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CORNELL
ONIVERSITY
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DA 176.P32 1861

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3 1924 027 950 405

‘olin
PICTURES OF OLD ENGLAND.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY R. CLAY, 80N, AND TAYLOR,
BREAD STREIT HILL,
 

 

 

 

 

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OLD ENGLAND.

BY DR. REINHOLD PAULI,

AUTHOR OF “HISTORY OF ALFRED THE GREAT,” ETC.

TRANSLATED WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION,

BY E. C. OTTE.

MACMILLAN AND CO.
Cambridge
AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN,
London.
1861.
TO
BENJAMIN THORPE, ESQ.
ONE OF THE MOST LEARNED CULTIVATORS
OF THE ANCIENT HISTORY AND LANGUAGE OF ENGLAND
Ohe follotoing Puges are Dedicated
WITH EVERY FEELING OF SINCERE REGARD

AND ESTEEM
BY

THE TRANSLATOR.
PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION.

TuE following “ Pictures of Old England” were origi-
nally sketched by the author, with the view of more
clearly illustrating to his own countrymen his “ History
of England in the Middle Ages,’’* a work that is admitted
by all who are capable of forming an opinion on the
question, to be characterized by impartial truthfulness
and by indefatigable industry in the research of minute
documentary evidence. The materials which were
necessarily accumulated by Dr. Pauli during the pro-
gress of such a composition, afforded him the ready
means of elaborating, in a popular form, this series of
vivid sketches of the men and institutions of the good
old times in the days of the Plantagenets. It will be

* Geschichte von England, vols. III. IV. V. Hamburg u. Gotha,
1858, 1855, 1858. These volumes are a continuation of Dr. Lappen-
berg’s work, which has been translated, with additions and corrections,
by Mr. Thorpe, under the titles of ‘A History of England under the

Anglo-Saxon Kings,” 2 vols. 1845; and “ A History of England under
the Norman Kings,” 1857.
Vill PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION.

readily seen that one of the principal objects aimed at
by the author, has been to bring prominently forward
the early intercourse which existed between England
and Germany; while he has endeavoured con amore
to illustrate some of the sources and channels through
which the history and social progress of our own
country have been modified and influenced by the
German element.

The value of the present translation has been much
increased by the careful supervision of the learned
author, whose accurate knowledge of English has
enabled him to suggest many important emendations.

The following is a list, drawn up by Dr. Pauli
himself, of the various authorities which he has con-
sulted in the composition of the several chapters :—

CHaprer I.—Historical Memorials of Canterbury, by A. P. Stanley,
London, 1855. Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, a Biography, by
J. C. Robertson. London, 1860.

II.—Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, Camden Society, 1840. Chro-
nica Monasterii de Abing1on, ed. Stevenson, 2 vols. Rerum Britanni-
carum Medii Aevi Scriptores, 1858. Monumenta Fraciscana, ed.
Brewer, Rer. Brit. Med. Aevi Script. 1858 (the new collection published
under the direction of the Master of the Rolls).

III.—Modus tenendi Parliamentum, ed. Hardy, 1848. Gneist Das
heutige Englische Verfassungs und Verwaltungsrecht, vol. I. Berlin,
1857.

IV.—A number of documents, formerly preserved in the Tower of
London, at present in the Public Record Office, having either been
PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION. 1x

written from Germany, or referring to German affairs during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were copied or extracted by the
author under the direction of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin,
to which also a report, accompanying nearly 500 pieces, was addressed,
The details regarding the Prussian Crusade of Henry, Earl of Derby,
in the year 1390-1, are taken from the original account-book, which
is still preserved among the records of the Duchy of Lancaster.

V.-—Besides the Geschichte von England, vol. IV. a Wardrobe Account-
book of King Edward III. a.p. 1338-40, in the Public Record Office,
is principally referred to, extracts from which have been printed by
the author in Quellen und Erérterungen zur Bayerischen und Deut-
schen Geschichte, vol. VII. Munich, 1858.

VI.—J. M. Lappenberg, Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen
Stahlhofes zu London, Hamburg, 1851; with a great number of
English and German documents.

VII.—The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. London, W. Picker-
ing, 1845, 6 vols. Confessio Amantis of John Gower, ed. Dr. R. Pauli.
London, Bell and Daldy, 1857, 3 vols.

VIII.— Vaughan, John Wiclif,a Monograph. London, 1853. Lechler,
Wiclif und die Lollarden, in Niedner’s Zeitschrift fiir die historische
Theologie, 1853. Fasciculus Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif, ed.
Shirley, Rer. Brit. Med. Aevi Script. 1858.

1X.—Aschbach, Geschichte Kaiser Siegmunds, 4 vols. Hamburg,
1838. Palacky, Geschichte von Bohmen, vol. III. Prag. 1845. Eber-
hard Windeck in Mencken, Scriptores Rer. Germanicarum, vol. I.
Lips. 1728. Gesta Henrici V. ed. Eng. Hist. Soc. 1850.

X.—J. Quicherat, Procés de Condamnation et Réhabilitation de
Jeanne d’Are, etc. 5 vols. Paris, 1841-1849, ed. Société del’ Histoire de
France.

XI.—The author's continuation of Geschichte von England, vol. V.

XII.—Munimenta Gildhalle Londoniensis, vol. I. Liber Albus,
AD. 1419, ed. Riley, Rer. Brit. Med. Aevi Script. 1859.
CONTENTS.

I.
PAGE
CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP OF ST. THOMAS BECKET 1
IL.
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS * 30
TL
THE PARLIAMENT IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 73
IV.
ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA . 106
Vv.
THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND KING EDWARD IIL . : . 140
VI.
THE HANSEATIC STEEL-YARD IN LONDON Sp sch 176
VII.
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER ; 204
VIIL

JOHN WICLIF nate rs 7 » ois
Xil CONTENTS.

IX.

PAGE

KING HENRY Y. AND KING SIGISMUND ... . + - 298
Nes

THE MAID OF ORLEANS . «wee ee ee ee te te 887
Jole

DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. . . . . + Sap BIBI
XIL

408

LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES . . 2 © «© «© «© «© «@ © .
I.
CANTERBURY,

AND

THE WORSHIP OF ST. THOMAS BECKET,

 

THE modern capital of a kingdom is not always the
spot from whence its earliest civilization has emanated.
Either two cities have, from their origin, contended for
supremacy, as was the case with Rome and Alba
Longa, or, more frequently, one has been thrown into
the shade by the other, after having for ages main-
tained an undisputed ascendancy. Toledo existed long
before Madrid; Brandenburg long before Berlin. Even
London, which Nature seems to have destined to
be the metropolis of the empire, the chief port of the
country, and the commercial emporium of the whole
world, has not always been without a rival in regard to
every province of material power. The Romans, when
they opened Britain to the knowledge of the rest of the
world and brought it within the pale of communion
with other nations, found this spot conspicuous in the
fresh beauty of its noble site; and this pre-eminence it
maintained throughout the wild and gloomy storms that
swept over the nation during the next few centuries. In
B
2 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

regard to one point, however—and that a point of para-
mount importance—London was compelled to yield to a
neighbouring spot, to which appertains a higher honour,
and to which the civilization of England, and we may
almost say of the entire world, will ever owe a large debt
of gratitude. The ancient Durovernum, which was in
existence when the Romans began to organize their
conquests, was even then an important intermediate
station on the great road which led from the sea-coast
to the city on the Thames ; but it was not until a people
of different race had changed its name to Canterbury,
and established at once a kingdom and a royal residence
on the banks of the Stour, that its fortunes experienced
any essential alteration. We have no intention to enter
into a dissertation, however brief, on the history of the
ancient city of Canterbury, for our purpose is merely to
speak of two events, and of two historical characters,
intimately connected with the celebrity and interest
which this spot has claimed from the earliest ages in
the pages of history.

The stranger, who in the present day is borne rapidly
along the railway through the slopes and luxuriant hop-
gardens of Kent, cannot fail to be struck by the air of
antiquity that meets him as he draws near to the ancient
city. A low and heavy gateway, which seems to belong
to the fifteenth century, leads him into the streets of
Canterbury. Below the ramparts, which have been con-
verted into public walks, the foundation-stones of the
old fortifications may still be traced ; and at one spot, at
least, we meet with the remains of an ancient royal
residence. We next come to extensive ecclesiastical
buildings, which are here and there in ruins, but which
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. 3

more generally retain their original form, fulfilling, even
at the present day, the object for which they were
designed. High above gate and tower, and walls and
gabled roofs, rises the carefully-preserved mother-church
of England—the stately Cathedral—conspicuous for its
pointed and crenellated towers and its far-stretching
nave, with its double choir, elevated above the rest of
the building, and extending far eastward. Like the
cathedral at Cologne, the Canterbury Minster is visible
from a considerable distance before any of the rest of the
town can be seen; and the fantastic outlines of its white
stone walls stand forth from the clear sky with an
almost unnatural brightness. It is, moreover, the prin-
cipal object of attraction in the district—the spot to
which, even in ages long passed, there resorted from
every part crowds of eager spectators. Canterbury,
which is still the chief archiepiscopal see of the island,
is also the most ancient site of Catholic Christianity in
England—the mother-seat of her Church and her civi-
lization.

It is well known that the Britons, after they had
become Roman subjects, received, at one time, a form of
Christianity, which was probably brought to them direct
from the East, since at that period, no primate had as
yet been settled at Rome as the head of the Western
Church. It is equally familiar to all that the British
island was, in turn, conquered by pagan Jutes, Saxons,
and Angles—tribes belonging to vigorous Germanic
races—that the bonds with which Rome had once bound
the island to the Continent were thus rent asunder, and
that the knowledge of Christianity was. almost en-
tirely eradicated from the land, except in a few places,

B2
4 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

where a feeble spark of the true faith was still kept alive
among the Celtic inhabitants. Alike well known is the
tale that, a hundred and fifty years afterwards, Gregory
the Great, having been moved by the sight of some fair
curly-headed English youths in the slave-market at
Rome, and touched by their beauty, had formed the
wish of converting their countrymen—the insular Saxons
—to the true faith ; and that when he soon afterwards
ascended the papal throne, he sent forth a faithful and
trustworthy delegate to perform this holy labour in his
place. His envoy, together with those who accompanied
and succeeded him in this great work, was rewarded by
the noblest success; and it was by means of converted
Anglo-Saxons, among whom stand conspicuous such
names as Wilfrid, Willibrord, Winfrid, and Willehead,
that Germany was subsequently brought within the pale
of Roman Catholic Christianity, and a portion of the
debt of gratitude thus nobly paid, which the converted
nations owed to their kindred tribes on the Continent.
It is, however, more especially to Augustine, the apostle
of Gregory, that the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury
owes the indelible character which has clung to it to the
present day.

This Augustine, who was probably named after the
great father of the Church—St. Augustine, Bishop of
Hippo-Regius—was a monk of the monastery of St.
Andrew, on the Ceelian Mount, to which Gregory had
also belonged. From the cell, in which his hours were
spent in the study of the Bible and in the devotional
exercises prescribed by the rules of his house, he must
often have looked down upon the still magnificent ruins
of imperial Rome. The destructive barbarism of her
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET, 5

Germanic assailants had not been able utterly to annihi-
late the glorious creations of the noblest arts of anti-
quity; and pagan temples were now being converted into
Christian churches, while the intellectual products of the
genius of the nobly-gifted heathens of old were being
collected, preserved, and adapted to the use of these
Christian fanes. In the midst of a world full of vigorous
rudeness, filled with marvellous ruins and permeated by
contending elements, within which, however, there slum-
bered the most maryellous germs of vitality, the Romish
hierarchy in those days slowly, but steadily, acquired a
solid and compact form. The minds of Gregory and of
his delegate must have been nurtured and ennobled by
the thoughts and memories that clung to this varied and
almost chaotic state of existence, and it was reserved for
the latter to transfer them to the remote shores of Britain.
It was in the year 596 that Augustine, a man of noble’
and almost athletic figure, issued forth from the gates of
his monastery, accompanied by forty monks. The terror
of the long journey, and the discouragement produced
by reports of the horrible barbarism of the savages to
whom they had been sent, had well-nigh made the tra-
vellers turn back when they reached the mouth of the
Rhone, had. not the Pope, who remained firm to his pur-
pose, encouraged them to persevere. After they had
traversed the whole of Gaul, and reached the sea-coast,
they crossed from the territories of the Morini to the
shores of Kent, and landed on the Isle of Thanet, which
was, at that time, entirely surrounded by water, at a
place named then, as it still, is, Ebbe’s Fleet, and not
far from those memorable spots, which have been so
intimately associated with the history and destiny of
6 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

England through the landing of Julius Cesar, of the
heroic brothers Hengist and Horsa, and of William Duke
of Normandy. The narrowness of the channel at this
part of the coast, which is here sheltered by chalk cliffs
and deep land-locked bays, naturally gave occasion to
such a preference.

Augustine had, moreover, a special reason for selecting
this small island as the place of his disembarkation ; for
he had to provide for his own safety, and that of his fol-
lowers, until he could obtain the necessary information
in regard to the disposition of Ethelbert, the Auscing,
who was at that time the ruler of Kent. He and his
subjects, like all the other Saxon princes and inhabitants
of England, were still heathens; although he must
have been regarded as the most distinguished among
the pagan rulers, since he exercised a sort of suzerain-
ship over all the others, while his power extended as far
as the Humber. He had, however, as the Pope had
long since heard, married Bertha, a Merovingian prin-
cess of the race of Clovis, who was permitted by this
tolerant worshipper of Woden to exercise her orthodox
faith without hindrance, and who had even been suffered
to bring with her, as her chaplain, a Christian country-
man of her own, Bishop Ludhard, who, as Bede circum-
stantially relates, was allowed to perform mass in her
presence in a small chapel in the eastern part of Canter-
bury. Arrangements for the first meeting with the king
were speedily settled, and without further delay, the
conference took place on the small island, and in the
open air—a precaution insisted upon by the men of Kent,
from the fear that the foreign strangers might make use
of certain charms or spells. The prince, attended by his
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. 7

haughty followers, all of whom were armed, took his seat
beneath an ancient oak, where he awaited the approach
of the monks, who advanced towards him, preceded by
two of their number bearing aloft a silver cross and a
picture of the Saviour, painted on a golden ground. The
interview was carried on by help of interpreters, who,
after announcing the message of Augustine, repeated the
answer of the /Mscing prince, who expressed a true-
hearted confidence in the good intentions of his new
acquaintance, to whom he accorded the most hospitable
welcome. Soon after this, the monks proceeded on their
way to Canterbury, which they entered, singing aloud
the “ Halleluia” in one of the chants of praise that had
been composed by Gregory.

The wife, in this case, as has so often happened both
in ancient and modern times, was the principal agent in
the conversion of her husband; and the strange guests
had not long recovered from the fatigues of their travels,
and had only lately begun to celebrate the services of
their Church within Queen Bertha’s chapel, when the
king caused them to be informed that he was disposed
to adopt their faith. All his thoughts had been turned
to that consecrated spot of ground outside the city gate,
where, even in the present day, there still stands, in the
midst of its ancient burying-ground, the small church
of St. Martin, and where, according to Bede, a church
had been founded by the early British Christians during
the time of the Roman occupation of the island, although
it is very probable that it received the name of the
saint of Tours from its subsequent connexion with the
Frankish princess. Here, on the only piece of ground
that had remained consecrated to Christian worship,
8 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

Ethelbert was baptized by Augustine on the 2d of June,
in the year 597—a day that has been conscientiously
and gratefully incorporated by the Saxons in their
calendar. The building from which this victory of
Romish orthodoxy extended over the north of Europe,
although small and unimposing, was of a peculiar cha-
racter, and well worthy of arresting the attention of the
spectator. On a singularly formed hill, which, in the
dark ages, had undoubtedly served as a place of sacrifice
for the Celtic Druids, and where probably, in after times,
Jutes and Saxons had invoked their gods, Thor and
Woden, stand the ancient and strong foundation walls
of a building of small dimensions, scarcely larger than
many a private burying vault or pilgrim’s chapel.
Roman bricks project between the stones, and these very
stones were probably the witnesses of that world-re-
nowned and most important ceremony of baptism, which
in its results, was nearly as momentous an event as the
conversion of Constantine the Great, or of Clovis, the
Franco-Gallic prince. We are scarcely disposed, how-
ever, to grant that the remarkable font, which, at most,
can only be referred to the later Saxon period, is the
identical one employed by Augustine on this memorable
occasion. It is sufficient for us that the spot where the
first Anglo-Saxon prince became a Christian is as tho-
roughly and satisfactorily authenticated as the site where
once stood the Capitol of ancient Rome. To the present
time the church of St. Martin-in-the-East has fulfilled
its destination of serving as a parish church to the sub-
urbs of Canterbury.

The diffusion of Christianity, like the progress of civi-
lization generally, has usually followed a western direc-
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. 9

tion; and this tendency may be traced even in regard to
details in the ruined buildings of Canterbury. A short
distance outside the city walls rises another elevation,
on which the ruins of an ecclesiastical building project
from the soil, Ancient histories and more recent tradi-
tions record that here, long before the arrival of Augus-
tine, had stood an ancient British Christian temple, in
which the Saxons, at a subsequent period, worshipped
their gods. The building was now given by the con-
verted king to the bishop, who dedicated it to St.
Pancras. He had selected for the patron-saint of his
church the youthful martyr who had been put to death
for his faith durmg the persecutions under the Emperor
Diocletian, in order that, by the selection of this saint,
he might keep in memory the spot where he had himself
lived for so long a time at Rome; for the monastery of
St. Andrew was situated on the ground which had once
been the property of the noble family to which St. Pan-
cras belonged. Thus, the hill and the church at Canter-
bury were intended to remind the monks of their pleasant
home on the Ccelian Mount, while, at the same time, the
Pope’s special injunction to win the affections of the
people, by studiously adhering to spots that had been
hallowed to them by their earlier heathen worship, was
obeyed, and the pagan fane converted by purification
and consecration into a Christian temple.

At the same time, within the city itself, the spot on
which the royal residence had hitherto stood was selected
for the site of the first English cathedral, which, as the
sequel showed, was destined to be the most renowned of
any ever erected in the island. Gregory the Great
alludes, in one of his letters on this occasion, very
10 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

pointedly to the memorable gift which, according to the
legend, Constantine is said to have made to Pope Syl-
vester. The building was dedicated to the Saviour, and
it bears to this day the name of Christ Church Cathedral.
The original church, of which not a trace now remains,
is said, in many of its features, to have been an exact
likeness of the old St. Peter’s at Rome. And here, as
in that ancient Basilica, the altar was originally at
the west end, while, moreover, there was also a crypt
which had been carefully planned to imitate the ancient
catacombs. There was yet another peculiarity, which
existed then as it does now, for the chief entrance into
the cathedral was, from the first, on the southern side—
a practice which seems to have been derived from the
ancient British Churches.

The most important building founded by Ethelbert
and Augustine was the great monastery, dedicated to
the Apostles Peter and Paul, and situated close to the
city walls, but outside them. It was destined to be the
principal abode of the new brotherhood, and it formed
henceforward the centre of the mission which was sent
from thence to all parts of the island, and at a later
period, even to the German continent. Here, within the
abbey, which, several centuries later, was named after
St. Augustine himself, the monks zealously prosecuted all
the studies that were indispensable to their sacred calling.
Gregory himself provided the materials for their first
library, the ecclesiastical works of which have been
minutely described to us, and of which some were still
in excellent preservation in the fifteenth century. Of
these works we still possess two venerable relics, in the
shape of manuscript gospels, written in Roman uncials
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. 11

with gold upon a purple ground, one of which is pre-
served in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the other
at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. These are pro-
bably the very gospels which once served the students of
that first training school from which the seeds of Chris-
tian culture were widely diffused over England and
Germany.

The object of the foundation of this building is there-
fore obvious ; but there is another peculiarity connected
with the abbey which must not be passed unnoticed.
The monastery, as we have already remarked, lay close
to, but just without, the city walls; and here we are
again reminded of Augustine’s efforts to transfer, as far
as possible, the local peculiarities of his former residence
in Rome to his new home. Like the Dorians and
Tonians, who carried the names of their cities into
Pontus, to Sicily, and to every other region which they
colonized ; like the Spaniards, who transferred the names
of their provinces and chief towns to Central America ;
or, like the English, who have perpetuated the designa-
tions of their counties and episcopal sees in the northern
parts of the Western Continent; St. Augustine strove,
in his day, to reproduce in the remote scenes of his
Christian mission the names and characteristics of the
home from which he and his companions had come. We
know that, at that period, no interment had as yet been
allowed within the walls of Rome, and that cemeteries
were outside the city along the sides of the great high-
ways, by which it was approached from every direction.
Augustine found that there was an old paved Roman
road which ran from Canterbury to Deal, and by which
he had himself come on his first arrival. Here he de-
12 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

termined to fix his burial-place, in close proximity to the
ecclesiastical institution which was destined to give
direct vitality to the diffusion of Christianity in Eng-
land.

‘The spot in which lie buried the remains of the first
primate of England and the first Christian English king,
served as a direct memorial of the Appian Way, as the
church of St. Pancras was intended to remind the far-
travelled monks of the Ccelian Mount and their distant
homes. Such associations as these are frequently met
with in the history of St. Augustine: thus the cathedral
of the see of Rochester was dedicated to St. Andrew,
and the great Christian church in London to the Apostle
Paul ; while the abbey at Westminster, which had been
erected on a spot at which Christians had worshipped
and pagan Saxons had offered up their sacrifices, perpe-
tuated the name of the apostle St. Peter.

Augustine died on the 26th of May, 605, with the
joint titles of abbot and archbishop, and when he had in
person accomplished the principal objects of his mission.
His abbey continued to stand until the sixteenth century,
when, under Henry VIII, all the monastic institutions
of England were destroyed. In the middle ages, after
a special and more richly endowed monastery had been
associated with the cathedral, St. Augustine’s Abbey
became embroiled in many odious contests, such ag are
of too frequent occurrence in the history of monastic
institutions. The only authenticated remains of this
once vast edifice is a noble gateway belonging to the
fifteenth century, together with two beautifully orna-
mented and well-preserved turrets. We must not pass
unnoticed the fact that, behind this gate, which now
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET, 13

again serves as a principal entrance, and on the site of
the old abbey, there stands a capacious building in the
old Gothic style, in which, with its hall and chapel, the
national Church of England provides for the training of
her missionaries, who are destined to be sent forth to
every part of the world. At the same spot from whence
the first Christian teachers of the Frisians and the con-
tinental Saxons set forth on their mission of conversion,
Negroes, Hindoos, and Polynesians, now receive the
instruction and ordination necessary to fit them for
carrying the knowledge of the Cross to all zones and to
all the nations of the earth. Here, then, we have a
verification of the words used by King Alfred, the West
Saxon, when he says of St. Augustine, “ Pope Gregory,
the champion of the Lord, sent him forth to carry the
glad tidings of the Gospel over the salt waves of the sea
to those who dwell in the islands.”

To a later age, and to a very different sphere of ideas,
belongs another person, whose memory will never be
severed from Canterbury, notwithstanding the changes
which time has wrought and still may bring with it.
The associations to which we refer are especially con-
nected with the cathedral, of which, as we have already
mentioned, Augustine laid the foundation. We know
but little of the history of the original building, but it
is Certain that, in the eighth century, there arose in con-
nexion with it a Benedictine monastery, which speedily
contrived to wrest from the canons and from the mem-
bers of St. Augustine’s Abbey, who were not a little
tenacious of their exceptional position, the rights which
they had hitherto enjoyed, and which soon began, in op-
position to the suffragans of the province, to act as the
14 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

chapter for the diocese of the metropolitan see of the
island. This new brotherhood even contrived nefariously
to deprive their neighbours of Augustine’s remains, in
order that they might, on the ground of possessing these
precious relics, maintain the pre-eminence and authority
which they had assumed, This, and many similar ques-
tions, maintained the bitterest dissensions for several
centuries between these rival institutions.

The ancient cathedral disappeared towards the close
of the Saxon period. Lanfranc, the great scholastic
primate under William the Conqueror, began the colossal
edifice whose foundation walls remain, for the most part,
uninjured to the present day ; and although a destructive
fire, which occurred in the year 1174, consumed the roof
and arches, we still meet with undoubted traces of the
best Norman style of architecture in the elegant columns
of the stairs on the north side, and in the magnificent
crypt. The plan of the building, as we now see it, and
the commencement of its execution, are therefore due to
the great Archbishop Stephen Langton, who lived in the
first half of the thirteenth century, and to whose ener-
getic character England, and the world at large, are
indebted for the Magna Charta. The primate’s sarco-
phagus is on the south side of the building, where it
projects through the wall far out into the churchyard, as
if the dead had belonged not wholly to the Church, but
more than half to the world. The execution of this
great work was furthered by an occurrence which threw
far into the shade all other events connected with Can-
terbury, with the exception, perhaps, of Ethelbert’s con-
version, and was the occasion of giving to the cathedral
a monument which, although it did not, perhaps, cause
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET, 15

those of Lanfranc, Anselm, Stephen Langton, and many
other celebrated men, to be wholly forgotten, yet led
them, for many centuries, to be comparatively neglected.
This monument was the shrine of Archbishop Thomas
Becket, erected after he had attained to the character of
a martyr and a national saint.

It would carry us too far beyond our limits were we
here to repeat the often-told tale of this remarkable
man’s life, or were we even to enter into a discussion of
the conflict in which he was so long engaged. But it is
decidedly not out of place for us again to remonstrate
against the widely diffused error, which is mainly due to
Thierry, and according to which Becket is to be regarded
as a representative of the Saxo-Germanic element, in
opposition to the Plantagenet King, Henry IJ., who
appears before us as the impersonation of the spirit of,
Romanism. Now, if we adhere to purely national and
historical points of view, we cannot fail to see that such
a hypothesis is the very opposite to the truth. There is
no Church quarrel in that century regarding the details
and agents of which we have such authentic records.
There are probably a thousand genuine letters extant
from the different persons who took part in these transac-
tions, and we have at least twenty descriptions of Becket’s
life and passion, which were written within the first fifty
years after the martyrdom. It was not long before the
credulous generation of those days had learned to look
almost blasphemously upon the four most distinguished
of these writers, who had all been eye-witnesses of the
scenes they recorded, as the evangelists of this new
Saviour; while their narratives, which were copiously
interlarded with tales of miracles, were collected in the
®

16 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

so-called “ Quadrilogus.”” We find, from unimpeachable
documents, that not only must the descent of the martyr
and his immediate progenitors be referred to Normandy,
but that even his mental and physical training, and the
weapons with which he contended, must be regarded as
essentially Norman, and almost Romish, in their charac-
ter, whilst the king, it is evident, strove to maintain an
Anglican Church on the basis established by the Saxon
kings, and by his ancestor William the Conqueror; at
the same time that he had recourse in his defence to
genuine Saxon and German modes of action. Becket,
who, as chancellor, had shown himself the thoroughly
worldly-minded executor of his sovereign’s commands,
strove with zeal, as soon as he attained the primacy, to
carry out to their ultimate consequences the pseudo-
Isidorian decretals, and strenuously endeavoured to
enforce in England the exaggerated pretensions of
Gregory VII. and the recently published doctrines of
canonical law, as taught by Gratian. We find, on the
other hand, that in the trial which was carried on against
Becket, who ranked as the first peer of the realm,
Henry II., for the first time, employed a mode of judg-
ment which may be regarded, in the history of the
English constitution, as a form of trial by jury. The
secular and the ecclesiastical power were most violently
opposed to one another in this conflict, in which the
former, under the guise of a powerful monarchy, main-
tained the victory within the limits of the kingdom,
while the archbishop fled from the country aS soon as
he was convinced that the judgment of his peers Would
go against him, and that even the majority of his clerical
brethren disapproved of the arrogant spirit in which he
OF 8ST. THOMAS BECKET, 17

had conducted himself. He was, however, supported on
the Continent by the authority of the Pope, and was
thus able to prosecute his quarrel with undiminished
bitterness and violence ; and notwithstanding all attempts
to restore mutual amity, the rancour and dissimulation
exhibited on both sides precluded the possibility of any
sincere reconciliation. At length, Becket resolved to
return to England, not, however, with the design of
retracing a single step that he had once taken, but
rather for the express purpose of enduring shame and
infamy, and, if matters came to extremities, to perish
within the consecrated building in which he had been
accustomed to officiate, and thus secure the victory by
dying the death of a martyr.

That this was the determined resolution of the prelate
seems obvious if, guided by the narratives-of contempo-
raneous writers, we examine the cathedral, and thread our
way through the extensive ruins of the former archiepis-
copal palace and the adjacent monastery.

When, after partaking of his usual midday meal,
Becket was employed, on the 29th of December, 1170,
in conversing, as was his wont, in one of the chambers
of his palace, with his monks and priests, on matters of
business, he was aware of the arrival at St. Augustine’s
Abbey of those four knights who, having eagerly seized
upon a few fatal words of their sovereign, had hastened
from Normandy, resolved, sword in hand, to force this
inflexible prelate to submission. Not long afterwards,
the knights, each one of whom had his own special
grievance against Becket, entered the apartment, when,
after a somewhat defiant mutual greeting, there arose a
violent altercation, the only result of which was to

Cc
18 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

fortify the prelate in his resolution and increase the
wrath of his antagonists. They soon hastened back to
the courtyard in order to prepare for the deed of blood,
by resuming their weapons, which they had thrown
aside on their arrival, and by placing their companions
on guard at the entrance gates. In the meantime, all
was commotion within the palace and the monastery.
As it was already growing dark and vespers had begun,
most of the monks had collected together inside the
church, but some, braver than the rest, hastened back to
secure the gates and then hurried to the apartment of
the archbishop, whom they earnestly entreated, without
a moment’s loss of time, to take refuge within the conse-
crated walls. For a while he obstinately opposed their
entreaties, as he had given his word to the enemies who
were thirsting for his blood that he would await their
return; but a thought having struck him, he com-
manded that the archiepiscopal cross should be borne
before him, and then suffered himself to be dragged
rather than led by his monks and priests through the
back postern door of his palace, along the north cloister
of the cathedral. Step by step we may here trace his
progress, as he made his way into the massive chapter-
house where the ceremony of enthroning the archbishops
is still performed, and passed through a side-door into
the lower north transept of the cathedral. The increas-
ing darkness of the night could readily have allowed
Becket to conceal himself from his murderers, who were
now hwrying fully armed through the transept, and he
might have taken refuge either within the chapels of the
Virgin Mary and St. Benedict, or in the crypt, the steps
leading to which were close by, or even within the chapel
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. 19

of St. Blaise, which was concealed in an elevated recess.
- He was in the act of ascending the broad steps that lead
to the elevated choir, in order that he might die in the
imposing and theatrical manner which was congenial to
his character, within the venerable porphyry chair behind
the altar, in which the archbishops were wont to receive
consecration and homage, when the appearance of the
knights stopped him; and turning back, he encountered
them in St. Benedict’s Chapel, where, after a short but
angry discussion, in the course of which a taunt, uttered
by Becket, roused the anger of his foes to the most un-
bridled rage, he met his death with an unmoved and
truly heroic fortitude. This was the last and most
terrible event in the conflict which the crown had waged
against the Church. The sword had, at length, been
fully drawn, and the Anointed of the Lord stricken down,
but he was himself answerable for that reiteration of
crimes which had now terminated in murder, sacrilege,
and the desecration of God’s temple. Even as he had
himself desired, he suffered a martyr’s death. With
his blood he had opened to the Church the road to vic-
tory, and with her now rested the charge of avenging
his fall.

It would lead us too far were we to enter into all the
details which have been preserved regarding the events
of that terrible night, and there are only a few special
particulars to which we will here draw attention, While
the murderers, rushing forth from the church and the pre-
sence of their victim, were ransacking the archiepiscopal
treasury for documents of every kind, the monks, who
had one by one ventured to return, now proceeded to

raise the beloved corpse and the cleft skull, bathed in
0%
20 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

its blood. As they turned aside the cloak, which still
lay undisturbed around the body, they discovered to
their great surprise, the rough hair clothing which, like
the humblest penitent, the martyr had long worn, and
with cries and lamentations they lifted up the body and
laid it, surrounded by all the insignia of the archiepis-
copal dignity, in a new sarcophagus, standing at the
eastern extremity of the ancient crypt before the altars
of St. John and St.'Augustine. In a short time these
treasured relics were securely laid within their safe re-
pository, and even before any plan could be formed for
preparing a more worthy and magnificent resting place
for them, rumours were heard of the miracles that were
already performed by the remains of the heroic martyr.
Before three years had passed, Pope Alexander III.
who had taken up Becket’s cause, proclaimed his canon-
isation; and thus St. Thomas of Canterbury, whom the
Catholic world had enrolled among the heroes of her
faith, began soon after his death, to exercise spiritual
dominion over the minds of his countrymen.

This period was marked by great political dis-
turbances; and King Henry, who had succeeded in
maintaining his ground in a truly national manner
against the aggressions of an ambitious and haughty
priest, now found himself involved in insurrections of
the most dangerous character on both sides of the
Channel. While his own flesh and blood, his first-born
son, was rising in rebellion against him, a papal interdict
had announced to the whole world that the chastisement
of heaven was impending over his crowned head in ven-
geance for the crime to which the king himself had given
the first impulse. Henry, who hitherto had never been
es

OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. 21

at a loss as to the choice of action, was now thoroughly
perplexed, and whether policy or a changed state of
feeling actuated him, certain it is, that on the 12th of
July, 1174, his people saw him walking bareheaded
and barefooted through the streets of Canterbury on
his way to do abject penance within the Cathedral.
Reverentially he followed in the track of that recent
tragedy, and kneeling in the crypt before the grave,
he made his confession to the attendant monks and
priests, and suffered them to scourge his naked back.
The following night he spent prostrate on the cold
stones within the damp and mouldering crypt. And
what were the fruits yielded by a penance and a sub-
mission as humble as that of the Emperor Henry IV.
at Canossa? <A few days afterwards a messenger
knocked at; midnight at the king’s chamber-door in
his London palace, and brought with him the joyful
tidings that, at the very same hour in which the king
had left Canterbury, his enemies in the north of the
kingdom had been signally defeated in a great battle.
Thus then forgiveness had been accorded to him, and
a new miracle had been wrought!

Some weeks later, on the 5th of September, occurred
the fire to which we have already alluded, and con-
sequently a long interval elapsed before the relics could
be taken from their concealed resting place and deposited
beneath a more suitable monument. It was not till the
year 1220, fifty years after the martyrdom, that the
new Cathedral, and more especially the choir that had
been built behind the high altar and carried out far to
the east in special honour of the martyr, was so far
completed that the solemn translation of the remains
22 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

from the crypt to the sumptuous shrine in the upper
church could be solemnized. On the 7th of July of
that year, the ceremony took place in the presence of
the young King Henry III. attended by a brilliant
court and surrounded by a crowd of native and foreign
prelates. The celebrity which in a short time was
attached to the name of the saint, not only among all
the nations of Western Christendom but even at Jeru-
salem, Acre, and Constantinople, whither the fame of
St. Thomas had been carried by the Crusaders, and
where churches were dedicated to him, fully justified
the efforts made by the English nation—to which he
especially belonged—to erect to his memory a sump-
tuous shrine which should surpass every other of the
kind both in regard to splendour and peculiarity of
architecture.

The miracles wrought by the saint, and the magni-
ficence of his shrine continued for three hundred years
to attract worshippers of all ranks, from the highest to
the lowest, together with thousands of idle [spectators
and innumerable true sufferers. Emperors and kings
reverentially performed their devotions before his sarco-
phagus, and left behind them, for the further adornment
of his shrine, gold and many precious stones, whose
intrinsic value, or special beauty had already rendered
them celebrated in history. It was in the spring more
especially that the three great roads leading into Canter-
bury were thronged with innumerable crowds of devotees.
The hostelries and shops of the old city, of which a few
remarkable examples still remain, were then crowded
with pilgrims from all parts of the British Islands,
and from almost every nation of the Continent. All
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET, 23

thronged into the church to kneel and worship at the:
shrine, but it was only to the most distinguished that
the monks exhibited the more precious relics, such as
the upper part of the cloven skull. Of the thousands
and thousands who came there, each pilgrim offered his
penny, and each mounted and descended the steps on
his knees,—the effect of this act of humble veneration
being still apparent in the deep hollows that have been
worn into the stone.

There are, however, other and more lasting memorials
within the cathedral which owe their origin to St.
Thomas of Canterbury, for not only is the vast edifice
filled with the monuments of his successors, both in
Catholic and Protestant times, but there are two memo-
rable graves here, within which rest the remains of a
king and prince who had hoped, by choosing their last
resting-place by the side of the martyr, to find that
peace in the tomb which had been denied to them in
their lives. The first of these was the greatest and most
warlike hero of which England could boast in medieval
times, and one who, in some particulars, might even be
compared with Wellington; for Edward the Black
Prince, whose great military talents gained the most
memorable victories of his age, both in France and
Spain, possessed chivalrous qualities which made him
the true and typical representative of the perfect English
gentleman, and won for him the sincere admiration, alike
of friend and foe. His varied and active life, his suffer-
ings of body and mind, and his premature death in the
lifetime of his father, are too well known to need further
notice. But less clear are the scanty indications which
we obtain regarding the reason why he should have
24 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

chosen, during his lifetime, the immediate neighbour-
hood of the national saint of Canterbury for the place of
his last rest. We only know that when, a few months
after the great victory of Poitiers, he returned to Eng-
land, in March, 1357, in company with his distinguished
captive, John, King of France, he visited Canterbury
on his way to London. He may, perhaps, have done
this in accordance with the wishes of the foreign prince,
who at that time stood so much in need of consolation,
and who, in the course of his many years’ captivity, re-
peatedly testified his great veneration for the memory
of the holy martyr by the presentation of rich gifts to
his shrine. Some years later, however, at the time of
his marriage in 1363, the prince founded two altars in
the beautiful chapel at the south side of the crypt, on
the walls of which we can still trace his arms. Here
he caused prayers to be offered for the salvation of his
soul even during his lifetime, and it appears that his
mind and thoughts were more and more constantly
turned towards the church in which the renowned
English saint lay buried. Soon Edward began to pine
away in a hopeless state of diseasé, and when, under
the pressure of the deepest melancholy, he was pre-
paring his mind for a calm and peaceful death, in the
will which he wrote in Norman-French with his own
hand, shortly before his death, he circumstantially de-
scribed the manner in which he desired to be buried at
Canterbury, on the south side of Becket’s shrine, indi-
cating the minutest details of the monument that was to
be erected to his memory. This will was punctually
adhered to, and to the present day there stands, at the
spot he indicated, the magnificent tomb which, with its
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. 2

splendid carvings, is equalled by few sculptures of thi
kind in Christendom. On the sarcophagus, which i:
ornamented with the escutcheon of the prince, and witl
the touching verses which he himself composed in Nor.
man-French, rests his effigy, encased in gilt armour anc
in a coat of mail, which was once brightly enamelled witl
the leopards and the lilies of France, each on its owr
red and blue field. High aloft, between the vaultec
groins of the choir, hang the well-preserved arms whick
he had carried in his victorious campaigns througl
France and Spain, his helmet, and shield, and his coa:
of mail, with his sword and brazen gauntlets. To «¢
German, the constantly recurring devices of the herc
which are most clearly visible, and have been distinctly
preserved in the carving of his monument, are especially
attractive. The motto “Ich diene” occurs alternately
with the word “ Houwmout,’ which probably signified
high spirit, and was, perhaps, the same as the German
“ Hochmuth ;” but although its origin, like that of simila
devices of the middle ages, is very obscure, it may pro-
bably be referred to the family of his mother, Philippa
of Hainault, and its connexion with Germany. The
motto “ Ich diene,’ as far as we can now determine,
appears for the first time in the escutcheon of the Black
Prince, although, since his time, it has belonged to all
the Princes of Wales.

The other prince, who wished in his lifetime to secure
rest after his death near the remains of Becket, was the
nephew of the former, and the first Lancastrian king,
Henry IV. The crime by which he raised himself to
the throne, and the bitter fruits which sprang from that
deed, even during his own reign, undoubtedly fostered
26 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

deep remorse within his soul. We are here reminded of
Shakespeare’s representation of this monarch, who is
made to express a wish of ending his life in a crusade,
and who showed his belief in the prophecy which de-
clared that he should die in Jerusalem, a prediction
which was certainly not fulfilled in respect to locality,
although it was so far verified that he died in the Jeru-
salem Chamber at the abbey of Westminster. With the
idea of reparation in his mind, and turning away from
the abbey, where the remains of his royal forefathers
had been laid, he chose for the place of his burial the
choir of Canterbury, to the north of the shrine, and oppo-
site to the monument of his uncle, whose son and heir he
had supplanted. Here, too, we have a noble epitaph,
graved in white marble, with the effigies of the king and
his consort sculptured in alabaster. On the wall, we
still see the stone-carved canopy over the altar, at which,
until the time of the Reformation, masses for the soul of
King Henry IV. were read.

