henry the Seventh's Chapel, in Westminster
Abbey, where a Latin inscription upon marble records the discovery,
and declares the remains to be those of Edward V. and the Duke of
York, confined in the Tower, put to death, and secretly buried, by
command of Richard. The simple entry, under the date of the first
year of Richard III., in the "Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London,"
conveys impressively the substantial truth "And the two sons of
King Edward were put to silence."

The character of the new king was a strange mixture of hateful
Richard an ^ admirable qualities. Courage and sagacity were his in
III. 1483- large measure, but these had been, up to the hour of his
1485< reigning, only the handmaids of successful crime. Once

seated upon the throne, he showed himself void of all petty feelings
of revenge towards the representatives of those whom his ambitious

1483 A.D.] BUCKINGHAM'S REVOLT. ,'535

policy had laid low. The estates of Hastings were freed from for-
feiture, in favour of his widow and children. The jointure of the
Countess of Rivers was secured, and a pension was given to Lady
Oxford, whose husband was in prison abroad. The king and queen
made a progress through the western counties and Midlands, where
Richard administered justice against offenders, and " heard the com-
plaints of poor folks." All seemed to promise a reign of peace and
security, but a cloud soon arose on the horizon.

One of the ablest men of the age was Morton, Bishop of Ely. After
his arrest at the Tower in June, he was committed to the Bucking-
charge of the Duke of Buckingham in Wales, and there he ^voit
began to plot against the king. His artful tongue gained 1483.
over the inconstant duke, who had been richly rewarded for his ser-
vices by Richard. Within a week of the coronation, letters patent had
assigned to Buckingham the estates which he claimed in right of his
descent from Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and which had
been withheld from him by Edward IV. Morton, as a zealous Lancas-
trian, looked for a king to one of the few remaining representatives
of the line. We have seen Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, as an
exile in Brittany after the fatal clays of Barnet and Tewkesbury. His
descent from John of Gaunt made him the nearest Lancastrian neir,
and Morton conceived the plan of his marriage to Elizabeth of York,
eldest daughter of Edward IV. The union would reconcile conflicting
claims, and wars of succession would come to an end. The Yorkists
had been roused to hatred of Richard by his treatment of his two
nephews, and the widowed queen favoured the plan. A message, with
a sum of money, was sent to Richmond in Brittany, and communica-
tions were opened with leading men of both parties. A premature
rising of Buckingham in Wales was brought to an end by lack of re-
sources to pay and feed his army, when his march had already been
stopped by a great flood of the Severn. The duke was betrayed to
Richard, and executed on November 2nd at Salisbury. Richmond had
sailed from France, but his fleet had been scattered by a storm, and
he now returned without attempting to land. He and the Marquis of
Dorset, son of the ex-queen, devised new plans, and on Christmas Day,
1483, they pledged themselves in the cathedral of Vannes to make
another trial, and Richmond swore to marry the Princess Elizabeth, if
he succeeded in obtaining the crown.

In the one Parliament of his brief reign, Richard III. showed that
he was in advance of his age. The assembly met at West- Richard
minster in January 1484, and the legislation there effected III- 's only
at his instance consisted of fifteen statutes of a remarkable ment,
character. The " Benevolences " of Edward IV. were " an- 1484t
nulled for ever" as "new and unlawful inventions" and as the cause
of "great penury and wretchedness." Another Act secured to persons
arrested for felony release on bail, and guarded them against seizure of

336 RICHARD III.'S ONLY PARLIAMENT, [1484-1485 A.I..

goods before conviction. A third statute provided for the summoning
of fit persons as jurors. Another gave security to possession of real
property, and thus facilitated the transfer of lands. A statute of
Henry VII. , who has received all the credit, repeats almost the exact
words of this Act passed under his predecessor. Two striking changes
were also made in this session of Parliament. For the first time, the
laws to be obeyed by the English people were enacted in the English
tongue. For the first time, the laws of the land were issued in a
printed form. In the legislation of this short and troubled reign, and
in the mode of promulgating a knowledge of the laws, we have evidence
of a master-mind breaking down the trammels of prescription and
routine. Among the Acts which were passed to guard the interests of
the growing commerce of the country, we have a single instance of
Free Trade, In every other case, Protection is the principle main-
tained. One commodity was to come into the land as freely as the
light fron heaven : one class of foreign merchants was to be strongly
encouraged to transmit their goods to our shores. All books, written
or printed, from every country, were to be freely admitted.