These two monuments are witnesses of the decline of
the medieval Church in England, when everything con-
nected with religion, including the worship of saints and
relics, had degenerated into the most monstrous system
of abuse, and when, in England more especially, the secular
wealth, the luxuriance and love of power among the clergy
contributed largely to bring about the downfal of their
order. A new epoch was opening to all the different
spheres of life, while the earnest longing for emancipation
from priestly oppression, and for a return to the orginal
and uncontaminated doctrineand Church of Christ, became
day by day more strongly marked. The time was drawing
near when both high and low would lay aside their
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET, 27

veneration for a man like Thomas Becket, who had shown
a most un-English passion for gaining supreme dominion
over the souls and bodies of men, and when the almost
smothered remembrance of a purer evangelical age, such
as that in which Gregory and Augustine had lived, was
again to revive.

In connexion with the period that immediately pre-
ceded the great catastrophe which crushed the power of
the Romish Church in England, we possess two very
remarkable narratives, which, although they differ mate-
rially from each other, concur in conveying the impres-
sion that the age of sincere enthusiasm for relics and
pious pilgrimages to the graves of saints was drawing
rapidly to an end. The first of these narratives is a de-
scription of the journey of a Bohemian nobleman, named
Leo Von Rozmital, the brother-in-law of King George
Podiebrad, who, in his visit to the court of Edward IV.,
also went to the shrine of “our dear Lord” St. Thomas
of Canterbury, which, according to the testimony of his
literary companion and scribe, was more precious than
any in Christendom, in proof of which he minutely de-
_ scribes all its treasures, including the large diamond.
He endeavours, with simple credulity, to put his faith
in all the the false with which the effrontery of the
monks appears literally to have overwhelmed him. The
other report occurs in a letter of Erasmus of Rotterdam,
in which this celebrated scholar relates his visit in the
year 1512, in company with his friend, John Colet, the
learned Dean of St. Paul’s, to the treasures in the cathe-
dral at Canterbury, describing the shape and nature of
the relics which they saw and worshipped, and the con-
versation which they held together in reference to them,
28 CANTERBURY, AND THE WORSHIP

and which appears to have led them to the conviction
that the period of veneration for Thomas Becket was
drawing to a close. The final blow was, at length,
struck on the 24th of April, 1538, by the despotic order
of Henry VIII., when that cunning, but rough-handed
prince made use of his right of supremacy, to seize
upon the countless treasures of the shrine, and scrupled
not to arraign, on a charge of high treason, rebellion,
and assumed sanctity, Thomas Becket, the once powerful
archbishop of Canterbury, who had,.for three centuries
and a-half, been regarded by the nation as one of its
holiest saints. That which Henry had not ventured to
attempt against the shrine of his royal ancestor, Edward
the Confessor, whose relics have remained even to our
own day within their original repository in the choir of
Westminster, he accomplished without let or hindrance
at Canterbury; and while no one has ever attempted
to desecrate the graves of the Black Prince or of
Henry of Lancaster, the vast and magnificent shrine of
the martyr-prelate of Canterbury has disappeared, leav-
ing scarcely a trace of its existence, for nothing now
remains to show where it once stood beyond a few pieces
of the original costly mosaic with which the ground
was paved.

The spirit of intolerance has thus left traces of its
presence at Canterbury in widely remote ages, and
under diametrically opposite conditions. Nothing can
be more refreshing than, in the very midst of these evi-
dences of ecclesiastical and secular passions, to meet
with an example of the rarest tolerance. When Queen
Elizabeth began to give shelter to the Protestants, who
were escaping from persecution in France, a small
OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. 29

colony of French refugees, consisting chiefly of poor
silk weavers, settled at Canterbury, where there was
assigned to them a portion of the extensive crypt, in-
cluding the spot where once stood the two altars founded
by Edward the Black Prince, and not far from the recess
in which the bones of the martyr had been laid after
the fire and during the building of the new cathedral.
Here the refugees celebrated the services of their Church,
and here their descendants, who are now reduced to a
very small number, still carry on their Presbyterian
mode of worship in their own tongue, immediately
below the south aisle of the high choir, where the
Anglican ritual is observed in all its prescribed forms—
a noble and touching concurrence—the parallel to which

cannot be met with in any other cathedral church of
England,
iL,
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

Tue Christian Church, both in the East and West, was,
a few centuries after its foundation, materially strength-
ened by the incorporation of a new order of delegates of
its authority, in addition to the various administrative
powers which had been developed from the original
organization of the hierarchy. This new order had
grown out of a natural requirement of the human mind
for meditative contemplation; and while this special
element became, at an early period, alike intimately
blended with the inner being of the two great forms of
Christianity, it differed essentially in the two; for while,
in the Eastern Church its original character of exclusive,
solitary self-contemplation was in time still further
developed, until it became personified in the hermits and
anchorites of the early ages of Christianity, in the
Latin Church it contributed to fortify and accelerate the
aggressive element which, from the first, had charac-
terized this form of the faith, which was destined to gain
universal ascendancy.

From the time of Benedict of Nursia, the various
monkish Orders and monastic Societies have existed
much in the same form as they have continued to our
own day, adapting themselves to the varying require-
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 31

ments of successive ages, while they maintained the
position of the militant party of the Church in oppo-
sition to the secular Clergy, who were regarded as the
special guardians of the mysteries of the Christian faith.
This was the character manifested by the monastic Orders
in England, both in regard to the diffusion of Chris-
tianity, and the success which in a subsequent age
attended her decisive separation from Rome.

We will endeavour briefly to characterize the prin-
cipal movements, and some of the leading agents in the
development of these Orders in England during the
middle ages. We shall find here, as in every other
part of the Latin Church of the West, different grada-
tions, but all alike included in the service of the Pontiff
of Rome, and all striving with zeal, century after cen-
tury, to carry on the spiritual conquest of their Church.
We shall see these Orders, after being reduced to a state
of passive inactivity, finally driven forth from the ter-
ritory, which they had endeavoured, step by step, to
dispute with the new power that was rising in oppo-
sition to them. The older types of the Orders could not
remain wholly unimpressed by the national and terri-
torial influences to which they were subjeeted; and when
at length the English popular spirit sought security
in the use of the original weapons of Christian doctrine,
and by their help penetrated through the closed barriers
of this foreign institution, the ultimate defeat and sub-
jection of the Orders were decided long before their final
banishment.

The monks of Bangor and Iona, the companions of
St. Patrick and St. Columba must be regarded as the
earliest champions of the Celto-Irish Church, whose
32 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS,

doctrine and discipline indicate a direct descent from the
East, and who for centuries successfully resisted all
attempts used to bring them under the dominion of the
Romish pontificate. The ardent zeal of these men was
manifested in the energetic missions which they set on
foot for the conversion, not only of all the different races
inhabiting the British islands, but also of the Germanic
heathens of the Continent; as for instance, the Franks,
the Suabians, and the Bavarians. Their zealous
efforts, however, were unattended with any persistent
result, for their system was deficient in organization.
But as soon as the Germanic races had entered within
the exclusive pale of the Romish Church, and their
hatred of race was strengthened by zeal for the diffusion
of the only true and saving faith, the Druidical caste
which had sprung from the ancient Celtic element, was
everywhere compelled to yield, while these followers of
the New faith not only encroached upon the ancient
domain of the Celto-Irish monks, but actually carried
their own conquests far beyond the original boundaries
of Celtic Christianity. It was a matter of decisive
importance to England that the Anglo-Saxons were
converted from the heathenism of their German ances-
tors direct to Catholic Christianity. This victory was
won for the Latin Church by the new order of monks,
which some years before had been founded within thewild
fastnesses of Montecassino; for Augustine, the apostle
of Gregory the Great, and his forty pious companions,
were nearly all Italian Benedictines.

We know too little of the seats of the Celtic monas-
ticism which had preceded the Latin Orders, and are too
ignorant of the social relations of the monks themselves
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 33

to decide how much the new comers may have incor-
porated from the old institutions. It is certain, however,
that the former was characterized by a decided oriental
tendency to self-contemplation and abstraction, and that
the intercourse of the monks with the rude population
was limited to instructing them in the homilies and
creeds of their Church. There seems to have been no
attempt made by the ancient British monks in Wales,
Treland, or Upper Germany to elevate themselves either
in a material or spiritual manner, or to communicate
their knowledge and acquirements to those around them;
for they neither cut down woods, or tilled the ground,
nor did they copy or even read either ancient or modern
secular writings. The messengers sent forth by Gregory
to teach the faith, acted on a very different principle, for
in addition to the orthodox weapons of attack and persua-
sion which they employed against their opponents they
made use of other, but equally powerful methods of sub-
jugation, by teaching the people many useful arts that
were alike beneficial to their bodies and their minds. As
soon as they had settled in Kent, and had begun to
spread themselves towards the north and west, they
built barns and sheds for their cattle side by side with
their newly erected churches, and opened schools in the
immediate neighbourhood of the house of God, where
the youth of the nominally converted population were
now for the first time instructed in reading, and in
the formulas of their faith, and where those who were
intended for a monastic life, or for the priesthood,
received the more advanced instruction necessary to their
earnest calling. Thus these Catholic institutions became,
what the Gaelic cloisters never were, training-schools for
D
34 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

the clergy and.laity, in which these classes were taught
to know the use and meaning of many heavenly and
earthly blessings.

From the seventh century abbeys and priories began
to be founded in all the districts of England, which, in
imitation of the mother monastery of St. Augustine at
Canterbury, were under the rule of St. Benedict. In
the north, and especially in the island of Lindisfarne,
from which the mother abbey of Durham, and many
churches of Northumberland originated, these institutions
were raised on the ruins of ancient Celto-Christian founda-
* tions. In some cases, as for instance at Canterbury and
Winchester, monasteries were in the course of time
associated with the cathedral, the members of which
formed the Chapter of the diocese; whilst in other in-
stances, as at Ely, the monastery became in time con-
verted into a cathedral. There were even some places
dedicated to the great national saints, such as St. Albans
and Bury St. Edmunds, which might fairly compete in
wealth, influence and power, with the neighbouring seats
of episcopacy, while again ‘at other spots, such as Wal-
singham, some spring or grove that had once been
dedicated to the service of pagan worship, served as the
foundation for the new Christian edifice. In the palmy
days of the Middle Ages, England was filled with hun-
dreds of these institutions, which sometimes gave rise to
a number of villages; while in other instances, several
were clustered together round one ancient seat of religion
in the neighbourhood of some large town. They were
all bound in common by the Canon of Montecassino,
and everywhere the same forms of life and discipline
existed among the brotherhood, while they everywhere
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 35

stood in the same relation to the world lying beyond the
walls of their cloisters, although individual inclinations
and local requirements found ample scope for develop-
ment. Thus, while at Canterbury, scarcely a century
after the introduction of Christianity, an almost classical
mode of study was combined with practical theology
under the direction of a primate of Greek origin, and its
richest fruits were ripening in the far north within
Bede’s silent cell at Yarrow, there were many other
institutions in Britain in which the Benedictines con-
tinued to devote themselves with especial pleasure, as
they had done from the beginning of their settlement, to
the cultivation and utilization of the unparalleled riches
of the soil. We purpose borrowing from one of the
numerous chronicles that have been preserved from the
spoils of the monasteries to give an idea of the course of
development of these institutions, and to trace by its
means the manner in which they developed and main-
tained their social, ecclesiastical and political relations,
in the midst of the many unfavourable circumstances by
which they were surrounded,

The monastery of Abingdon in Berkshire, which was
founded. towards the close of the seventh century by the
pious zeal and munificence of two princely brothers, was
situated not far from Oxford, and within the ancient
kingdom of Wessex, which completed the union of the
different Anglo-Saxon principalities, although it was the
last that was converted to Christianity. The actual
founding and endowment of this institution must, how-
ever, be referred to a subsequent period, and are due to
King Ini, who effected so much for the ecclesiastical and
secular organization of his kingdom. Here for the first

D2
36 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

time, an abbot and monks were duly settled, who began
to put into practice the duty, which the national law,
instituted by this king, had endeavoured to enforce upon
his subjects, of converting at least one half of the soil
into pasture and arable land. The rule of the canonized
founder of their Order, required that all the brethren
who were not prevented by infirmities and weakness, or
by advanced or immature age, should in addition to the
prescribed services of the Church, perform a daily por-
tion of field labour. In their mode of cultivating the soil
they followed the practices adopted in the warmer and
more systematically tilled lands of the South. They
soon engaged the services of the natives of the vicinity,
and repaid their labours with a portion of the fruits of
their toil; and in proportion as the woods and thickets
were cleared, and the swamps and morasses disappeared,
the soil yielded a more plentiful return, while the land
being leased and sub-let, became the means of placing the
monastery, which was in fact the central point of the
entire system, in the position of a rich proprietor. From
such centres as these, the beams of a new and hopeful life
radiated in every direction.

The waste places became fruitful, and the land was
intersected by many ‘new roads, in addition to the few
old Roman ways that had never been entirely destroyed.
Even the waste within the heart of the people vanished,
and their old hereditary Paganism gradually yielded
to the advance of agriculture, and to the blessings shed
abroad by the seeds of truth that had been scattered over
the land by the spread of the Gospel, although many
ancient memories of heathen days still clung to the
soil, and were kept alive in the minds of the people
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 37

by various local names, and by numerous heroic tales
and traditions.

The monasteries, like the Church in general, were
especially efficient in smoothing down those prominent
inequalities of rank which had characterized the national
institutions of all the German races in theircolonizations;
and here for the first time the rude power and right of
the sword were opposed by mildness and mercy, both
in matters of law and administration; and an unwearied
perseverance shown to secure a better fate for all who
were held in the harsh bonds of slavery. Christian
mercy had been one of the virtues most stringently
enforced by St. Benedict, who had enjoined upon the
brethren to devote a large portion of their time and
means to the care of the poor and needy, and to the
fulfilment of the duties of hospitality. In furtherance of
this object, many rich donations had been early poured
into the coffers of the brotherhood, while the legacies of
the benevolent, the tithes, the pence collected for the
masses for the dead, and the money which after a time
was allowed to be given for exemption from ecclesiastical
penances, were all at first most conscientiously devoted
to these purposes.

The requirements of the monks, and the instruction
they were able to impart around them, soon led to the
establishment in their immediate neighbourhood of the
first settlement of artificers and retail dealers, while
the excess of their crops, flocks and herds, gave rise to
the first markets, which were, as a rule, originally held
before the gate of the abbey church. Thus hamlets and
towns were formed, which became the centres of trade
and general intercourse, and thus originated the market
38 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

tolls, and the jurisdiction of these spiritual lords. The
beneficial influences of the English monasteries in all
departments of education and mental culture extended
still further, even in the early times of the Anglo-Saxons,
for they had already then become conspicuous for the
proficiency which many of their members had attained
in painting and music, sculpture and architecture. The
study of the sciences, which had been greatly advanced
through the exertions of Bede, was the means of intro-
ducing one of his most celebrated followers, Alcuin of
York, to the court of Charlemagne, for the purpose of
establishing schools and learning in the German empire.
And although every monastery did not contribute in an
equal degree to all these beneficial results, all aided to
the best of their power and opportunities in bringing
about that special state of cultivation, which characterized
the Middle Ages.

These palmy days of prosperity, the memory of which
was perpetuated among the monks by many donations
from pious benefactors, were only too soon followed by
a period of heavy trial. Scarcely were the struggles
between the hereditary Kings of Wessex and Mercia
definitely settled, when there occurred that fearful in-
vasion of the pagan Danes, which, like the approach of a
swarm of locusts, threatened to destroy every trace of
civilization. The monasteries, which were the foci of
wealth and population, naturally attracted the eager
cupidity of these fierce pirates. In the southern, and
midland parts of the country, their path of destruction
could be traced by a line of smoke-blackened walls, and
by fields choked and overgrown with weeds. Gold and
silver, the garnered fruits of the earth, and the cattle
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 39

within their stalls, were all seized upon, and carried
away by these ruthless victors, while their former
possessors wandered penniless and homeless over the
land, carrying with them their few books and the
vessels they had used in the performance of their re-
ligious ceremonies. Abingdon was doomed to suffer the
full meed of this horrible calamity, and it was only
Alfred’s victories that brought salvation to the land,
and saved it from thoroughly receding into its ancient
barbarism. When, however, the monks began again to
settle in their former homes, they not only found that
the land would have to be again reclaimed from a state
of almost utter wildness, but that their own discipline
had become grievously relaxed during this period of
misrule; and the necessity for the re-organization of the
entire monastic system was felt during the tenth century
as urgently in England as in any other part of Western
Christendom. Everywhere the most flagrant worldliness
had invaded the monasteries, and it became imperatively
necessary to draw the reins of discipline more tightly,
and to accommodate the system to the new order of
things in the State and Church in order to keep at bay
the mortal foe that threatened the very existence of
monachism. The reformation, or rather the increased
strictness of the old Benedictine rule, which had
emanated from the Abbey of Cluny, through France and
Burgundy, and was associated in Italy with a few
monkish zealots, and in Germany with an eccentric
emperor—supported by his bosom friend, the holy
Adalbert, who suffered martyrdom at the hands of the
heathen Prussians—found in England its chief supporter
and promoter in the nobly-gifted, but gloomy fanatic,
40 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

Archbishop Dunstan. In the pursuit of his object this
haughty prelate carried his exactions almost to the verge
of inhumanity in his dealings with his Sovereign, but on
that very account, perhaps, the clergy, who were almost
all opposed to him, were unsuccessful in their opposition.
They have, to a certain extent, avenged themselves on
the memory of the primate by giving currency to the
fabulous, but indelible, imputation that St. Dunstan was a
powerful sorcerer, and in league with the Evil One. The
chronicles of Abingdon, and of some other monasteries,
afford evidence, however, that Dunstan met with many
active supporters in his work, which, independently of
much that was evil, was also the means of effecting
many beneficial changes. Ethelwold, Abbot of Abing-
don, was one of his most zealous adherents. He trans-
lated the Rules of St. Benedict into Anglo-Saxon ; and
when he was raised to the See of Winchester, introduced
these amended rules into the monastery of his diocese,
while his house at Abingdon contributed largely, by the
labours of several of its gifted members, to the reforma-
tion of monastic discipline at Ely, Peterborough, Hyde,
Thorney, and many other places. These renovations
were imperative, if the monastic institutions were to be
adapted to the great changes of the eleventh century;
and they may, to some extent, be regarded as one of the
means of preparing the way for the acquirement, by
the Normans, of the supreme rule both of the State and
Church, and as the transition from a purely Germanic
to a Romanised condition. We must look upon the
strict monastic discipline which Archbishops Lanfranc
and Anselm endeavoured to establish in accordance with
foreign precedents and by the help of Italian and
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 41

French Monks, as a continuance of the work that had
been begun by Dunstan and his contemporaries, while
the monastery of Bec, in Normandy, must be regarded
as the actual training school of the Anglo-Saxon monas-
teries which had been then recently appropriated by the
Normans.

The seeds of the gradual decay of these institutions
were, however, planted in the same age. It was obviously
necessary that the monasteries should be organised in
accordance with the sharply defined feudal system that
had been introduced into the State by William the
Conqueror. Thus in regard to all lands which were not
included in the ancient freehold property of the Church,
the Benedictine abbots enjoyed the same rights, and
tendered the same duties as their ecclesiastical and secular
brethren—the bishops and barons. They exercised the
right of jurisdiction over the property which they held,
and supplied the king with subsidies of knights and
squires, or in default of this, paid the customary amount
of scutage, in accordance with the number and value of
their fiefs. When, at a subsequent period, the parlia-
mentwas constituted and organized by the representatives
of the different shires and boroughs of the kingdom, alarge
number of abbots, who were distinguished as the mitred
abbots, took their places in the Upper House, and con-
tinued to sit as peers of the realm until the time of the
reformation. Thus the monastic houses became on the
one hand important agents in the mechanism of the
secular State, whilst on the other hand, the tendency of
the new interpretation of the canonical right of the
Church, which had originated with William the Con-
queror’s great cotemporary, Gregory VII.,wastoestablish
42 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

the hierarchy on a perfectly distinct footing in the world,
and to place it far above the supremacy of the State.
The conflict between the secular and the ecclesiastical
power, and the fear lest the Church should make use of
her sacred and religious character as a cloak to cover an
unrighteous desire for mere external gain were strongly
manifested in the history of English monastic institutions
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At that period
their original purpose was still manifest, but it was
gradually lost sight of in the course of time, through the
obstinate adherence to their much cherished principles,
which resulted in their destruction. The good and the
bad elements inherent in these institutions were at that
time nearly equal, and in the following remarks we will
trace the subsequent course of both.

We hear nothing more of missions for the conversion
of heathen races; while nobles and peasants have
long been rivalling the monks in the art of cultivating
the soil. The sphere of activity of the monastic clergy
was therefore greatly circumscribed, but they were still
suffered, without let or hindrance, to practise the duties
prescribed to them by their Church, of singing the praise
of God, exercising mercy and charity, instructing the
young and cultivating learning. In some of these
particulars they subsequently achieved great success.
Several of the abbeys acquired the reputation of being
benefactors of suffering humanity ; some prosecuted the
instruction of the young with signal success, whilst
others acquired lasting fame by the writings of their
members. As Latin continued to be the language used
in the services and public business of the Church, the
study of this tongue was never wholly neglected, and
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 43

many English monks, more especially in the time of |
the first of the Plantagenets, industriously contri-
buted by their copies to keep up an acquaintance with
ancient models of style, or to multiply later writings
that treated of spiritual matters, while they also col-
lected together an important mass of writings, consisting
of the annals of their respective houses, the biographies
of their most distinguished brethren, numerous letters,
and even state papers. It would almost appear as if
the office of a royal historiographer, or keeper of the
archives, had been permanently associated with the
distinguished Abbey of St. Albans, since we find that,
for several centuries, regular historical annals of the
realm were kept there, together with copies of the
protocols of the diplomatic transactions, enacted both at
home and abroad, but more especially with the Papal
and Imperial court. Simultaneously with this varied
activity, which has proved alike valuable to their own
and subsequent times, there prevailed a condition of
things lamentably the reverse, but which was undoubt-
edly favoured by circumstances. Since the new dynasty,
in the person of Henry II., had established internal order
and peace in the kingdom, new sources of wealth, such
as they had never before known, had been opened to
the monastic institutions. Their crops and cattle, their
trade and barter, had brought them very considerable
profit, whilst the constantly increasing prosperity of the
country augmented the tithes, and increased the money
fines paid in default of penances, at the same time that
it had become almost a fashion among princes and
nobles, that scarcely any one should make his last will
and testament without bequeathing to the monastic
44 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

institution with which he had been most closely connected
during his life, some rich gift, in land or other property,
or large sums for the altar, and for the saying of
masses. Sometimes even, rich men founded monastic
houses from their own resources. Thus avarice and an
eager desire for acquisition grew with increasing wealth,
and every device was soon deemed justifiable that could
satisfy this passion for power. Donations, which would
never have been freely made, were extorted from the
dying, under the threat of withholding extreme unction,
or in return for its administration and the assurance of
eternal salvation. The superior knowledge of the monks,
and their acquaintance with the art of writing, were
prostituted to the lowest ends; and records of olden
times were forged or falsified to give validity to the
tenure of any questionable property which their house
might hold. The State, which in the meanwhile was
becoming more and more firmly based upon law and
order, now therefore felt itself imperatively called upon
to take up the cause of those who died intestate, and by
legal enactments to put a stop to further usurpation
in the name of the dead, and at the same time to pre-
vent the annihilation of its own supremacy by the sub-
division of the feudal tenures. The ecclesiastical powers
came into conflict in the twelfth century with the market
towns and boroughs, of which a large number had been
formed through their own instrumentality, exactly as
they had previously come into collision with the crown.
In these boroughs and towns commerce and trade had
acquired an independent footing, and had already
secured special municipal rights; but notwithstanding
this, the ecclesiastical houses obstinately insisted upon
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 45

their claim to receive the principal proceeds of the
market and other tolls, without themselves contributing
to them in any form whatever. In many instances,
lawsuits arose out of these differences, as between the
abbey at .Westminster and the city of London, while
in other cases, as at Bury St. Edmunds, the monks and
townspeople fell to blows, and fought their rude brawls
within the very churchyard, or even inside the walls of
the abbey. At length the State was obliged to interfere,
and under Edward IIL, a statute was passed, forbidding
priests and monks from taking part in future in trade or
business. While these spiritual Lords were careful to
appeal to the exceptional rights which their Church
claimed whenever they made any attempts unjustly to
appropriate the property of others, or to maintain un-
changed their old privileges, notwithstanding the totally
different circumstances of the times, they were still
more disposed to advance such assumed claims when-
ever the canonical jurisdiction came into collision with
the laws of the land and the officers appointed to enforce
them. A singular cause of irritation had existed through-
out all the Middle Ages, which finally grew to such a
height, that it required the most stringent measures for
its removal. The beneficent privilege of an asylum, or
sanctuary, which in olden times had once attached to
certain consecrated spots where oppressed innocence
might secure safety from the rough hand of power, had,
through the pertinacious adherence of the clergy to their
ecclesiastical exemptions, gradually grown into an abuse
by becoming the means of affording the ordinary crimi-
nal illegal, and sometimes even treasonable, protection.
Many of the monastic houses about this time secured
46 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

permission, either through papal or secular intervention,
wholly to separate themselves from the episcopal com-
munity, the result of which was to leave their abbots
invested with all the rights of bishops within the limits
of their own domains and jurisdiction. It thus happened
that in the course of ages the rich monasteries and
abbeys became the seats of luxury, self-indulgence and
despotism, and not unfrequently the hotbeds of disturb-
ance; since, under the plea that they had acquired,
governed, and appropriated their great wealth solely
and exclusively -for the honour of God, they insisted
upon being judged by very different moral and political
principles, from those which secured them protection and
favour, and enabled them to live in ease and affluence.
In the course of the twelfth century we first see the
exalted, almost child-like, and grateful devotion, with
which the populace had hitherto looked up to these
institutions, beginning to decline; for a time, a certain
mutual respect was felt by both parties, but this was
soon changed on the side of the people into uncon-
trollable hatred and contempt.

The chronicles of the abbey at Abingdon give us a
most welcome insight into the easy and comfortable
lives which the brethren there led as early as the days
of Edward J.; and we are not a little struck by the
admirable manner in which they managed to subdivide
the labour of their pleasant duties, that the burden
might not press too heavily upon any one, modifying
and amplifying the simple and strict rules of their
founder, until the purpose for which they were originally
designed was completely subverted. The germ of hu-
manity which had bloomed so beneficently within the
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 47

precincts of these institutions in the days of barbarism,
had now given place to a rank growth of fleshly lust
and worldliness. The abbot’ and his chapter had, as
everywhere else among the Benedictines, long main-
tained a courtly state, and lived entirely apart from the
ordinary brothers. At first the representatives of these
high powers were installed in offices which were admir-
ably well adapted to the establishment of order within
this exclusive institution, and to the maintenance of its
varied relations: with the external world, but which,
after a time, came to be gradually perverted into mere
instruments for securing increased power or self-in-
dulgence.

The rules and regulations in regard to the rights and
duties of the prior and sub-prior are very circum-
stantially set forth, whenever either of these function-
aries was called upon to supply the place of the abbot
when, either from absence, or any other cause, he was
prevented from appearing in the chapter, at divine
service in the chapel, or at the common table when
stranger-guests were present. The precentor and the
sacristan were specially appointed to provide for the
requirements of divine service, whilst the secretary and
the chamberlain were joined in one common charge—by
no means a very onerous one—of superintending the
domestic arrangements of the household. Very circum-
stantial are the instructions in reference to the choice of
an appropriate master-cook. This important business
demanded the careful deliberation of the abbot and
chapter, that the choice might fall upon a mild and
merciful man, who, being himself sober and mode-
rate, might the more willingly afford consolation and
48 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

protection to all sick and needy persons, and be a veri-
table father of the congregation, serving and following his
Lord in all things, as it is meet and right that he should
do. This highly important functionary was to be re-
lieved, excepting at high mass and at some special
festivals, from the ordinary attendance at chapel during
the heat and burden of the day; and he had, moreover,
full authority to provide for the kitchen in the surround-
ing villages. He gave the signal for the saying of grace
at table, for sitting down, and for drinking; and, while
he had the privilege of being served on high fast-days
with three special dishes of fish, he was expected to
provide for the wants of the hospital and the neces-
sities of those who came to ask alms. The cellarer, we
are told, should be circumspect in speech, liberal in
giving, sober and moderate in regard to all excesses,
while he is also to be meek and pious, for the Apostle, in
his Epistle to Titus, enjoins that we should “ live soberly,
righteously, and godly in this present world.” He was
not allowed to absent himself so frequently from divine
service as his worthy brother, the master-cook; for the
care of the bread, beer and wine, under his charge, do
not require such profound thought, nor such incessant
activity, as the duties of the kitchen. He was, how-
ever, exempted, on account of the burden and heat of
the day, from attending masses, complines, and other
day-services. But he must take care to supply the
brethren abundantly with good beer at their ordinary
noon and eventide meals, and see that they find their
cups well filled when they return fasting from their
chaunts and prayers. The refectioner laid the table,
and, after placing the abbot’s spoon and the prior’s
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 49

beaker, arranged the platters of the rest of the com.
munity in the order settled by established ceremonial
practice ; he also did part of the honours in the presence
of guests, both in carving and meteing out the drink.
Other officers, with well-defined functions, devoted them-
selves to the duty of entertaining strangers, giving alms,
superintending the hospital, for which medical know-
ledge was especially necessary, and to the supervision
of the fields, woods, and pastures. Everywhere the
self-importance and verbose diffuseness of these multi-
farious regulations, which are abundantly interspersed
with texts of scripture, show that, amid all the piety
and liberality assumed by these virtuous confraternities,
their chief object was to promote, as far as possible,
their own bodily well-being and enjoyment.

We can scarcely wonder that, in such a state of things,
the most unprincipled selfishness should have threatened
almost wholly to supplant the good old Christian virtues
of charity and hospitality. At Bury St. Edmunds, the
cellarer had run into debt with a Jew, because, for three
years together, he had been obliged to defray, from his
own purse, the cost of entertaining the guests who came
to visit the abbot, whose avarice was too great to suffer
him voluntarily to supply the means necessary for the
purpose. On the third day after the appointment of a
new cellarer, it happened that three knights, with their
several attendants, entered the abbey-gates, when that
functionary, being fully equal to the emergency, took
his keys in his hand, and, ushering the guests into the
hall, where the abbot was seated, addressed him in these
words :— My lord-abbot, you know full well that
knights and burghers are received by you whenever

E
50 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

you are in residence. I cannot, however, entertain the
guests that come to visit you; and, therefore, if you
will not alter your former practice, I beg you to take
back these keys of the cellar, and to give them to some
other brother.” Such decision may very probably for
a time have been attended by good results; but in Bury,
as in every other house of the Order, avarice and selfish-
ness completely subverted all nobler interests, and not
only made the monasteries a common butt for the con-
tempt and scorn of the populace, but even struck a deep
blow at the internal organization and peace of these
institutions.

The voice of public opinion, which had already found
vent in forcible rhymes and political satires, made the
indolent and luxurious monks the special objects of its
attacks. According to the description given in one of
these compositions, the abbots and brethren were wont to
ride forth after the manner of the sleek monk in Chaucer,
with a falcon on the wrist, mounted on stately chargers,
and even outvying knights in the chase. They, and
their community, who were enjoined by the rules of
their Order to go barefooted, had long worn warm socks
and furred boots, and wrapped themselves in cloaks and
hoods lined with rich skins. At the gate of the monas-
tery, we are told a strange state of things had come to
pass ; for, while some poor people are praying, for heaven’s
sake, that they may get the alms they had been wont
to receive, they are harshly driven away by the porter,
whilst others, who are able to bring with them a letter
of recommendation from some gracious lord or other—
who might chance sooner or later to prove troublesome
to the abbot—are instantly led into the refectory, with
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS, 51

every show of civility, and are well cared for. In
another composition we have a description of an imagi-
nary Order, in which monks and nuns live together in
dulct jubilo, with no high walls and no broad dykes to
separate them, as was unfortunately the case at Sem-
pringham. The thirsty brethren are here permitted,
as was said to be the practice at Beverley, to regale
themselves with wine and beer after the evening meal,
until the foot’s length of wax taper, which each one
received, was burnt down. There is certainly no doubt
that the followers of St. Benedict had sunk into the very
slough of unbridled debauchery in their fabulously rich
‘English benefices, and into a state of licence which no
hypocrisy could any longer conceal, and which was
favoured by the example of the prelates, who were
seldom without their concubines and paramours. In the
fourteenth century they had already forfeited the re-
spect of the people, and the measure of the sin of these
numerous profligates and idlers was already filled to
overflowing ; yet two hundred years passed away before
their overthrow, which was ultimately brought about
with as much harshness and want of tolerance as
Henry VIII. could impart to the final blow which threw
down the entire system.

While the Catholic Church in general had only been
able to make its long asserted immutability and infalli-
bility manifest to the people by occasional public,
although tardy, modifications, and incessant, but secret
amendments of the various parts of its structure, a
similar condition of things had prevailed among the
monkish Orders, who might be looked upon as its body-
guard. At the time of the first crusades, when the

E2
52 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

power and influence of the pontificate aud of the feudal
system had reached its culminating point, some of the
nobler spirits of Western Christendom were moved,
among other extraordinary desires, by the most eager
wish for a re-organization of the Benedictine Order. The
old severity, abstinence, and piety, were, if possible, to
be reinstated in the midst of a century of unbridled
licence. From these endeavours there sprang up within
the Latin Church the Orders of the Camaldulenses, Cis-
tercians, Premonstratenses, and Carmelites, each of which
had its own special ascetic tendency. They soon spread
themselves over England, but the Cistercians seem cer-
tainly to have attained a far higher importance in the
country than any of the others. Their first attempts at
a reformation were undoubtedly much aided by the
efforts of a young English monk, who had contributed
largely at Citeaux to the task of simplifying and
tightening the rule. Those who took the vows were
bound to confine themselves to the most limited amount
of clothing and food; most of their time both by night
and by day was given to the service of God, and to the
exercise of severe penances, while the rest was devoted
to the object of maintaining themselves by severe
bodily labour, only interrupted by short intervals for
sleep. All high mental cultivation was discouraged
from the first, and the brethren were taught to seek
their principal oceupation in labouring in the woods and
fields. It must remain an undecided question whether
the powerful appeal of Bernard of Clairvaux, who had
presided over the mother-monastery at Citeaux since
1115, or the direction which was now given to the pur-
suit of agriculture, was the cause of their rapid spread
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS, 53

in England, but certain it is that, about 1132, a man of
noble birth, named Walter Espec, liberally founded the
first Cistercian Monastery at Rievaux, in Yorkshire,
which was soon followed by others in different parts of
the kingdom, as for instance those of Jorveaux and
Fountains Abbey, in the immediate neighbourhood,
and Waverley, Coggeshall, and Hales, with several
others in the south of the island. Special regard
seems to have been paid in their foundation to the
character of the soil, and the leading idea that regu-
lated their choice of locality appears to have been influ-
enced not so much by a taste for romantic solitude, such
as was evinced by the first Benedictines’ Houses, as by
the desire to secure pasture and arable land, which
might enable the brethren to perform their allotted field
labour, and to procure them their necessary maintenance.

The English Cistercians distinguished themselves from
the first by the great care and attention which they gave
to the breeding of sheep; and they unquestionably con-
tributed far more largely than the great secular landed
proprietors to bring the wool trade, which was one of the
principal sources of national wealth, to the perfection
which it attained in the middle ages. But it was by
these very means that they themselves acquired a degree
of prosperity and monied wealth, which, notwithstanding
all their asceticism, put them in the possession of those
very agents of corruption which had well nigh been the
ruin of their predecessors. The Cistercian monasteries in
England were not slow in following the example set
by Citeaux, which, on the death of St. Bernard, and,
perhaps, partly in consequence of the glory which his
memory shed upon the Order, had renounced the old
54 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

severity and humility of their House, and now thought
themselves entitled to compete with Cluny for supremacy
in regard to wealth and influence. Richard Coeur de
Lion, who, indeed, had granted an annual donation of an
hundred marks to the general council of the Cistercians,
in memory of his accession to the throne, was able to
count upon their wool treasures for the liquidation of the
ransom which was to deliver him from the prison of the
German emperor ; and, when subsequently he was pressed
by his never-ending embarrassments, he repeatedly made
despotic loans on the proceeds of their summer shearings.
When his brother John had fallen out alike with the
Church and his subjects, and was beginning to give vent to
his passion and wrath, his avarice found no readier source
of satisfaction than in the sheep-flocks of the Cistercians,
who, if we are to believe contemporaneous accounts,
must indeed themselves have been most thoroughly
fleeced by the sovereign. Such drains as these must
certainly have very seriously affected the exchequer of the
brethren, but, for the time being, no doubt they exercised
a salutary check on their excesses. In'England, no less
than in France and Germany, the severity and simplicity
of their rule may be traced in the very ruins of their
monastic buildings. Even the chronicles which were
compiled in the Cistercian monasteries have a dry matter-
of-fact style about them ; while the Benedictines wrote,
even at that early period, with elegance, although certainly
with much less attention to truth. But however many
individual features of greater consequence may have
survived amongst them, it is undeniable that the rapidly
attained wealth of the Cistercians in the thirteenth cen-
tury led to the same results as among the Benedictines; _
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 55

so that the popular ill-will was directed indiscriminately
against all these Orders, who elicited, without exception,
one and the same expression of popular hatred.

There was, however, another special form of monastic
life, generated within the Church itself during the middle
ages, for the maintenance of its fundamental principles.
This was the Orders of the Mendicants, especially of the
Franciscans and Dominicans. Their founders had been
moved by the powerful appeal of the great pontiff, Inno-
cent III., who aimed at nothing short of a universal
dominion, and a regal hierarchy. The great movement
that had been directed under the name of the Crusades
by Western Christendom against the East had been pro-
ductive of evil, but previously unsuspected results. The
organization of different states began to be disturbed,
and new systems promulgated; while, through contact
with Mahommedanism and Asiatic idolatry, the inherent
tendency of the Norman and German mind to enlarge
upon independent and various forms of doctrine had
become powerfully stimulated to heresy and infidelity.
What therefore could have been more welcome to Inno-
cent and his immediate successors than to meet, at the
right moment, with the very defenders whom they
needed,—men possessed of resolution and energy suffi-
cient to stifle these dangerous tendencies while there was
yet time? Francesco of Assisi and Domingo the Castilian
formed new ecclesiastical confraternities in accordance
with new principles at the moment of all others that the
Pope most needed them, and at atime, moreover, when
it was of vital importance to prevent certain impulses of
the European Christian mind from being wholly de-
stroyed. Both founders placed the injunction of complete
56 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

and unconditional poverty at the head of their canons,
and both were ready to suffer every torture of body and
soul to carry on to victory the one true and only saving
faith, while both were equally ready to sacrifice their
individuality for this one supreme object. The Italian
sought to attain this end by private exhortation, while
the Spanish reformer endeavoured to reach it by means
of eloquent public preaching. It would appear that their
Orders, and others which were formed after them, and
which were all comprised under the common designation
ot the Mendicant Orders, were more or less strongly
drawn to different countries, in accordance with the
amount of sympathy existing between their own tenden-
cies and tastes and those of the different nations among
whom they settled. While the Dominicans evinced an
evident preference for Spain, France, and the Rhenish
district, the Franciscans seemed most at home in Italy,
in a great part of the German Empire, and in England.
We are here more especially called upon to consider their
sphere of activity in the latter country; and in the
furtherance of this object we purpose availing ourselves
largely of some valuable materials which have been
recently published.

In the year 1244, that is two years before the death
of their enthusiastic founder, a small band of Minorites,
as the Franciscans liked to be called, landed at Dover,
and proceeded direct to the metropolis. Although they
were of different origin, some of them being Italians,
others Frenchmen, and others again Englishmen, they
were nevertheless equal in all other respects ; for not one
of them owned any other worldly property than the thick
russet hood and serge frock with which his naked limbs
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 57

were covered, and the cord that bound the robe round
his waist, or scourged his naked back. They carried
nothing with them but a book of prayers and writing
materials. Thorough beggars, they went forth two and
two as their rule required, ready for the labour that had
been committed to them. The principles on which their
organization was based had already been tested on the
continent, and found therefore the more readily a cordial
recognition when the Order was transplanted to the
British soil. The monastic societies of all their prede+
cessors in the different kingdoms of Western Christendom
had shown special predilection for rural districts, and
had built their houses far from densely populated towns,
where, in imitation of the castles and halls of the princes
and nobles of the land, they lay surrounded by woods
and parks.. A strong aristocratic resemblance manifests
itself in all the earlier monastic Orders ; and during the
period of their first development they had everywhere
kept aloof from cities, and even after a time had endea-
voured to make the villages, towards whose formation
they had originally contributed, directly dependent
upon themselves. Their whole life, indeed, was unsuited
to cities, such as they were constituted in the north and
south of Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. Behind the city walls there was then crowded
together a mass of various elements, which were working
out their own independence, and seeking protection from
the selfishness and oppression of feudalism, or from the
tyrannical. power of the Church. An important trade
both by sea and land served as a means for the attain-
ment of hitherto unknown material riches, and of know-
ledge, which was of immeasurably higher value, The

-
58 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

maritime towns of Italy and southern France imported
in their galleys, not only the luxuries of the East and the
enjoyments that were associated with them, but they
acquired through the same channels a familiarity with
those secret arts of magic, which were forbidden by the
Church, and with many rank and exuberant forms of
heresy. All these novelties were rapidly diffused through
these recently formed cities, whose self-governing com-
munities had to a great extent emancipated themselves
from the control both of the secular and the ecclesiastical
power. The Church now for the first time perceived the
incalculable injury which the burghers might inflict upon
the higher ranks, and, above all, on the Church itself, if
they were once to secure material and intellectual free-
dom; and Innocent III. lost no time in doing what he
could to avert the danger while there was yet time. At
such a moment a man like St. Francis must have
appeared to him as a messenger sent from God. Fran-
cesco of Assisi had once been engaged as a merchant on
the shores of the Mediterranean, and his many years’
experience had thoroughly made him understand how to
treat with men of all nations and all classes. The
necessity for acquiring the knowledge which such ex-
perience yields had been made incumbent on his
followers, to whom the turmoil of a city life seemed
from the first to have been almost a necessity.

Hitherto the servants of the Church had almost wholly
neglected the lowest grades of the city populations.
The monasteries benefited the country people, while the
cathedral stalls and the town livings were oceupied
almost as hereditary appanages by the secular clergy,
with whom the proceeds of their benefices was the main
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS, 59

object of consideration, and who therefore seldom per-
formed the duties of their offices, except when compelled
by necessity. The richer burghers alone were brought in
contact with them, while the trade guilds usually had
chaplains of their own. It was under these circumstances
that the Mendicant Friars entered upon their spiritual
mission, as we might now call it, among the poor and
the young of the civic populations, whose numbers were
rapidly increasing in all the maritime and mercantile
towns, where they had almost run wild through ignorance
of every form of religious worship and secular instruction.
The narrow unwholesome streets were overcrowded by a
dense population, incessantly afflicted in body with the
miseries of dirt, hunger, and disease, and vitiated in mind
by the habitual practice of every form of vice and crime.’
It was among this class that the plague in its periodical
attacks slew its thousands, and that leprosy had become
domiciled, as it were, with all the terrors that were wont
to rend asunder every social tie. Among this class too
had fallen stray seeds of the oriental sensualistic doctrines
of religion, while even some politico-communistic tenden-
cies had begun to contend with the few germs of Christian
learning that by chance had found their way thither from
the outer world. It was against all these enemies that
the Franciscans boldly resolved to make war; but in
the conflict the only tactics to which they trusted were
identity in position and fortune with the poor among
whom they laboured. Being wholly without earthly
wealth of any kind, they associated with the poor on equal
terms, and as companions and sharers in the same
vicissitudes and the same fate. The Franciscans, by
enjoining the removal of dirt, prepared the way for a
60 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

purification of the air and the ground, and while the
brethren tried to impress upon the idle that even the
smallest amount of labour may help to stave off hunger,
they showed by their service in the Lazarettoes, that had
been erected through their earnest endeavours, that they
had no fear of infection from leprosy or the black death.
They baptized the children, confessed the men and
women, and gave extreme unction to the dying. The
Franciscan thus became the benefactor of crowds of
hitherto neglected and lost beings, who owed to his
care the salvation of their bodies, and to his teachings and
admonitions the peace of their souls. And thus the
Mendicant Friar was alike the friend of the men in all
things affecting the business of their daily lives, and the
confidant of the women in all that concerned the care of
their houses and children.

The first appearance of the Franciseans, and the plan
of activity which they followed, had been everywhere
the same. Everywhere, whether in London, York,
Oxford, Bristol, Warwick, or Lynn, they erected the
same miserable barrack-like houses, with the same
small unsightly chapels, in the very worst parts of the
town, or in the suburbs near the walls, which separated
the privileged burghers from the unprotected crowds
without. Nothing can be more significant than the
locality and the name of the spot which they selected as
the site of their House in London. It was situated in
the very midst of the slaughter-houses of the city, and
was known as “ Stinking Lane.” Here they presented
to the people the example of contented poverty and pri-
vation, and from hence they superintended their heroic
mission to the Leper Hospitals. Soon the confraternity
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 61

consisted only of native Englishmen, and now for the
first time the monks could address the common people
in their own tongue. The most important rule of their
founder had enjoined upon them to maintain the same
footing, and remain in the same relations as those among
whom they performed their ministrations, an innovation
which gave great umbrage to the clergy, who, through-
out the whole of Western Christendom, had hitherto
almost entirely lost sight of the distinctions of nationality
and individuality, and were now, for the first time,
beginning to see whither their exclusiveness and their
use of Latin were bringing them. From the very first,
the Mendicant Friars appear in strong antagonism to
the secular clergy, who reproached these servants of the
Church for their friendly intercourse with the populace,
and accused them of endeavouring, by an over-zealous
and studied mode of preaching the Word, to attract the
populace to themselves in an unseemly manner. St.
Francis had, however, himself given the impulse that
tended to draw his followers from the practices of the
clergy, and of the older Orders. This genuinely prac-
tical man insists that his followers shall not become
learned, or seek their pleasure in books, “for I am afraid,”
he says, “that the doctors will be the destruction of my
vineyard.” ‘This is entirely in conformity to the natural
order of things, for learning drives men to investigate
still further for themselves, and to try to satisfy wants
which were quite incompatible with his command of
absolute poverty, and with the object for which it had
been enforced. All his efforts, therefore, were directed
to prevent such a result. A Testament and a Prayer-
book were the utmost that the Franciscan monk might
62 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

call his own, and he was allowed to learn and to practise
the arts of reading and writing, solely because they
might be required in the pursuit of his hard and humble
occupations. Libraries were an abomination in his eyes,
and, according to his opinion, they had contributed quite
as much to the degeneracy of the Benedictines as the
wealth which had given rise to their irregular lives.
When the original stringency of this rule was beginning
to be somewhat relaxed, Roger Bacon, who belonged to
this Order, and who was one of the most learned men that
the Middle Ages could boast of, complained to the Pope, to
whom he dedicated his Works, that he possessed no manu-
scripts, and that the use of ink and vellum was scarcely
permitted to him, and he, therefore, urgently prays the
Holy Father to grant him dispensation from this severe
restriction. The cramped and contracted writing, and
the numerous abbreviations which are to be met with
in manuscripts written by Franciscans, as well as their
peculiarly involved style and the intentional absence of
all quotations from the Latin Classics, have been referred,
not without good grounds, to the influence of the original
principles on which the Order was founded. Even the
doctrinal tendencies of the brotherhood seem to have ex-
hibited a decided leaning to practical theology, and to
the same direction of mind we may refer their vivid’
realization and almost matter of fact mode of represent-
ing the life and sufferings of Christ, and the increased
stimulus which they gave to the worship of the Virgin
Mary ; arising, no doubt, from the fact that the Mendi-
cant Friars, unlike their monkish brethren, were brought
into intimate relations with family life, which had taught
them to honour and respect the character of women.
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 63

We find that scarcely thirty years after their first organ-
ization there were already more than a thousand
Franciscans diffused throughout England in their nine-
and-forty monasteries. Their Houses had everywhere
been erected by means of donations from the pious, or
willing contributions from the lower classes, or had been
assigned to them by the transference of land and build-
ings from the wealthy classes, but it was always on the
distinctly recognized condition that such houses and
lands were merely to be regarded as alms given for a
time by the pious, but never in any case to be considered
as the actual property of the Order.

The extraordinarily rapid growth and the unparal-
leled popularity of the new confraternity fostered a
germ, which, although at first it only yielded the most
precious fruits, was destined to be developed into a lux-
uriance of growth, destructive to the Order itself. The
human mind was so unnaturally fettered by the Fran-
eiscans and Dominicans, that, more powerful than its
oppressors, it naturally broke its bonds wherever the
barriers which opposed it were the feeblest.

Although the Franciscans were forbidden to apply
themselves to learning, the care of the sick, which was
enjoined upon them, necessarily directed their minds to
the study of medicine and natural history. It was not
long before the practical tendency, which was peculiar
to them, led them to the study of physics and chemistry;
not, however, as heretofore, by the path of theoretical
speculation, but by the co-operation of experiment—an
advance in the method which they were the first to
establish, and by which Bacon arrived at the most
remarkable results in almost every branch of physical
64 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

science. True physicians and chemists of European
origin are not met with before the thirteenth century,
and then they were to be found almost only among the
ranks of the Mendicant Friars. The mercantile origin
of their Order may have had an influence in determining
the great predilection which they evinced for remote
missions and distant voyages, in the course of which
they observed everything that fell under their notice,
and collected every form of information that was acces-
sible to them; and this treasure of knowledge, when
once acquired, was never wholly lost again by the
different nations to whom it was introduced. By the
middle of the century, the Franciscans and Dominicans
had traversed all the coasts of the Mediterranean, while
some had even visited the czar at Kiew, and penetrated
far into the interior of Asia among the Tartars. Others
of the brethren had made even greater advances in other
departments of research. From physics to metaphysics
the transition is short. The task of endeavouring to
wean the common man, gifted with a natural mother-
wit, from his own primitive ideas, by means of forcible
demonstration, led the Franciscans direct to the study
of logic and dialectics. No very long time had elapsed
since these men had first settled themselves modestly
and diffidently in the suburbs of Oxford, when, in
imitaion of the University practice, one of their body
began to lecture to his brethren on philosophical learn-
ing. The celebrated Chancellor of the University,
Robert Grosteste, Bishop of Lincoln, a noble-minded
prelate, who was far more free from prejudice than men
of his rank and age commonly were at that time, had
his attention drawn to these new teachers, and, wholly
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS, 65

indifferent to the opposition which he might meet with,
soon became their most zealous friend and patron. He
had long perceived that the old and tedious school
routine of the Trivium and Quadrivium, as well as the
pertinacity with which the theologians, in furtherance
of their own worldly aims, were devoting themselves
almost exclusively to the study of the canon and civil
law, was likely to divert university studies still farther
from their noblest and highest aims, and he therefore
had no scruples in taking part with those who promised
to benefit theology by bringing it into more intimate
connexion with the interests of real life. And, in truth,
the theology of this new school remained free from the
dryness and abstruseness of the older systems as long
as it adhered to its original popular mode of preaching,
in which the subject was wont to be richly seasoned
with striking allegories and forcible comparisons, and
was closely connected with material objects. But the
learning, investigations, and modes of application of the
order, were necessarily being constantly carried forward;
and they not only studied the physical writings of Aris-
totle—that great teacher of all ages and all races of men
—but they discovered in his logic powerful weapons,
which they applied to their own purposes. With these
weapons they learnt to combat whenever they were
called upon to dispute concerning questions of the
highest importance, or to refute the heterodoxy of their
opponents. It has even been attempted to be shown
that, by the help of the Aristotelian logic, the Fran-
ciscans and Dominicans introduced a far more earnest
mode of interpreting Holy Writ, and that they approxi-

mated much more closely than their predecessors to the
F
66 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

true critical conception or rational comprehension of the
Scriptures. In this respect, therefore, as well as in
regard to their earnest zeal in preaching, they would
have ranked among the forerunners of the Reformation,
if their efficiency in all departments had not been coun-
teracted by a fatal reaction.

The crowning glory of the English Franciscans is the
University of Oxford, which they boldly and daringly
attempted to gain over to their side under the patronage
of the Bishop of Lincoln. The greater number and
the most celebrated of the great scholastics of their
order, who were renowned in physics and metaphysics,
but who, on the one hand, carried their system into the
depths of obscurity, and, on the other, raised it to the
highest point of subtilty—as for instance, Roger Bacon,
Duns Scotus, and Occam—studied at Oxford. The
colleges of this University acquired in a short time such
a high reputation amongst all the neighbouring nations,
that German and French chairs were filled by teachers
from Oxford, and the University even ventured to enter
into competition with the sister University of Paris,
which was under the control of the Dominicans. There
are still extant the letters of one of the best teachers
belonging to the first period of this epoch. This writer,
the Doctor Illustris of the schoolmen, was Adam de
Marisco, or Adam of Marsh. He had been early be-
friended by Grosteste, had studied in his youth at Oxford,
had taken holy orders, and had subsequently entered
the ranks of the Franciscans. From this period dates his
activity in lecturing, which was destined, about the
middle of the thirteenth century, to lay the foundation
of all the results which he obtained for learning at
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 67

Oxford, and which consequently also contributed to the
training of those distinguished ornaments of learning.
His letters give us a deep insight into the practical ten-
dency which then prevailed at the University, and the
opposition with which it was met, while they also afford
evidence of the intimate and undisturbed connexion with
all-important phases of life which still existed at the
University in that generation. Ata place which was then
resorted to by a crowd of ardent youths, eager for know-
ledge, where the threads of political agitation were not
unfrequently interwoven with the concerns of everyday
life, and where consequently the maintenance of muni-
cipal and academical discipline must have been a matter
of very considerable difficulty, there must necessarily
have been much to be done in reconciling the frequently
conflicting functions of the widely differing and variously
intermingling authorities of the secular and the eccle-
siastical powers. Many of the letters bear evidence of
this. At one time we find this ever-active man endea-
vouring to obtain increased stipends and allowances for
poor students of merit, or books and vellum for some”
industrious members of his order; at another time he is
anxious to secure his brethren protection from the hostile
University authorities, or to free them from attendance
on some course of lectures. At one time we find him
preaching before the court, or, by the command of the
pope, exhorting his hearers to join the crusades; at
another time he has business with the Parliament in
London, while he also accompanies the archbishop to
Rome, and is one of the delegates at the Council of
Lyons. Then again we find him actively occupied in the
spiritual duties of his brotherhood, either compassion-
F2
68 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

ately administering consolation in the hour of bitterest
need, relieving the conscience of a man who has unjustly
possessed himself of property, or giving his advice and
assistance to a poor woman, who has been involved in a
complicated matrimonial process, and has been unmerci-
fully dealt with by subtile and avaricious practitioners of
the law. But amid all these avocations he has always
time to correspond with such friends as Grosteste, or the
learned brothers of his order in Italy and France, whether
on scientific subjects or in relation to some philosophical
or theological work. Some of his letters are addressed to
the King and Queen, to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and,
indeed, chiefly to the highest personages in the land.
The most important of these letters are, however, un-
questionably those in which this remarkable man opened
his heart to the friends with whom he was connected by
the ties of genuine affection. Among the most celebrated
of these were the two greatest reformers of the Church
and State in those agitated days, the Bishop of Lincoln
and Simon de Montfort, the great Earl of Leicester.
“With both of these men it seems to have become a
matter of necessity to consult their intimate friend,
Adam of Marsh, in all affairs, whether great or small,
public or private. The bishop he encouraged without
ceasing; cheering and strengthening him when his
courage seemed about to give way under the colossal
weight of his attempts to counteract the destructive
attacks of the pope, to raise the Church from its world-
liness, and to put an end to the idle depravity of the
monks. De Montfort, who had just placed himself at
the head of the celebrated movement against the despotic
and aristocratic misrule of Henry the Third, was even
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 69

then the darling of the nation—a character which, if
we may judge from the letters before us, he most
thoroughly deserved. Adam of Marsh must have been
the real bond of union between the earl and the bishop,
who were sincerely attached to each other. He appears
as the father-confessor and principal adviser of the
family of De Montfort, who, when the Earl has taken
the supreme command in Gascony, writes to announce
the approaching confinement of his wife, and gives him
a report of his young sons, who, at the recommendation
of the Doctor Itlustris, had been entrusted to the care of
the bishop for their education. Other passages give us
glimpses of the noble heart of the earl, who was fully
resolved to lay the foundation of a stable form of govern-
ment for all the states and classes of the population.
His courage and his wisdom are repeatedly praised in
these letters, and he is encouraged to persevere in his
plans for achieving the freedom of all the noble spirits
who were pining under unjust oppression, whether from
the State or the Church. Nor were warnings and in-
junctions wanting; and the noble earl is entreated to be
on his guard against the deceit and treachery which were
lurking near him. He is constantly begged to practise
patience, and never to give way to a proud security, or
suffer himself to be too much elated. The Word of God
must at all times be asa lantern to his feet. We can
scarcely too much lament that such admirable testimony
of the interchange of ideas that existed among these
men was doomed to cease before the crisis of the great
struggle for legislative power, which did not occur till
some years after the death of Grosteste and Marsh.

If we are not mistaken, the remarkable Latin poems,
70 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

which treat of the leading ideas of the great popular
movement, and the sudden readiness of the third estate
for a genuine constitutional form of national government,
are to be referred to the same clear and calmly judging
spheres of observation. It is certain that none but
Franciscans could so admirably have depicted the pur-
poses of knights and burghers, and the recognition of
the supremacy of the laws over arbitrary will.

Soon after the termination of that long and bitter
political contest, and about the beginning of the four-
teenth century, the decay of the Franciscans was clearly
manifest in all the departments of action to which they
had hitherto devoted themselves with such signal suc-
cess; and from this time forth the order advanced with
rapid strides towards its final overthrow. Notwith-
standing the haircloth which they wore upon their
bodies, and in defiance of the law of the land, which
interdicted the monastic orders from acquiring possession
of landed property, both Franciscans and Dominicans had
accumulated earthly treasures for themselves, and had
made the fundamental command of their founder a mere
le, by enjoying vast property, and erecting stately resi-
dences for themselves, which were held in the title and
name of others, for the sake of evading the prohibition
against the tenure of land and houses. It is true that they
never assumed the aristocratically exclusive forms and
habits of the Benedictine orders, but rather maintained
with zealous care their original relations to the lower
classes of society; but in doing this, they rapidly sank to
that depth of coarseness, meanness, and sinfulness, which
has been described with striking touches in Chaucer’s
poem, and is commemorated in many of the productions
MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS. 71

of the popular satirists of the day, for it was now
too evident that the once popular mendicant brothers
presented the same scope for scorn and ridicule as the
sleek and portly monks of the magnificent Benedictine
and Cistercian abbeys. The once pious hospital-servi-
tors, and the benevolent diffusers of every kind of useful
knowledge, had now degenerated into unprincipled
quacks and charlatans, who strove, by means of worth-
less gifts of spurious relics and false medicines, and by
the shameless misuse of the secrets of the confessional,
to subvert the peace of domestic life ; deceiving the men,
or making them drunk in the taverns, while they under-
mined the virtue of the women. The daring with which
they had once taken part in the conflict against the
pretensions of the Papal chair, both in England and
Germany, the resolution with which they had for a
time supported the secular authority, and aided in bring-
ing the struggle for freedom to a successful termination,
had been changed into the most unprincipled effrontery,
and perverted to their own advantage, while their pre-
tensions, and opposition to all other authorities, and their
daring attempts to keep in subjection the consciences of
men, knew no limits. Their adherence to the external
forms of their rule degenerated into the most repul-
sive hypocrisy, in comparison with which the openly
exhibited love of pleasure of the monks appears com-
paratively unobjectionable. Their knowledge had dege-
nerated into mere unprofitable theorems and subtile
hair-splitting arguments, while the great majority of
the brethren were sunk into a state of illiterate stupidity,
which would hardly have been a source of gratification
to St. Francis, could he have foreseen it. They had
72 MONKS AND MENDICANT FRIARS.

forfeited the opportunity which they once possessed of
bringing about a much desired and greatly needed
reformation in the Church and the State, as well as in
society at large, although they still sought to augment
the power which they had acquired in the University,
in defiance of the daily increasing complaint that they
aimed at nothing short of the exclusive subjection of
the minds of the young to their teaching. Enemies
were gathering round them on every side; and even
in Oxford there stepped forward, from the ranks of the
secular clergy, an opponent who hesitated not to pro-
claim the irreconcilable hatred with which he entered
the lists against them, and who now turned the whole
art of scholastic dialectics against those from whom he
had learned it, and with whom it had originated. And
although they may, indeed, have maintained their ground
against Wiclif and his followers, the spark of evan-
gelical truth that had been kindled by the preaching of
this devout-minded Reformer never wholly died out,
notwithstanding the attempts that were made, century
after century, to extinguish it. Till the time of the
reformation of the Church under Luther and his con-
temporaries, the monastic and mendicant orders under-
went no further renovation of any moment; and it was
only when the victory had been wrested from Rome,
that new champions of the pontificate arose, who, al-
though they tried to follow better paths than those
which their predecessors had trodden, nevertheless bor-
rowed many things from them which tended neither to
their welfare nor their profit.
Til.

THE PARLIAMENT IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

More than six hundred years have passed since the
English Parliament began to have a history of its own.
An institution of such high antiquity, which, in the
course of ages, has undergone numerous vicissitudes and
experienced important self-imposed modifications, and
which, arising from small beginnings, has attained colossal
dimensions, and thrown its roots deep into the fate of the
country, and even of humanity at large, must necessarily
possess an early history, in which some genuine traces
of its origin may still be detected. But the history of
the early phases of its development is obscure and inter-
rupted, like that of the great nations of the earth, and
the absence of reliable information has too often been
supplied by mere conjecture, or even by tradition and
invention.

It is long before a nation awakes to self-consciousness,
and therefore we can scarcely wonder that the English
people should only have begun at a comparatively late
period to collect the records of their Parliament (which
was, in fact, the real organ of their national existence), or
to attach any importance to the knowledge of the sources
of its origin. At the time of the Reformation, under
Henry VIII. and Edward VI., the House of Lords, for
74 THE PARLIAMENT IN

the first time, set the example of recording current affairs
by keeping a journal for the entry of the minutes of their
proceedings; and it is not till the time of Elizabeth and
the Stuarts, that we meet with inquirers who venture to
assert independent views regarding the mode of origin of
the National Assembly.

In the course of their investigations, these inquirers
found only scanty authentic materials in reference to the
earlier period of its history. Although since the time of
Henry II., the first of the Plantagenets, who, about the
middle of the twelfth century, began to centralize the
administration of the kingdom, every occurrence, how-
ever insignificant in itself, if it touched upon the prero-
gatives and possessions of the Crown, has been entered
in the Royal Exchequer Rolls, which have been pre-
served to the present day; and although, since King
John’s time, every Chancery record has been regularly
entered either on the Close, Patent, or Charter Rolls,
we nowhere meet with the original form of writ used to
summon Parliament, as required by Magna Charta. It
has been conjectured, that the clerks of the Exchequer—
the oldest State-office established by the Normans—with
whom the charge rested, must either intentionally have
neglected their duty from an idea of the little importance
to be attached to it, or in some unaccountable manner
have suffered the draughts connected with this business
to be destroyed. At a later period—that is, from the
end of the thirteenth century—the Chancery held it
imperatively necessary to keep records of the meetings
of Parliament, and to enter upon its Rolls the names
of those who had received writs. From the time of
Edward II. there appeared under their authority special
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 75

Rolls of Parliament, which, although they did not give
minutes or protocols of each meeting, contained short
arbitrary notices of the proceedings, as well as extracts
from the most important resolutions and enactments.
Unfortunately, no writer or chronicler of the time
thought it worth his while to give asketch of Parliament,
so that we are not justified in assuming, as is sometimes
done, that this institution was suddenly organized in
a somewhat revolutionary manner. The slow course of
development which it went through, and which was only
occasionally accelerated, was not adapted to excite in any
specially high decree the attention and surprise of con-
temporaries. There exists, indeed, a remarkable treatise,
under the title of “ J/odus tenendi Parliamentum,”’ which
belongs to a period not much later, and which, although
it has been regarded as almost theoretical, affords us a
tolerably comprehensible representation of the great
national council. Its date became for the first time a
subject of earnest critical discussion about the beginning
of the seventeenth century, when the English people saw
themselves in danger of being deprived of their tradi-
tionary rights and liberties. Sir Edward Coke, the well-
known Chief Justice in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was
the first to draw attention to this document, and his notice
of it referred more especially to a copy, bearing the un-
doubtedly apocryphal title of “The Manner of holding
Parliaments, as practised by William the Conqueror,
according to the Precedent of Edward the Confessor.”
This great lawyer credulously believed in the genuine-
ness of the title, and, until the time of the Revolution, his
view seems to have been very generally held. At that
juncture, William Prynne—who at one time, in the triple
76 THE PARLIAMENT IN

capacity of barrister, political writer, and member of the
House of Commons, had resolutely opposed the arbitrary
measures of Charles I., for which he twice suffered the
punishment of the pillory and the loss of one of his ears,
but who, having grown less violent under Charles II.,
had been appointed Keeper of the Records in the
Tower—discovered this document in the course of his
investigations of the historical treasures under his charge.
In several pamphlets, written with his usual passionate
violence and ponderous erudition, he not only declares
that the statement conveyed in this title is untrue, but
further insists that there is no older manuscript of this
work than one of the time of Henry VI., or even of
Henry VIIL., so that this document could at most only
afford a description of Parliament from the end of the
fifteenth century. But in his blind zeal he overshot the
mark, for he had not only overlooked an edict of King
Henry IV., dated at the beginning of that century, in
which this prince sends the document on the holding of
Parliaments to Ireland, for the observation and imitation
of his government there, but he had also failed to notice
a printed assertion of his contemporary, John Selden (a
man equally well versed with himself in archeology and
jurisprudence), that he had found a copy of the ‘“ Modus
tenendi Parliamentum,” belonging to Edward III.’s time,
and therefore about half a century older. There are
several MSS. of this work extant, some of which bear
the date of Richard II.’s time, and consequently belong
to the end of the fourteenth century. It has been
proved, by recent careful researches, that this document
existed in the time of Edward I., and most probably
as early as the year 1295, and therefore eighty years
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. q7

after the signing of Magna Charta. With such an
antiquity as this, it, therefore, most undoubtedly deserves
to be appealed to in an investigation into the earliest
history of the English Parliaments.

By the help of this work, which is, however, by no
means very comprehensive in its character, a few
meagre notices from the chroniclers, and a number of
ancient edicts, and above all by the aid of Magna
Charta, we may perhaps be able to draw up a tolerably
faithful representation of the manner in which the English
Parliament was developed in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries; and learn to comprehend the elements
of which it was composed, the rights and duties which
it acquired in the course of a century or little more, and
the forms which it assumed, and in which its pro-
ceedings were conducted.

Many attempts have been made, and much time
expended in endeavouring to connect the origin of Par-
liament with the JVitena Gemote, or national assembly
of the Anglo-Saxons, or even with the original form of
government, described by Tacitus, as existing among the
ancient Germans. We still hear of a free yeomanry
who are supposed to have taken an independent part in
the administration of public affairs under a national
monarchy. But those who adopt this view entirely lose
sight of the existence of the feudal government of
William of Normandy, which formed a characteristic
interval between ancient purely Germanic institu-
tions and the Parliament of recent times, which has
been developed by the fusion of many different factors
into one consolidated whole. The Conqueror, in accord-
ance with principles of rigid severity, founded a system
78 THE PARLIAMENT IN

of government which was at once military, administrative,
and judicial, and which was under the control of one
supreme despotic hand. And although his son Henry I.
pledged himself, in his coronation oath, to keep the laws
of Edward the Confessor, the last of the Saxon kings,
the pledge probably implied little more than a mere
reference to the old laws of the land, which, when they
did not obstruct the working of the Norman system, were
allowed to subsist amongst the conquered races. This
consolatory assurance, which is certainly to be found in
the Charters of Henry I., Stephen, and Henry IL, very
probably, however, applied to the Anglo-Saxon inde-
pendent local government within the differentcounties and
shires, and to the right of trial by jury which still pre-
vailed in the rural districts. Of an assembly taking part
in the administration or enactment of laws, there was as
yet no idea under the first Norman kings. The Courts
which they usually held three times in the year, viz. at
Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, seemed, as far as
we can judge, to have been nothing more than ceremonial
celebrations of those high festivals at which the king
appeared, wearing his crown and the other insignia of his
rank, and surrounded by a numerous attendance of his
great feudal vassals. It was not as yet a court of juris-
diction, in which judgment was given, or a meeting for
the discussion and settlement of affairs of state. The
clergy alone claimed the exceptional rights, which they
had enjoyed in the Saxon times, and continued, as they
had hitherto done on account of their higher cultivation,
to take part almost exclusively in the conduct of public
affairs.

But in the fourth generation from the Conqueror, after
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 79

the fierce right of the sword had prevailed almost
exclusively under King Stephen, and the fusion of the
conquered and the conquering races had begun, and
when consequently many questions had arisen as to the
right of possession and property of the two parties, the
Saxon elements which had hitherto been suppressed
began, for the first time, faintly and slowly to revive.
To their influence we may, indeed, ascribe many im-
portant advances in the organization of courts of juris-
diction and the more uniform mode of administering the
law. In the next generation we find the Great Barons,
who had once been participators in the spoils of the
conquest, and who may be regarded as the richly salaried
officers. of their victorious captain, advancing in a com-
pact body against their sovereign, whose powers had
become almost unlimited, and, with arms in their hands,
extorting the Magna Charta. This was not a case in
which individual vassals, who had grown too powerful to
rest contented as subjects, renounced allegiance to their
prince, as frequently happened on the Continent at that
age; for here an entire estate of the realm rose as one
mass, and thus won for themselves a common ground
from whence the germs of constitutional right were
destined to be developed. At the same time, there were
now brought more prominently to view certain collateral
parts of the great system, which, although they had long
enjoyed consideration in social life, did not as yet possess
any legally defined status in the realm. A distinction
must naturally have been drawn between the Greater
and the Lesser Barons, depending on the size of the fiefs
which they held. The under-feudatories were not, how-
ever, forgotten; and they obtained their rights the more
80 THE PARLIAMENT IN

readily, since William the Conqueror, anxious to main-
tain the military unity of his realm, had established
the uncontrovertible principle that the arriére-vassals
were to tender an oath of fidelity direct to the king,
besides doing homage to the baron, or feudal chief, from
whom they held. It was owing to this principle, as well
as to the circumstance which was closely connected with
it that the great fiefs of the crown should never con-
glomerate into unities, but should be scattered over
different parts of the kingdom, that England was
saved from sharing the fate of Germany; and thus not
even after the events of Runnymede was it possible for
any of the barons, by the support of their feudal vassals,
to raise themselves to an equality with the sovereign.
Then, moreover, the old difference of races between the
Normans, who held the larger fiefs, and the Saxons, who
were only in the secondary rank, was not without its
influence. The great mass of the lower freemen, who
were proprietors as well as vassals, belonged undoubtedly
to the Saxon race, and it would almost appear as if this
party had met with special favour under Henry II. As
soon, therefore, as a national assembly was formed, it
became expedient to make a separation between the
different members of the entire body of freemen, who
were either proprietors or tenants in chief.

The Norman Court days had been entirely discontinued
in their ancient form, after the conflicts and struggles
for the crown which took place between the Empress
Matilda and King Stephen. They were most assuredly,
at that time, only attended by those barons who were
specially favoured by the sovereign, or whose pro-
perty happened to be in the vicinity of the different
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 81

places of the royal residence. We first meet with
distinct summonses to Parliament at the period when
Magna Charta was granted, which in consequence of the
separation into two classes, to which we have already
referred, are issued in two ways, viz. personally and
collectively. In regard to the former class, nobility of
birth or a theoretically assumed right of interest in the
administration was taken into such slight account, that
the sovereign caused a summons to be issued chiefly on
the ground of special confidence or personal acquaint-
ance, and probably also with reference to the value of the
estates owned by the individual summoned, the proximity
of his place of residence, and the consideration in which
he was held by his equals in rank. Those who were
thus personally summoned constitute, therefore, the first
germ of the Parliament, and, in contradistinction to the
lesser Crown vassals and tenants in chief, who were
summoned collectively, form the basis of the future
House of Lords. But here the questions arise: who
were the men who, not long afterwards, laid claim
to the dignity, rights, and hereditary titles of peers of
England, to what class did they belong, and under
what designation must we characterise them ?

Magna Charta recognises as an anciently established
distinction the difference between spiritual and temporal
lords, giving the pre-eminence to the former, as the ser-
vants of the Church. Among the Anglo-Saxons, as in
the dominions of the Norman-French, the prelates—that
is to say, bishops, abbots, and even some priors—were
almost the only persons who could read and write, or
who were skilled in any useful art, and on this account
they were naturally admitted into the councils of the

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82 THE PARLIAMENT IN

sovereign, in the double capacity of confessors and men
of learning. The lands they held were, however, the
freehold property of the Church, and wholly independent
of the State. The Norman prelates had, on the other
hand, done military service when they took the field,
armed and mounted, to aid William in the conquest of
England, in return for which that prince had endowed
them with great baronies. From that time forth, there-
fore, they took their seats in the council of the State in
right of their Crown fiefs, and, like the temporal lords,
furnished subsidies in time of war, exercised the rights
of judicature, and occasionally, when circumstances tended
to it, came into collision with the Crown, their temporal
peers, the commons, and even their own order, when-
ever they endeavoured to screen themselves under their
exceptional spiritual rights in regard to legal judgments,
involving loss of life or property, or whenever there arose
questions that either actually were, or could be assumed
to be, of a purely ecclesiastical character. On the other
hand, however, in the summonses which in the course of
time were issued with great regularity, the dignity of the
barony and the peerage predominated, and thus the
secular rank, to a certain extent, took precedence of the
ecclesiastical dignity, since it was only those abbots and
priors who could prove by the deeds and grants in pos-
session of their houses that the lands they held were not
Crown fiefs, but ancient Church property, which had
belonged to it before the Norman period, who were able
to claim exemption from the often burdensome attend-
ance on the national legislative assemblies. It is, how-
ever, an important fact in reference to future times, that
the prelates derived their right both of sitting and voting
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 83

in the assembly through their tenures of Crown fiefs, and
not as dignitaries of the Church; and it was in conse-
quence of their having been thus incorporated with the
temporal lords into one sole and compact body of the State,
that England was happily spared from the unpropitious
results which have generally followed the incorporation
into the State of a special assembly of the clergy. The
princes of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the Ed-
wards and the Henries, strangely enough, found it de-
cidedly to their interest to summon a majority of prelates
—indeed, often more than double the number of the tem-
poral lords—a proof how much they needed the support
of the clergy against the assumptions of the several noble
families who were at that time rising to the rank of a
firmly consolidated hereditary peerage.

The temporal lords did not originally possess any
hereditary right to take part in public or political assem-
blies, either among the Saxons or on the occasion of the
holding of the old Norman courts. There were, indeed,
at all times gradations of rank, so that the dignity
of the Saxo-Scandinavian earl became merged in the
rank of the Norman count—a dignity which the King-
Duke William I. distinguished from the time of the Con-
quest by great endowments. It is, therefore, in accord-
ance with a still older precedent that Magna Charta and
the ancient document to which we have already referred
distinguish between two classes of temporal peers, viz.
earls and greater barons. The dignity of tarl was granted
by royal letters patent, and was accompanied by solemn
investiture with the sword, and by a grant of the so-
called third penny of the county—that is to say, a third
part of the profits of the sheriff’s county court—a rental

G2
84 THE PARLIAMENT IN

which was intended to assist the noble lord in maintain-
ing a state commensurate with his rank. For the rest,
however, the earls had nothing to do with the military,
administrative, or judicial government of the counties
from whence they derived their titles, which subsequently
ceased to be exclusively connected with the ancient divi-
sions of England into counties and shires, and were taken
indiscriminately from cities and towns, and even from
different court and family dignities. The higher rank in
relation to the other barons was therefore purely personal.
We must not, however, entirely pass over a notice which
occurs in that ancient document, to which we have
already referred under the title of ‘Modus tenendi Parlia-
mentum,” since it appears to indicate the recognition of
the sharply defined gradations of rank which existed in
the ancient Germanic system. Thus, for instance, it
specifies that while an earldom must contain at least
twenty knights’ fees, a large barony requires only thirteen
and a half fees. These knights’ fees or manors were,
however, even in the thirteenth century, estimated at
201. sterling annually, so that an earldom must have
been rated at 4002, and a large barony at about 26632,
or, to speak more precisely, at 400 marks, reckoning the
mark at 13s. 4d. It is, therefore, probable that the
Crown, before granting an earl’s patent, required proof
that the patentee possessed the revenues necessary to
give him a certain relative superiority over the mass of
the greater barons.

All who held a considerable number of knights’ fees or
manors, although not as many as were necessary for an
earldom, were regarded as ranking among the greater
barons ; and we find that some families adhered from an
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 85

early period with an inexplicable degree of pertinacity to
this Scandinavian and Norman titular name, which origin-
ally signified merely a free and independent man. To this
body Magna Charta secured the privilege of receiving
a personal and special summons to attend the national
assembly, and thus distinguished them from the great
mass of those who held lesser fiefs, and who were sum-
moned collectively. Even at that period, a number of
the Crown fiefs that had been granted by William the
Conqueror had lapsed, either by attainder, alienation,
death, or subdivision, so that when Edward I. issued
his summonses to Parliament he was enabled, chiefly
in consequence of the great political movement under
Simon de Montfort, to pass over the representatives of
many old families, whose landed property and influence
would otherwise have given them the right of receiving
a personal summons: while he, on the other hand,
called to his council many foreigners, natives of France
and Lorraine, who had risen to pre-eminence in his
service. In addition to the distinction which is recog-
nised in the Great Charter and in the “ Modus tenendi
Parliamentum,” of being summoned on the ground of
holding a barony by tenure, there was now added a sum-
mons by writ, or barony by writ, which became almost
exclusively the mode by which the peers were called by
special summons, and by right of which they sat and
voted in the assembly. It was one of the prominent
stipulations of Magna Charta that all those who subse-
sequently appeared as members of the upper house, as,
for instance, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors,
earls, and the greater barons, should each be individually
summoned by a royal writ to attend the national
86 THE PARLIAMENT IN

council. Whilst, therefore, the necessity of possessing
landed property of a certain value was gradually over-
looked, and the titles of baron and earl, as well as that
of duke, which was first created by patent in the middle
of the fourteenth century, gradually came to be regarded
as mere titular distinctions of nobility, the personal sum-
mons by royal writ appears to have been the principal
requirement for enabling a nobleman to take part in the
national councils. | When, about the year 1400, a third
distinction of rank was adopted, and the title of baron
was conferred by letters patent, the barony by writ became
also hereditary; and hence arose, about this time, the
conception of an exclusive and independent peerage, the
privileges of which were claimed by several noble
families for the heads of their houses. The extent to which
the families of men are subjected in the course of time to
changes and extermination is forcibly illustrated by the
fact that, at the present day, there are very few members
of the House of Lords who can show, with any degree of
certainty, by which of these modes the right of sitting
and voting in that house was exercised by their ances-
tors in the fourteenth century, the brave contemporaries
of those who took part in the wars between England
and France.

It would appear that, in addition to the spiritual and
temporal lords, those whom we should now designate
as the Ministers of the Crown were also, from a very
remote period, entitled to be present at the national
council, as, for instance, those high dignitaries at court,
with whose offices, moreover, the title of peer was
generally associated, as well as the treasurer and the
chancellor, and as assessors the chief justices who pre-
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 87

sided at the three great courts of Westminster. The
latter, however, unless entitled to the rank by birth,
creation, or office, were not peers, as they had merely a
seat in the upper house, and no vote. They were also
called upon to advise the monarch, and were required to
give their counsel and aid to the Lords and Commons
in regard to the special business under discussion.

It was the Greater Barons who, in the year 1215,
drove their tyrannical and pusillanimous king to the last
extremity, and compelled him to grant rights which had
not hitherto been recognised by the monarchs of England.
They, however, were themselves utterly worsted in the
first attempt which they made to govern constitutionally
in accordance with the stipulations they had enforced.
A struggle, which was continued during three genera-
tions, was the consequence of thcir attempt to enforce,
in defiance of the other constituent orders of the State,
the most prominent of their stipulations, viz. the privi-
lege of a personal summons to the national councils, and
the right of being consulted whenever any extraordinary
subsidies were demanded by the Crown. That age, and
more especially the period preceding the close of the
powerful movement that took place under the great Earl
de Montfort, sufficiently shows that, even in the palmiest
days of Norman ascendency during the middle ages, it
was no longer possible to carry on a purely aristocratic
form of government in England. It was after these
events that the Crown succeeded, in addition to the
prerogatives which it had saved in its hour of need, in
acquiring a new support against an all-powerful nobility
by having recourse to a class of persons whom the
barons refused to recognise as their equals, although
88 THE PARLIAMENT IN

they had, indeed, secured to them in the Great Charter
a certain status, which De Montfort had endeavoured,
although too late, to raise to a still higher level.