In March, the king's friendly advances drew out of sanctuary the
Affairs in ex-queen and her five daughters. In April, he suffered a
1484-85. grievous loss in the death of his own son, Edward, the only
child of his marriage with Anne Neville. His nephew, John de la
Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was declared his heir, and the king then sought
to counteract the schemes of Richmond. In March, 1485, the queen
died, and the Lancastrian dealers in calumny who ever sought to blast
the name and blacken the memory of Richard III. insinuated that she
died by poison, administered by the king in order to clear the way for
his marriage with Elizabeth of York. The slanderers have forgotten
to explain how Richard's title to the crown could be strengthened by
marrying a woman whom the law had declared to be illegitimate. In
1485, no second Parliament was called, and the king, needing money
for preparations to meet Richmond, borrowed sums from the citizens
of London, for which, as Alderman Fabyan tells us, " he delivered to
them good and sufficient pledges as surety." The enemies of Richard
have not failed to denounce this as a new resort to the system of
"Benevolences," as though the giving of "good and sufficient pledges"
for a loan were the same thing as the extortion of money by com-
pulsory gift, without any intent of repayment.

The Earl of Richmond was furnished by the king of France with but
Battle of a small force for so great an enterprise as the conquest of
August* 11 ' England from such a warrior as Richard of Gloucester.
22, 1485. From two to three thousand Norman adventurers formed the
army with which Henry, on August i, 1485, sailed from Harfleur.
His chief hope lay in the support to be looked for on English soil.
The Welsh were sure to rise in behalf of a Tudor, who traced back his
lineage to their half- mythical kings. There was a regular organisation

1485 A.D.] BATTLE OF BOSWORTH. 337

of the Lancastrian party in England, against which Richard, with all
his care and sagacity, seems to have taken inadequate measures. Some
of the chief men, who held office for the Yorkist king, had been
already won over to the cause of the Red Rose. Among these were
Lord Stanley, who could command much support in the north-west,
and the Earl of Northumberland, the great lord of the border country.
On August yth Richmond landed, without opposition, at Milford
Haven. He marched northwards through Wales, recruiting his force
at every step, and crossed the Severn at Shrewsbury, on his way to
encounter the king. Richard had taken up a central position at
Nottingham. He seems to have undervalued his enemy as "a man
of small courage and of less experience in martial art," and this,
combined with a fear of taxing the people, made him slenderly use
the resources of the crown. The whole of the forces on both sides
amounted to less than twenty thousand men. The truth is that in
this, the last battle of the Wars of the Roses, we do not see a national
conflict, but simply a trial of strength between two claimants of the
crown, supported by such hired men and zealous partisans as could be
gathered under their banners. The people were weary of civil war,
and cared little or nothing for the pretensions of either combatant.
They longed for a time of peace, and when Richard, the first crowned
king since Harold that fell in battle upon English ground, was struck
down by an English rival of royal blood, the contest was at an end.
The old feudal chain which bound the lord to the king, and the vassal
to the lord, had been weakened in many links. The sentiment of
loyalty to the sovereign, founded upon the spirit of patriotism, and not
upon the obligations of feudal service, was scarcely yet created. With
Richard, the last Plantagenet king, was to perish also the system
under which, with many changes, England had been governed by that
house for more than three centuries. The battle called after Market
Bosworth, in Leicestershire, as the nearest town of importance, was
fought on August 22, 1485. The armies met on a plain three miles
from the town. The spot was then a swampy desolate heath, and is
now utterly changed by tillage. A monument stands over a spring
known as " King Richard's Well," and the rising ground where Stanley
placed the emblem of rule on Richmond's head is still called " Crown
Hill." On Sunday, August 2oth, Richard marched from Nottingham
to Leicester, at the head of his troops. He rode on a white horse, in
full armour, bearing a crown on his helmet. The next day he moved
to an abbey near Bosworth, and encamped his men on hilly ground.
Richmond, marching from Shrewsbury, had a conference at Stafford
with Sir William Stanley, and there final arrangements were made for
his treacherous action with Lord Stanley on the day of battle. On
the 2ist, Richmond was at Atherstone, and on the morning of the
next day both armies moved to " Redmoor Plain," as the battle-ground
was then called. When the fight began, the king found the Stanleys