There had long existed an estate in the country which
was alike dissatisfied with the pure despotism of the
Crown, whose severity and weakness it had sufficiently
experienced, and with the aristocracy, on account of the
unavoidable egotism, the tendency to faction, and the
thirst for acquiring feudal power, by which that body was
actuated. And it is a memorable and great trait in the
character of King Edward I. that he departed from the
convictions and practices of his earlier years to associate
with those whom he had once opposed, and was thus
able, at the right moment, to aid in establishing the
House of Commons on a legal basis. We will here
pause to consider the individual constituents of which
this body was composed, and the manner in which it
gradually acquired the right of participating in the
administration of public affairs.

‘We must again refer to Magna Charta. When the
great spiritual and temporal lords, with whom originated
the terms of this great national Charter, united in one
compact body against the Crown, they came forward
not only in their own name, but also in that of another
estate of the realm, for whom they had secured certain
rights, simultaneously with their own, although they, at
the same time, assigned to this class a subordinate posi-
tion in the State. The stipulation by which these rights
are secured is comprised in the clause which guarantees
that, besides the prelates, earls, and greater barons, all
other free men holding im chief under the Crown must
be summoned to the national council to give their assent
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 89

to the extraordinary subsidies demanded by the monarch,
although with this essential difference, that they were
not to be summoned by a special royal writ, but col-
lectively by the sheriff of the county, or the bailiff of the
hundred. Now, those who held in chief under the Crown
undoubtedly belonged to the class previously designated
as the Lesser Barons, who certainly held their land under
the same rights and stipulations as the greater and more
richly endowed barons, but who did not hold fiefs of
sufficient value to entitle them to the. privileges which
the others enjoyed. They were originally the holders of
only one of these small knights’ fees, and sometimes of
only a portion of one, more especially if it were included
in the tenure of a large barony. There was another
cause, however, which contributed almost simultaneously
to augment the numbers and influence of this class of
the community. During the Crusades, the idea of the
knightly dignity had become firmly established among
the nations of Western Christendom, and the different
orders and corporations of chivalry had thus become
amalgamated into one system, based upon a common
principle of chivalrous valour, courtesy, and discipline.
The different bands of armed men became everywhere
the nucleus of the feudal armies, and in England, more
especially, the princes began to avail themselves to a
large extent of this power. Whoever was equipped as
became a knight, without reference to birth, and whoever
possessed sufficient means to bring a well-accoutred horse
into the field, or to pay the corresponding amount of
scutage, was soon regarded as a member of the knightly
estate. It thus happened that while, on the one hand, the
order of knighthood was composed of younger portion-
90 THE PARLIAMENT IN

less sons of men belonging to the baronial class and of
esquires, or even of pages, who still awaited the honour
of being dubbed knights, this class was, on the other
hand, recruited from the ranks of the tenants and
smaller landed proprietors. The service and order of
knighthood consequently fused the lesser barons and
tenants into one class, which the Crown regarded with
constantly increasing favour, in proportion as it learnt
to appreciate the advantage which might accrue to
itself, when the great fiefs relapsed from attainder or
any other cause, by permitting them to be subdivided,
while it maintained the inalienability of the knights’
manors. In the thirteenth century, a law was passed,
which long continued in force, that every freeman who
possessed 202. sterling annually—a sum which, with the
inerease of wealth, was afterwards raised to 40/.—should
join the order of knighthood. Thus, property and
dignity, chief and under tenure, became merged together
without reference to equality of birth, and fused into
one general knightly class.

In the same manner as the Greater Barons had first
combined in a body to oppose the Crown and then
legally rallied round the monarch as members of the
great council of the realm, so the knights now combined
together within the ancient precincts of their several
shires ; and by their means those principles of self-govern-
ment, which had never been thoroughly destroyed within
the Anglo-Saxon districts of the country, acquired a
more vigorous development; whilst, on the contrary,
the power that had been vested in the king’s sheriff,
as the representative of the once all-powerful Norman
Bailiffs, was continually being reduced within narrower
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 91

limits. The sheriffs and knights of the shire wielded
whatever power the individual counties still possessed
in regard to the administration of the law, and of the
affairs of the local police, militia, and finances ; and con-
stituted the County Court, in which character they were
recognised both by the monarch and by the State
generally.

This condition of things was brought about as soon as
the attempts of the Crown to govern exclusively by an
aristocracy had failed, and when, in the place of this
mode of government, it had become requisite to consti-
tute a national representative body. Then, moreover,
the order of knights who constituted the middle ranks
of the landed proprietors could no longer rest contented
with the stipulation set forth in Magna Charta, accord-
ing to which they were summoned collectively and in-
discriminately to the national assembly. This general
mode of summons led, of necessity, owing to the extension
of the kingdom, to a substitution of some for the many,
and it thus became a custom to delegate to a few full
powers to act for the whole. Thus, in accordance with
the ancient precedents followed in each shire, a legal
representation of the several counties was introduced
into the great Council of State. King John and his son
Henry IIT. had, on several occasions when they wished
to treat with the entire body of the knights of a shire,
summoned only three or four of the whole body as
representatives of the rest. Some years after the signing
of Magna Charta we find that, at first only in individual
cases, but soon more regularly, two knights were sent to
the general council of the nation as representatives of
the counties, in obedience to a writ addressed to the
92 THE PARLIAMENT IN

sheriff, as chairman of the county court, and by the
election of the entire number of freehold voters. The
electors, however, did not consist only of the under-
tenants of the Crown and knights, but included all free-
men of the county who were men of good repute, and
who possessed landed property, or held in chief, in as
far as they were entitled to take part in the judicial and
administrative business of the county courts. In the
fifteenth century, however, the electors were limited, by
strict legal definitions, to all forty shilling freeholders,
while, from the same period, it was required that no
knight or landed proprietor should be elected unless he
possessed an annual rental of 402. sterling. The repre-
sentation of the general landowners had, however, been
securely established as early as the close of the thirteenth
century, under Edward I.

Simultaneously with this body, another element of
power had become developed with almost equal rapidity
in the State. Although the towns had been assured in
Magna Charta of their ancient rights and immunities,
there was as yet no idea of allowing them to participate
in the deliberations of the national assembly. There
was, however, an exception in favour of the city of
London, for in the clause that treats of the granting of
extraordinary subsidies, its right to take part in these
assessments was clearly defined. This special prerogative
it owed to its vast preponderance in regard to size and
wealth over the rest, even at that age, and while it
ranked as a County within a County, the Wards of the
city must be regarded as corresponding very nearly with
the hundreds of the shires, or even with the counties of
the kingdom. London not only chose its own sheriff, but
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 93

it elected the sheriff of the county of Middlesex, and its
lord mayor. The aldermen, who were the representa-
tives of the different wards, designated themselves ax
barons. Guilds of the several trades were formed from
the burgher classes, with whom they competed, but not
always in the most amicable manner, for equality in
regard to civic and even political rights. For a time,
we find the magistrates and citizens of London closely
adhering to the nobility, who were then forcing the
Crown to grant the prerogatives which they claimed.
Notwithstanding all these circumstances, however, London
never became wholly independent, like some of the cities
of Germany and Flanders. Its efforts to secure a cer-
tain degree of independence ceased when it acquired a
just share in the deliberation of matters of state; and as
England had been spared from the fate of seeing the
highest of her nobility converted into sovereign princes,
it was in like manner saved from the destiny of having
its civic communities elevated into free cities. Some of
the provincial towns, of which many had risen in the
course of the thirteenth century to political eonsidera-
tion, either as the seat of a bishop or on account of their
trade and wealth, cherished the wish of acquiring the
same immunities that were enjoyed by London; but they
soon contented themselves with sharing in the local
affairs of the county, and learnt to be satisfied with their
own subordinate position in the kingdom. When the
dissensions between the king and Simon de Montfort
had broken out into open enmity, that high-spirited
nobleman, undoubtedly, with the view of strengthening
his cause by the support of the widely diffused middle
classes, for the first time summoned delegates from the
94. THE PARLIAMENT IN

towns, in addition to many knights of the shire, to attend
the memorable Parliament which he called together in
January, 1265, and at which the order of nobility, which
was jealous of his power, was only sparingly represented.
There were about twenty places included in his sum-
mons; but although this precedent was lost sight of in
the reactionary period that succeeded, it was again
followed by Edward I., the victorious opponent of De
Montfort, who saw, with his usual provident sagacity,
that the measure might contribute to the consolidation of
his own power. He was desirous that civic representa-
tives, by having an independent share in the assessment
of the taxes, should be debarred from any right to advance
subsequent objections to the mode of taxation—a prac-
tice which had been of frequent occurrence. An attempt
was also made to establish the proposition that many of
the towns and boroughs must actually be considered as
fiefs of the Crown, on account of the fines which they
paid in return for the privilege of independent municipal
government, and consequently that they enjoyed equal
rights and owed equal duties with the knights of the
shires.

The summonses issued under Edward to the towns and
boroughs differed considerably in different cases, being
sometimes addressed to many, and at other times only
to a few, of these corporations. Thus, in the Parliament
of 1295, which was summoned during the war, when
large subsidies were more especially needed, we find as
many as two hundred civic representatives present;
while on another occasion, when the subject under dis-
cussion was a question of feudal tenure, none of these
representatives were summoued tothe assembly. For a
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 95

long time, indeed, the civic was secondary to the knightly
element in the state; and the smaller towns, which
were closely connected with the affairs of the county,
often showed considerable unwillingness to send repre-
sentatives to Parliament. A long time elapsed, more-
over, before the question of the mode of summoning the
representatives of the several towns and boroughs could
be established on the same firm basis as that which
regulated the mode of summons for the knights of the
shire. Many of these towns and boroughs fell into a
state of perfect dependence upon certain noble or other
influential county families on all matters connected with
their representation in Parliament. Owing, however,
to the greater independence and power of the city of
London, the election there was vested in the hands of a
few independent and noble families together with the
civic corporations which they nominated, and the guilds
which enjoyed the fullest municipal privileges.

It is a matter of great importance to England, and is
a privilege which is not shared in by other nations, that
the knights and civic representatives were fused together
into one body, which constituted the Commons of the
land. An influential cause of this fusion was, in the
first place, the early separation of the order of knights
from the Greater Barons or peers of the realm, and, in the
next, the dependence of the provincial towns upon the
counties in which they were situated. The knights of
the shire held their court within these towns, and were
thus brought into intimate relations with the burghers ;
while freehold property within the towns, moreover, en-
joyed perfect equality with every other kind of free-
hold property, knights’ manors could be alienated even
96 THE PARLIAMENT IN

in favour of citizens, and even ‘the rights of trade were
not inseparably connected with the several guilds.
Thus, these two classes of the population were inti-
mately thrown together and intermingled in private life,
while they had even in the middle ages made a most
important advance towards the attainment of one and
the same rank and status in the country. The clergy
took part in the affairs and debates of the House of
Commons until the Reformation, although, as early as
the fourteenth century, in imitation of the organization
of Parliament, the convocations of both the archiepiscopal
provinces of Canterbury and York were separated into an
upper and lower house. The clerical members of the
House of Commons appear, however, to have occupied
very much the same position as the judicial assessors in
the Upper House, and to have been employed more espe-
cially to give the necessary information when questions
came before the house in reference to ecclesiastical
matters.

Thus then from the time of Edward I. we meet
with the two groups which subsequently became deve-
loped into the Houses of Lords and Commons. The
former of these comprise the materials from which the
estates of the Imperial diet were formed in Germany,
while the latter seems to have represented the German
Provincial estates. Their origin and their various cha-
racters continue to be appreciable to the present day.
A memorable circumstance connected with their develop-
ment is, however, that the several paths which they have
followed have not disunited them, as has elsewhere been
the case, for, notwithstanding their separation into two
bodies, they have actually been combined into one general
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 97

Parliament. The Upper House is the more ancient
and the more distinguished of the two, and has perma-
nently retained its pre-eminence, whilst even the name,
by which both parts are conjointly designated, has been
borrowed from the conferences held by the lords and
prelates. It is, indeed, worthy of notice that the earliest
instance of the use of the designation Parliament occurs
in an Act of Henry IIL, in which that Prince designates
the stormy meeting on the 15th of June, 1215, at which
Magna Charta was granted, as the “ Parliamentum de
Runemede.” It is, therefore, connected with an epoch, at
which noble lords and prelates, but, as yet, neither
knights nor burghers, sat and voted in the great national
assembly. The greater barons, who were invited by a
separate and respectful summons from the crown, had
from the first attended the assembly entirely at their own
cost, while the commons, as the representatives of close
corporations, and as poorer men, who were more inti-
mately bound to their homes by the ties of trade and
business, received a daily allowance from those by whom
they were elected. This allowance was at first subject
to great fluctuation. Thus, in the year 1296, the repre-
sentatives of London already received the then exorbitant
sum of ten shillings daily ; and until the time of Edward
III. each knight was paid four shillings daily, and every
burgher two shillings, a scale of payment which was
adhered to till the eighteenth century, when the practice
of paying members was wholly done away with.

If we would inquire into the rights and duties which
appertained to Parliament in the middle ages, we must
consider the two groups separately and distinctly. When
the king was no longer able to govern solely with the

ae
98 THE PARLIAMENT IN

help of his ministers, court officials, and favourites, the
lords and prelates at first combined together to form a
species of deliberative assembly. They thus constituted
a sort of general council, conjointly with the ordinary
and permanent council of the crown, known as the Privy
Council. On this account the duties of both were
originally much the same, with this distinction, how-
ever, that the more general council, which only assembled
on special occasions, deliberated and passed resolutions,
while the more limited council was especially the depart-
ment for the administrative and executive business of the
State. The former very soon, however, began to exer-
cise a perceptible pressure on the latter, by exerting a
certain amount of supervision over its proceedings. The
recently instituted constitutional body endeavoured also
gradually but successfully to predominate over the more
ancient administrative department. There were many
of the most important matters of state, regarding which
the King’s Privy Council no longer felt itself competent
to decide on its own responsibility, and it therefore
became necessary to have recourse from time to time to
the more general council. The examination of all com-
plaints, grievances, and petitions, addressed to the
government, was in the course of time submitted to a
commission of the lords, consisting generally, as we
learn from the rolls, of one prelate, two earls, and two
barons. As the King found it advantageous to choose
his ministers and other officers of the crown from among
the influential members of the upper house, this branch
of the legislature acquired in time a share in the nomi-
nation to these important offices. It was, however,
chiefly in reference to questions of judicial administration,
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 99

as in cases of appeal from the decision of the three
great courts, that the crown began to refer to the general
council. Hence it resulted that the House of Lords
became the highest court of appeal in the land, with
power to give judgment in regard to cases of every
kind and persons of all ranks, while it moreover became
a court for judging the peers of the realm, when towards
the close of the fourteenth century, the idea of a peerage
was firmly established, and the right of sitting and
voting in the house became hereditary.

The rights and duties of the Commons were in the
meantime being specially developed in another direction.
It had, indeed, been enacted by the Great Charter that
the lesser as well as the greater barons were to have
a voice in granting extraordinary subsidies. Edward I.
had, however, so far considered the towns and boroughs
and the Commons generally, as to give them a direct
voice in the assessments of imposts, in order to remove
all pretexts for subsequent complaints of grievances ;
but even, he was soon compelled to seek their counsel
and aid in the settlement and enactment of state con-
tracts and laws. They were therefore from that time
forth summoned to attend the great national council,
ad faciendum et consentiendum, although they still con-
tinued for a long time, not merely figuratively speaking,
but in reality, to present their petitions humbly, on
their knees, after the manner of profoundly submissive
subjects. The landed proprietors who owned enormous
flocks of sheep, and the citizen class who had grown
rich in trading in wool, were especially well adapted
to give advice in reference to the proper adjustment of
the tolls, and the assessment of the taxes, which were

H2
100 THE PARLIAMENT IN

more and more needed in proportion to the increasing
requirements of the Government. They thus naturally
became the leaders in all matters connected with finan-
cial questions before they had been discussed by the
Lords and Parliament; and we find that from the time
of Henry IV. the Commons always took the initiative
in regard to money bills. No very long period of time
elapsed before they extorted the further concession that
no law was to be considered valid, either in regard to
themselves or their equals, until it had received their
concurrence. Thus, while the country had at one time
received its laws through royal edicts, or by resolutions
of the king in council, it now became imperative that
laws should, in accordance with the required consti-
tutional form, be proposed in the House of Commons,
and receive the concurrence of the Lords, and the assent
of the Crown. It is self-evident that such important
privileges as these could not have been acquired in a
short period of time, nor without much violent opposi-
tion on the part of the crown and its ministry, and even,
in individual cases, of the Church and nobility. The
history of the whole of the fourteenth century bears
witness to the amount of bitterness, strife, and confusion
which had to be allayed before these results were attained;
but, from the time of the great enactment of laws under
Edward I. to the usurpation of the throne by the house
of Lancaster, we find that notwithstanding all obstacles
and impediments, the rights of the Commons, and, con-
sequently, those of Parliament, were constantly increas-
ing. The right of voting the subsidies led, during the
warlike and costly reign of Edward III. to an inter-
ference on the part of the Commons with foreign policy ;
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 101

and during the reaction under Richard IT. it brought
about the first attempt to remove some of the abuses
of the administration, and to establish the responsibility
of the ministers of the crown. We find, also, that unre-
stricted freedom of speech was insisted upon by the
earliest speakers of the Lower House. Thus, then, the
Greater Barons became consolidated into the body of the
peers of the realm at the same time that the Lesser
Barons supplied the constituents from which the Com-
mons of England were developed. In a country where,
since the days of William the Conqueror, so many rights
and claims had become hereditary, a fixed mode of con-
ducting public business was soon established, and a
systematic routine followed in relation to the functions
and details of its several branches. Thus, by the force
of usage and precedent, all those principles on which
the two bodies of Parliament were based, soon took such
deep root, tliat neither the manifold changes of dynasty
which oceurred in the course of ages, nor the destructive
contest among members of the Upper House, nor even
the many systematically calculated attacks that have
been made on the liberties of the Commons, and of the
country at large, have been able to overthrow the
Houses of Parliament, or even to deprive them of their
privileges.

Amid all the mass of conflicting influences which
characterises the dawn of Parliament in the middle ages,
we can trace, at least externally, a tendency to consoli-
dated order. Thus, as a general rule, the assembly met
three times in the year, on the days anciently appointed
for the meeting of the courts, as they were held under
William the Conqueror, viz.: two weeks after the New
102 THE PARLIAMENT IN

Year, two weeks after Easter, and two weeks after
Michaelmas ; forty days before which periods, as required
by the great charter, the writs of summons were issued
with a clear specification of the time and place of meet-
ing. It frequently happened, however, that at the
appointed day, the number of members requisite for the
due transaction of business was not present, in conse-
quence of which the opening of the assembly had to be
deferred until the more tardy and distant members had
assembled, or in default thereof, had tendered their
excuses, or paid the required fine. It was only when
these preliminaries had been complied with, that the
meeting was opened in the presence of the King, or of
the person appointed to act in his name, and who was
almost always a Prince of the blood. The King took
his place on the throne, midway down the longer side of
the hall, while on a bench at his right hand sat the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of his pro-
vince, in the order of precedence anciently established
among them, and on his left the Archbishop of York
and his suffragans. The earls and barons were seated
in a similar order. At the foot of the throne the minis-
ters and chief justices took their places at a marble table,
with the chancellor on their right hand, and the lord
treasurer on the left. It agrees entirely with the origi-
nal character of the upper house as an enlarged council
of state, that it should meet the king in an apartment of
his own palace. Before this central group there appeared
when they were called, the knights and burghers, stand-
ing with their speaker at their head. Then the chan-
cellor, or one of the other ministers rose in his place,
and made the opening address, which, as the speaker
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 103

usually belonged to the clerical order, was for the most
part worded after the manner of an edifying sermon,
although the reasons for which the assembly had
been summoned, were in general laid down with much
clearness, and wherever the reports are extant, we find
that they throw a clear light upon the position of the
country in regard both to its home and foreign policy.
Hereupon two customary proclamations were issued by
one of the two clerks of the Parliament, in the first of
which, all persons, excepting only those empleyed on the
King’s service or on guard, were forbidden to bear arms
during the sitting of the assembly, while the other pro-
hibited all noises and sports in the neighbourhood. The
King then addressed a few words from the throne to
each one of the estates of the realm, whom he addressed
severally and individually, exhorting them to deliberate
and take counsel together conscientiously and zealously,
so that they might answer before God for their acts,
which ought all to be influenced by a desire for the
King’s honour and advantage, as well as their own.
The two Houses then proceeded to business, each
forming itself into a committee to consider and decide
upon the petitions that had been laid before them.
The Lords deliberated in the presence of the Sove-
reign, whose throne was erected either in the hall
painted in the time of Henry II., or in the apartment
of the palace at Westminster, which was known as the
Whitehall; while the Commons, knights, and burghers,
held their sittings either separately or conjointly, as the
case demanded, in the chapter-house of the abbey,
which they continued to occupy until a special place
of meeting was at a subsequent period appropriated
104 THE PARLIAMENT IN

to their use. It was a principle established by ancient
usage, that the assemblies should not be held in secret,
or in a dark place, but openly and publicly, where all
who wished might be present; and, indeed, we fre-
quently hear of the presence of indifferent and unin-
terested auditors at these meetings. The members
met at eight o’clock in the morning, and an hour earlier
on days of high festivals, in order that the whole body
might first attend Divine service. Sundays, All Saints’
Day, All Souls’ Day, and St. John the Baptist’s Day,
were the only occasions on which the assembly did not
meet. We find that other forms, which have continued
to the present day, were enforced with much strictness
from a very early period. Thus the peers kept their
seats, excepting when they wished to address the assem-
bly, when the person wishing to speak rose in his place,
and spoke in such a position that he might be heard in
all parts of the house. There was to be only one door
of entrance and of exit for all the members. The order
in which the proceedings were to be taken up was
inscribed in the Calendariwm, or order of the day’s
business. Thus it was a rule of the House, that when
the State was engaged in war, the affairs of the war were
to be first discussed, and then all other matters which con-
cerned the king, his queen, and his children; next in
order the general questions of the country were to be
considered, among which, all that related to the enact-
ment of laws was to take precedence of the rest, while
private bills were to be considered last. The granting
of the supplies demanded by government, and the con-
sideration of private petitions, closed the business of the
united Houses. No member could absent himself until
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 105

the last petition had been answered or transferred to the
mixed commission, which sat during the recess of Par-
liament. The House did not separate until after the
king, (who during the sittings could absent himself from
town only on account-of illness), had either accorded or
refused his consent to the different bills that had been
passed by the Lords and Commons. Before their final
separation the members collectively attended high mass.

It is self-evident that different Parliaments must
for a long time have varied considerably, not only in
regard to the duration and importance of their sessions,
but also in reference to the forms, in which the business
of the assembly was conducted, and which very fre-
quently underwent important modifications ; for the two
Houses of Parliament in reality constituted the theatre,
in which were enacted all the momentous events of the
true history of England and the great constitutional
struggles, which continued for many centuries to disturb
the country. The parliamentary system in its early
phases was exposed to many fierce storms, but the pillars
on which the edifice was raised have remained firm and
unshaken, and notwithstanding the many changes which
the lapse of ages has brought with it, the great national
institution still retains much of its original form, and
has hitherto victoriously bid defiance to the angry invec-
tives and fierce attacks of its bitterest fogs.
IV.

ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS TO AUSTRIA
AND PRUSSIA.

Ir would almost seem as if from the earliest periods of
historical record, the relations of Great Britain with the
Continent had assumed and retained a northern rather
than a southern direction. When the Romans were com-
pelled to evacuate the island, there arrived nations of a
northern origin, as Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, who con-
tended for, and soon successfully gained possession of the
island from the Celts. The first foreign political rela-
tions established by the conquerors reacted strongly upon
their own northern homes. For the Christian doctrines
to which the Anglo-Saxons had been converted in the
subjugated land of the Britons, were now carried by them
into Friesland, the northern and central parts of Germany,
and even beyond the boundaries which separate the
Scandinavian from the German races. The power and
magnificence of Charlemagne had irresistibly attracted to
his court the insular Saxons no less than their continental
brethren. Offa of Mercia was on friendly terms with the
Emperor as their letters testify, while Egbert, the first
founder of one united Germanic kingdom in Great Bri-
tain, had derived his liberal political views from his
intercourse with the leading men of the Emperor’s court.
AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 107

Thus when the Saxons of the Continent succeeded to
the inheritance of the universal supremacy that had hi-
therto belonged to Rome, the ancient alliance with the
kindred races who dwelt on the opposite sides of the
Channel was re-established on the closest footing. Otho
the great, by his marriage with a granddaughter of King
Alfred, cemented the first of the many matrimonial alli-
ances, which have united the royal houses of England
and Northern Germany for more than a thousand years.
It would almost seem as if that costly present of a gor-
geously illuminated Gospel, which King Athelstan re-
ceived from his brother-in-law the Emperor and his
sister, and in which their names are still inscribed, had
constituted the first link in a hitherto uninterrupted
chain of alliances. Throughout the whole of that cen-
tury of Scandinavian pillage there existed moreover a
long established and most beneficial commercial inter-
course between the Thames and the opposite German
coasts, which could not possibly have been interrupted
either under the rule of the Danish dynasties or that of
the early Norman kings.

Henry II. the first of the Plantagenets, who in his
opposition to that spirit of Romanism, by means of which
the Church endeavoured to secure to herself an undue
amount of temporal power, involuntarily sought aid from
ancient Saxon institutions, first laid the foundation of a
system of English policy in connexion with the Con-
tinent, the threads of which may be traced throughout
the whole of the century. The marriage of his daughter
to Henry the Lion, the bravest of all the Guelphic
princes, shows us the direction taken by the English do-
mestic policy in the great contest between the Emperor and
108 ENGLAND’S EARLIEST RELATIONS

the Pope, which was in fact a struggle between the prin-
ciples of a unity and a multiplicity of powers. Richard
Coeur de Lion, who, before and during his captivity in
Germany, had been involved in the political interests of
the Empire, used all his efforts to secure the nomination of
his nephew Otho to the dignity of King of Rome. When
this prince quarrelled with Rome, he made common cause
with John of England, who had his own differences to
settle with Pope Innocent III. This family compact re-
ceived a severe check at the battle of Bouvines, but never-
theless the cities of Germany, and trade generally, con-
tinued to increase in importance under the long continued
patronage of the Guelphic party. It is to this period that
the cities of Flanders, the sea trade of the Dutch and
Frisians, and the maritime ports of the Hanseatic con-
federation owe their rapid and prosperous development.
The German princes, who by the disruption of th.
Imperial union and the struggles maintained by the
reigning sovereigns with Rome, had acquired a much
greater degree of independence than they had ever before
enjoyed, now strove to outvie one another in the libera-
lity with which they offered protection and immunities of
every kind to the towns within their domains; and we
even find that the different rulers of the districts in
which maritime trade had been most rapidly developed,
were often ready to make common cause together, and it
was in this manner that England was constantly being
brought into contact and alliance with Flanders, Brabant,
Holland, Guelders, Juliers, Cologne, and Saxony. After
the fall of the Hohenstauffen family, the title of King of
Germany was botne by an English prince, the candidate
of the Guelphic party, whose strength lay chiefly in the
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 109

Rhineland and the north-western part of the Empire.
He was unable to restore the splendour of the Empire,
and the only traces of the benefits conferred by his rule
are afforded by the privileges which he granted in re-
ference to the long-established trade between Germany
and England, unless we include under that head certain
architectural improvements which may still be traced in
some of the fine cathedrals in the districts of the Rhine.
Notwithstanding the daily decline of power of the Ducal
House of Saxony, the old commercial relations with
England continued uninterrupted, no slight proof of
which was afforded by the fact, that Richard, King of
the Germans, had recourse to mountaineers from the
Hartz district to work his rich tin and copper mines in
Cornwall. This intercourse, which had been equally en-
joyed by the subjects of both countries, appears to have
been interrupted during the next generation ; for Edward
I. was the last English monarch who addressed a Duke
of Brunswick as his cousin. The rupture was, however,
only apparent, for the commercial relations between
England and Northern Germany continued to be main-
tained as heretofore, although they were no longer asso-
ciated with any one definite royal house, and notwith-
standing the attempts that were made from time to time
to break off the long continued international communion.
They were, indeed, intimately connected with the
alternate preponderance of power, and the long-lasting
struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.

When Henry II. found himself involved in a contest
with the Pope as well as with Becket, his interests and
those of Frederick Barbarossa seemed for a short time to
have been united at the meeting of the Diet at Wiirzburg,
110 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

held in the year 1165, but they were soon again as
widely separated as ever. When after the fall of the
Emperor Otho IV. the sons and grandsons of Henry the
Lion failed in restoring the supremacy of their house in
the Empire, and when the subdivision of their Saxon pa-
trimony even endangered their position in Germany,
England began, during the long and weak reign of
Henry IIL, to seek protection against France by entering
into some other alliance, on the stability of which it
might rely. Thus in the year 1225, the English govern-
ment for the first time made cordial advances towards
the imperial house of the Hohenstauffen, who had ac-
quired a firm footing in Southern Germany, and esta-
blished its power both over the Empire and Italy.
Notwithstanding the long and wearisome negotiations
that were entered into by the ambassadors of both coun-
tries at Cologne, Ulm, and Frankfort, the treaty was
broken off in consequence of the decided leaning evinced
by Frederick II. towards a French alliance. The murder
of Engelbert I. Archbishop of Cologne, who had been
the most influential intercessor with the Pope and Em-
peror in favour of Henry III., seems also to have been
the means of suddenly breaking off the negotiations that
had been begun by this remarkable embassy. Ten years
later, however, when the position of the Emperor Fre-
derick had been essentially altered, he formed an alliance
with Henry, which terminated in his marriage with Isa-
bella, the sister of the English monarch. This marriage
opened a prospect of a new and more brilliant alliance—
the material results of which might have essentially be-
nefited the districts of Southern Germany. The bitter
contest which the Emperor had waged against Rome soon,
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 111

however, burst forth with renewed violence, and although
his weakminded brother-in-law did not withhold his
submissive advice by letter, he did not venture to afford
him any more tangible proof of his support. The idea
of forming a strong coalition against the temporal supre-
macy of the Popes was a question of policy, which the
English had not yet been able to master, and the Crown,
which was just then involved in bitter dissensions
with Parliament, following the example of King John,
appealed for counsel to the Court of Rome, which had
adroitly contrived to uphold the opinions of the Guelphic
party. Another cause of the decline of cordiality be-
tween the two sovereigns may have been the loss of
(Queen Isabella, who had died in giving birth to her se-
cond child. Some ten years afterwards, the power of
the Hohenstauffen family was completely crushed, and
the sons and grandsons of Frederick had sought and
found a grave for themselves and their house on Italian
ground, but still the policy of the Ghibelline party met
with no sympathy in England.

It happened singularly enough, however, that the
prince whom the English government had been most
disposed to acknowledge as the successor of the lately
deceased Richard of Cornwall in the German empire,
was actually the representative of the Ghibelline
claims. Alonzo the Tenth of Castile, surnamed the
Wise, whose mother was a daughter of King Philip of
Suavia, had once been elected by the dissentient princes
of the empire in opposition to Richard, and on that
occasion he had vainly endeavoured to gain the support
and approval of his ally, Henry III. of England.
When, however, that monarch and his brother Richard
112 ENGLAND’S EARLIEST RELATIONS

were both dead, and the shrewd and politic young King
Edward I. had ascended the English throne, his pros-
pects assumed a more favourable aspect. He was,
moreover, the brother-in-law of Edward, who had mar-
ried his sister Eleanor of Castile. As soon as the
young King and his consort had returned home from
the Crusades, a meeting was speedily arranged between
Eleanor and her brother, which took place in a small
village at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the year 1273,
when it is probable that the affairs of the German
empire were made the subjects of discussion.

In the meantime, however, the German princes had
on the 29th of September of the same year, elected
the Suabian Count Rudolf of Hapsburg as their king.
In the following spring, Pope Gregory X. expressed
himself in favour of this prince at the council of Lyons,
where he entirely repudiated the claims of the Castilian
monarch. In the following year, however, Edward
strongly advocated the cause of his brother-in-law with
the Pope, who had been his companion in the Crusades,
urgently entreating him to acknowledge his right to the
German crown. He at that time still addressed Alonzo
as King of the Romans, promising him aid both with
counsel and men in his struggle with Rudolf, whom he
designated as the ‘‘ Count of Alemannia.”

Scarcely a year had elapsed, however, before very
different feelings were entertained towards this prince in
England. It has frequently been lamented that foreign
historians make scarcely any mention of Rudolf, but in
as far as England is concerned, the remark is not appli-
cable, for the annals of the times and numerous state
papers afford sufficient evidence of the attention with
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 113

which public affairs in Germany were watched, more
especially at the period of Rudolf’s first accession to
power. In the year 1276, King Edward had already
begun to make overtures of friendship to him. Their
interests perhaps may have coincided in relation to those
portions of the south-east of France, over which, as the
remains of the ancient kingdom of Burgundy, the Ger-
man empire probably still retained well-grounded claims
of suzerainship. Rudolf’s patrimonial estates were
situated in Alsace, and extended as far as the Jura
chain, through the district which was subsequently
known as Switzerland. Although Edward I. owned a
less extensive territory in Languedoc than his ancestors
Henry IL. and Richard I. had possessed, whose influence
had extended as far as the kingdom of Arles, he was
closely connected with this district through family ties,
for his mother was the daughter of a Count of Provence,
and he was the nephew and cousin of the Counts of
Savoy. Whatever the cause may have been, we at all
events find these two princes suddenly engaged in the
most eager diplomatic relations without giving a thought
to Alonzo of Castile; the subject of these negotiations
being nothing less than the settlement of a matrimonial
alliance between two members of the numerous progeny,
with which the royal houses of Plantagenet and Haps-
burg were then blessed.

It would appear that the first idea of this marriage
must have originated with Queen Anne, the consort of
Rudolf; for when, at a somewhat later period, English
ambassadors were accredited to the court of the German
King, we find that they were expressly instructed to
thank the queen more particularly for this happy

I
114 ENGLAND’S EARLIEST RELATIONS

suggestion. It happened that Bishop Henry of Basle
was at Vienna at this period, and as he had always
stood high in Rudolf’s confidence, he together with the
imperial notary Andrew of Bode, Provost of Werden,
received in September, 1277, full powers to settle this
business in England, and to bring it as speedily as pos-
sible to a happy conclusion. The plan arranged was
that Rudolf’s son, Hartmann, Count of Hapsburg and
Kyburg, and Landgrave of Alsatia, whose earlier
bethrothal with Cunigunda, a daughter of the Bohemian
King Ottocar, had been dissolved by the latter, was to
be affianced to King Edward’s daughter Joan; and
we see by the many marks of favour shown to these
ecclesiastics, how readily and eagerly the English
monarch had met their advances; while he lost no time
in sending a representative to the German court, in the
person of Gerard of Grandison, Bishop of Verdun.
The negotiations advanced so rapidly, that the prelimi-
nary compact was concluded in London as early as the
2nd of January, 1278; while the ceremony of betrothal
was settled for the next festival of the Birth of the Virgin
Mary, (September 8th,) unless the English emissaries,
who were just then about to start for Germany, should
fix on a more convenient time.

These ambassadors were charged to express on the
part of Edward the most grateful willingness to agree
to the proposed stipulations, at the same time that they
were commissioned to announce his intention of giving
his daughter a dowry of 10,000 marks; while he
would be satisfied if the young prince Hartmann were
on his side to present his bride with a nuptial gift of
£2,000, and if he owned hereditary property to the
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 115

value of £10,000. He wished further that in consi-
deration of the tender age of the princess, Hartmann
would first come to England, as his daughter, who
had been named Joan of Acre, from the place of her
birth, was not yet six years of age, having been born
during the Crusade in the spring of 1272, and was
still under the care of her grandmother, the widowed
Queen Joan of Castile. The ambassadors were further
enjoined to secure a promise, that in case Rudolf
obtained the imperial crown, Hartmann should succced
him as King of Germany; while they were directed
carefully to observe the young man, and to gain what-
ever information they could obtain in regard to his
natural disposition and general habits. A special clause
recommended that they should endeavour to acquire
trustworthy information in respect to his property, and
the value of the land which he held in fief.

The conferences of the plenipotentiaries at Vienna
were so successful that a definite promise was obtained
from King Rudolf that he would make every sacrifice
to ensure that his son Hartmann should, with the con-
currence of the princes of the empire, obtain the king-
dom of Arles; and he further expressed his intention of
letting his son assume the title of King of the Romans
as soon as he himself became Emperor of Germany, as
he intended to reserve for his first-born son, Albert, the
far more secure acquisition of the Austrian territories.
He moreover pledged himself that the nuptial gift to be
presented to the august Lady Joan should be augmented
in proportion as his son’s property and influence in-
creased. Ten days later he confirmed all that his
envoys had promised in his name, and he and his

12
116 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

Queen Anne, both declared themselves perfectly satis-
fied with the time appointed for the betrothal. On this
occasion a remarkable document was drawn up, in
which it was stipulated that the bride of his son should
receive from the hereditary patrimony of the king a
yearly income of one thousand silver marks as a mar-
riage-dowry, together with an assignment of the sum of
1,000 marks on various of his strongholds, and other
properties, according to the valuation that had been
made by the Bishops of Verdun, Basle, and Lausanne,
who were well adapted for the management of business
of this nature. This settlement referred to a portion of
the old possessions of the house of Hapsburg, and
included the castle of Lenzburg, with the manors of
Vilmeringen, Sur and its appendages, the towns of
Arau and Mellingen, the castles of Casteln and Wil-
lisau, the towns of Sempach and Sursee, the bailiwick
of Miinster, the town of Zug with the manor and office
appertaining to it; the valley of Aegeri, the valley of
Schwitz with the estates of Kiburg and Froburg and
its appendages; the manor of Art and its farms; and,
with few exceptions, the whole of Argau, as it had been
held by Count Hartmann the younger, of Kiburg, by
the king’s father, Albert, and his cousin, Count Ever-
hard of Hapsburg, with all the arable and waste lands,
ways and commons, meadows and waters, and with all
the rights and privileges thereto appertaining. The
ordinary provisions in case of the premature death of
either of the parties was added, and the document
confirmed, not only by the bishops present, and some
other spiritual and secular dignitaries, but also by
Rudolf and his sons, Albert and Hartmann. After the
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 117

receipt of this contract, King Edward likewise settled
10,000 marks as a nuptial-gift on his daughter, who
continued henceforward to reside with her parents in
England.

Public affairs would probably have assumed a very
different character if the two noble princes had been
able, without delay, satisfactorily to carry out the views
which they entertained in reference to the restoration of
the kingdom of Arles. The English monarch had in-
deed received from his new ally the requisite authority
for helping to settle the differences which had broken
out between Rudolf and the Count of Savoy. But
who can decide whether Rudolf’s schemes were
directed with the view of benefiting the empire or his
own dynasty? He was, at any rate, soon afterwards
compelled to enter upon his great campaign against
Bohemia, whose haughty monarch had thwarted him in
many ways, and had further irritated him by sending
his daughter, the first-betrothed of Prince Hartmann, to
aconvent. On the 26th of August Ottocar was defeated,
and lost his life on the field of battle, after which the
head of the house of Hapsburg took possession of his
kingdom. These events were certainly the means of de-
laying the final settlements of the English stipulations,
although King Edward was not bebindhand in the ex-
pression of friendly sympathy and satisfaction at the
news of the great victory. An English book of the
household expenses of the palace contains a notice of the
arrival at the Court of Westminster of Rudolf’s King-at-
Arms, Herthelm, who had been despatched to announce
these tidings; and we find that this person, as well as
a musician and another herald of the King of Germany,
118 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

were both handsomely remunerated on Sunday, the
30th of October.

On the 8th of November Edward wrote to the Bishop
of Verdun to express his joy at the triumph of his royal
ally, for which he has offered up his thanks to the
Almighty. The bishop, it would appear, had advised
the king himself to write to Rudolf, and this, he says, he
would most assuredly have done had not the news of the
victory been made so universally known by the German
messenger, that it was no longer worth while to write
about it. Then the bishop is again urgently entreated
to lend a helping hand to bring about the marriage
without delay. In another letter of the same date, he
begs that, as Rudolf is going to send his son forthwith
to England, the bishop, who has contributed so much
to obtain these happy results, will not fail to be pre-
sent at the wedding. He is most anxious, he says, to
consult him in regard to the value of the landed property
that has been assigned to Hartmann and his future con-
sort, and regarding which he, strangely enough, has as
yet received no information, although, as he adds, he by
no means feels any uneasiness on that account.

On the same day he writes to inform his future son-in-
law that, in compliance with the wishes of his august
father, he sends him the letters of safe conduct which he
has obtained for him from Philip III. King of France.
He begs, therefore, that Prince Hartmann will at once
inform him of the time of his approaching arrival, that
he may, on the appointed day, send some of his officers
to meet him at Witsand, on the coast of French Flan-
ders, and thus provide him with an honourable retinue,
worthy of his dignity.
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 119

It is probable that Bishop Gerard wrote to excuse
himself, for there is a letter extant in which the king
expresses his regret that illness and other pressing cir-
cumstances should have prevented the bishop from pay-
ing his hoped-for visit to England. The Bishop of Basle
has given him information that he is awaiting the arrival
of the English messengers in his diocese, but there had,
unfortunately, been some error of form in their creden-
tials, which had obliged them to send home for further
instructions. At the end of that year Bishop Gerard died.

It happened, moreover, that notwithstanding the sin-
cere endeavours on the part of Edward to effect a satis-
factory understanding between the parties, the feud with
Savoy was protracted from year to year on account of
the unjust usurpation of several estates belonging to
the empire. Edward had family interests in the same
quarter, for Margareta, the widow of St. Louis of
France, a sister of his mother, and a near relative of
the Count, had written, urgently entreating the king to
secure peace before he thought of this marriage, while
Eleanor, the Queen Dowager, informs him that she has
heard that there is a project for concluding a marriage
between Rudolf’s daughter, Clementia, and a grandson
of the King of Sicily, an alliance which she thinks will
prove detrimental to her hereditary rights in Provence.
She therefore begs that her son will write to Rudolf, in
order that the latter may confirm her claims before any-
thing further is done. Edward had already exerted
himself on her behalf in Germany, but she seems after
this to have dropped her pretensions for a time, and it
is only in the year 1282 that she again reverts to the
subject in a letter, addressed to her royal son.
120 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

The obstacles on King Rudolf’s side were still
apparently due to the various successful campaigns in
which he had for a long time been almost incessantly
engaged in the eastern parts of his realm. He could not
even spare the retinue which he must have given his son
for his marriage-journey to England. There is nothing,
therefore, to justify the assumption that the German
King had endeavoured, from dishonest and bad motives,
arising from the still pending difficulties with Savoy, to
postpone, or even wholly to prevent the marriage. It
would rather appear as if the young Prince Hartmann,
who was to inherit this Swiss territory, and who had
already been designated as King of Burgundy, had
himself taken the field against Count Philip. We find
among the English State papers belonging to that period
some documents which give us a certain insight into the
character and motives of this young prince. Thus, for
instance, he once addressed a letter to King Edward,
whom he designates as his father and lord, and whom
he thanks with sincere filial respect for all the goodness
he had shown him in promoting his marriage, promising
that he will endeavour to become more and more worthy
of the king’s parental care, and more loving and obedi-
ent towards him. It is in conformity with an order of
his father that, on the day of his writing, viz. the
10th of September, he is to go with his brother to
Austria, where it is to be hoped the latter may be
elevated to the rank of duke. He expects to return by
All-Saints’ Day, and he will then anxiously await the
arrival of the messengers, who are to be sent from
England to meet him at Basle. His tutor, the Master
Peter, who is probably the writer of this very bombastic
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 121

and incorrectly expressed letter—for the landgrave must
have been a mere boy at this time—had been instructed
to explain this matter more fully by word of mouth to
the King of England.

Edward, whose impatience could no longer be con-
cealed, probably received by the hands of the same
messenger a very explicit letter from the Bishop of
Basle, in which the writer endeavours in various ways
to excuse Prince Hartmann’s protracted delay. He
writes, that being mindful of the words which Edward
himself had repeated to his consort Eleanor, on the
occasion of the signing of the contract of betrothal, by
which they declared that they confided their daughter
Joan, not so much.to the young Prince Hartmann as
to him, the Bishop holds himself solemnly pledged to
bring this business to a satisfactory conclusion. He
had, therefore, on more than one occasion earnestly en-
treated the young prince to betake himself to his father,
and urge him to put him in possession of the hereditary
property that had been assigned to him. Prince Hart-
mann believed that he would return to Vienna about
All-Saints’ Day, when he thought he should be able to
give the English Ambassadors a reply which would be
perfectly satisfactory to their master. The Bishop ex-
plains to Edward that the first delay which prevented
the fulfilment of Prince Hartmann’s visit to England
was owing to illness, the second to a number of pressing
engagements, while the third, he allows, was due to lazi-
ness and carelessness. The latter could not, therefore, be
so easily excused, but still the Bishop hopes that the king,
whose sound and mature judgment is the admiration of
the whole world, will not on this account withhold from
122 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

him, as his faithful servant, his future good will. He
would rather have been deprived for two years or more
of his diocese, or even of the favour of King Rudolf,
than deceive the royal English lady in this matter. He
would himself most willingly have come to England,
had he not been heavily burdened with debts since
the campaign against the king of Bohemia; and he,
moreover, is afraid that his royal lord and master may
need his services in his contests with Hungary, whose
prince has contumaciously set himself in opposition to
the Romish Church and the Catholic Faith.

At this stage of the proceedings, when there was a
cessation of warlike operations during the winter season,
the unexpected and most sudden death of Prince Hart-
mann put a stop to all further discussions. On the
Tuesday before Christmas-day, the 21st of December,
1281, the young landgrave, who was only eighteen years
of age, had embarked at the fortress of Breisach on the
Rhine, intending to go down the river to meet his
father. A thick fog soon closed in around them, and
the boatmen having got out of their course, the vessel
struck near Rheinau against an overhanging tree,
and was instantly capsized, when Prince Hartmann
with most of his retinue found a watery grave. This
mournful intelligence was carried, with all speed by
a messenger, whose name is not given, to the king of
England, in order that he might not be ignorant of the
event when he answered the letter, which he had shortly
before received from Rudolf.

With this catastrophe all matrimonial plans natur-
ally came to an end. King Rudolf, who was deeply
affected by the death of his son, did not write again to
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 123

Edward until the 17th of August, 1282, when he excuses
his long silence on the ground of his grief for the severe
loss he had sustained. He assures him, however, re-
peatedly, that this event shall not sever the bonds of
friendship by which they have hitherto been united ; and
we do, in fact, meet with several proofs of the friendly
and political relations that were maintained between
the two monarchs.

In one instance Edward intercedes with the King of
the Romans on behalf of a Rhenish knight, who has
not been able to obtain a fief which he expected, and
shortly afterwards we learn that the property in ques-
tion has been made over to him. On another occasion,
strange to say, the mediation refers to Castile, which
was at that time disturbed by Sancho’s insurrection
against his feeble father, Alonzo. In a letter, addressed
by the young prince to Edward, he announces that he
is aspiring to the honour of forming an alliance with
a daughter of the German king, and at a subsequent
period we find the English monarch interceding with
Rudolf to secure a free passage through Germany for
Alonzo’s ambassador, Gonzalvo Rodriguez.

The differences with Savoy were now about to be
finally adjusted, for it would appear that Edward did
not prosecute the business of mediating between the
two parties with thorough earnestness until after the
death of Prince Hartmann. He now despatched a
special embassy, at the head of which stood Otho of
Grandison, a relative of the bishop of Verdun, and a
man who took an active share in all the diplomatic
negotiations of Edward's reign, and who ultimately
became the founder of one of the noble families of
124 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

England. Bishop Henry of Basle had been entrusted
with the management of the negotiations on behalf of
Rudolf, but when peace was finally concluded in July,
1283, both parties turned to the wealthy king of
England, entreating him to reward with the gift of
some rich benefices the services of certain ecclesiastical
agents, who had distinguished themselves by their
unwonted zeal in the cause of their employers.

In a few months war again broke out, and Rudolf
advanced in person against Peterlingen. To this
period we must probably refer a letter addressed to
Edward by Philip, in which the latter praises his
nephew and thanks him heartily for his long continued
endeavours to effect a reconciliation, while he, at the
same time most bitterly complains that Otho of
Gyrandison had not received an audience from Rudolf,
who had absolutely made an incursion into the territory
of Savoy, and began to devastate the country with
fire and sword. The Count can see no escape from his
impending fate, unless Edward will hasten to his aid,
and assist him with the strong arm of his power. But
about the end of the following December, before the
English monarch could afford the assistance which his
uncle sought, the two contending princes seem to have
found a way of settling their affairs between themselves
without his intervention.

During the latter years of Rudolf’s life, the evidences
of the intimate relations that had so long subsisted
between these two sovereigns, became less and less
frequent, and seem to have been limited to questions on
which the interests of Germany and England will always
be most closely united. In the differences between the
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 125

Wendish principalities and cities, and Brandenburg,
Rudolf had shown himself inclined to favour the in-
terests, which were represented by the city of Lubeck.
and thus we find him on one occasion interceding
with Edward in favour of the Lubeck owners of certain
cargoes that had been confiscated in England, in accor-
dance with the laws of flotsam and wreck. In a letter
treating of more important matters, and bearing the
date of 1285, he again advocates the cause of the
Lubeckers and their Hanseatic allies against King
Eric of Norway, surnamed the priest-hater, who had
taken strong measures against the German mercantile
towns, which threatened to put an end to their trade
with Scandinavia. Rudolf and the Hanseatic towns
were anxious to secure assistance from Edward, and
hoped that he would be induced to forbid all exportation
from England to Norway, and thus compel the Nor-
wegian monarch to yield to their demands. This is
the last letter extant addressed by Rudolf to Edward.
If the death of Hartmann had contributed to weaken
the peculiar alliance that the English had formed with
the powers of southern Germany, the inconsiderable
interests of the House of Hapsburg in the northern part
of the empire were inadequate to cement such stable
alliances as those which the Guelphs and other princes
in the north-west of Germany had been able to form
with the Plantagenets and their territories. Very
different and very much more varied were the relations
which existed during the short reign of Adolphus of
Nassau. King Albert, the ally of Philip le Bel of
France, on behalf of whom we find him concluding
peace with England, could not possibly be on very
126 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

friendly terms with Edward. Only on one occasion
do we hear of an ambassador being sent by him to
England, and we may well question, whether it ever
had been the earnest wish of Rudolf to set aside this
first-born of his house in favour of the prematurely
deceased Prince Hartmann, and by nominating the
latter his successor in the Empire, thus to promote the
establishment of an European combination, such as was
meditated by the projected matrimonial alliance between
the houses of Hapsburg and Plantagenet.

After this, more than a hundred years passed before
any member of the Hapsburg family was again placed at
the head of the German empire. The international rela-
tions during the reign of the Bavarian and the Luxem-
burg dynasty deserve special consideration. It was
not until the House of York had been connected by the
ties of friendship and marriage with the Burgundian
Dukes, and when the first of the Tudors had made
common cause with Maximilian I, that the families ma-
nifested any disposition to resume their former relations
of amity; but notwithstanding these friendly dispositions,
the marriage of King Philip II. of Spain with Mary of
England was the only matrimonial alliance that was
ever concluded between the English royal family, and
the House of Hapsburg. It was no bond of affinity,
no similarity of spiritual and material interests, -but
exclusively the promptings of State policy, that could at
remote periods, unite the destinies of Austria with
those of the British Islands. _

Essentially different are the germs and subsequent
development of those relations, which were formed, even
in ancient times, between England and Prussia. Until
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 127

recent days, we hear of no matrimonial alliances between
these two powerful dynasties, nor of any attempt to
combine in one common policy in relation to the rest
of Europe. There is, indeed, no want of personal
goodwill, but it results for the most part only from
affinity of race, and the intimate intercourse which
has always subsisted between the people of both coun-
tries. The circumstance, that the original territories
of the Prussian monarch are situated in northern Ger-
many, and that the immigration of Low Saxons drew
the Slavo-Lettish districts into more extended relations
of trade and social intercourse, connected the lands of
the Baltic, by means of their commercial relations, closer
with the Saxon population of England. The towns of
the North German Hanseatic league, even before they
had entered into that confederation which subsequently
acquired a world-wide renown, were the means of
keeping up the threads of intercourse with those Saxons
who had emigrated to the British Island; they had like-
wise a distinguished share in the German colonization of
the countries of the Baltic. It is worthy of notice, that
it was from these towns that the formation of the Order
of Teutonic knights was destined to originate. It was
merchants from Bremen and Lubeck, who first pitched
their canvass tents beneath the walls of Acre, and
extended to German pilgrims the blessings of shelter,
safety, and comfort, amid the heat and pestilence of an
eastern climate. At the very point where the energy
of the Crusaders culminated, a German brotherhood had
dedicated itself to the Virgin Mary, and drawn together
the remains of a German hospital, which for seventy
years had lingered on at Jerusalem, surrounded by
128 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

difficulties and obstacles of every kind. Thus, then,
a crying evil was remedied, for while the knights of
St. John devoted themselves more especially to the care
and protection of Italian pilgrims, and the Templars to
those of France, there had been no similar corporation
of a semi-spiritual and semi-warlike character, which
advocated the cause and cherished the interest of the
great Germanic nation. This Order was never destined,
however, to attain any great degree of prosperity, com-
pared with its older and more powerful associates. This
may perhaps have been occasioned by the fact, that in
the Crusades of the western nations to Palestine, people
of Romanized descent were far more numerously repre-
sented than the purely German tribes. Indeed, this
new Order, in addition to the Emperor and some few
German princes, had probably no patrons, unless we
except the Pope. Richard Coeur de Lion, under whom
the knights of St. John and the Templars began to lay
the foundation of their noble possessions in England,
appears to have been unfavourable to the Teutonic
knights; but although they never acquired actual pro-
perty in the English territories, they were destined in
the course of time to enter into much closer relations
with England, than the more specially Romanist
orders.

We must seek the explanation of this fact in their
energetic colonization of the north-eastern districts of
Germany, in the settlement of the Teutonic knights
in Europe, and the intimate connexion which existed
between their admirable grand master, Hermann von
Salza, and the Emperor Frederick II. Similar con-
federations, half clerical, half chivalrous, had already
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 129

arisen, as the champions of Germanism in Moravia and
Prussia, but they soon sank under the weight of the task
which they had undertaken, until the year 1227, when
a considerable portion of the knights of this Teutonic
Order had been called upon under their master, Her-
mann von Balk, to afford their assistance against the
Prussians. Salza, however, understood how to promote
the interests of all his subjects by his clever and efficient
pleadings with the Emperor. He had made himself in-
dispensable to Frederick by his energetic devotion in the
hard struggle with Gregory IX., and had shown himself
a true mediator between the two contending heads of
Christendom ; and after having taken an active share, as
a prince of the empire, in the most important affairs of
Germany, he now, from his position at the imperial court,
directed the transference of his Order from the Holy
Land to the inhospitable shores of the Baltic—an event
which has proved of most momentous import in its results
to future ages. Hermann bore the reputation of being
a true statesman and a skilful diplomatist, well versed in
the reciprocal relations of the different rulers and states
of Europe; but it is perhaps less well known, that he
was on one occasion accredited as an ambassador at the
court of Henry III. of England, at the time when the
Emperor was seeking the hand of a princess of the royal
house of Plantagenet. He, in common with the cele-
brated Peter de Vigny, went to the English Court to
settle the marriage of the Emperor with Isabella in the
year 1235, on which occasion he was not only received
in the most honourable manner, as beseemed his rank
and services, but he very probably at the same time pro-
cured the donation of that annual stipend of forty marks,
K
130 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

which for more than a hundred years afterwards was
regularly paid from the treasury at Westminster to the
Teutonic knights in Prussia, in aid of their labours.
The English sympathies in favour of this order were
no doubt cherished and encouraged by Richard, Earl of
Cornwall, both in his capacity of Crusader and King of
‘the Romans, and still more by Edward L, who himself
took part in the last attempts that were made to save to
Christendom the Syrian stronghold of Acre, and who,
throughout all his life, upheld the cause of the Cross
with a genuine spirit of chivalry, in all the encounters
that took place with the followers of the Crescent.
During the reign of these monarchs, the old bonds that
had once united the German cities and the Teutonic
knights were more closely drawn. The colonization
from Bremen and Lubeck had a special influence on the
increase of the acquisitions of the Cross, Danzic, Elbing,
and other Hanseatic emporiums of trade, were rising into
prosperity in the Prussian territories, and although dif-
ferences were not wanting with the recently established
Order, more particularly in regard to the monopolies in
trade, granted to the mother-cities, their interests were in
the main identical, especially in regard to their foreign
policy, and most of all, perhaps, to their relations with
England. The great privileges which had been granted
by Henry ITI. and Edward I. were soon shared in by the
trading subjects of the Grand Masters, Hartmann von
Heldrungen, and Conrad von Feuchtwangen. And
whatever slight dissensions there may have been among
them, we find that the Prussians and the people of the
Hanseatic towns were, except on rare occasions, always
firmly united together when they met in London, where
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 131

they were all included runder the general term of the
« Kasterlings.”

It was not until the fourteenth century, when the
middle classes had begun to assert their freedom in
England, and when English merchants and English
maritime trade were beginning to compete with the com-
merce of every other part of the known world, that the
want of relation was first keenly felt, which existed be-
tween the great privileges which the Hanseatic traders
had managed to acquire for themselves in foreign lands,
and the suspicious distrust which they showed to all
foreigners who attempted to take part in the monopoly
of the Baltic trade. The English naturally desired to
possess similar rights to those which they granted to
others in their own seas, and they had already for some
time established emporiums on the coast of Norway,
and had, in common with the other Hanseatic traders,
acquired the right in Scania of fishing over a certain
extent of water, and of salting their herrings on shore.
From these unequal privileges arose those differences,
which lasted beyond the middle ages, and which have
not a little contributed to the downfall of the Hanseatic
Confederation. The Prussian cities occupied in the mean-
time a remarkable position, in being dependent, on the
one hand, on Lubeck, as one of its colonies, while on
the other hand, they recognised the Grand Master and
the Order of the Teutonic knights as their feudal chiefs.
The interests of both parties were necessarily some-
times at variance; for while the Hanseatic League de-
sired to come to an understanding with England, the
Order, at any rate as long as it was at the height
of its prosperity, was anxious to be the head of a

K2
182 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

perfectly independent policy,*even in regard to the
British dominions.

This complication of interests rose to a dangerous
height at a time when England, after having long
enjoyed the advantages of the far-sighted policy of the
brilliant reign of Edward III., fell under the rule of
Richard I., whose incapacity and minority helped to
undermine his throne on every side, whilst Prussia in the
meanwhile was under the sway of the renowned Winrich
von Kniprode. These two princes undoubtedly ex-
changed civilities and presents of every kind, the one
sending his royal friend beautiful falcons, and the other
reciprocating with the gift of costly stuffs: but the inter-
course between their subjects was soon sensibly affected,
chiefly through those disturbances of government by
which England was then distracted. The authorities
in that country took advantage of the state of passing
events to raise the duties on foreign trade, and to
lay an unjust embargo upon goods coming from the
Hanseatic towns, while the common seamen, incited by
a genuine English hatred of foreigners, sought every
opportunity of picking a quarrel with the Hanseatic
traders or the Prussians in the ports where they met,
whether at home or abroad, going not unfrequently to
the length of robbery and murder. It was, therefore,
decided at a meeting of the Council at Lubeck, in the
year 1379, that all relations of trade should be suspended
until the old condition of things was re-established. The
consequence was that every article of English produce
in the Baltic had an embargo laid upon it, while the trade
with Prussia, where indeed there had always been most
ground for complaint, was entirely suspended for several
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 133

years. The noble Grand Master remained firm and
unshaken in his policy, although he lost no opportunity
of trying to impress better principles on the King of
England, his uncle the Duke of Lancaster, and the civic
authorities of London. His suecessor, Conrad Zéllner
von Rotenstein followed in his footsteps, so that. the
merchants on both sides were doomed to feel most
sensibly the evils of this suspension of trade. Attempts
were, however, made in the year 1385 to arrive at
more comprehensive arrangements by means of negotia-
tions, and the English were the first to draw up a series
of complaints; while the Prussians, less disposed to
adopt conciliatory measures than the Hanseatic traders,
who hoped to effect a compact on the ground of their
ancient privileges, advanced many countercharges of
their own. Until the English would agree to bring
their woollen stuffs under less limited conditions to the
Elbing market, the exportation to England of the most
important Baltic products, such as corn, wood, tar, and
potash, was strictly forbidden. It was not till the year
1388 that any understanding was arrived at, when
the Hanseatic towns and the English traders having
found these disturbances of trade perfectly intolerable,
both parties saw themselves obliged to make common
cause against similar proceedings in Flanders. At
length, on the 21st of August, a new treaty of com-
merce was signed at Marienburg between England and
Prussia, in which provision was made for compensation
for all the inconveniences that had been suffered, for
the adjustment of further differences by legal measures,
and for the continuance of the unmolested intercourse
which had formerly existed. The advantages of the
134 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS

monopoly remained entirely on the side of the East
Germans, as long as the Steel-Yard in London main-
tained its extraordinary privileges, and it needed all the
violent disturbances of the fifteenth century, when the
Order fell under the power of Poland, and England had
been almost destroyed in the wars of the Roses, before
the relations of commerce could be thoroughly and
effectively remodelled.

Before these ‘measures could be effected, however, a
peculiar intercourse of another kind had been established
between the two countries. The support which England
had afforded, from the days of Hermann von Salza, in the
Crusades against the heathens, had never been entirely
suspended ; but had, on the contrary, received a new and
more animated impulse after the cessation of the Cru-
sades in the Hast, and was now directed towards the
opposite ends of Europe, both against the Moors in
Spain and the Lithuanians in Prussia. English knights
and lords, in the fulfilment of their vows, or to satisfy
their thirst for adventures, followed the same routes and
traversed the same districts which had been long trodden
by their mercantile countrymen in the prosecution of their
commercial undertakings. The pleasant sketch that
Chaucer has drawn of the knight of those days shows
how much it was then the fashion to go forth on such
expeditions to Prussia, and how familiar the use of
certain words connected with German travel had be-
come; for the poet says—

“Ful often tyme he hadde the bord bygonne
Aboven alle naciouns in Pruce.
In Lettowe hadde he reysed and in Ruce.”
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 135

Richard II. when he endeavoured to come to some
arrangement with the Grand Master of the Teutonic
knights, expressly refers to this fact, and says it ought
to be remembered with gratitude, that many English
knights and squires, without heeding the risk to life
and property which they incurred, have at all times
been ready and willing to help the German knights
in their contests with the unbelievers.

No sooner had these commercial difficulties been
removed, than the English began to resort to the country
even more frequently than of old. <A prince of the
royal blood, the eldest son of John, Duke of Lancaster,
who was then known as the Earl of Derby, and who
subsequently raised himself to the throne as the first of
a new dynasty, headed an expedition of this kind in the
year 1390. He may perhaps have been !ed to the idea
by the example set by his maternal grandfather, Henry,
Duke of Lancaster, who had gone to Prussia in 1352 ;
certain it is that throughout the whole of his life, this
prince showed a strong inclination to fight as a soldier
of the Cross; he may also very probably have found it
expedient to absent himself for a time from home, as he
had already begun to take a part in the political oppo-
sition that had been raised against the misrule of his
cousin Richard II. Whatever his reasons may have
been, the prince, as we learn from his own circum-
stantial diary of the expenses of his journey, undoubtedly
left England during the summer of that year, and em-
barked at the head of several hundred men, including
knights and soldiers, on board some Prussian vessels,
reaching Danzic on the 10th of August, where he pro-
cured the equipments and supplies necessary to enable
136 ENGLAND’S EARLIEST RELATIONS

him to reach Kénigsberg with all possible speed.
From thence he was to proceed under the guidance of
Engelhard Rabe, the Marshal of the Order, against
Lithuania, which had been allied with Poland; the
object of the expedition being to reinstate the banished
Duke Witowd. They now only waited for the arrival
of the foreign volunteers from Germany, France, and
England, and when all were assembled, the baggage and
supplies were sent by ship along the Haff, while the
knights and their retinue set forth in the latter end of
August, through the desolate districts of Kau on the
Memel, where they appear to have had a hot engage-
ment with the enemy on Saturday, the 27th. The
fortress of Wilna was beleaguered all thé month of Sep-
tember, until the bad season of the year brought the
campaign to a close without any special result. The
English Earl returned to Konigsberg on the 20th of
October, and we learn from accounts which he had to
settle there for the transport and keep of his men,
that at least one of his men had been killed in battle,
that three youths, the sons of a Lithuanian nobleman,
had fallen into the hands of the English prince, and
that two Prussian knights were by order of their
Marshal in attendance upon the Earl.

Henry spent the next three or four months in
Kénigsberg, and seems to have installed himself regu-
larly there for the winter season. We find that the
interval between Christmas and the Epiphany was
spent in accordance with the English custom, in
feasting, sports, and merriment of every kind. He
would not, however, undertake a second expedition
against the heathens, but devoted several weeks to
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 137

travelling through the country. It was in the course of
this journey, in February 1391, that he passed through
Braunsberg and Elbing to Marienburg, whence he
went to Dirschau, and then down the Vistula, to
Danzic. He did not see the aged Grand Master,
Zéllner von Rotenstein, for he had died of some lingering
disease in the month of August. His successor, Conrad
von Wallenrod, was not chosen till the 12th of March,
when his election by the knights took place at Marien-
burg, and he lost no time, in accordance with the usual
custom, of making a present of several falcons to the
foreign prince, who after fighting so bravely for the
Order was now about to leave Prussia. Henry spent the
whole of March at Danzic, where he was probably
detained by illness, as we infer from an indication given
us by the keeper of his accounts, from whom we learn
other things still more worthy of notice. The Karl of
Derby’s herald had been despatched to demand from
Whladislav Jagello, the King of Poland, the restitution
of two English knights, who had fallen into his hands
during the war. An English herald also arrives with a
message from Henry’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester,
who had started in the same year on a similar crusade,
_ but who had gone no further than Norway, from whence
he had returned home; and lastly, the Earl receives the
news, through an English sea-captain, that his consort
has given birth to her fourth son, Humphrey, the future
Duke of Gloucester.

Henry spent the Easter at Danzic, on which occasion
he gave rich alms to the four principal churches of the
town, in return for which Pope Boniface IX. granted
him absolution from his vow to take part in the
138 ENGLAND’S EARLIEST RELATIONS

Crusades. Soon afterwards he embarked on his home-
ward voyage, and after having safely landed at Hull, he
hastened to his castle at Bolingbroke.

When this prince ten years afterwards became King
of England, he displayed a thorough acquaintance
with the condition of public affairs in Prussia, during
the many very complicated negotiations which arose
between his own country and the districts on the
Baltic. He was also the last prince of any repu-
tation who made a voyage to the North Sea, and on
this account special attention is due to the relations
which subsisted between Henry IV. and the Prussian
authorities.

The strong material basis of these international
relations was not therefore wholly deficient in some
elements of romance ; for the people of these two countries
were early united together, and long maintained a reci-
procal intercourse, such as Austria, from her position on
the southern boundary of Germany, where she had to
maintain a defensive attitude in respect to the Slavonic
nations, was never able to establish with regard to
England. It was not until many ages afterwards that
the bonds of a family union, which Rudolf and Edward
lad once been so anxious to cement, were united between
these royal houses; although from an early period of the
middle ages we find different ancestors of the Hohen-
zollern family, as if in anticipation of the closer union
that was to be effected at a future period between their
descendants, brought into close contact with the policy
and personal interests of the Kings of England. Thus
Burggrave Albert the Handsome, of Nuremberg, was one
of the German nobles who helped Edward III. to gain
TO AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA. 139

his splendid victories over the French; while at the
court of Henry V. and of his son Henry VI., no foreign
prince was better known than Frederick I., Elector of
Brandenburg, whose far-sighted policy had raised him

to the rank of the first politician in the Empire of
Sigismund.
Vv.

THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND KING EDWARD IIL.

Tue remarkable degree of development which the
nations of Europe attained during the fourteenth century
clearly manifests the extent to which the fate of two
nations, such as Germany and England, who are allied
by race, may differ from one another, and the points at
which the consciousness of a unity of origin may again
revive long dormant associations of affinity.

When the two brightest lights of Christendom, the
Pope and the Emperor, had begun to pale amid the dark
storms of the agitated period that had just passed, and
the brightness of the one had long dimmed that of the
other, states which had hitherto revolved like stars of
lesser magnitude round their primary planets, now neces-
sarily acquired pre-eminence and significance of their own.
France and England had successfully taken the lead in
opposing the unbounded pretensions of Rome, advanced
by Boniface VIII., and the former of these powers had
even reduced the papal chair to temporary dependence
by forcing it into a state of Babylonish exile at Avignon.
The greatest emperors of ancient times never succeeded
in effecting such a result as this. The imperial dignity
had, however, been thrown completely in the background
THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV, AND KING EDWARD IIL. 141

since the downfal of the Hohenstauffen family ; and from
the two sections which hitherto had constituted the
Empire, there now arose a number of minor divisions,
which were all striving to grasp at supreme power—and
since the death of Rudolf of Hapsburg, the choice of the
Electors had already elevated three different families in
succession to the imperial throne. The exclusive and
almost domestic policy of the Hapsburg dynasty, which
was even at that time most injurious to the entire
body of the empire, as well as the ungenial personal
character of Albert, appears to have removed the last
chance of maintaining a hereditary succession to the
imperial crown, and the Electorate body now turned
their eyes from the south-east to the west of the Empire
for a successor to the throne. But even the vigorous and
conscientious policy by which Henry VII. had been
influenced, in endeavouring to uphold his authority, was
ineffectual in securing the immediate succession to his
own dynasty. At his death an Austrian and a Luxem-
burg party were again arrayed against each other, while
the papal court, and more especially its protector, the
King of France, gave free scope to their intrigues
during this crisis of the affairs of Germany: and hence
arose that fatal double election of Frederick the Handsome
of Austria, and Louis of Bavaria. We know indeed by
what sacrifices and struggles Louis won for himself the
double kingly and imperial crown ; how he contrived to
keep down the pretensions of Austria and to check the
advances of the Luxemburg and Bohemian party ; how
correctly he estimated the idea of the empire which he
wished to restore to Italy; and how ably and adroitly
he strengthened the position of his family in the south of
142 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

Germany, by the acquisition of the northern territory of
the Marquis of Brandenburg, while at the same time he
formed far-extending family alliances in the north-west of
the Empire. But although in these respects he certainly
showed himself to be an emperor who promised to rank as
the equal of the bravest of the Hohenstauffens or Guelphs,
the still absent pope, who was dependent upon others, had
unfortunately felt irreconcileably aggrieved by his ad-
vance against Rome, while Austria and Luxemburg were
united more closely than ever with France. Louis and
his adherents therefore fell under the ban of the Church,
and were thus induced to set up a rival pope, and driven
into a schism, which could not fail to bring upon them
the ill-will of Christendom; and from that hour the life
of this otherwise brave and good prince was troubled by
many cares and sorrows. His friendships and alliances
fell away from him on every side, and when they failed
he was necessarily driven to seek support elsewhere, and
by fomenting jealousies and dissensions among his
enemies, to prevent the consolidation of any system of
firm policy on their part. Under such circumstances
the emperor could hardly fail to have recourse to despe-
rate measures, in which he was indeed met half-way by
the spirit of the times in which he lived. The principle
of the unconditional infallibility of the Popes had
suffered a bitter humiliation, for it was in their own
Italian home that the boldest voices were raised in favour
of one sole temporal ruler. Dante in his theory of state
policy had pointed to one universal emperor; Marsilius
of Padua had stood forth as the most distinguished writer
in support of these views against spiritual supremacy,
and among the Mendicant Orders, but more especially
KING EDWARD III. 143

the Franciscans, doctrines were taught, and practices
followed, which were in direct and dangerous opposition
to the authority of the pontifical college, which was
moreover shaken on every side. But while we are bound
to admit that the policy and mode of action pursued by
Louis in these respects seem to have been due merely to
the promptings of temerity and even desperation, we
cannot on the other hand fail to allow that they indicate
a revival of a deep inner stirring of the mind, which
touched the heart of the German nation, like the first
breath of a renovating spring. This is undoubtedly the
source from whence sprang those truly popular sympa-
thies with the Bavarian Emperor, which differed so
widely from any feeling that was elicited among the
people, either before or after that time, for the members
of the houses of Hapsburg and Luxemburg.

It was fortunate, however, for Louis, that he was not
wholly without adherents in other countries. The
German element that still lingered in the minds of the
English was equally at variance with the avarice and
ambition of the papal conclave, and it is a matter of no
slight significance that one of the Emperor's most dis-
tinguished represéntatives in his conflict with Pope
John XXII., was an English Franciscan, the celebrated
schoolman William Occam. Another source of strength
was the recent family alliance that had again been formed
between the two reigning houses by the Emperor's
marriage with Margareta, the eldest daughter of Count
William of Hainault, who by the extinction of the older
family had recently also become Count of Holland; and
as there seemed to be some danger of a failure of male
heirs in that line, a glorious prospect was opening to the

°
144 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

imperial dynasty of the Wittelsbach family of recovering
ancient territories of the Empire, in which German
sympathies were beginning to lose their hold on the
minds of the people. Edward III. on the other hand,

while still a minor, had married Philippa, the younger —

sister of Margareta, but this marriage had been amply
blessed in a social point of view by a numerous progeny,
and politically by the great influence which it exercised
on the current events of the times. The dynastic in-
terests of the families of Wittelsbach and Plantagenet
were thus necessarily brought in contact in the Low
Countries, where there were not wanting both spiritual
and material elements to cement their union. Two
influential rulers of neighbouring territories had been
included in this family compact, for Reinald of Guelders
had married a sister of the King of England, while
William of Juliers was regarded as a most enthusiastic
adherent of the Anglo-German Alliance. Brabant anda
portion at least of Flanders were still fiefs of the Empire,
but here the rich free-cities, which were entirely governed
by German autonomies, predominated, constituting at that
time the most important money-marts of the north-west
of Europe, and the great emporiums of English and
German trade. It may readily be conceived that the
report of this compact was received with the greatest
satisfaction in these towns, more especially since the
Count of Flanders had been obliged about this time to
flee before the opposition of the popular communes of his
country, and to seek refuge and protection at the court of
his feudal suzerain at Paris. Great too was the welcome
awarded to the dissemination of liberal spiritual views
and opinions, which did not always accord with the
KING EDWARD III. 145

hitherto immutable doctrines of the Church of Rome,
but which, like the rich products of agriculture and
manufactures, were rapidly exchanged among these in-
dustrious communities of German traders. The tendency
against France, where the pope and the systematic
doctrines of Rome sought not only a safe place of
refuge, but additional support for future acts of aggres-
sion, was at that period most strongly manifested within
the English dominions.

This country, which had once been characterised by
its powerful feudal tendencies, had entered upon a course
which was destined to lead it towards the attainment of
a constitutional government—a result which was favoured
by the gradual disruption of its feudal connexion with
France—and in proportion as the Saxon element gained
ascendency in the English nation, an antipathy against
France rapidly increased, although only a short time
betore French sentiments had maintained a spiritual
and, to a certain extent, also a political supremacy in the
country. During the weak reign of Edward II. these
tendencies had been powerfully developed in two different
directions, while at the same time the sufferings that
had arisen from the national disgrace under that feeble
monarch accumulated a mass of evils, which his successor
felt himself called upon to, retrieve. The necessity of
this was recognised by Edward IJ. when that young,
active, and ambitious prince assumed the reins of
government. He did not pause when he found himself
compelled to oppose his own scheming mother, and to
award to her the punishment she merited for the part
she had played in the humiliation of England; nor had
he any scruple in appealing to the popular instincts of

L
146 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

his subjects for support, and in relinquishing some of the
prerogatives of his crown, for the sake of obtaining the
high aim towards which he aspired. When the direct
succession of the Capetian line became extinct in France,
and the first of the Valois ascended the throne, the king
of England, without heeding the Salic laws of hereditary
descent, advanced the claims of his mother and stepped
forth as a candidate for the French crown. Instead of
remaining merely a vassal as his ancestors had been
since the conquest by right of their possessions in
Normandy, Poitou and Guienne, he boldly and daringly
aspired to the dignity of King of France. In this
respect his wishes concurred with those of his people,
who were beginning to assert a more manly indepen-
dence of tone, and here, too, his views and schemes
brought him into closer affinity of feeling with his
imperial brother-in-law. We now see this young
monarch, after he had regulated and improved the rela-
tions between England and Scotland, which had suffered
materially during the previous reign, and after he had
come to an understanding with his parliament, turn
with an almost passionate eagerness to the subject of
the maritime trade of his country, in the consideration
of which he gave evidence of a sagacity in the pursuit
of his object, worthy of a far-sighted politician and
legislator. In order to secure the means necessary for
the vast and extensive operations which he had in view,
he adopted measures, which are characterised by a
daring and masterly policy, the politico-economical
principles of which were, at all events, thoroughly
consistent with the circumstances of the times. Not-
withstanding all the opposition and disaffection to which
KING EDWARD III. 147

the measure threatened to give rise, Edward doubled
and tripled the amount of the subsidies, which he
exacted from that staple article of national wealth—
wool—and he at the same time observed a most strin-
gent and arbitrary protective system, according to which
it was required that all supplies of wool should be
placed in certain ports, as if they were his own property ;
while the exportation of this article was forbidden,
except in certain large quantities, and its transport
exclusively limited to the ports of Antwerp and othe
Flemish cities. By these stringent measures he not
only closely bound to his policy the flourishing munici-
palities of the German Hanseatic League, the ships of
which were the principal agents in conveying the raw
material and the manufactured goods either back to
England or into the interior by way of Cologne, but he
at the same time secured for himself and his people a
system of prompt payment in hard cash, which no other
state in Europe had been able to obtain.

After these preliminaries, diplomatic negotiations
were opened at the different courts of the Netherlands
in the spring of 1337. A brilliant English embassy,
including Earls and Bishops, was despatched by a
vessel, which at the same time carried a considerable
cargo of wool, and thus associated together the plenipo-
tentiary powers and the means of credit, which were
then needed for cementing a politico-military compact.
England required foreign troops for her schemes on the
Continent in those days, as at every period of her Euro-
pean wars, and instead of voting subsidies and enlisting
foreign legions as in modern times, it was the custom
in the fourteenth ‘century to secure whole squadrons of

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148 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

armed men, and to pay their captains for the value of
their services with the proceeds of the wool that was sold
at Antwerp and Bruges. In every part of the continent,
but more especially in the Low Countries, as in Hainault,
Brabant, Guelders, Juliers, Berg, and many other small
territories, such compacts were regularly and systema-
tically effected. In the month of July, the English
embassy signed a treaty at Frankfort, conjointly with
the plenipotentiaries of the Emperor, by which the latter
pledged himself to send ready armed into the field by
the following month of November, 2,000 lances, in return
for which his royal brother-in-law gave him credit for the
sum of 300,000 gold florins on Dortrecht. And it was
further arranged between the two, that they should have
a personal conference on the Rhine, which was also to
be attended by Louis’ first-born son, the Margravé of
Brandenburg, and the Margrave of Meissen, as well as
by many other supporters of the Bavarian policy in
Germany. Negotiations were followed up with much
zeal with the Duke of Nassau and many of the princes
of southern Germany, as for instance, the Counts of
Teck, and their neighbours, and even with the Austrians,
and thus Edward was led to cherish the hope that he
might on this occasion cement a better understanding
between the houses of Hapsburg and Wittelsbach, and,
perhaps, effect a coalition, the general principles of
which might be thoroughly German in spirit. Never
at any other time had the imperial dignity been sup-
ported from without by such powerful material aids.

All these preliminaries, however, occupie more time
than was quite in accordance with the eager wishes of
those concerned in them, and it was not until the 16th
KING EDWARD III. 149

of July of the following year, that the king, in company
with his consort and a.distinguished retinue, was able
to set out for Antwerp. His personal presence at the
conference might, according to his idea, be the means of
binding together the severed threads of various negotia-
tions, and thus enable him to begin the attack against
France, aided by the whole strength of the Anglo-
German alliance. How animated was the scene in the
ancient Abbey of St. Michael, where this brilliant prince
and his numerous court took up their quarters for a
whole year! The Duke of Brabant, the king’s brother-
in-law the Count of Guelders, a number of noble
knights from the Rhine-land, all eager for war, came
and went, while high officials from England and
emissaries fresh from the Empire deliberated together.
There was one man, too, of public note, who had free
access to the royal quarters, and whose name was then
on the lips of all; asimple though a powerful man, who
was a more important ally to the king of England
than all these princes and nobles. This influential man
was Jacob van Artevelde, commonly called the Brewer
of Ghent. The important part which he played for a
few years at the head of the democracy of Flanders,
tends to make us forget the fact that by origin and
tastes he belonged more to the aristocracy than the
plebeian party, while his greatness was shared in by
the nation at large. He had received the cultivation
that appertained to his rank as a member of the ancient
nobility, and like other men of noble birth had even
made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, while he had always
acted in regard to public affairs as became his station
and the age in which he lived. At that period,
150 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

however, the civic Communes in Flanders had, as it
were, assumed the place of the State, while the political
dissensions had been merged in the popular factions,
and found a powerful channel of expression in the
influential guilds. It had long been the practice for
patricians and nobles to allow their names to be enrolled
in these trade-unions; and it thus happened that
van Artevelde, the Brewer, had monopolized the chief
influence over the other guilds. When the Flemish
had driven out the family of their Counts, who had
shown themselves somewhat too friendly to France, the
victorious faction in Ghent acquired supremacy in the
country, while their leader was called upon by the whole
of Flanders to be the new Ruwaert. How attentively
did the looks of all the members of those busy, wealthy
and agitated corporations hang upon every glance of
Artevelde; how anxiously did they defer to his advice,
and how proud were the people, when they saw him
passing through their noisy streets, brilliant and power-
ful as a king, in the full pomp of his dignity, and at the
head of his stalwart guard. An alliance with such a
man, who could sway the wills of the entire nation,
was by no means to be neglected by Edward, and we
may rightly conjecture that each fully comprehended
the policy of the other, and that Artevelde was more
especially the true bond of union that held together
the various links in the chain of the Anglo-Flemish
commercial policy; we, at all events, possess suf-
ficient proof of the intimate footing on which they
stood to each other, and of the decidedly German
point of view, from which the Ruwaert regarded
the great aim to which they were tending. His noble
KING EDWARD III. 151

spirit had rightly appreciated and recognised the
excessive weight of the bonds by which the Church
and the State, society and general intercourse were
alike fettered.