338 DEATH OF RICHARD III. [1485 A.D.

opposed to him, and Northumberland kept his men aloof, and would
not stir a foot to his aid. No tactics, no military skill, no valour, could
now be of the least avail. It was of little moment that Richmond
" had never set a squadron in the field." The men whom Richard
had loaded with benefits deserted him in the hour of his need, with a
baseness of treachery that proclaimed that the knell of chivalry was
rung. There was nothing left for him bat to die fighting, and the
courage of his race sustained him to the end. Hopeless of victory,
and surely doomed in case of surrender or survival of defeat, he sought
only to slay his rival. With a few faithful friends at his back, he
made a desperate onset upon that part of the field where he saw the
banner of Richmond, and made his way almost to sword-points with
his foe. He bore down the standard, and killed with his own hand
Sir William Brandon who carried it. He dismounted Sir John Cheney,
and made way with his weapon on every side. Richmond, who bore
himself bravely in the fight, was in imminent danger, when Sir
William. Stanley came to the rescue with three thousand men. The
few troops who were with Richard were in a moment killed or disabled,
and the king fell, overwhelmed by numbers, and fighting manfully to
the last. The crown which had fallen from his helmet was placed by
Sir William Stanley on the head of Richmond, who was at once hailed,
with shouting and clapping of hands, as " King Henry." The brutality
of the age was shown in the treatment accorded to the remains of one
of the bravest of its warriors. The body of Richard III. was rudely
flung across a horse, and thus, besprinkled with mire and blood, it wan
taken to Leicester and buried in the church of the Grey Friars.

BOOK X.

TUDOR TIMES. THE NEW LEARNING AND THE NEW
CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

THE AGE OF HENRY THE SEVENTH.

Character of the period. Tudor monarchy. The new king's policy. Henry and
claimants of the throne. Perkin Warbeck's strange career. Royal marriages.
The king and the nobles. The tools of tyranny. Parliament under Henry VII.

THE reign of Henry the Seventh in England comes at the close of a
century whose latter half was marked by some of the most ^
momentous events in the records of the human race. The Tudor
fifteenth centniy is the time of transition from mediseval to age>
modern history. The slow previous growth of the European intellect
was marvellously quickened in its contact with the mind of ancient
Athens. The masterpieces of Attic genius began to be studied, and,
after a long eclipse, a flood of light came pouring into the souls of men.
Freedom of thought was the grand invention of the race that fought
and won at Marathon, and in the noble remains of their priceless
literature they bestowed it on the world as a heritage for all ages to
come. Prejudice, pedantry, superstition, blind submission to authority,
fled from the view of those who taught mankind to look the universe
in the face, to question nature freely, to think a subject boldly out,
to follow no beaten track, to acknowledge no limitary rules, to demand
reasons for belief, to stand up to the death against violence and fraud,
in the cause of liberty and reason. Change and progress became, in
western and in central Europe, the watchwords of the world's enduring
conflict with the powers of nature and the problems of existence, and
this condition of the minds of men produced, within the limits of the
Tudor age, events and changes which worked with more or less effect
on religion, politics, commerce, the social system, literature, art, science,
and war. " The old order changeth, giving place to new." The supreme
importance of the time is shown in a mere mention of some of these
results of human energy and speculation. The mariner's compass
showed the way over wide and trackless oceans, and the bouncTs of the

339

340 THE TUDOR AGE.

material world were suddenly enlarged in the rediscovery of once-found
and long-forgotten America, and of the route to India round the Cape
of Good Hope. The use of gunpowder in battle and siege sounded a
note of warning that the days of safety in stone walls, and of protection
in steel armour, were coming to an end. The feudal fortress could
not bear the battering of cannon, and the feudal knight was helpless
against the pike and musket of the new-armed infantry. The invention
of printing caused an intellectual transformation of the world. The
cheapening of books supplied the new demand for mental light, and
the increased supply created a demand. As year by year the printing-
press sent forth more books for readers, there were more persons to
whom books became an absolute necessary of life. The mode of spread-
ing knowledge was largely changed from that of sound to silence, from
the use of ear to eye. The pulpit was supplanted by the printing-press.
The priest and preacher, trembling for the spiritual safety of his flock,
could not prevent the silent spread of new ideas.

The great political fact of modern history is the consolidation of mon-
Political archy, in the form of sovereigns invested with an authority
of a the eS emanating from the state. The fixed and positive principle
time. of this institution is the exclusive right of one family to the
possession of the throne, and the hereditary succession of rulers, further
restricted by the law of primogeniture. The state is thus furnished with
an immovable centre in the dynastic family to which sovereign power
is consigned. It was in the Tudor age of England that the Euro-
pean states showed themselves with boundaries fixed, and populations
settled, and institutions formed, in their main features, as they
were destined to continue, with minor changes, until the close of the
eighteenth century. In 1453, the last of the races who came from Asia
into Europe was firmly fixed as a nation by the capture of Constanti-
nople. The establishment of a powerful Mahometan empire in south-
eastern Europe was soon afterwards partly redressed in the expulsion
of the Moors from Spain, and the extinction of the power of Islam in
the south-west of the Christian continent. The state system of modern
Europe begins in the establishment of social order and strong centralised
government, enabling rulers to direct their attention more closely to
the affairs of neighbouring peoples. The intrigues of diplomacy, and
the development of the theory of foreign policy known as the "balance
of power," were the results of inter-monarchical and inter-national
jealousy ; and wars, negotiations, alliances, in the shape of royal inter-
marriage, or for the combined action of fleets and armies in offensive
and defensive warfare, begin to assume an importance unknown in
previous ages. The Tudor sovereigns of England, firmly established in
power through causes already noticed, were enabled to intervene with
effect in continental affairs, and to acquire for England that European
influence which, with rare and brief interruptions, she has ever since
wielded.