After much deliberation at Antwerp, the king pre-
pared himself for his journey to Germany, in order at
length to fulfil his long-standing promise of meeting his
imperial brother-in-law.

They alone could hope to put into action their long
and zealously planned schemes, and towards the end of
August messengers at length announced that Louis,
who already in the spring had gone from Bavaria to the
Rhine, and had long resided at Frankfort, absorbed
in the most serious matters of state, was about to
start from thence to Coblentz. It was on Sunday, the
16th of August, 1338, that the English court, escorted
by many noblemen, a numerous retinue of servants and
a guard of some sixty men left Antwerp, to make an
excursion of a few weeks along the Rhine, many valu-
able particulars of which have been preserved to us
by means of the Diary of Expenses, which was kept on
this occasion. The princess Joan, a child only five
years of age, accompanied her royal father, together
with the noble queen Philippa, who although then far
advanced in pregnancy, went some portion of the way.
This princess was to have married Frederick IV. the
young Duke of Austria, whose mother—and here again
we see the political tendency of the alliance—was one
of the Bavarian family. The heavy baggage had
already been sent beforehand to Antwerp, from whence
it was again despatched by water to the Rhine. A
number of vehicles had also been hired to convey the
152 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

travellers and the most indispensable articles of their
luggage into the interior.

Their way lay eastward through Brabant, and on the
the 19th, Edward passed the night at Herenthals. On
the following morning the queen took leave of him to
return to Antwerp, while the others proceeded through
Bree and Sittard to Juliers, which they reached on
Saturday the 22d. The king alighted here at the house
of a certain Lady Juliana von Werth, who seems to
have played the part of hostess in the most charming
manner. Count William of Juliers, who two years
before had been elevated to the rank of Margrave, now
also came to greet his royal guest. On the Sunday
the travellers must have risen with the sun, for they
had to make the long journey to Cologne in one
day. Here they rested the following day, spending
their time in seeing and doing numerous things, and
in visiting many of the wonders of this great and far-
famed city.

The ancient commercial relations between England and
Cologne, which were now at their very height, made it an
event of great importance to the inhabitants to receive a
visit from the king of this wealthy land. Their city annals
probably still told them, that on a former occasion, a
hundred and fifty years earlier, another English monarch,
Richard Coeur de Lion, when released from the hard cap-
tivity of the Emperor, had found a joyful reception among
them, and that high mass had been celebrated in their
cathedral in commemoration of his release. A still earlier
connexion with the British island was moreover recorded
in the legends which clung to the many Christian relics
worshipped in Cologne. Recently the schools of the
KING EDWARD III. 153

Dominicans had become celebrated far beyond the Ger-
man boundaries, and English brethren of the Order
frequently came there to study, while King Edward I.
had even caused masses to be read for the repose of the
souls of his nearest kinsfolk at some of the most celebrated
consecrated spots of Cologne. The grandson of that
monarch, a man gifted with quick perceptions and great
political foresight, had now come to see some of the
renowned marvels of the Continent, to shew himself to
the people of the land, and to strengthen the many bonds
of intercourse which united the old city of Cologne with
his capital on the banks of the Thames. We find that
he took up his residence in the house of a rich burgher,
the Knight Heinrich Scherfgin, who together with his
wife Blida, a member of the family of Spiegel, long re-
garded this visit as an occasion of great honour and
festivity. The merriment and rejoicing knew no bounds,
and the throng of the curious populace was so great in
the street, that the city was obliged to appoint four armed
servants to assist the porter of the house in keeping the
gate closed. Noble lords and knights, and messengers
from every part had free access to the house, and many
were the presents they brought to the royal guest in
token of welcome. The Archbishop Walram, who
was a member of the house of Juliers, sent a charger of
high price by the hands of his esquire Wilhelm von.
Strake, while the knightly host of the king begs per-
mission to offer him some elaborately ornamented
weapons, which were probably samples of Cologne
workmanship. A fiddler, named Franz, was in the
meanwhile engaged to play for the entertainment of the
guest. Still more interesting, however, as regards the
154 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IY. AND

history of social culture, was the generous and truly
royal demeanour of Edward on this occasion. The
many churches and ecclesiastical buildings, of whose
magnificence and beauty he had often heard in his own
country, received munificent memorials of the king’s
brief sojourn, and it is probable that he visited many
of these spots, and heard mass in several different
churches. His gifts of forty shillings to each of the
monasteries of the Minorites, Dominicans, Augustines
and Carmelites, to the brethren of the Holy Cross and
others, sufficiently show what was expected in this
way from a monarch in the fourteenth century. The
different altars and pictures of the eleven thousand
Virgins, who according to the legend had come to
Germany from England, received as much as £11 5s.
The richest gifts of all were, however, those expended
upon the cathedral itself, the noble choir of which had
only a few years before been completed in the form
in which we now see it. England had already for
several generations taken the liveliest interest in the
further construction of this wonderful building; for
when the old cathedral was destroyed by fire, the Arch-
bishop, Conrad von Hochstaden, had himself crossed
the sea about the middle of the previous century, in
order to collect contributions at the court of Henry IIL.,
who was known as a patron of art, and also among the
subjects of that king, (many of whom were acquiring
great wealth from the proceeds of their trade with
Cologne,) in order to be able speedily to erect a building
that should be worthy of the city and of its increasing
reputation. It would appear that the king had gone
in person to the cathedral ; for the Diary of Expenses
KING EDWARD III. 155

distinguishes between his various gifts, according to the
definite purposes for which they were designed, and
which certainly imply that they were due to direct obser-
vation on his part. He only gave twenty-two shillings
and sixpence to the various chapels and altars which were
at that time completed amid the generally unfinished
state of the grandly designed edifice, while he bestowed
as much as fifty-eight shillings and sixpence on the
recently erected shrine of the Magi, who were in that
age worshipped, far and wide, through every part of
Western Christendom, There may probably have been
a box for receiving the gifts of the pious near the en-
trance of the cathedral, or it is not improbable that a
direct appeal was made to the wealthy prince, unless
indeed his architectural taste, of which he subsequently
gave frequent evidence both at Westminster and
Windsor, prompted him, in his admiration of this in-
comparable sample of Gothic architecture, to contribute
of his own free will towards the completion of this
noble work. But whatever the inducement might have
been, certain it is that we find an entry in his Diary
of Expenses of a donation of £67 10s. towards the
building of the cathedral, and if we reckon this sum
according to the value of money at that time, which
was fully fifteen times as much as in the present day,
we shall find that his present amounted to about £1,000,
or from 6,000 to 7,000 dollars. English money was thus
cemented into the very foundation stones of the central
nave, and into the buttresses of the south tower. At all
events, if ever a tablet were to be inscribed with the
names of the many high and noble patrons of that vast
labyrinth of columns and Gothic arches, among the first
156 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

and most distinguished would stand that of Edward III.
of England.

We must now, however, follow his passage up the
Rhine, for his journey was attended by memorable
results, ‘both in reference to the age in which he lived
and the country in which he sojourned. On the Tuesday
we find the king with all his retinue at Bonn, where he
alighted at the house of Johann von Rese, one of the
canons of the cathedral of that city. But the arch-
bishop Walram, who held his court at Bonn, had pre-
pared a great feast in his palace for the royal guest, with
whom he probably had many weighty matters to dis-
cuss. And here we find that two minstrels in the
service of the prince-primate, named Conrad and Ance-
lin, entertained the company with their music during
the banquet.

On the following day, the travellers have a pleasant
and merry passage along the beautiful river, and arrive
in due order at the place of meeting. Two worthy
Rhine skippers, whose names have been preserved in
these records as Dietrich of Andernach, and Hanekin of
Breisich, have undertaken, for the payment of £20 ster-
ling, to convey the whole court, with all their horses
and baggage, as far as Coblentz; the labour being
effected by the help of eighteen strong watermen and
forty-four assistants. When all is prepared, the king
enters the vessel with his little daughter, and attended
by his gallant retinue, among whom are four noble
knights belonging to Rhenish families of distinction,
who have received orders from the Emperor to attend
upon the English king. In addition to these, there is also
his body guard, consisting of sixty-six men, belonging
KING EDWARD III. 157

to the class of English yeomanry who, armed with
bows and arrows, and clad in their usual green forester
garbs, merrily take their places in the boats. All
seem to have found pleasure in looking at the beautiful
district through which they passed, as the barges were
drawn slowly up against the broad current. that flows
between the Drachenfels and Rolandseck. On the
Wednesday evening they land at Sinzig, where the king
is entertained by a knight, named Wolfram von Deest.
The next station at which they stop is the island of
Niederwerth, where the whole company rest till the
following Friday. We do not know whether Edward
came one day too soon for the appointed conference with
the Emperor Louis, or whether—and this seems indeed
more probable—some brilliant entertainment had been
prepared for him on the way. At all events we find
that a number of the neighbouring princes and nobles
have assembled together at this spot, to await the arrival
of their royal ally, and to testify their respect for him.
Here again, we read of the presentation of valuable
gifts, and we find that several of the princes have
brought with them their minstrels, who belonged in
that age to the retinue of a court, and were an evidence
of the cultivation and taste of their masters. A band
of ten of these musicians, belonging to different lords,
and at the head of whom appeared the king-at-arms,
Master Conrad, as well as the five minstrels of Arch-
bishop Baldwin of Treves, led by Master Heinrich
Valbeck, and Gottschalk the piper, receive each of them
fifty shillings sterling, while Master Ithel, with ten
minstrels, who had been sent by the Emperor, is rewarded
with a gift of a hundred shillings. We are led to
158 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

the assumption that this numerous band of musicians
performed not only instrumental music, but sang Ger-
man songs, the remains of the chivalric Minne-singers
which had probably not quite died out from the charm-
ing districts of the Rhine, and thus the love and taste
for art which this foreign prince exhibited, both in music .
and poetry, were amply gratified. Amid all this merry-
making, however, the business that was to be prosecuted
in common was discussed in the genuine medieval
style. There is little doubt that the war with France,
and the actual condition of the German empire were
made the subjects of discussion. Among the many
persons who came in contact with the king of England,
we also meet with the herald-at-arms of the Grand
Master of Prussia, who in many respects stood in the
closest relations to England, and who no doubt had his
own reasons for welcoming the English monarch on his
arrival in Germany. The throng of people upon the
island of Niederwerth must have been very considerable,
for the accounts show us that a fine of forty-six shillings
and eightpence was paid to the principal proprietor of
the district, the knight Johann von Valendar, for damage
done in his vineyard, while Reginald Sculf, the bailiff
of the archbishop of Cologne, received forty shillings as
an indemnity for the mischief perpetrated on the lands
of the primate. The king’s host, Conrad Winter, a
Premonstratian friar, and the capitular of the Abbey
of Romersdorf, the chaplain and friend of the archbishop
of Treves, was paid twenty marks, while the inmates of
the nunnery received a present of forty-six shillings and
eightpence. On the 29th, the king proceeded slowly to
Andernach, where he took up his abode with the Fran-
KING EDWARD III 159

ciscans, whose hospitality he repaid by a gift of forty
shillings. It is probable that he spent the Sunday
there, for he made the last part of his journey to Cologne
on Monday, the 31st of August. Here there was no
lack of solemn greeting and welcome, for even before
his vessel reached the city, he was met by the state
barges of the Emperor, and loudly welcomed with the
sound of trumpets and bugles, by four of the imperial
minstrels, whilst the imperial grand falconer, a native of
Lombardy, whose name was Scolaus, according to our
authority, presented king Edward, in the name of his
master, with the emblematic offering of a living eagle.
After this, we unfortunately learn nothing further regard-
ing the landing of Edward, or of the personal greeting
of the two brothers-in-law and friends. For a week tlie
columns of the Diary contain no entry, but during this
time, Edward and his enormous retinue were entertained
at the residence of the Emperor, who must have defrayed
their expenses in all respects.

This was, however, the very week in which the entire
Diet had assembled at Coblentz, around the person of
the Emperor, to discuss and deliberate on matters of
great weight. The questions under discussion, as we
learn from different chronicles and some trustworthy
documents, referred more especially to two highly im-
portant events, viz:—the attitude that was to be assu-
med on the part of the Empire in case of a war with
France; the constitutional organization of the impe-
rial government in relation to the intolerable encroach-
ments of the papal court; and the maintenance of the
dignity and authority of the emperor and of the electo-
ral princes. The latter point had been under discussion
160 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IVY. AND

at the Diet which had met six weeks before at Rense,
and which had been attended by all the members, with
the exception only of the king of Bohemia. The reso-
lutions adopted in regard to all these questions were to
be accompanied by all possible solemnity, and it appears
tolerably well proved, that it was on Saturday, the 5th
of September, that a special meeting was held in the
public market of St. Florian, at Coblentz. The emperor
Louis appeared in the full pomp of his dignity, wearing the
double crown upon his head, and carrying the sceptre in
his hand, and sitting on a throne which was raised
twelve feet above the ground. One step below him, sat
his brother-in-law, the king of England, who was also
adorned with his crown, whilst at least four of the
electoral princes and other imperial dignitaries stood
round them, each clothed in his robes of ceremony, and
carrying the insignia of his office. The Margrave of
Meissen was on the emperor’s right hand, and the Mar-
grave William of Juliers, on the king’s left. Otho
von Cuyk, a noble lord of the lower Rhine district, who
appears to have been intimately associated with king
Edward, held aloft, as the representative of the Duke of
Brabant, an ancient sword of state high above the
emperor's head. The heralds calculated that on this
occasion there were some 17,000 knights and lords
assembled, independently of their retinues and of the
populace, who had flocked into the city from every part.

As soon as silence had been commanded, five im-
portant laws of the Empire were proclaimed aloud, in the
name of the Emperor. The object of these enactments
was to try once more to prop up the tottering fabric of
the State; and among other points, it was decreed that
KING EDWARD III. 161

the prince, who was chosen by the electors to be King
of the Romans, should assume the rights and appanages
belonging to his high dignity, without waiting for the
confirmation of his title by the Pope. Whenever any
one of the imperial vassals rebelled against the Empire,
his life and property were to be forfeited ; and whenever
the Emperor, or his representative, summoned the army
to serve in a war of the Empire, every man who held a
feudal fief under the Crown, was bound by reason of
his oath of fealty, to afford his aid. No one who had
challenged another could, on penalty of disregarding the
imperial injunctions, lay hands on the person or pro-
perty of his adversary before three days had elapsed.
Disturbers of the public peace and highway robbers were
to be proceeded against with the severest penalties in
regard to property and life, from which the Emperor
even could not grant exemption. This promulgation of
laws was followed by another emission of the imperial
power, which was more closely connected with the
former acts than would at first sight appear. Thus, for
instance, the Emperor Louis, associating his brother-
in-law, the king of England, in measures which the
Diet had already proceeded with on account of the
impending campaign, nominated him to be his Vicar, or
representative, for all the imperial district lying on the
left bank of the Rhine.

It had Jong been the custom to appoint imperial
princes, and even foreign nobles, to be vicars or viceroys
over the districts, or boundaries, in which they them-
selves exercised special influence. But the appointment
of Edward, whose insular kingdom was so remote to
this dignity, can be explained less on the ground of his

M
162 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

close affinity with the Emperor, than on account of the
great influence which English policy exercised in
Germany, or at least, in the north-west of the Empire,
and more especially perhaps in consequence of nearly
one-half of the electoral princes, with the Emperor at
their head, having concluded military treaties with the
English, and having promised to serve in the war that
was to be conducted by Edward. Under these circum-
stances, he certainly needed a position to which—at all
events in certain territories—it was essential to attach
some portion of imperial authority. His appointment
and these laws of the Empire were, however, so far con-
nected, that both measures were taken independently of
the Pope, and that the war was to be carried on against
that very power, from whom alone Benedict was certain
of receiving efficient aid. These resolutions were passed
with all the solemnity that could be imparted by imperial
ceremonials, and the might of Germany appeared in the
eyes of the world to be once more alike great and power-
ful. After the Emperor and the Diet had attended
high mass together on the following Sunday in the
cathedral of Coblentz, and after Archbishop Baldwin of
Treves had concluded a treaty with King Edward, and
had promised to supply a contingent of 500 men-at-
arms, and when, as it is related, the Emperor had sworn
to the king for life or death, that he would assist him
for seven years against Philip of Valois, and when
finally the time for the opening of the campaign had
been determined, the Diet was dissolved.

On Monday, the 17th of September, the two brothers-
in-law took leave of each other. The Emperor and
Empress, to whose care Edward had committed his little
KING EDWARD III. 163

daughter, went slowly to Munich by way of Frankfort ;
while Edward, after he had liberally paid the servants
of the Emperor and court, and had presented large gifts
and paid high fees amongst other things for a copy of
the notices of the alliance, and for the papers connected
with the imperial vicarship, to the notaries, chancery
clerks, and writers, took nearly the same way homewards
by which he had come, deviating, however, from the
route in some slight particulars, which deserve to be
recorded. For the first night, he again took up his
abode at Andernach, but on this occasion, in a private
house; while he passed the next night at Bonn, where he
had a vexatious matter to settle with the burgomaster
and magistrates of the place. It would appear that a
portion of his English servants and attendants had
remained kere during his sojourn at Coblentz, and that
on the 31st of August, these men, who had possibly
been excited by too free indulgence in wine, had quar-
relled with the inhabitants of Bonn, who very probably
were not over civil to strangers. Some considerable
amount of damage was done on the occasion, which the
king was obliged to make good by a payment to the
civic authorities of £22 10s. sterling. On the 9th of
September, the journey was continued as far as Diiren,
and from thence through Sittard, where Queen Philippa
again met her husband, to Bree and Herenthals and
then on to Antwerp, where the court arrived after an
absence of exactly four weeks.

Edward might now indeed flatter himself that in
return for all his great expenditure of time and money,
he was provided with the means necessary to proceed
at once with his great undertaking. The delusion of

M2
164 THE EMPEROK LOUIS IV. AND

supposing that he had made a lasting compact and
alliance with the Empire began, however, only too
quickly to make itself manifest. For when in the
following October, he attempted to avail himself of his
new dignity by summoning, in his capacity of Imperial
Vicar, all the princes under his jurisdiction to a Diet at
Herk, in Brabant, the hollowness of the ground on
which he stood, in common with all the confederated
allies, was made too clearly evident. It was not only
those princes who were known to be decidedly in favour
of the French, as the Bishop of Louvain, who refused
to appear at this Diet, but others even who had hitherto
been his friends, as the Duke of Brabant. The winter,
during which no warlike operations could be conducted,
passed without effecting anything essential in regard to
the better amalgamation of the separate masses. We
do, indeed, still notice a continuance of the former
zealous intercourse between Antwerp and Munich, be-
tween which cities and the many small capital towns of
Germany messengers continually came and went. It was
not till the summer of 1339 that the English and Ger-
man troops assembled in Brabant and Flanders. Many
of the nobles who had accepted large sums of English
money, amongst others the Margraves of Brandenburg
and Meissen, arrived at the head of the promised. horse-
men; but the Emperor failed to appear, and others
followed his example. Many were glad enough to put
English angels in their purses, but it was found that
the intrigues emanating from Avignon and Paris were
powerful enough to neutralise the promises that had
been made to Edward. We discover, nevertheless, by
the course which the campaign took from its very com-
KING EDWARD III. 165

mencement, that it was to be a war of the Empire, and
that Edward would be pledged to a special course of
policy in his character of Imperial Vicar. The first act
was to enter the diocese of Cambray, which was still
reckoned as a part of the Empire, and to lay waste
and seize upon everything that fell in the way. King
Philip VI. had, however, in good time carefully selected
and strongly guarded the few good positions in the
north of his territories, where the rivers had not many
available fords. He avoided, with great circumspection,
any serious encounter with the superior forces of the
enemy, who found that wherever they went everything
had been laid waste, and that there was seldom anything
left to destroy. The autumn had already advanced, and
the period for which the troops had been engaged was
fast drawing to a close, while the love of fighting had
also begun to decline among the German allies. The
campaign came to an inglorious termination without
having brought any favourable result to the Bavarian
party in the Empire; while, besides spending a useless
amount of money, the King of England had drawn
upon himself the ridicule of his opponents and the
earnest admonitions of the Pope, without having found
any opportunity of distinguishing himself as a military
leader, or of bringing the strength of his own nation
into the conflict. Benedict XII. had, indeed, no great
desire for a rupture with him, but still he had em-
phatically warned the King, that he could not, with
proper respect to the papal chair, nor without drawing
much vexation on himself, accept titles and dignities
from a prince who was himself neither king, nor em-
peror, and who, moreover, lay under the severest form of
166 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

condemnation that the Church could inflict. Edward,
in the meanwhile, having been sufficiently warned by
his unsuccessful attempt at Herk and by the miserable
termination of the campaign, actually relinquished the
dignity of Imperial Vicar, and even acted as if such a
title had never appertained to him, for the deed of nomi-
nation, which was signed by Louis during his stay at
Coblentz, seems to have disappeared most completely,
notwithstanding every attempt that has been made to
recover it. It thus happened that scarcely a year after
that brilliant meeting at the Diet, the combined in-
fluence of the Pope and the king of France had
succeeded in breaking up the great and dangerous
coalition, which seemed to have been all but completed.

We will now follow the threads of these events, as
they diverge from one another, in the same manner as
we traced their gradual conjunction. During the first
winter, the communication with the court of Munich
appeared to be as animated as ever, for messengers
still came and went, bearing political dispatches relating
to the war with France, or to projected matrimonial
alliances with the House of Austria. John de Montgo-
mery, the most distinguished of these emissaries, brought
every month a large sum, amounting to about 20,000 or
30,000 gulden, intended for distribution among those
immediately about the person of the Emperor, and
Empress, and among the princes of southern Germany.
We can follow his account of these expenditures at the
court of Mayence, and at that of Count Henneberg. He
has to go three times in succession to Austria. The
chief officers at the imperial court, as the Chancellor,
or Heinrich von Cipplingen, a commander of the
KING EDWARD III. 167

Teutonic Order, the Notary-public, Ulrich von Augs-
burg, Master Raimund of Valenciennes, the imperial
physician and secretary, all receive large sums in hard
cash through his hands. He brings the Emperor, as
a present from England, a couple of knives, and a costly
silk bag embroidered with pearls for the Empress ; for
their eldest son, the Margrave of Brandenburg, a girdle,
inlaid with silver; and for the Count of Neiffen, whose
influence was all-powerful at court, equally valuable
gifts. These civilities were frequently responded to
by attentions from the other party, for either the impe-
rial herald-at-arms, or Austrian knights, pay their re-
spects at St. Michael’s in Antwerp, or the Emperoy’s
musicians come to entertain the English at Christmas.
Liberal allowances have also to be made for the youthful
Joan and her household at Munich. We meet con-
tinually with entries of the linen, jewels, and pearls,
which she either used herself, or liberally gave to
others, and she seems to have been attended by no
inconsiderable suite; for at the close of one year, we
find in reference to the English expenses at Munich, the
remarkable notice, that as the food and drink provided
by the imperial court had not been sufficient for the
household of the princess, £46 sterling had been expended
on account of the king of England, to supply the defi-
ciencies. About this time, Edward’s patience seems,
however, to have been thoroughly exhausted, for not-
withstanding all attempts on his part, no approximation
took place betwen the Houses of Bavaria and Austria,
while the Emperor even began to retreat more and more
decidedly from the undertaking upon which he had so
zealously entered, having at last been driven to despair
168 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

of the possibility of inducing the Empire to enter into
the combination with England, by which he had hoped
to compel the Pope to submit, and to make the king of
France yield to the demands of Edward. At this junc-
ture, in December, 1339, the English king sent John de
Montgomery to bring his little daughter away from
Bavaria. Preparations on a large scale were again
required to convey the travellers and their luggage on
their journey, and wherever such a course was practi-
cable the passage was made by water, both the travellers
and their horses having gone by boat as far as possible
up the Danube, and then down the Rhine. By the
15th of April, 1840, Joan had again rejoined her
parents, after which the close relations that had hitherto
existed with the imperial court came to an end.
These relations were, however, rather suspended than
destroyed; for although the many brilliant political
expectations and all immediate prospects of any impor-
tant family union were necessarily relinquished, there
was no serious estrangement, or even any definite vari-
ance, between these two closely allied courts.

King Edward, indeed, could not fail to recognise the
miserable necessities and the great difficulties in which
the Emperor was placed, whose government was every-
where disturbed by the intrigues of the Luxemburg
or Bohemian and the Austrian party, and by the
animosities which the Pope was perpetually fomenting
amongst the faithful. He did not, therefore, bear any
excessive resentment towards Louis, when the latter began
in his great need to turn to France, making concessions
in regard to many of the points of variance between
himself and King Philip, and seeking to establish a
KING EDWARD III. 169

better understanding between his own party and the
apostolic chair. Louis had perhaps hoped by these means
to escape more easily from some of the endless embarrass-
ments by which he was overwhelmed, and to secure a
few brighter days before the close of his life. He
trusted that with the explanations which he was pre-
pared to make, he might still maintain those bonds of
alliance, by which he was united to England and the
Netherlands, and he therefore recalled from Edward
his nomination to the dignity of imperial vicar, on the
25th of April, 1341, pledging himself at the same
time to lay the foundation of a peace between the
Houses of Valois and Plantagenet, while he endea~
voured to explain and justify his whole course of
conduct in a letter which he addressed to Edward.
These great events assumed, however, an essentially
different course from any that had been foreseen by
those who had taken part in them. The king of
England had from time to time given evidence of suffi-
cient energy to show that he was not likely to retreat
after a first failure, and that when the support of others
gave way, he possessed self-confidence enough to trust
to his own resources. On the 24th of June, 1340, his
fleet gained the first memorable sea victory of which
the maritime history of England can boast. On this
occasion his ships, which were lying off Sluys, defeated
the much more heavily manned squadrons of the French
and Italians, who were trying to close the entrance into
the Schelt from the English, in the hope of thus des-
troying their politico-mercantile alliance with the Ne-
therlands. ‘All who speak the German tongue rejoice
in these tidings of victory,” says, in his quaint rhymes,
170 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

Jan, the clerk of Ghent, who was a zealous partisan of
an alliance betwéen the kindred nations of Saxon origin.
By this victory, Edward secured to himself the material
support of the influential German traders of the popu-
lous and industrious cities of Flanders, and the free use
of the ready money of the Hanseatic towns, which were
largely indebted to him for their wealth. This is
clearly shown, by the turn which affairs now took. It
had been the well devised plan of the king, to give
permanency to the effect of his sea-fight, by making
another incursion into France. The army which he
led on to this attack, was again, for the most part,
composed of foreigners and mercenaries ; while some of
the princes of the Empire raised troops to aid him, and
the Flemish Communes, with their Ruwaert at their
head, joined his ranks. The result, however, was as
unfortunate as in the previous year, for the troops of the
Flemish cities, and the proud bands of knights, covered
themselves with dishonour, and an unsatisfactory armi-
stice was finally agreed upon, which did not settle any
of the points of dispute, while to a certain extent it
justified the Emperor in retreating from the alliance, and
only left Edward the prospect of being able on some
more fortunate occasion to resume the contest with diffe-
-rent forces. He had, however, deeply involved himself
in debt, and was not a little embarrassed to provide
funds for paying the high subsidies due to the German
princes. The Diary of Expenses, to which we have so
frequently referred, contains, in the concluding entries for
the year 1841, a long list of the sums he had paid, from
which we learn that the Emperor received £8,227 1s.;
the Margrave of Juliers, £8,962 10s.; Count Reinald of
KING EDWARD III. 171

Guelders, who had lately been made Duke, £4,612 10s.;
Dietrich von Falkenberg, £3,864 8s. 3d.; the Count of
Hainault, £3,150 ; the Duke of Brabant, £600; the Arch-
bishop of Treves, £506 5s.; and many others similar,
although generally, smaller sums. They were all drawn
upon the Hanseatic Exchange, but the king was by this
means necessarily brought into a close and dependent
connexion with the German merchants which must
have occasioned him very great trouble during the next
few years.

When he was still at Antwerp, where the English
court resided for nearly two years before their final
return to Westminster, Edward was obliged to pawn
his most valuable crown jewels, and to leave them
in pledge with the Germans. From the carefully pre-
served correspondence relating to this affair, we learn
that the great state crown had to be given up to the
Elector of Treves, and that the queen’s crown, together
with many of the most costly of the regalia, remained
for a considerable time in the hands of several burghers
of Cologne. The Diary of Expenses preserves, in its dry
enumeration of figures, a detailed narrative of these
proceedings, and it informs us that an English knight,
named Bartholomew Burgersh, was entrusted by the
king and the privy council with the management of
this delicate business; detailing how, on his arrival at
Cologne, he had the regalia valued by a goldsmith of
the city, named Lauretto, and that two burghers, Jo-
hannes von Spiegel and Richard Grim, had negotiated
the affair with the usurers of the city and further, that
considerable sums were at different times raised on this
security. But the necessity of the case waxed great. The
172 THE EMPEROR LOUIS Iv. AND

time at which the jewels should be redeemed fell due in
the year 1342; and the letters which passed in reference
to this matter, between the Court of Exchequer in
London and the Council at Cologne, show us that king
Edward was thoroughly unable to redeem the property.
At this juncture, the representatives of the German
Hanseatic Confederation in the Steelyard in London,
the names of whose prosperous and influential mercan-
tile houses are still known to us, united with the Co-
logne merchants in taking upon themselves the debt
and its securities, furnished the king with fresh sup-
plies of money, and restored to him his crown jewels,
in return for which, Edward gave them as a security,
the wool that was lying in the store-houses of several
of the principal ports, some of his tin mines in Corn-
wall and other profitable crown properties, to be held
by them for a series of years. By these transactions,
the German League in London reached the summit of
its high privileges, although by the same means it drew
upon itself the direct ill-will and hatred of the English,
who were jealous of foreigners. The native merchants
and maritime traders of England began now, however,
to attain a certain degree of efficiency and consideration,
which tended, at no very remote period, to make the
position of the foreign mercantile bodies extremely pre-
carious.

But in the meanwhile, these shrewd associates of the
Steelyard, who in all their speculations exhibited no
inconsiderable degree of German patriotism, relieved
the great embarrassments of the king, who had shown
himself the champion of German nationality and the
resolute enemy of the pretensions of France. It was
KING EDWARD III. 173
only by their assistance that he was able to bear up
against the serious calamity by which he was visited
when in July, 1345, his gallant friend and ally, Jacob
van Artevelde, was slain in a disturbance which he
had endeavoured to quell between the guilds of the
weavers and fullers of Ghent. Van Artevelde had re-
turned only a few days before from the roadstead of
Sluys, where he had held a secret conference with king
Edward, who had thought it worth his while to cross
the water expressly for the purpose of having an inter-
view with the Flemish burgher. There could be no
doubt that the motives which had led to this murder
lay far beneath the surface, and that Flanders was at
that time in danger of falling a prey to French machi-
nations, unless stringent measures were at once taken to
save her. It was at this conjuncture that the king,
trusting entirely in his home resources and in the
money advanced to him by his German allies, resolved to
make his attack from a totally different quarter; and
accordingly in the August of the following year, he
effected a landing in Normandy, the temerity of which
was crowned, after a difficult march across the north of
France, by the brilliant victory of Crecy. The flower
of French chivalry fell beneath the attacks of an irregu-
larly formed and undisciplined army, which, however,
was led by Edward in person, and by his still beardless
heir, young Edward, the Black Prince. And although
the king carried away little more than the empty title
of the Valois, and the Fleur-de-Lis to quarter with his
arms, the taking of Calais, which soon followed upon
the former victory, testified that a new course of daring
exploits was beginning on the part of the English,
174 THE EMPEROR LOUIS IV. AND

to threaten the integrity of the dominions of the king
of France, and that a point had been already gained
which was not only of incomparable advantage, both
with regard to measures of attack and defence, but
at the same time afforded a direct means of commu-
nication between the English and their German allies,
which was then specially important in regard to the
commercial intercourse of the two nations. The news
of the glorious victory of Crecy was received with
acclamations throughout the whole of the Netherlands
and the neighbouring German districts, while the Ge-
noese and Florentines, who had fought on the side of
the vanquished, were wont to repeat, in their Italian
homes, tales of the terror and havoc that had been
spread among them by the English arrows and battle-
axes, and by the artillery, which, if we are to believe
the annals of the times, was used for the first time at
this battle. It is scarcely less worthy of notice, perhaps,
that while the Lombard banks failed in London and
Florence, the Steel-yard confederation, favoured by for-
tune, was reaping the rich fruits of its skilful specula-
tions. Henceforth, however, the war in France was
carried on solely by the English, for it is very rarely
that we meet with the names of German knights in
the ranks of Edward’s army; and of all his old associ-
ates in war, the Count of Holstein seems to have been
the only one who fought in his ranks, while on the
opposite side, there were numerous princes and counts
of Germany, who had probably been induced, either
through proximity to France, or through their adhesion
to the policy of the Luxemburg dynasty, to take up
arms for king Philip.
KING EDWARD III. 175

A year after the great battle of Crecy, the emperor
Louis was laid in the grave; his death having taken
place on the 11th of October, 1847. Although his
family maintained their supremacy for a few years in
Brandenburg, and even during several generations in
Holland, the prospect that had opened to them of inhe-
riting the imperial crown, vanished with the death of
Louis. When the Margrave of Brandenburg offered
the insignia of the Empire to his uncle, King Edward
III., and called upon him to come forward as a candi-
date for the dignity of King of the Romans, on the
ground of his close affinity with the late Emperor and his
earlier connexion with the Empire, the king hesitated
not a moment in declining the proffered honour. His
own crown seemed to him, if not so brilliant, at any
rate a more secure and easy possession than the thorny
diadem of Charlemagne. He had moreover been stri-
ving, step by step, for more than six years, to free
himself from the embarrassments in which he had been
entangled through his support of the imperial policy,
and he was therefore but ill disposed to resume the
trammels from which he had so lately freed himself, at
the very moment when he had plucked the first rose
amid those thorny paths, on which he too had been
compelled to enter.
VI.

THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

Tue German, who for the first time goes down the
Thames from Westminster towards the busy parts of
the city, cannot fail to be struck by the numerous
bridges, the many spires and domes, which rise through
the surrounding smoke and fog, and the interminable
succession of busy warehouses which he passes before
he reaches the last bridge, whose colossal arches span
the river. At this point he is involuntarily reminded,
by the sight of one of the quays which lies apart from
the others, of the maritime towns of his own country ;
for here the vast and lofty warehouses are built in the
peculiar style which characterises many similar erections
in Germany, and adorned, not only with brightly painted
green shutters, but with the unwonted accompaniment
of a few green trees before them. ‘This is, in fact, a
spot in which, from the earliest ages, Germans have
dwelt in the very midst of the city of London, and where
they continued to hold property till within the last few
years; for here stood the ancient factory and emporium
of the merchants of the German Hanseatic League,
which was known by the name of the Steelyard. It is
not easy to explain with any certainty why the Germans
long before, and in preference to almost all other Euro-
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 177

pean nations, were allowed for ages the high privilege
of possessing land and houses in so exclusive a country
as England, although we may perhaps conjecture that
these special prerogatives were in part due to the simi-
larity which exists between the geographical configura-
tion of the north of Germany and of the southern parts
of England, and in part to the indelible impressions
produced by affinity of races. The Angles and the
Saxons, who ventured across the boisterous North Sea
to subjugate Britain, were also unquestionably the means
of opening the first commercial intercourse between the
two countries. These relations became much closer in
after times, when the descendants of Alfred the Great
allied themselves with the posterity of Otho of Germany,
with whom they shared a common origin. The alliances
between the princely houses of Northern Germany and
the royal family of England have continued to the
present day. The white horse which Hengist and Horsa
bore as their cognizance is still to be seen in the arms of
Brunswick, Luneburg, and the county of Kent, and is
the sea-horse, in memory of which the Saxons poetically
named their high-beaked ships. Close bonds of re-
lationship between the princes of the two countries, and
the common origin of both nations, have thus tended
essentially to promote the special direction which their
international relations have assumed.

It is not difficult to instance some of the principal
epochs in the development of these relations from the
history of the Steelyard. A corporation of German
traders must have existed on the banks of the Thames
long before the German cities had combined to form
their renowned league, and therefore long before they had

N
178 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

laid the foundations of their distant factories in Russia,
Scandinavia, Flanders, and Portugal, at Novgorod,
Wisby, Bergen, Antwerp, and Lisbon. The laws of
the Saxon king, Ethelred IT., who reigned from 978 to
1016, secured to natives of the countries under the rule
of the Emperor the same rights when they entered
English ports with their ships as those which the
natives of England possessed, in return for which they
were bound to make a donation at Christmas and at
Easter of two pieces of gray and one of brown cloth,
ten pounds of pepper, five pair of men’s gloves, and two
barrels of vinegar. The fact that no money was required
of them is entirely in accordance with the ancient usages
of mercantile guilds or corporations, the members of
which, it must, moreover, be presumed, remained in
England throughout the winter. It is not till the second
half of the twelfth century that we again hear of this
guild, when Henry II., the first of the Plantagenets,
took the people of Cologne, together with the house which
they possessed in London and all the goods therein
contained, under his special protection; while at the
same time he allowed them to sell their Rhenish wine,
which they had already begun to bring into the
London market, for the same price at which French
wines were then sold. When at a subsequent period
Richard Coeur de Lion, after his release from the
captivity in which the emperor, Henry VL, had kept
him, was hastening homeward as joyous as a wild bird
that has just escaped from its cage, he rested a day at
Cologne, where he attended high mass in the cathedral,
and testified his grateful acknowledgment of the ready
welcome he had received from the burghers by exempt-
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 179

ing them from the annual rent of two English shillings,
which they had hitherto been compelled to pay for their
Guildhall in London. It was, therefore, the subjects of
the Emperor, and more especially burghers of Cologne,
to whom the house in London belonged which bore the
old Saxon name of Guildhall, which still appertains to
the civic hall of the City.

It was not long, however, before the natives of other
German cities made themselves known in London, and
became incorporated in a commercial league. This was
the period, moreover, at which the Empire was disturbed
by the fatal struggles of the Hohenstaufen and Guelphs,
to the latter of which parties Henry II. of England had
been more specially inclined since one of his daughters
had married Henry the Lion. This policy, which
on the one hand tended very materially to destroy
German unity, was on the other hand the very means
by which the cities of Italy, as well as those of Southern
and Northern Germany, acquired by a remarkably
rapid development the condition of almost independent
communes. The election of the Emperor Otho IV., the
first Guelph who superseded the Hohenstaufen family,
..was effected by the help of his uncle Richard Coeur de
- Lion and by the aid of English money. The burghers

of Cologne contintted faithful to him, even after the great
victory of Bouvines, where Otho and John of England
were defeated by the arms of France, and through the
policy of the Hohenstaufen. When the great emperor,
Frederick II., died after a long and chequered rule,
and his family speedily shared one common tragical
fate, Richard of Cornwall, a prince of the house of Plan-
tagenet, and the brother of the English king, Henry III.,
N2
180 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

presented himself as one of the candidates for the throne
of the divided empire, and as the representative of the
Guelphic policy. In his reign the cities of Northern
Germany cemented their union, and it was to him that
the Hanseatic League owed its recognition in England.
King John had already expressly granted to the people
of Bremen the same rights as those which had been
awarded to the burghers of Cologne, and to these
were added the traders of Hamburg, of Lubeck—a
place which soon afterwards became the chief of the
Hanseatic towns—and the merchants of Rostock, Wis-
mar, Stralsund, and Greifswald. The burghers of
Cologne were not a little jealous of this influx of their
countrymen from Northern Germany; but in spite of
their remonstrances, Henry III., in the year 1260,
granted by letters patent the same rights to all the
merchants of Germany who had a share in the house
in London, which was known as the German Guildhall,
or the Aula Teutonicorum.

A short family history, which belongs to this period,
may perhaps serve to give us some idea of the immigra-
tion and mode of life practised by Germans of this class
in England. The city archives of London contain a
very remarkable vellum codex belonging to the second
half of the thirteenth century, the’ author of which,
speaking modestly of himself in the third person, gives
a short account of his origin. In the latter part of the
twelfth century, he says, a native of the city of Cologne,
named Arnold of Grevinge, came to England with his
wife, whose name was Ode. They were childless, and
on their first landing they proceeded at once to make a
pilgrimage to the grave of the venerated Archbishop
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 181

of Canterbury, St. Thomas Becket—who since his
murder in 1170 had worked many miracles—with the
view of praying to the martyr, that through his inter-
cession they might be blessed with offspring. Ifa son
were born to them, they intended that he should be
dedicated to the service of God and enter the celebrated
monastery at Canterbury, over which Thomas Becket
had once presided. After this, Arnold went to London,
where he followed his business. In the course of time
two children were born to him, a son—whom he called
Thomas, in gratitude to the saint for having heard his
prayers—and a daughter named Juliana. Thomas did
not indeed become a monk, but in lieu of this, he
took the cross, and in the year 1203 followed Count
Baldwin of Flanders to Constantinople, at the taking
of which he disappeared, and was never heard of again.
His sister Juliana married in London a countryman of
her own, named Thedmar, who was a native of the
town of Bremen. They became the parents of eleven
children, and a proof of the prosperity with which they
were blessed is afforded by the liberal provision which
they made for their four daughters on their respective
marriages. One of their sons, named Arnold, is the
author of the old vellum folio, the chief part of whose
contents was published some years ago. He was a man
who played a distinguished part in the history of the
city in that troubled age. He was one of the twenty-
six civic aldermen; but he did not the less on that
account retain a faithful and grateful remembrance of
his origin, maintaining through life a friendly footing
towards his countrymen, who also elected him to the
office of alderman and president of their own Guildhall,
182 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

During the struggle of the barons with Henry III.
in which the democratic party was decidedly in the
ascendent in the city, he maintained a strictly con-
servative policy and adhered closely to the king, in
consequence of which he was frequently obliged to
pay heavy fines, and on one occasion his life even was
in danger. He died, respected and esteemed, at the
advanced age of ninety. In the book, which is un-
doubtedly written by himself, he relates many things
of Richard, King of Rome, with whom he seems to
have been personally acquainted, and it would appear
that he obtained from him very considerable privileges
for those of his countrymen who belonged to the German
sea-ports, and he also speaks with special interest of the
election of Count Rudolf of Hapsburg to the dignity of
King of the Romans, by which the dismembered empire
recovered some degree of respect in the estimation of
other nations. These few traits from the life of an
English alderman of Bremish descent, afford us an
insight into the manner in which industrious and
thrifty German emigrants and their descendants made
themselves happy in their English homes, and give us,
in relation at least to one family, an example which the
whole German colony might have done well to follow ;
for it shows us how the jealousies existing between
persons belonging to Cologne and the cities of the
Hanseatic League were reconciled by a happy marriage.

Henceforth the merchants from the Rhineland and
those from the Baltic and the North Sea lived together
in harmeny, and enjoyed in common the very con-
siderable advantages which were connected with their
Guildhall. In regard to thrifty activity, the English
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 183

could not be compared with them, and indeed, in point
of wealth, no one could compete with these Germans,
excepting, perhaps, the Italian money-changers of Lom-
bard Street, which was then, as it still is, a favourite
locality for banking-houses. The Germans, who were ad-
verse to the business of usury, devoted themselves almost
exclusively to mercantile affairs, and they imported in
their ships both the raw produce of Norway and Russia,
and the rich fruits of Spain and Portugal. Their trade
received a very great impulse at the beginning of the
brilliant reign of the powerful Edward II. The long-
continued contest in which this prince was engaged in
his endeavours to secure the crown of France required,
moreover, the most extraordinary resources. The close
relations of affinity by which he was connected with the
German Emperor, Louis IV., and the reigning family of
the Netherlands, soon turned his thoughts, in regard to
political and commercial combinations, almost exclusively
to the Empire. In the summer of 1338, Edward made
an excursion on the Rhine, and after lingering for a
time at Cologne, where he admired the recently-finished
choir of that noble cathedral, and after making his rich
offerings, proceeded to discuss matters of business with
his brother-in-law, the Emperor, at Coblentz. After a
few years, however, it happened that the war-taxes
which he was compelled to raise in his own country far
exceeded the resources at his command. The money-
market in England, Flanders, and Italy, was moreover
in a very depressed condition, and the celebrated com-
mercial firm of the Bardi, at Florence, which constituted
the very focus of the Italian usury business, had failed,
and the King of England appeared in their books as a
184  .THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

debtor for the sum of 1,000,000 of golden guldens. The
occasion was adroitly turned to account by the mer-
chants of the Hanseatic League, who again hastened to
the king’s assistance in his hour of need. Wool and
leather then constituted the most remunerative articles
yielded by England, which was indeed singularly
favoured in respect to the nature of its products ; but, in
accordance with the commercial policy of the king,
which was based upon the strictest protective system,
wool could only be exported to Flanders during the
continuance of the war with France. Such being the
case, no better agent could be found for its transport to
the rich Flemish cities than the Hanseatic merchants,
who again conveyed the woven stuffs and cloths through
Cologne further into the interior of Germany, and, in
return for such privileges as these, the members of the
German Guildhall always showed themselves ready to
advance new sums of money. ‘The rich mercantile
houses of Tidemann von Limberg, the Brothers Reule,
Clippings, &c. had then as great a reputation in London,
as the Rothschilds and Barings of the present day.
By way of security, they had even obtained the manage-
ment of the export duties in the different maritime ports,
while Tidemann von Limberg held for several years
the valuable tin mines in the county of Cornwall,
which were included in the appanages of the Prince of
Wales. LEdward’s crown and the jewels of the queen
consort, with the insignia used at her coronation, were
fora long time pledged in the city of Cologne, and we
learn from a correspondence, still preserved among the
Chancery Records in London, that the king was not
able to redeem them when the time, for which they
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LUNDON. 185

were pledged, had expired. It was then that these
members of the Steelyard again proffered him the loan
of more money, and having redeemed the crown jewels
they sent to Germany for them, and restored them to
the king. He was now able to draw again upon these
houses to the amount of £20,000 or £30,000 sterling—
asum of money the full value of which at that period
was fifteen times greater than in the present day. The
great victories, won by the Black Prince at Crecy and
Poitiers, must therefore have been gained, in no small
degree, by the help of German industry and German
capital; nor did these merchants show any diffidence in
accepting for their factory still more important privileges
in return for these great services.

The beginning of the fifteenth century was the
culminating point of the Hanseatic League and con-
sequently also of the Steelyard in London. Soon,
however, the rise of the Scandinavian powers, and the
consolidation of the Duchy of Burgundy in the Nether-
lands became dangerous to the exclusive and strongly
egotistical commercial system of the German traders
in London. ‘Their position in England, also, soon
became less pleasant, for, notwithstanding the distress
of the times during the disastrous Wars of the Roses, an
efficient class of native traders had steadily been rising
into notice, and attaining great wealth in imitation of
their Italian and German prototypes; and we now for
the first time begin to trace the dawn of that spirit of
mercantile enterprise, which in the present day is the
wonder and admiration of every zone of the globe. A
numerous guild of merchants, trading in foreign parts,
now sought to be admitted into the German cities of
186 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

the Baltic, in Prussia, and Livonia. The Hanseatic
League refused, however, in accordance with their usual
system of exclusive policy, to grant them the same privi-
leges which they had themselves enjoyed for centuries
in Russia, Scandinavia, and England. Some of these
merchant-adventurers, as the members of this commercial
company were called, were even in danger of losing
both property and life, and hence arose lawsuits and
reprisals, which often terminated in active hostilities. For
several years a fierce maritime war raged between these
rival traders, such as we can scarcely imagine, when we
consider only the present relation between the Hanseatic
and the British shipping. On one occasion a fleet of
108 sail, belonging to Lubeck and Riga, while returning
from Spain, heavily laden with salt and the fruits of the
south, was captured in the channel by the English.
This act was revenged by the large coasting vessels
of Lubeck and Danzic, which boldly cruised in the
North Sea, and took possession of many splendid English
prizes deeply laden with cloth and other valuable goods.
This state of things necessarily did great damage to the
trade of Northern Europe, but it was to no purpose that
the Baltic merchants in their desire for peace negotiated,
through their ambassadors, with the several govern-
ments. The Hanseatic League, and the Grand Master
of Prussia, who had formed an alliance with them,
obstinately insisted upon the maintenance of their
ancient privileges, while the English, who could not
obtain similar immunities to those which they had
granted to others, required that the Germans should pay
the tax on wine and wool which had been exacted from
all other foreigners, dealing in the English markets.
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 187

The German traders resisted with might and main,
but at length, in the year 1469, they were condemned
by the courts to pay a fine of £13,520 sterling. Many
members of the Steelyard were thrown into prison, and
this ancient corporation ran great risk of losing its
rights, together with the house and land it had so long
possessed. At the same time dissension broke out in
the very midst of the league, for the merchants of
Cologne and of Western Germany were at variance with
those of Lubeck aud the Baltic cities. Itis not improbable
that the entire League would prematurely have come to
an end had not the Parliament been the first to make
overtures of peace. Even when armed ships from
Bremen, Hamburg, and Danzic, sailing under the flag
of Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, entered the channel
and made a landing at several points of the English
coast, the House of Commons did not remit its efforts
to effect an amicable adjustment of the differences. To
Edward IV., who after he had been once driven from his
country by a Lancastrian faction, and had been enabled
to return by the help of Hanseatic traders, belongs
the merit of having brought about a peace in the year
1474, by the treaty of Utrecht, in which it was stipulated
that satisfaction was to be made to all the parties con-
cerned, while the corporation of the Steelyard was to
recover its former rights and privileges, as far as the
altered circumstances of the times would admit.

The German traders continued to enjoy their rights
throughout nearly the whole of the century in which man-
kind was enriched by the acquisition of a great continent,
and ennobled by the reformation of the Church. The dis-
covery of America by Columbus, to which was soon
188 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

added that of hitherto unknown districts by the
Spaniards and Portuguese in the south, and by the
English and French in the north of the new world,
rapidly dimmed the glory of Venice and Genoa, and
threw into the shade the pretensions of the North
German Hanseatic League. The bold schemes of
Jiirgen Wullenwever for making Lubeck the starting
point of a series of operations, the object of which was
to gain supremacy over the north of Europe, were
connected for a time with the aspirations which even
before the Reformation, had arisen in men’s minds for
the amelioration of the Church, and once more the idea
of the universality of the power of the Hanseatic League
was re-awakened, but only for a moment, before it was
finally and rapidly laid at rest for ever. In the mean-
while totally different channels were opened to the
commerce of the world, and the enterprise of the
nations of Europe, for now hitherto unknown products
were added to the necessaries of life; and in place of the
miserable vessels with which trade had been carried on
in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and along the shores
of the Atlantic, ships of totally different build and
capacity were fast coming into use. The Hanseatic
League had outlived its date, and the size of its ships
had so much increased that they could no longer
pass through the arches of the London Bridge, or lie
at anchor, as in olden times, at the wharfs attached
to the Steelyard Factory. The traders insisted not
the less pertinaciously upon adhering to the letter of
their old prerogatives, notwithstanding the wholly
different circumstances of the times, while they refused
to grant to the English those privileges in Germany, which
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 189

they had themselves so long enjoyed in a foreign country.
When, therefore, on one occasion English subjects were
expelled from Elbing and Stade by the command of
the emperor, the English queen, Elizabeth, would no
longer be trifled with. Her admirals, Drake and Norris,
before whom the proud Spaniards had learnt to tremble
on the coasts of the old and new world, captured in a
short time more than sixty Hanseatic ships, while by a
royal decree of January, 1598, she banished the German
associates of the guild from the Steelyard. The build-
ings and wharfs were then employed for a time by the
Admiralty, until the Hamburg and Lubeck authorities
agreed to receive English merchant-adventurers on the
same conditions that had been granted to the Hanseatic
traders in London. From that time they recovered their
old possessions and made the best use they could of
them, till the great fire of London, in the year 1666,
which laid the most considerable part of the city in
ashes. But before we proceed to speak of the destruction
of the Steelyard, we will attempt, as far as possible, to
describe the buildings which composed it, and the life
and habits of those who once occupied them.

The piece of land which was known as the Steelyard,
although on what account cannot be determined with
any certainty, occupied a most admirable position in the
London of the middle ages. Situated only a little above
London bridge, which, until a comparatively recent
period, was the only bridge of the city, and not far from
the Exchange, and St. Paul’s, it extended, from its
commodious wharfs on the river side, far inland to the
south of Thames-street, while on the west it was bounded
by Dowgate-street, whose name reminds us of one of
190 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

the ancient river-gates of the city, and on the east by
All-Saints-street. The original building was small
enough, but in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
several manor-houses and other buildings in the neigh-
bourhood were added to it. An edifice was then erected,
whose solid style of architecture accorded with the re-
quirements of a medieval corporation, and which may be
compared to the Arthushof at Danzic, the Rumeney at
Soest, and similar ancient commercial halls. The
northern front, which looked towards Thames-street, must
have been especially imposing with its many storeys and
its three circular gates, well protected and clamped with
iron, each of which was embellished with a characteristic
inscription. In one of these the house offers to all who
enter it, “Joy, abundance of all good things, peace,
rest, and honest pleasure,” and in another we are told that
“Gold is the father of the graceful arts, and the offspring
of toil,’ whilst the third threatens all who infringe
the rules of discipline with merited punishment.
The double eagle of the Empire, with its outspread
wings, surmounted the high gabled roof. Strong walls
encompassed this enclosure, which stood like a little
fortress in the midst of the city, and on many occasions
afforded protection to its inmates. Sometimes it was
the rude populace living on the banks of the river, who
in their eagerness for strife, began the attack against
these foreigners, whose language they could not under-
stand, whose dress and appearance struck them as
peculiar, and whose privileges excited their envy. And
during the great communistic rising of the working
classes and of the scum of the English population,
under the ruthless demagogue, Wat Tyler, in the year
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 191

1381, when no one who rejoiced in the possession of
rank or property was certain of his life, the Hanseatic
merchants owed their safety to the strength of their
walls, while other foreigners, and more especially the
Flemish, were killed en masse.

The buildings which were surrounded in a fortress-like
manner by these walls were of several different kinds.
High above the rest, rose conspicuous the great hall, which
served as a council-chamber at the general meetings,
and was used for the celebration of the frequently
recurring festivals, that had been kept from olden times
by the traders. The high chimney-pieces and elabo-
rately carved cornices were adorned with the state silver
and tin vessels of the corporation, and there is little
doubt that among these polished and glittering pieces of
plate there may have been seen then, as we still find in
Hanseatic Guildhalls, many curiosities and strange or-
naments from foreign parts. There were two paintings,
however, which must have been of special value, for
they had been painted by the celebrated master, Hans
Holbein, for his countrymen, who brought to their new
homes the love of art, for which their native land was
already distinguished. These two paintings were pend-
ants, and represented under an allegorical garb the
triumph of riches and the triumph of poverty. On the one
side of the hall rose a tower, which was the sanctuary or
treasury in which the company preserved their title deeds,
and their most precious jewels and works of art; while
on the other side was situated the capacious stone kitchen,
in which ample preparations were made for the dinners
of week-days and festivals. Between the hall and the
wall upon the west side, lay a garden, in which the
192 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

Germans, in accordance with the practices and require-
ments of their own homes, had planted vines and fine
fruit trees. On summer evenings they were wont to rest
here after the business of the day, while the young
people among them amused themselves with playing. at
ball, or with some similar recreation. The stores,
sale-booths, and places of business belonging to the
company extended in long rows down to the river side,
and occupied by far the larger portion of the grounds.
Here the individual mercantile firms of the German
Hanseatic League had their counting houses, and here
were stored away their goods according to a regularly
prescribed allotment of space. Next to these were the
broad wharfs surmounted by a lofty crane, to the foot of
which the waters of the Thames reached at high tide,
when the ships were able conveniently to unload their
freights. This was truly one of the great staple places for
the export and import of all the principal necessaries of
life, before men had thought of the products of America.

From Norway, Russia, Poland and the territory of
the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order in Prussia,
iron, wood, hemp, tallow, wax, and furs were imported,
while the Baltic itself yielded large quantities of its fish,
more especially the herring, which had not then been
found in any other waters, sturgeon, which was considered
as a special dainty, and many cargoes of salted cod, with
which the English were then accustomed to feed their
troops when on service, There were also sometimes
living creatures among these goods, as for instance, choice
falcons from Norway or Livonia, for which the English
nobility, who were passionately addicted to the sport,
paid high prices. Ships that had come from the Rhine,
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 193

brought many bulky casks of noble wine, while the
Flemish skippers conveyed large cargoes of cloth and
linen of every quality. The intercourse with Spain and
Portugal opened a connexion with all the nations of
Southern Europe, who were engaged in the trade of the
East, and was the means of introducing various luxuries,
as figs, dates, almonds and cinnamon, dyes, choice
spices and perfumes, medicines, metals, and even gold-
dust and jewels. The Hanseatic traders did not, how-
ever, dispose of many of these things to their English
customers, and they therefore carried them to Hamburg
and Lubeck, from whence they were conveyed to Bergen
and Riga. From the English they purchased the produce
of their flocks and their tillage, as wool, strong hides, corn,
beer and cheese. In fact, all articles of barter and com-
merce then known to the world exchanged hands, and
were rapidly bought or sold at the Steelyard in London.

There was one house belonging to the Steelyard
which must not remain unnoticed, and which was situa-
ted on the northern side, where it formed a portion of the
front facing Thames-street, which was then as it still is
one of the main streets of the city ; we refer to the vaults
which had existed here from the fifteenth century, and
where strangers might purchase Rhenish wine, smoked
ox-tongues, salmon, and caviar.

It was not only frequented by the prosperous traders of
the Baltic and the North Sea, who resorted thither to
close their bargains over their wine cups; for in the
reign of James I, at a time when the fashionable world
had not yet migrated to the west end of London,
and when many noble families still lived in the city,
this house enjoyed a reputation similar to that which

0
194 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON,

belonged to the neighbouring tavern, in which Shake-
speare made the bulky Falstaff and the light hearted
prince Henry quaff their cups of sack. It was not only
the merchants who relished the good things of the Steel-
yard, for bishops and nobles, and even the lord chancellor
himself, and many a distinguished privy councillor did
not disdain to honour these vaults with their presence,
or to taste the dainties of the foreigners. Frequent refer-
ence is made to this practice in the comedies written in
the days of Queen Elizabeth and her successors, which
constitute the best authorities for the social life of the
times. “Let us go to the Stilliard and drink Rhenisch
wine,” says the author of Pierce Pennelisse, and in one of
Webster’s plays we have the following passage: “I
come to invite you to meet him this afternoon at the
Rhenish winehouse in the Stillyard. Will you steal
forth, and taste of a Dutch bun and a keg of sturgeon?”
Singularly enough a large tavern, bearing the sign of
the Steelyard, still stands on the same spot, sur-
mounted by a bunch of golden grapes, similar to
those which we so frequently meet with in the narrow
streets of old German towns. Here then, after the
many vicissitudes which this spot has experienced,
we find that the same name and business have been
preserved since the day when, 600 years ago, Henry
II. granted to the men of Cologne the right of selling
their Rhenish wine within the walls of their own factory.

Although the tendencies of the German traders were,
as we see, sufficiently material, they were not wholly
deficient in a taste for other and better things. They
had themselves proclaimed in their mottoes, that riches
generate a taste for art, and gratification in its cultivation,
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 195

and: they had given their poorer artistic brethren the
opportunity of adorning their hall with beautiful paintings
and carvings. But still higher and more earnest feelings
kept alive in their hearts a religious veneration for the
Christian faith, which had always been zealously upheld
by the simple and honest burghers of the German
imperial and Hanseatic cities. The adventurous and
dangerous calling of the seaman, and the risk and un-
certainty attending the speculations of the trader,
fostered, more especially in the times preceding the
Reformation, a humble and simple piety, which found
its expression in a diligent attendance on the services of
the Church and in the foundation of benevolent institu-
tions of every kind. Strange to say, we scarcely meet
with a trace of a separate chapel in the Steelyard in
London, and it would appear that the company was
incorporated in the neighbouring parish of All-Saints,
the church of which, besides its other designation,
appears early under the name of the Seamen’s Church.
Although the tradition that this church was founded by
the Germans does not admit of confirmation, there can
be no doubt that they were extensively connected with
it. They probably maintained a special altar, made
offerings of the long wax candles which were used at
special festivals, and caused masses to be read on certain
holy days. Even the Reformation did not entirely
loosen this bond of connexion, which affords an obvious
proof of the manner in which the Germans had identified
themselves from a very early period with the English,
among whom they lived. The Germans appear, however,
to have adopted the new and purified doctrines, if not
tardily, at any rate ey for when, in the year
0
196 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

1526, a commission headed by the celebrated chan-
cellor, Sir Thomas More, in person, himself a zealous
catholic, proceeded in obedience to their orders to make
a domiciliary search at the Steelyard for the writings
of Luther, nothing was found among the corporation but
Old and New Testaments, Gospels, and German Prayer-
books, while the whole body, both young and old, were
able with a clear conscience to swear at St. Paul’s Cross,
that there was not a heretic amongst them. Soon after-
wards the Reformation was firmly established in England,
as it had been in most of the cities belonging to the
Hanseatic League, and from this time forth the Steel-
yard associates attended the English Protestant service
in All Saints Church. Here they long occupied several
rows of old seats, which were again appropriated to them
on the restoration of the church after the great fire.
Several artistically and brightly painted glass windows,
in which the double-headed imperial eagle formed the
centre-piece, were contributed by the corporation. After
the great fire, they presented to the church the beautifully
carved oak screen, which separates the choir from the
main aisle, and which still excites the admiration of all
who see it. It was the work of a Hamburg carver in
wood, and represents numerous twisted columns, pilas-
ters and arches. On the door leading to the altar, the
imperial eagle is again introduced, while high above it,
rise the royal arms of England. As late as the year
1747, these seats were still in the possession of the
master of the Steelyard and the otherrepresentatives of
the Guild, although the religious tendency of the
Germans in London had already assumed a very
different direction.
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON, 197

These, then, were the buildings of the corporation, and
it now only remains for us to give such details of the
life of the Hanseatic traders as are likely to prove
interesting. This little state within a state naturally
corresponded in its constitution to the forms of the
times, and to the conditions of the government under
which it existed. The actual members of the corporation
and the masters had a perfect equality of votes in the
assemblies, in which the interests of the collective body
were discussed and decided upon. They annually
selected from their own body an alderman, who with two
assistants and a committee of nine members, managed
the affairs of the corporation. In these elections, care
was taken that all the representatives of the different
Hanseatic cities should serve in turn on the committee.
By this mode of government the affairs of this little world
were settled in its own tongue, and measures taken for
carrying on the administration of its affairs in a fitting
and legal manner. The discipline of the place was almost
monastic in its character; for it was required that all the
masters living in the Steelyard, together with their
apprentices, including even the bailiffs, should be un-
married men. Order and quiet were maintained by the
most stringent regulations. Blows and other personal
offences were punished by heavy money fines; while
drunkenness, gambling and immoral conduct were
visited by severe punishments. At nine o’clock in the
evening the gates were closed, and not opened: again to
any one till the following morning. Every master was
bound to maintain his helmet, coat of mail and all the
arms belonging to a complete set of accoutrements, in good
condition, within his own chamber. These regulations
198 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

aimed at enforcing a strict maintenance of the legal
relations in which the traders stood to the country, in
which they enjoyed the privileges of hospitality. Much
stress was laid upon the necessity of never giving the first
incentive to a quarrel. It was also the custom to choose
as a mediator in all strifes or in civil law cases with the
native English, either one of the aldermen of the city or
the Lord Mayor himself. In criminal cases, the jury,
as is still the custom in England under similar con-
ditions, was composed of the one half of Englishmen,
the other half of Germans.

The duties which the Guild owed to the authorities
of the city and of the country at large, had been
defined by ancient usage, and were scrupulously ob-
served: thus, for instance, the regulations which enforced
that their arms should always be ready, was not a mere
useless precaution, for the Germans were bound to take
part in the defence of the city; while, in accordance
with a long-existing enactment, they were expected to
supply the watch at the Bishop’s-gate, which formed the
northern entrance of the city, and when circumstances
demanded it, to defend it and keep it in good condition.
The old Bishop’s-gate, as it has been described to us,
was the work of German architects, while its statues,
representing a bishop in the act of benediction, with
King Alfred on his right hand and his son-in-law,
Ethelred Earl of Mercia, on his left, carry us back to the
old Saxon times. Even in the days of Protestantism,
when the City of London was no longer troubled by
enemies, the Hanseatic traders faithfully adhered to the
fulfilment of this ancient duty.

In the course of time, the voluntary impositions, which
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 199

had been assumed by the Germans with a view of pre-
serving their great privileges, which consisted chiefly in
the smallness of the customs and duties demanded of them,
acquired still greater importance. It thus happened
that many presents were made, in money and articles of
value. Thus, for instance, the Lord Mayor received
from them every new year’s day fifteen gold nobles,
wrapped up in a pair of new gloves, which forcibly
remind us of the singular offerings that were made in
the Saxon times. When the Lord Mayor was especially
popular with the Germans, he received in addition a
keg of the best caviar, a few tons of herrings, or a hundred-
weight of Polish wax. The legal advisers whom the
company selected from the serjeants-at-law, received
similar gifts, in addition to their regular fees.
From an account-book referring to the time of Queen
Elizabeth, we see how much these presents to the
authorities of the city, and even to the ministers of the
crown, had become a matter of course. The officials of
the Post Office, the Admiralty, the Treasury, and the
Foreign Office, were all entered as having received their
new year's gifts. The chief inspectors of customs
received about 20/. sterling, intended probably to make
them easy and indulgent in the exercise of their duties,
which were frequently of a delicate nature. No incon-
siderable sum is set down for small presents in the way
of dainties and wine and for the gloves, in which, with
a tender consideration for the feelings of the recipient,
it was customary to wrap up the pieces of money.

By such means as these, a very friendly state of
feeling was maintained. The “ Hasterlings,” as the
English had at all times been in the habit of calling the
200 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

German Hanseatic traders, were regarded by them on all
public occasions as their fellow citizens, and accordingly
the honest and respected members of the Steelyard
failed not to take part in those great and sumptuous
feasts, which the city of London has continued, even to
the present day, to celebrate with the strangest pag-
eantry. When the young king, Henry VI., returned in
February, 1431, from Paris, where he had been crowned
‘King of France, and the lord mayor, with the sheriff
and aldermen on horseback, rode forth to meet him,
dressed in scarlet and ermine, as the poet Lydgate
describes in his song, the Easterlings came immediately
behind the authorities of the city, mounted on gallant
steeds, and headed by their wardens and masters.

On certain days in the year they celebrated festivals
of their own. On the 4th of December, St. Barbara’s
day, after they had first attended service in All Saints’
Church, they kept their solemn annual festival in the
great hall. Doubly bright shone then the state salvers
of the rich Guild, and bright were the walls with gay
and costly carpets and hangings. The masters sat ata
table raised above the rest, and their apprentices some-
what lower at long tables, and whatever rarities may
have been served on these occasions, their favourite dish
of cod never failed. The incumbent of All Saints’ Church,
and the porter of the royal court of the Star-Chamber,
were annually invited before any other guests.

Enough, however, has been said of the life and habits
of a corporation, which, as long as it was in harmony
with the circumstances of the times, was fraught with
blessings and advantages; and we have now only to
relate the manner in which the ancient Steelyard came
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 201

toanend. We have already seen that the Hanseatic
League and its factory had outlived its age in England
as early as the sixteenth century. The fate of this
institution was materially affected by the great fire of
London, which took place in September, 1666, when
the Steelyard, like the best part of the city, was laid in
ashes. When the English government hesitated to
renew the privileges of the Company, the members
again obstinately insisted upon their good old rights,
and after some litigation actually obtained a confirmation
of their ancient charters from Charles II. The new
building, which was then erected, was much more
devoid of pretension than the old edifice with its solid
walls, ponderous arches, and capacious halls, for only one
dwelling house was erected for the Master of the Steel-
yard, while the rest of the space was appropriated to
warehouses and wharfs, differing in very few respects
from the numerous buildings of the same nature that
are to be seen on either side of the Thames. The Guild
in fact existed only in its past history, and it no longer
needed its foreign counting-houses, for the position of
continental merchants in England had been completely
changed since the introduction of Cromwell’s important
measures of maritime policy. The associates of the
Steelyard required, therefore, only a very small portion
of their old premises in London, and they consequently
let out the ground, in separate lots, to the London
merchants for warehouses ; and although the value of the
land and the amount of the rent which it brought, more
than supplied the expenses incurred by keeping up the
establishment, the property sometimes became burdensome
202 THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON.

to the free-cities of Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen,
which were the heirs of the once powerful Hanseatic
League. At length, after prolonged negotiations be-
tween the various governments of those cities, and after a
careful investigation of the historical and legal organi-
zation of the Steelyard, the property was sold in the
year 1853, to a company of English speculators, for the
sum of £72,500. :

There are some invaluable blessings which have been
secured to the German population in London—which at
present amounts to more than 50,000,—by the associates
of the Steelyard, which it is to be hoped their country-
men may continue to enjoy for many ages. When, after
the great fire, the Steelyard had been rebuilt, the Warden
and Masters petitioned King Charles II. to grant one
of the small city churches for their special use, and
in consequence of this petition, a small church, known
as Trinity Church, in the immediate neighbourhood ot
the Steelyard, was assigned to them by royal letters
patent, in the year 1673. After the restoration of the
building, which had suffered materially by the great
fire, it was appropriated to the celebration of the pro-
testant service in their own language, and with the
exception of the German Court Chapel, Trinity Church
is the mother of the other three or four protestant
German chapels in London.

German merchants certainly no longer live within
the Steelyard as in olden times, nor do they enjoy the
exceptional privileges which were once possessed by
their countrymen, but in exchange for the prerogatives
of the Steelyard Corporation, they have attained a
THE HANSEATIC STEELYARD IN LONDON. 203

footing of perfect equality with the natives of the land.
The monopolies and restrictions of the middle ages have
passed away, never to be revived, and in their place has
arisen a system of free and untrammelled competition
open alike to foreigners and native-born Englishmen.
VIL.

TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

Tue dawn of national poetry is generally contempor-
aneous with some brilliant epoch in the literary history
and general development of a nation. When this awak-
ening of a poetic spirit is coincident with an advanced
period of the historical existence of a country, its language
passes at the same time from an unsettled stage of
immaturity to a consciousness of development, while
it proclaims its own individuality with a characteristic
and expressive force, which enables it to main-
tain its integrity, notwithstanding the modifications
to which it naturally is subjected in the course of ages.
This transition from the youth to the maturity of a
language is always attended by special phenomena
among nations of mixed origin, and more especially
when it occurs at an historical age. Where two races
blend together into one nationality, their respective
languages also become gradually fused tozether into a
new idiom. The origin and course of development of
the English language present therefore both in respect
to comparative philology and the history of literature
an equally abundant mass of rich materials and equally
numerous points of interest, whether we direct our
investigations to its recent, or its remote history.
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 205

It would be difficult to estimate the relative propor-
tions in which Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian,
and Norman elements have combined to form the
character and speech of Englishmen of the present
day. Weare only made conscious of one or other of
these constituents as they in turn predominate, and it
requires a more mature consideration to enable us to
recognise the fact that there are some clements, whose
presence we can scarcely trace, although their effects
remain permanent. When the Angles and Saxons first
subjugated the British race, after its previous contact
with a Celto-Roman civilization, the victors, like all
the other Germanic tribes, and like the ancient conquer-
ing nations of the Kast, kept themselves for a while
widely separated from the vanquished. Neither party
could, however, for any length of time escape from the
effect of the opposing influences to which they were
subjected, and even now the English language contains
a number of words, some of which are of common
every day use, which it does not possess in common
with other Indo-European tongues, and which could
only have been incorporated from the ancient British
dialects.

The links, moreover, which once bound the island
to the Roman empire of the west, and which were
severed with its downfall, were again united through
the Church of Rome. It is a question, however, whether
in addition to the ecclesiastical type, which is easily
recognised in the combination and style of the Anglo-
Saxon diction, classical influences may not also have
contributed their part. More marked and more un-
avoidable was the effect produced by contact with the
206 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

Danes—another kindred race—who first trod the shores
of England in the character of pirates and subsequently
remained as colonists in the land. We have most
important evidence in proof of the permanency and
deeper significance of the German element in the fact,
that although a number of Scandinavian words, more
especially in the north, on either side of the Tweed,
have been fused into the national tongue, the special
Scandinavian characteristics can nowhere be traced in
the inflexions or arrangement of the words of the
English language. Till the arrival of the Normans
the Anglo-Saxon had scarcely been more changed by
the intermixture of foreign elements than the conti-
nental German of the same period.

It was reserved for a people, who were themselves
sprung from’a mixture of Celts, Romans, Franks and
Scandinavians, to debilitate among the Anglo-Saxons the
Germanic element, which had hitherto been preserved
in relative purity among them. It is true that the way
must to some extent have been opened to the victorious
chivalry of Normandy and to their race generally, for
there are unmistakeable traces of the presence in the
English language, prior to the year 1066, of many
Norman-French words, which must have been introduced
through the agency, not only of the Court and Church,
but also, perhaps, by means of mercantile intercom-
munications. It is, however, still more evident that
both nations remained, almost for centuries after the
Conquest, perfectly distinct and unmixed. As the king
bestowed the great fiefs of the crown exclusively upon his
French nobles, and the Church filled almost all her sees
with prelates of the same origin, the court and nobility
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 207

which governed the land constituted one distinct and
exclusive nationality. And although there may have
been no lack of Normans among the lower ranks of
knighthood, or even among the burgesses, these classes
were comprised for the most part of the entire mass of
the vanquished, who, with a sense of the oppression
which they were undeniably made to feel, stood widely
apart from their rulers, both as to social intercourse and
language. On this very account, however, the Norman-
French could not have been used as the language of the
State for at least the first century after the Conquest,
although such was even then, and still is, sometimes
assumed to have been the case. As the clergy con-
stituted the interpreters between the two races and
administered all the most important offices of the realm,
the language of the State in England, as in every
country of Western Christendom at that period, was
necessarily Latin. Even after the Saxon element had
begun to revive under the Plantagenets, and when the
loss of Normandy had thrown the island back on its own
resources, and the first fundamental principles of English
law had been extorted from the Sovereign through
Magna Charta, all public acts and enactments, and all
public notices, whether judicial or administrative, were
couched in Latin, although during the constitutional
disturbances of Henry III.’s reign, it is worthy of
notice that we meet with several instances in which the
State documents are drawn up in both forms of the
vernacular, in order to promote their easy and rapid
comprehension. In the meanwhile, at the court of the
monarch and in the castles of the nobles the use of
French was pertinaciously adhered to, and it would
208 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

appear as if the language took the deepest root in the
country at the very time when the foundations of the
Anglo-Saxon independence were being laid. We have
no satisfactory proof that any one of the first three
Edwards spoke English, and it would appear that
Edward III. on some public occasion found it difficult
to put together three consecutive words in the national
tongue. Indeed there are grounds to assume that
French actually became the language of the State under
Edward I. It was the language exclusively used in
Parliament; for the notices of the proceedings of the
meetings, the great majority of laws and statutes, and
even petitions from the lower classes of the community
were all drawn up in French, Although Latin always
maintained its place, and notwithstanding the impetus
which the use of the English tongue simultaneously
received from all directions during the second half of the
fourteenth century, the ancient Norman-French still
continued to predominate for a certain time in different
quarters, as in the House of Lords, and in some official
departments of the City, until it slowly but steadily dis-
appeared in the course of time, leaving only here and
there a few memorials of its early use.

Such vicissitudes in the official use of these respective
languages were, however, coincident with, and in a great
measure dependent upon, important changes which took
place in the two contending idioms, upon the amal-
gamation of certain literary expressions and upon the
successive approximations and combinations which were
established between the two. Like two rivers, both
languages flow side by side for a time, until at length
they blend together in one broad stream. Thus far each
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 209

maintains its own individuality, and endeavours to create
new products from its own special sources. While some
of the best Norman authors wrote and composed verses
in honour of the Plantagenets and served at their courts,
while we have many examples of chaste Norman lyric
poetry which drew its source from English ground, and
while the national songs composed in honour of Simon
de Montfort, the hero of the popular party, were even
composed in French, there existed a native literature
which must be characterized as almost wholly German.
The Anglo-Saxon chronicle does not break off till the
end of King Stephen’s reign, and at its close it still
gives us only modified transitions from the vigorous old
Germanic inflections, which are not more marked than
the transition from the ancient High German into the
Middle High German. The long heroic poems and
rhyming chronicles of the thirteenth century, although
more or less tinctured with provincial colouring and
interwoven with foreign elements, still maintained
essentially the same character. Then, moreover, we
have evidence of the existence of a national lyrical
poetry, whose tender and truly poetical sentiments may
stand comparison with those of the German Minne-
singers or the Provengal Troubadours, although in form
and in the structure of the versification it fell short of
its foreign rivals, owing to the antagonism between the
old Germanic alliterations and the Romanic rhythm and
its artificial combinations. It was in the political songs
which, towards the end of the thirteenth century, reached
the high degree of development which they subse-
quently maintained, as well as in the national ballads,
that we first meet with a tone and form which may
P
210 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

be characterized as English, and which give us, as it
were, the first fruits of this fusion.

This process, however, was not strictly in accordance
with the natural order of things, and was rather due to
artificial agencies and to the forcible pressure of circum-
stances. It is quite natural that the author of that
remarkable poem, entitled Pierce Plowman’s Vision,
which depicts in few but bold touches the awakening of
the fourth estate of the realm and the origin of the great
rise of the peasantry of England, should, like the writers
of the older national songs, employ a pure Saxon dialect
in order to make himself comprehensible to men of low
tirth, while he pertinaciously adheres to the old rhythm,
and jealously avoids everything savouring of a foreign
style of diction. It is equally natural that Wiclif, who
did not preach or translate the Bible exclusively for
the middle and lower classes, should have written
in a mixed dialect, which, like a lingua franca,
formed to a certain extent the neutral ground of
the two nationalities, and which, although we do not
know how long it had been spoken, undoubtedly began
at that period for the first time to be used as a written
language. This great Reformer, who wrote in the cause
of religion and the Church, could scarcely have employed
any other dialect, considering the social and political
importance which it had attained soon after the
middle of the fourteenth century, which was the period
at which he wrote. The House of Commons, whose
national influence had been considerably augmented
during the great French wars, continued from this time
forth to conduct its proceedings in the dialect, which
was familiar to all its members, whether Knights or
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 211

Burghers, and already in the year 1362 the nation had
the satisfaction of seeing the two Houses opened with an
English speech. At the same period, the Government
enjoined upon the Courts of Law to have their pro-
ceedings conducted in English. And although Latin
and French undoubtedly still lingered in the public
enactments of the various departments of Government,
a national language had now been finally obtained
which even the high Norman nobility were compelled,
at any rate partially, to adopt before the close of the
century; for we find that the charges of high treason,
which were brought against several peers, were drawn
up in English, while soon after the convulsive change in
the monarchy, the Sovereign was even obliged to employ
the same form of speech. If this were the case among
the highest ranks of official society, who were almost
exclusively of Norman birth and descent, this dialect
must have taken much deeper root in the lower classes,
especially amongst the young. We are assured by a
schoolmaster of that age, that he had entirely ceased to
employ French in the course of his instructions as early
as the year 1385, for he found that their mother tongue
was a far better medium for teaching his boys the Latin
grammar, as they scarcely understood a single word of
French.

Thus, then, a national language had been developed,
fully adequate to meet all the purposes and requirements
of general intercourse. It was destined, moreover,
simultaneously to attain a higher dignity and to receive
an impress of durability, by being at once hallowed and
enriched by the gift of poetry, bequeathed to it for the
first time by two native poets. The services which

P2
212 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

Gower and Chaucer have rendered to the language and
poetry of England are indeed very unequal, since it is
scarcely possible to name two minds more diametrically
opposed to each other, in regard to their natural endow-
ments and their powers of moulding their materials ; but
the labours of these two cotemporaries and friends
tend towards one and the same aim, and the difference
in their modes of life, their views and relative powers of
imagination, prompts us to place them side by side, in
order that by a comparison of the two, we may the
better arrive at a knowledge of the results which have
been obtained through their powerful aid. A sketch of
the life and works of either of these poets can scarcely,
moreover, be drawn up, independently of that of the
other, as many threads of their history necessarily
became intertwined at more than one point of their
several careers.