1498 A.D.] COMMERCE. 341

The discovery of new lands and new markets for goods gave a great
impulse to trade and manufactures, increased the wealth of c om _
Europe, and led to the building of powerful navies by the mercial
chief maritime states. The era of colonisation in the east and of^he 63
the west had arrived, when sovereigns, statesmen, and peoples time -
began to see the full value of commerce in promoting the prosperity of
nations. The commercial centre of the world was shifted when Vasco
da Gama, in 1498, made his way round the Cape of Storms to Calicut,
in Malabar. The shortest and safest route to India was that by the Medi-
terranean, Red, and Arabian seas, and the great commercial republic
of Venice had long held command of the ports of Egypt and Syria
through which the traffic of India passed to and from central and
western Europe. By the adoption of the new route round Africa,
Venice lost her commercial supremacy. "Western Europe, instead of the
Mediterranean, became the centre of the trade of the world ; and the
British Islands were started in the race which was to end in their
acquirement of the foremost position in commercial and maritime
affairs. The colonial system of the country had its rise in early Stuart
times, but it was under the Tudors that the nation acquired, or first
displayed on a great scale, the adventurous spirit and maritime skill
and courage which led, in later ages, to results so striking.

Of all the monarchies of Europe, that of England was the only one
under which the people succeeded in maintaining, in greater TJie E
or lesser degree, constitutional checks upon the arbitrary lishand
will of the sovereign. In the time of the Plantagenet kings, tinental
it had become thoroughly settled, first, that the king could mon-
not legislate without the consent of his Parliament ; secondly,
that he could impose no tax without the consent of his Parliament ;
thirdly, that he was bound to conduct the executive administration
according to the laws of the land, and that, if he broke those laws,
his advisers and his agents were responsible. In all the monarchies
of western Europe, during the middle ages, there also existed restraints
upon the royal authority, in the shape of fundamental laws, and re-
presentative assemblies. Under the feudal system, the people there,
as here, were trained to the use of weapons, and an armed nation was
possessed of ample means for the curbing of a tyrannical ruler. The
progress of civilisation brought a great change. War became first a
science, and then a profession. The mass of the people, closely en-
gaged in profitable pursuits, declined the inconveniences of military
service, and paid others to undergo them. The standing army be-
came an institution in continental states. The physical force which
had once belonged to the nobles and the commons, and had been used
to resist an oppressive sovereign, was now enlisted in his service,
and became itself the instrument of oppression. The representative
assemblies grew more and more feeble, and at last practically ceased
to exist. They failed to secure freedom, in the days of their power,

342 THE TUDOR MONARCHY.

by keeping in their hands the control of taxation, by which alone a
standing army could be maintained. The firm refusal to furnish
money for the support of a permanent military force, until ample
securities had been provided against despotism, would have left the
king helpless, and England would not have remained the sole example
of a constitutional monarchy. Apart from the determined character
and the free instincts of her people, England was mainly indebted, for
her escape from absolute monarchy, to her insular situation. A stand-
ing army was needless to protect us from foreign invasion, and the
people whose arms had once carried terror and devastation to the
fair fields of France, abandoned the vain dream of foreign conquest
in Europe, and devoted their energies more and more to the accumu-
lation of wealth in tillage, manufactures, and trade. The political
wisdom and vigilance of the friends of English freedom did not fail
to observe and profit by the fate of the Spanish Cortes and the French
States-General. When the Tudor line of sovereigns ended, as the
seventeenth century opened, the Commons of England were prepared
for the struggle which, first within the walls of Parliament, and
then on the battlefields of the great civil war, secured for ever, it
may well be hoped, the constitutional rights that had never, under
the strongest of the Tudor sovereigns, been allowed to fall into utter
desuetude.

Some of the causes of Parliamentary weakness under the Tudors
"he have been already indicated. The great constitutional assembly

mcm- r showed itself often subservient, and permitted its undoubted
archy. rights to fall into a partial disuse. The constitutional growth
of the nation was checked, and under the new personal monarchy we
see many instances of arbitrary taxation, many acts of executive oppres-
sion and cruelty, and some long intervals during which the nation's