From the few scanty biographical fragments which
we have obtained regarding them, it would appear that
there was at any rate considerable similarity in their
origin, for it is highly probable that the ancestors of
both were among the ranks of the Norman conquerors.
John Gower, the date of whose birth has not indeed
been ascertained with perfect certainty, but who was
probably born between the years 1320 and 1330, was
thus very nearly of the same age as his friend and

. comrade. Belonging to an affluent county family of
good descent, Gower owned property of various kinds,
which was situated to the south of London, and not far
distant from it, but probably in the same district in
which his ancestors for several generations before him
had lived. He was at any rate descended in the second
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 213

line from a knight, whose estate was situated in Suffolk,
and who was buried in a village church in Kent. He
designates himself as an Esquire of Kent, and although
- he held several manors, either as his own, or from some
feudal lord, in at least three counties, he never sought
to obtain the honour of knighthood. The management
of his property absorbed a large proportion of his time
and attention, as we gather from the care with which
he secured himself from the risk of legal informalities,
by causing every change, effected through the granting
or falling in of leases and mortgages, to be registered in
the rolls of the Court of Chancery. It is probable
that he was deterred both by circumstances and
inclination from adopting the military profession, and we
even find that he at all times held himself aloof from
participation in local county affairs or in those political
questions which the English gentlemen of that day had
already begun to consider as a matter of duty. In this
respect he forms a very striking exception to the rest of
his countrymen at that period, for the brilliant wars of
Edward III. and the Black Prince had given additional
impulse to the romantic spirit of chivalry which charac-
terized the adventure-loving class to which he belonged,
while on the other hand a noble field of political activity
had been opened to the gentry of the land, by the
growing importance of the House of Commons. He
was possessed of the culture which had long placed the
knightly classes on an equality with the clergy, and it
is highly probable that he had acquired his mental
training either at Oxford or Cambridge, for the very
varied reading on which his works are based could
scarcely at that period have been acquired at any other
214 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

place in England, than at one of the sister Universities.
We have, however, no certain evidence on the subject,
and still less in reference to the question, whether he
was a member of any of the Inns of Court, or whether
he even belonged to the legal profession. He appears
to have lived a retired, independent life, and to have
mixed as little as possible with the outer world, and
hence we meet in his works with strikingly few refe-
rences to the current affairs of the times. There was
one great event, however—the rising of the peasantry
and the villeins, in the year 1381—that made a very
powerful impression upon him, which is to be traced in
all his subsequent writings. It is true that the move-
ment began in Kent, where he had shortly before
entered into possession of his principal patrimony, and
of which he was probably a native. Although, like all
the far-sighted men of his age, he could not fail to see
the deep corruption of the church, he nevertheless
shrank with abhorrence from a religious fanaticism,
which aimed at the annihilation of all social bonds, and
from which he very probably had himself suffered, both
in money and estate. We find that he became from
this time forth a thorough conservative, and a close
adherent and upholder of the ancient authority of the
church and state, entering even into alliance with those
who had raised the standard of the church for the reali-
zation of the most ambitious objects, in the pursuit of
which they hesitated not to plunge the country into the
horrors of a revolution. Gower was probably correct
in asserting that the vacillating rule of Richard II. had
given the most powerful impetus to the opinions of
Wiclif, and to the emancipation of the lower classes,
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 215

and hence he turned away from that monarch, although
he was personally indebted to him for friendship and
encouragement, and took part with his political oppo-
nents ; in the first place, being on friendly terms pro-
bably with Thomas Duke of Gloucester, and soon
afterwards giving his most unqualified confidence to
the Lancastrian Henry of Derby, the future Henry IV.
As early as the year 1393-4, the latter, while still
bearing only the title of Earl, gave him an order,
probably that of the Silver Swan, the cognizance
of the Lancastrian family, for we find both the
chain and the badge sculptured on the poet’s monu-
ment.

Of the rest of his life we know in truth very little.
1t was not till his old age, when his hair was grey, that,
wearying of his solitary state, he took a wife in the
person of one Agnes Groundolf, to whom he was married
on the 25th of January, 1397. His very comprehensive
will does not mention any children, but it makes ample
provision for the faithful nurse and companion of his
latter years. After prolonged debility and sickness he
lost his eyesight in the year 1401, and was then com-
pelled to lay aside his pen for ever, and died in the
autumn of 1408, when upwards of eighty years of age. He
lies buried in the beautiful church of St. Mary Overies,
now St. Saviour’s, near the southern side of London
Bridge; and we find from his last will, that he had been
connected in several ways with London through his
estates, which were all situated in the neighbourhood of
the city. St. John’s Chapel, in the church already re-
ferred to, still contains the monument that he had himself
designed, and which, notwithstanding the many subse-
216 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

quent renovations which it has undergone, is tolerably
well preserved. He lies clothed in the long closely
buttoned habit of his day, with his order on his breast,
and his coat of arms by his side; but whether the face,
with its long locks and the wreath around the head, is
intended as a portrait, it is difficult to say. Greater
significance attaches, as we shall see, to the three
volumes on which his head is resting, and which may
be said to symbolize his life.

Very different and more varied are the few fragments
which have come down to us regarding the life of his
brother poet. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in the year
1328, and belonged to a knightly family which was
‘probably settled in Kent, but which, at all events,
appears to have maintained a constant and active
communication with London. Their names and arms
point to a noble Norman origin, but we nowhere find
any record of the locality or value of their patrimonial
estate. It is quite certain that the poet never enjoyed
such worldly prosperity as Gower—a circumstance to
which, independently of his more extensive mental
gifts, we probably owe much of the rich produce of his
mind. In point of mental culture he was fully equal to
Gower, and on that account, there can be little doubt
that he belonged to one of the Universities, but it is
difficult to say to which, since he has lett precious
memorials of his intimacy with the modes of life and
thought that prevailed in either, and hence Oxford and
Cambridge still both compete for the honour of num-
bering him among their alumni. Not less indefinite is
the traditionary account that he was at one time a
member of the Temple. The first trustworthy informa-
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 217

tion that we obtain in reference to his life, is from his
own assertion that he had served in the army which
Edward IIT. in the autumn of 1359 led in person with
no great success against the French. On that occa-
sion Chaucer had the bad fortune to be made a prisoner
of war; he was, however, released in the May of
the following year, by the peace of Bretigny. Seven
years later, we find him at court in personal attend-
ance on Edward III. and married to Philippa Roet,
an attendant and countrywoman of Edward’s noble-
hearted Queen, Philippa of Hainault. To this marriage
the poet undoubtedly owed his fortune, as it was the
means of securing him an annual pension, in addition to
several other advantages. His wife was the elder sister
of the celebrated Catherine Swynford, who after she had
assisted in the education of the children born to John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and titular king of Castile,
by his first wife, lived with him first as his mistress, and
afterwards became his third wife and the ancestress of
the royal house of Tudor. Chaucer was thus brought
into intimate relations with this energetic prince, who
remained his patron and friend to the end of his life.
One of the poet's earliest attempts at versification was
composed in honour of the Duke’s marriage with
Blanche of Lancaster, whilst the death of this princess
in the year 1369 was mourned by him in stanzas which
are not deficient in elegance. After Chaucer had been
once employed in the summer of 1370 on a short diplo-
matic mission on the continent, he was again despatched
at the close of 1372, as one of the members of an
embassy, accredited to the Doge of Genoa, for the pur-
pose of establishing closer mercantile relations with the
218 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

republic. On this occasion, when he made a tour through
the charming districts of northern Italy, and visited
Florence, it has been conjectured from a remarkable
passage in his great poem, that he very probably made
the personal acquaintance of Petrarch at Padua. At all
events this visit to Italy added greatly to his intimate
acquaintance with the immortal works of the great
founder of Italian poetry. On his return home, the
aged king gave him the place of comptroller of the
customs of wine and wool in the port of London, and in
addition to a fixed salary, granted him a daily allowance
of a pitcher of wine. In 1376 he was again employed
in a secret mission to Flanders, and in the first year of
Richard IT.’s reign he was despatched as a joint envoy
to the courts of France and Lombardy. After this he
continued for several years quietly to exercise the duties
of his office, until the first of October, 1396, when he
was elected as knight of the shire for Kent, where he
therefore probably owned some freehold property. He
entered keenly into the party turmoils of that disturbed
period, which appear to have been very unfavourable to
his worldly prospects. During the session of parliament
in which he served, the government which had hitherto
been supported by the influence of his patron, John
Duke of Gaunt, was overturned, and as early as in the
following December, Chaucer was made to feel the un-
happy effects of the change by losing his office and being
deprived, in May, 1388, of his old court pension. There
can be little doubt that a man so partial to the pleasures
of life as Chaucer, must have suffered keenly from the
embarrassed circumstances due to loss of money; but in
the year 1389, the fall of the administration of the Duke
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 219

of Gloucester, who appears to have regarded him with no
favourable eyes, on account of his adhesion to the Lan-
castrian faction, effected some improvement in his circum-
stances. He was now again restored to favour and was
appointed clerk of the king’s works at Westminster,
Windsor, and the Tower, where King Richard was then
having great alterations effected. But two years after-
wards he also lost this post, and although we do not know
to what his dismissal was due, we may perhaps conjecture
that his opinions may have given umbrage to the king,
whose vacillating character was always subjected to the
ever varying influences that surrounded him. Care and
want seemed to have pressed more and more heavily
upon the poet with increasing years, and after the receipt
of each half-yearly payment, he speedily fell back into
his former poor and needy condition. Pressed by urgent
creditors, we find him repeatedly applying in person
at the treasury, to forestall the receipts of the scanty
pension which Edward III. had granted him. But
although his income had been slightly augmented by
the annual gift of ten pounds from his old patron, John
of Gaunt, his means were inadequate to cover his debts.
What a contrast does this picture present to the opulent
Gower, who never knew the cares and anxieties of
straitened circumstances. We are forcibly reminded in
Chaucer, of the great Castilian, Cervantes, who exhibited
in many respects the same mental endowments, and who
like him knew how to cheer and ennoble the chequered for-
tunes of thesoldier, and to lighten the trials of poverty with
the inexhaustible humour of a true poetic genius. Happily
he was not suffered long to pine in want, for his fortunes
once more revived when Henry IV., the son of his

+
220 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

patron, made himself master of the English throne: for
one of the first acts of the new sovereign was to double
the pension of this old and faithful servant of his house.
Chaucer’s descendants long afterwards gratefully and
devotedly linked their own fate with that of the
Lancastrian dynasty. The old poet himself did not
long enjoy this favourable change in his fortune, for
although we find that he took a lease in 1399 of a house
at Westminster, the close of the following year, 1400,
saw his remains laid in their last resting-place in Poet’s
Corner, where half a century later a sincere admirer of
Chaucer raised to his memory the monument which is”
still standing in the venerable old Abbey. Although
the inscription and the figure which once adorned the
monument have long since disappeared, we have a more
trustworthy portrait of him than of Gower, for his friend
and imitator Occleve drew a likeness of him from
memory in an autograph volume of his own, and of this
‘drawing there exist numerous copies, both in pen and
ink, and painted on wood. The, hair is grey, the beard
thin and parted in the middle, the figure portly and
clad in the ample dress of the day. The face has an
expression of thoughtfulness and refinement, whilst the
attitude exhibits some trace of that elegance of which
the poet confesses, in a playful allusion in his Canterbury
Tales, that he was not altogether destitute, notwithstand-
ing his robust and portly person. The eyes are cast
down with an expression of thoughtful contemplation,
while the rosary which he holds in his hand, and the
ink or knife-horn which hangs suspended from a ribbon
round his neck, have become almost typical in all
delineations of Chaucer.
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 221

After following these sketches we shall find less diffi-
culty in tracing the internal mental development of these
cotemporary poets. Gowers thoughts appear as if
chained to the soil which he called his own in right
of feudal or hereditary tenure. In his earlier days he
attempted, and not without some success, to compose in
French verse, and the fifty ballads which have come down
to us as his compositions have a smooth and easy flow,
and might bear favourable comparison with other produc-
tions composed in accordance with long established rules,
being in point of style and sequence of ideas perfectly in
harmony with the art of versification then in the ascen-
dant on the continent. The poet does indeed modestly
beg for the indulgence of his readers, on the ground that
he, as a native-born Englishman, could not be expected
to write with fluency in a foreign tongue; but French
can scarcely have been very strange to him, for consi-
dering his birth and descent it must have seemed as
natural and familiar to him as English. He also com-
posed French verses at a later date, while he at any rate
wrote the argument of a long poem (Speculum Meditantis)
in that idiom, and it is probable that this composition is
typified in one of the three volumes on his monument ;
and, as if he were destined in his own person to exem-
plify the confusion of tongues and the struggle between
various dialects which prevailed in his day, Gower also
persevered for years together in trying to write Latin
verse. In addition to a few shorter pieces and the
Latin headings to his English poem, he composed many
thousand distiches on the subject of the rise of the
villeins, under the title of Vow Olamantis, which con-
sisted of several books, in which he endeavoured with
222 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

the most wearisome diffusiveness to investigate and
describe the causes that led to this occurrence, and the
nature of the corruption of the several classes of society.
The poet was equally unsuccessful in the choice of the
form in which he expressed his ideas, and the position
which he assumed in relation to the wide party differ-
ences of his times. He attacked ecclesiastics and monks
on their own ground, although he was a layman, writing
in French, but speaking English as his mother tongue.
His Latin, however, it must be confessed had a natural,
almost modern, and not unpleasing flow, notwithstanding
his adherence to the affectation and metrical rules of the
schoolmen. His views never lead him to any definite
conclusions, for while he seems bound by the trammels
of the past, he is nevertheless forcibly drawn towards the
new ideas which threatened to destroy the existing order
of things. It was only at a later period that he was able
so far to reconcile his conflicting views in regard to the
choice of language, as to venture to write in English,
and even this was not done until he had been stimulated
by the great and successful example of Chaucer.

As natives of the same country, and equals in age,
their frequent visits to London and the court must early
have brought these two poets together, and we find that
when Chaucer went to Italy, in May, 1378, he appointed
Gower together with another friend as his trustees.
The brother-poets moreover greeted each other in their
several works; for while Chaucer dedicates his graceful
poem of Troilus and Creseide to the “moral Gower
and the philosophic Strode,” as he not inaptly distin-
guishes them, Gower in return sends him in his
English poem a flattering greeting through the goddess
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 223

Venus. Their views, as well as their individual expe-
riences of life, could scarcely, however, have conduced
to their intimacy, although there is no ground for assum-
ing that subsequent differences produced an estrange-
ment between them. Although both ultimately adhered
to the new dynasty, their conduct in this matter was
influenced by very different motives; but although
Chaucer may in no way have biassed the mind of his
brother-poet in regard to politics, he undoubtedly
exerted a decided influence on his opinions as to lan-
guage, notwithstanding the many differences which
characterized their respective modes of composition, for
it is certain that Gower began to discard other dialects
in favour of English as soon as he perceived the success
that had attended Chaucer’s use of their native tongue ;
and it is to this resolution that we owe the third of
his three great tomes, the Confess’o Amantis, which
comprises no less than thirty thousand verses.

Gower must have begun this comprehensive work
prior to 1386, as the prologue of the first edition relates
the manner in which he had been stimulated to under-
take this labour, at the suggestion of Richard II., on
the occasion of their meeting on the Thames, between
Westminster and London, when the king asked him to
“booke some new thing.” And hence the poet could
not at that period have ranked himself on the side of
the king’s enemies. The second edition, with a tho-
roughly different prologue and epilogue, is, however,
dedicated to the Earl of Derby, and thus testifies to the
change of opinions that had taken place in Gower, and
shows that his work must have been finished somewhere
about the year 1393. Both the phraseology and the
224 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

versification bear evidence that their mode of treatment
had become more difficult to the aged author; but
notwithstanding such blemishes, his work exhibits a
certain facile smoothness which rises superior to the
dryness of the subject and the unskilfulness of the
construction. Indeed many passages read remarkably
well, and show a natural talent for narration. After a
somewhat wearisome introduction, in which the good
old times are lauded to the skies, without any proofs
being adduced to verify the author’s statements, there is
nothing to interest the reader beyond a severe criticism
on the condition of the church, which however is followed
by a no less violent protest against the Lollards. We
next find the poet suffermg from the woes of love,
which, as a matter of course, befall him in the month of
May, when he is listening to the song of the birds in a
leafy grove, and he goes on to tell us how he poured
forth his bitter complaint to Venus and her gentle son.
The goddess at length takes pity on the sufferer, and
sends to him her own priest, Genius, in order that he
may shrive him, and after giving him absolution, show
him the way which he must follow. The priest and
his penitent hereupon go through a course of all the
collective vices and virtues. In accordance, no doubt,
with highly moral purposes, the lover has to listen
to a number of repulsive and enticing phases of life,
after each of which the subject is duly argued and
disputed, in strict accordance with the rules of scholas-
tic dialectics, and after this process has been repeated
over and over again, through eight long books, to
the intense weariness of the reader, the unfortunate
lover, after having persisted throughout in asserting his
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. , 225

unbounded devotion to a nameless fair one, is at last
permitted to receive forgiveness according to the ortho-
dox forms of the confessional, and is dismissed with the
direction to use the seven scholastic sciences as his
most trustworthy weapons against the seven cardinal
sins, receiving moreover the good advice to abstain in
future from participating in the follies of love. Such is
the loose network which Gower has thrown around a
collection of the most varied tales and narratives,
which were in fact the main points of interest both to
him and to his contemporaries, among whom, as well as
among succeeding generations, they formed a perfect
encyclopedia of highly popular fiction. The work at all
events gives evidence of the extensive reading of the
poet, who has drawn his materials from every available
book, whether it treated of sacred or profane matters,
borrowing from the Bible no less than from the different
poems of Ovid, which are largely incorporated in the
plan of his composition, passing with equal readiness
from the medieval Gestes of Troy and Alexander to the
Pantheon and the Mirror of Kings, by Godfrey of
Viterbo, and from Boethius to the romances of Sir
Launcelot and King Arthur. We moreover have long
episodes and wearying stanzas devoted to the exposition
of the secret learning of the Almagest and of the Aristo-
telian scholastics. Independent creative powers of ima-
gination, or a reference to actual life and the passing
times, are not indeed to be met with in Gower’s works,
but the eight or nine syllabled rhymes—the form of
versification common in the middle ages—and the less
flexible and somewhat archaic phraseology employed by
him, harmonize admirably with the character of his
Q
226 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

*

subjects, while the admixture of the Germanic with the
Norman and Latin is fully as marked in Gower as in
Chaucer. The popularity which Gower’s works main-
tained far beyond the age in which he lived, and which
led the author of the play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre,
to borrow his subject directly from him, is due to that
preference for the allegorical form which is to be found in
all periods of English literature, and to the rich choice
of subjects, together with the simple genial tone which
pervades the whole.

Very different were the results and progress of Chau-
cer’s mental development. He indeed had also begun
with the study of foreign (French) models, and his
frequent visits to the Continent had brought him into
intimate communion with the cultivators of Italian, and
very probably also Flemish poetry ; while his works
afford ample evidence that he had thoroughly mastered
the ponderous Latinity of his day, and was well read in
the Norman-French versions of ancient mythology and
history. Very fortunately, however, he never made any
serious attempts to write poetry, either in outlandish
French, or in Latin, and he had the good sense to
content himself with turning his knowledge of more
highly cultivated forms of literature to the advantage
of his own. He began from the first to write in English ;
and after many years’ practice in the use of his mother-
tongue, which was then scarcely established, he acquired
the right to be considered as one of its first founders,
aud richly merited the title of father of the English
language, which succeeding generations felt pleasure and
pride in bestowing upon him. His prose works, his
translation of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophie,
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 227

the scientific treatise on the Astrolabe, and his “ Testa-
ment of Love,” are indeed all evidences of his great
versatility; but in the present day they only interest us
as so many exercises, in which the practised eye of the
philologist can trace the progress of the language under
the hands of the author at different periods of his life.
Far more important are his poetical works, although we
can only venture approximately to determine the date of
their composition and the order in which they appeared.
His translation of the decidedly uninteresting allegory
known as the Romaunt of the Rose, is no doubt the
production of his earlier years, as we infer from the
language and from the mode of versification, which he
copied from the original, and which was also adopted by
Gower in his English poems. The translation, however,
attracted some notice even on the Continent, for the
somewhat: common-place French poet, Eustace Des-
champs, flattered by seeing his soft-sounding French
translated into rough Saxon, felt himself called upon to
laud “ the great translator, the noble Geoffrey Chaucer,”
in a composition of many strophes. Happily the poet
did not long continue to occupy himself with such
subordinate labours, and his next productions, among
which we must reckon the poem “on the Death of
Blaunche the Duchesse,” “the House of Fame,” and
several smaller pieces, show independence and originality
in the invention as well as in the arrangement of the sub-
ject. “The Legend of Good Women,” as well as “The
Court of Love,” indicate a still higher degree of develop-
ment. The trammels of foreign pedantry soon gave way
to a fresh individual force of imagination, which was
based upon the possession of a warm, expansive heart, an
Q2
228 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

observing eye and a sound judgment, together with a
genuine reality closely allied to nature, and the true
poetic gift of representing life as it is. Nature, love,
and the pleasures of life, had long been celebrated by
Chaucer in popular songs, which, as Gower makes
Venus assert, resounded from one end of the land to the
other. We would gladly resign some of the works
which have come down to us, if we could recover these
lyrical productions, which must undoubtedly have been
genuine national songs. But though these songs are
lost, the poet is always true to himself when he describes
objects that excite his love and admiration. How well
he knows how to depict the month of May, with all its
rich luxuriance of blossom, and with what rare feeling
he has described that small and unobtrusive blossom of
spring—the daisy. His own life, so rich in experience,
enables him to estimate with the most perfect accuracy
every shade of feeling, from the strongest passion to the
slightest emotion of the heart, while his intercourse
with the high and the low, with his own countrymen
and with foreigners, his familiarity with the pleasures
and annoyances of every-day life, and his deep sense of
the joys and sorrows of the human heart, combine to
endow him with every attribute that can enable a poet
to depict with diversified and dramatic reality the time
and people among whom he lives, and this he has done
in a manner that has nowhere else been attempted in the
literature of the middle ages. It would almost appear
as if Chaucer had formally laid a plan for the prosecution
of this design; weat any rate are led to infer sucha purpose
from his careful and systematic study of the cotempo-
raneous poetry of the Italian school. He repeatedly speaks
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 229

with the greatest respect of Dante, and gives us even
some happily translated verses of the Divina Commedia,
while he borrows largely from Boccaccio’s works, and is
indebted, as he tells us, for one of his tales to a Latin
translation of Petrarch, to whose fame he repeatedly
alludes. Such studies as these must have contributed
largely to the more perfect elaboration of his mother-
tongue, for we find that his combinations and application
of words are far more perfect than in Gower, and he
undoubtedly copied with the most thorough success the
beautiful form of the Italian, which he had unweariedly
made the object of his study. At one time he wrote
only in rhyming Iambic pentameters ; but he was also
the creator and founder of the stanza of seven lines,
modified from the Ottave Rime, which he employed in
his highly finished and much read version of the legend
of Troilus and Cresseide and which maintained its place
in English poetry for nearly two hundred years. It was
thus that he successfully applied himself to master the
form as well as the matter of his subject ; but it was not
till towards the close of his life, although still in the
full maturity of his powers, that he began his great
poem ; for it would appear with tolerable certainty that
it was not till after the year 1386 that he applied
himself to the production of that work which was
destined to win for him a crown of immortal fame, and
which will always rank as the noblest monument of
English poetry, prior to the composition of the incom-
parable plays of Shakspere.

The framework of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
embraces a rich collection of legends and narratives. Its
plan may perhaps have been suggested by that of the
230 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

renowned Decameron, in the same manner as Gower may
possibly have borrowed the framework for his Moral
Tales, the binding, as it were, of his Encyclopedia,
from the Italians. Instead, however, of adopting the
tame and trivial device of assembling a circle of Floren-
tine youths and maidens, who are only actuated by the
one object of hearing and narrating tales, and who
might as well have made the number a thousand as a
hundred ; and instead, like Gower, of drawing a pedantic
aud wearying scene of a confessional, Chaucer has
sketched in bold and sharp outlines a picture of the
social condition of his cotemporaries, and made his
figures stand picturesquely and boldly forth, in all the
vivid, many-sided variety of reality.

Who has not heard of the far-fumed sanctuary of
Canterbury, where rested the bones of the Archbishop
Thomas Becket, who bravely met his death to uphold
the cause and arbitrary rule of the Romish Church,
and who, venerated as the national saint of England,
became renowned as a martyr and worker of miracles?
To that sanctuary, year by year, and especially in the
spring months, crowds of devout pilgrims flocked from
every part of the Christian world; and although such
pilgrimages were no doubt often undertaken from the most
laudable motives, it is certain that even in the fourteenth
century they had become amongst the great masses of the
people a mere pretext for every kind of diversion, for

purposes of lucre, and even for the indulgence of every °°

form of sinful excess. Fairs and markets recurred
periodically, and while on the one hand these occasions
brought more clearly to view the deadly plague-spot of
the old ecclesiastical system, they were on the other hand
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 231

the means of drawing the various classes of society more
closely together, and thus gave free scope to the inter-
change of those ideas, which were destined finally to
put an end to the worship of saints and to many other
human innovations in the Church of Christ. It was
such a pilgrimage as this, that Chaucer took for the
framework of his great poem, and as a Kentish man,
he was probably able to describe from experience and
personal observation all that occurred on an occasion of
this kind.

The inimitable prologue of the work, which, although
it comprises twenty thousand verses, scarcely reached
one-half of the originally ‘intended dimensions, begins
with a short description of spring, when after the
showers of April, the sun bids all things bud and
blossom in the groves and fields, when the birds
make melody, and men from every part of the land long
to go on pilgrimages and seek the blissful martyr of
Canterbury. At such a season—and some writers have
calculated that Chaucer refers to the 27th of April,
1383—the poet was tarrying with this purpose in view
at the house which was long afterwards widely cele-
brated under the sign of The Tabard, in the High
Street of Southwark, where pilgrims were wont to
assemble from every part, and where they found good
accommodation both for themselves and their horses,
before they set forth on their way. Towards evening,
when the host’s room was filled, Chaucer had already
made acquaintance with most of the guests, who were
of all conditions. The nine and twenty persons who
composed the party are introduced to us with the most
life-like colouring. A Knight appropriately heads the
232 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

list. For years his life has been spent either in the
field, or in the Crusades; for he was present when
Alexandria was taken, helped the Teutonic knights in
Prussia against the Lithuanians and Russians, fought
with the Moors in Granada, with the Arabs in Africa,
and with the Turks in Asia. One may see by his
dress that he seldom doffs his armour; but however
little attention he pays to externals, his careful mode of
speech and his meek and Christian-like deportment
betray the true and gentle knight. He is accompanied
by his son, a slim, light-haired, curly-headed youth of
twenty, the perfect young Squire of his day, who is
elegantly and even foppishly dressed. He has already
made a campaign against the French, and on that occa-
sion, as well as in the tournay, he has borne him well,
in the hope of gaining his lady’s grace. Love deprives
him of his sleep, and like the nightingale, he is over-
flowing with songs to his beloved, yet he does not fail
with lowly service to carve before his father at table.
In attendance on him is a yeoman, probably one of his
father’s many tenants, who, clad in green, with sword
and buckler and his bow in his hand, his arrows and
dagger in his belt, represents with his sunburnt face,
that has grown brown in woods and fields, the stalwart
race who won for the Plantagenets the victories of
Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt.

In contrast with this group appears a daughter of
the Church, Madame Eglantine, a prioress of noble birth,
as her delicate physiognomy and the nicety with which
she eats and drinks plainly testify. With a sweet, but
nasal tone, she chaunts the Liturgy, and she speaks
French, too, by preference; but it is the French of
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 233

Stratford-le-Bow, and not of Paris. She would weep
if they showed her a mouse in a trap, or smote her
“little hound” with the rod. A gold brooch orna-
menied with the letter A, encircled by a crown bearing
the inscription Amor vincit omnia, hangs from her
string of coral beads. Next to her comes a portly
Monk of Benedictine rule, whose crown and cheeks are
as smooth as glass, and whose eyes shine like burning
coals. He, too, is elegantly dressed; for the sleeves
of his robe are trimmed with the finest fur, while a
golden love-knot pin holds together his hood. Clear is
the sound of the bells on his bridle, for he knows well
how to sit his horse, while hare-hunting, which is his
special pleasure, and a fat swan upon the board are more
to him than the rule of St. Augustine and all the
learned books in his lonely cell. The worthy pendant
to this stately figure is the Mendicant Friar, whose
ready familiarity and good humour make him the friend
of the country folks, and the favourite Father Confessor
of the young women. No one understands better than
he how to collect for his cloister, for he knows how to
please the women with timely gifts of needles and
knives, while he treats the men in the tavern, of which
he always knows where the best is to be found. He
lisps his English with affected sweetness, and when he
sings to his harp, his eyes twinkle like the stars on a
frosty night.

The next in order is a Merchant with his forked
beard, his Flemish beaver and his well-clasped boots;
he knows the money-exchange on both sides of the
Channel, and best of all does he understand how to
secure his own interest. Then follow a couple of
234 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

learned men. First comes the Oxford clerk, hollow-
cheeked and lean as a rake, like the horse on which
he rides, with threadbare coat, for he has not yet
secured a‘benefice, but his books are his whole joy, and
chief among them is his Aristotle. He knows no greater
joy than learning and teaching, yet he shrinks back
modestly and timidly, and nowhere pushes himself
forward. The other is a widely renowned Serjeant of
the Law, who has at his fingers’ ends the whole confused
mass of all the laws and statutes from the days of
William the Conqueror to his own times, and who
knows admirably how to apply his learning in his
extensive practice. Although his heavy fees and many
perquisites make him a rich man, he goes forth on his
travels dressed in a plain and homely fashion. Next
follows a frankleyn, who is described as the owner of a
freehold estate, and who is a man of note in his county,
who has already served in parliament as knight of the
shire, and has held the office of sheriff. His beard is snowy
white, but he still knows how to enjoy life. There is
no stint of good eating and drinking in his house, for the
dishes on his board come as thick and close as flakes of
snow, each in its turn, according to the season of the
year.

The working class is further represented by a
Haberdasher, a Carpenter, a Weaver, a Dyer, and a
Tapestrer, honest industrious folk, each clad in the dress
that appertains to his order, and wearing the badges of his
guild, which are even adorned with graved silver-work.
They all have money and interest enough to be made
aldermen at some future time, and their wives would
gladly hear themselves called “ Madam,’ and would fain
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 235

go to church in long and flowing mantles. With these
are associated a cook, who is master of all the delicacies
of his art, but who is not the less able to relish a cup of
London ale. The “shipman” could of course not be
absent from such a gathering, and here we see him as he
comes from the west country, sunburnt and clad in the
dress of his class, equally prompt to draw a draft of the
fine Burgundy that he is bringing home, while the
master slumbers in the cabin, or to join in a sea-fight
against the foes of his native land. He has visited every
shore from Gothland to Cape Finisterre, and he knows
every harbour and bay in his course. The doctor of
physic is well versed in all branches of his art, for in
addition to the skilful practice of his profession, he has
systematically studied both astronomy and the science
of the horoscope, and is familiar with all the learned
Greek and Arabic writers. He dresses carefully and in
smart clothes, but he knows how to keep the treasures
which he amassed during the pestilence of the Black
Death.

Next follows a rich and comely Wife of Bath, who
especially attracts the attention of the poet, and who is
more communicative in regard to her own affairs than
any one else in the company. She wears clothing of
the finest stuffs, a broad hat, with a new-fashioned head
attire, red, tightly fitting stockings, and a pair of sharp
spurs upon her heels. She is already well advanced
in years, has been three times to Jerusalem, and has seen
Rome and Bologna, Compostella, and Cologne. Her
round fair and reddish face looks bold, and shows that
after her many experiences of life, it would not be
easy to put her out of countenance. She relates to her
236 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

fellow-travellers with the most edifying frankness that
she has been five times married in her life, and that
therefore, independently of other considerations, she is
entitled to say a word or two about love. She tells
them next, how in her young and giddy days she be-
guiled and deluded her first three husbands, who were
old, but rich, and she does not even withhold from them
the narration of some sharp curtain lectures. Her fourth
marriage terminated in both parties taking their own way:
but her last husband, although he is only twenty years
of age, has studied in Oxford, and is not to be drawn
away from the perusal of a ponderous tome in which are
collected the injunctions of the fathers of the Church to
lead a life of celibacy, enriched by examples, culled from
ancient and modern times, of the manner in which
wives are wont to circumvent their husbands. Once,
when in her anger she tore out some leaves of this book,
he beat her so hard, that she has ever since been deaf
of one ear, but since then they have got on admirably
well together. In opposition to this good dame, who,
true to her allegiance to the star of Venus, forms one of
the most important links of connexion between the
different members of the varied circle, we have another
admirably drawn character—a poor Parson, the son of
humble, but honest peasants, who, notwithstanding his
scanty benetice, is ever contented, even when his tithes fall
short, and who never failed, either in rain or thunder, to
brave the storm, and staff in hand to sally forth to visit
the remote members of his flock, wherever sickness or
mischance might call him. He was ever ready to
comfort the needy, and, undismayed by the pride of the
rich, he faithfully and honestly proclaimed the word of
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 237

the Lord in his teaching, This is the class from which
proceeded the renowned itinerant preachers among the
Wiclifites of that day; and though Chaucer himself was
no Lollard, his great English heart responded to the call
of this genuine evangelical movement, and hence his
picture of the good Parson is decidedly drawn in har-
mony with the Lollard character. The Parson is
accompanied by his brother, a hardworking, honest,
and pious ploughman; and thus the two belong to
the class which was bound to the soil, which they
tilled.

Before the poet leaves this rank of the social scale,
he brings before us several other prominent characters
belonging to the people of theday. There is the Miller,
a stout churl, bony and strong, with a hard head,
a fox-red beard and awide mouth. He was not over-
scrupulous in appropriating to himself some of the corn
which his customers brought to his mill. Over his
white coat and his blue hood he carried a bag-pipe, and
his talk was of sin, wantonness, and obscenity. Next
comes the Manciple of an ecclesiastical house, who is
connected with at least thirty lawyers, and knows how
to make his own profits, while he is buying in for his
masters. The Reeve of a Norfolk lord, a man as lean
as a rake, closely shaven and choleric, appears dressed
in a blue coat, riding a grey horse. In his youth he
had been a carpenter, but now no one knows better
than he how to judge of the yielding of the seed, or
the promise of the cattle. No person could call him to
account, for his books are always in the best order, and
he and his master are always in good accord. The
Summoner of an Archdeacon, with a fiery-red face,
238 TWO POETS, GUWER AND CHAUCER.

which no Apothecary’s art can mend or cool, is
justly described as one of the lowest and most villan-
ous of the company. Lustful and gluttonous, he yet
cares most for his wine, and when he is thoroughly
drunk, he speaks no word but Latin, for he has learnt
a few terms while in attendance at the courts. His
rival in villany is a Pardoner, who has come straight
from the Court of Rome. His hair is as yellow as flax,
and his voice is small, like a goat’s. He carries in his
wallet a lapful of lying relics, which he tries to palm
upon the people, and in one day he gets more money
than an honest Parson can earn in two months.

Right glad at heart to see such a troop of worthy
guests, assembled in his hostelry, mine host, Harry Baily,
serves them with good cheer, and while the wine is
passing round among the company, he proposes with a
boldness, that not unfrequently belongs to his craft, to
join them on their pilgrimage, and suggests that it
would be a good means of shortening the long way, if
each were to tell a tale, both in going and returning,
and if the one who gave them the best tale should
have a supper at his inn, at the expense of the rest,
on their return. He next, without more ado, offers
himself as judge for the occasion, a proposition which
meets with general approval. The company now retire
to rest and early the next morning they take the road
to Kent.

This then is the wondrously fresh and vivid frame-
work, in which the individual figures stand boldly
forth, each remaining true to his station and individual
character, when it comes to his turn to speak. It is
assuredly unnecessary after this description to revert
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 239

to a comparison with Boccaccio, or even with Gower.
The varied group of pilgrims speak for themselves, and
indicate, moreover, the different classes of society,
between the knight and the miller, which were likely
to be brought together on terms of social intercourse
at that period. We find here the collective grades of
society which were politically represented by the House
of Commons, while the higher and more privileged
classes, constituting the House of Lords, were of
course wholly absent. In the meanwhile, the dramatic
groundwork of the picture continues throughout to be
kept in view, and we sometimes get a glimpse of the
pleasant spots, which are passed in the lovely districts of
Kent, and which were then bright in the rich bloom of
spring. The pauses and stoppages by the way are
filled up with much pleasant discourse, and among the
rougher members of the company, by many practical
demonstrations of character. Beyond Rochester a Canon
with his servant joins the company, after which both
take direct part in the discussions of their companions,

But the promise which the poet made of completing
his noble plan, he was unfortunately not able to redeem,
as death interrupted him in the midst of his great
undertaking. Not even the half of the work has been
finished, for the poem breaks off before the pilgrims
enter Canterbury, and hence to our lasting regret we
have lost a description of their doings and sayings
when there, their return, and the promised feast. There
are, also, several other very obvious indications that
this fragment was not even complete in its individual
parts, for here and there we meet with discrepancies
in the dates and hours indicated. Itis the same with
240 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

Chaucer’s enumeration of the nine and twenty pilgrims,
for according to a verse, which has, indeed, very pro-
bably been interpolated, besides a second nun, there
were also two priests, and we have the tale told by the
former and by one of the latter. Then moreover,
Chaucer himself and the landlord were of the party,
which was further augmented on the road by the addi-
tion of two persons. Nor is it quite clear whether each
one was only to tell one tale, or whether two narratives
were to be told—one on the way out, and the other on
the way in—and lastly, we are unable accurately to
determine, even after a critical examination of the
collective manuscripts, what was the actual order of
succession of the various narratives, of which several
evidently are pendants to one another, whilst others
can scarcely have been placed by the author in the
order they were finally intended to occupy.

The present is not the place to give a complete
summary of the contents and origin of the twenty-four
complete tales, and we must therefore content ourselves
with rapidly and briefly indicating their copious variety.
The knight, after having drawn the lot to begin, com-
mences the series with the adventures of Palamon and
Arcite, which are conceived in accordance with the
affected style of the day. When he has ended, the
landlord in his character of general master of the cere-
monies is about to turn to the monk, when the miller,
who, early as it is, has already drunk too much of the
Southwark strong ale, rudely interposes, and begins to
entertain the company, by relating in the coarsest terms
how a student of Oxford once circumvented a stupid
carpenter. This irritates the Reeve, who had himself
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 241

once been of that trade, and he takes revenge by narrat-
ing in the same tone the story of the Mill at Trumping-
ton, where two Cambridge scholars were guilty of a
similar trick. Next follows the Cook, who begins in
the same strain, but after a few verses of his narrative
there is in all the manuscripts a very considerable
blank. The Sergeant-at-law, encouraged by the landlord,
takes up a more decorous subject, and relates the story
of the lovely Constance, which, although perhaps with
less grace, occurs also in Gower. Here, probably, in
accordance with Chaucer’s plan, the Wife of Bath begins
the confession of her fine feelings and extraordinary
experiences, and then gives her own somewhat richly
coloured version of one of the tales of the legend of
King Arthur’s Round Table, which has also been told
by Gower. The Mendicant Friar and the Sumptnour,
who are ill-disposed to one another on account of their
origin, take care that neither shall be much in debt to
the other in respect to the coarse and stinging character
of their anecdotes. Hereupon the landlord attempts to
rouse the Oxford clerk from his modest diffidence, who,
borrowing his subject from Petrarch, proceeds to narrate
in graceful strophes the charming story of Griselde,
whose angelic patience nothing could destroy. The
Merchant then takes his turn, and informs his hearers of
the manner in which a blind and jealous old husband
lets himself be beguiled in his very presence by his
faithless wife and her young lover. Next comes the
young Esquire, who, taking his subject from the Hast,
tells the story of the Sultan Cambuscan, although
unhappily, he has left it incomplete. He is followed in
succession by the Frankelin, with his tale of the lovely
R
242 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

Dorigene, which he says he has borrowed from an old
British legend ; by the doctor, who draws from classical
sources the history of the virtuous Virginia; and the
Pardoner, who has many low examples to bring forward
from his own sphere of observation. He finds pleasure
in narrating the manner in which a merchant was
deceived by his wife and his best friend, a jovial young
monk ; whereupon the prioress relates the miracle which
once took place when the wicked Jews tried to circum-
vent a Christian child. With admirable humour the
landlord now attacks the poet himself, who is always look-
ing upon the ground as if he were tracking a hare, and
Chaucer, who does not wait to be called upon a second
time, at once begins in the verses of Sir Thopas, to
parody the conventional rhyme of that day, with all its
harsh words, until his hearers are well nigh stunned,
and the landlord sharply interposes. With perfect
willingness, and far from wishing for an opportunity of
display, the Poet yields to their entreaties, and changing
from poetry to prose, relates to them the highly moral
and virtuous history of Melibceus and the lady Pru-
dentia, which appears to us in the present day even
more unbearable than his first contribution, which was
unfortunately interrupted. After he has done speaking,
the monk gives them some of the conventional and
unmeaning poetry of the cloisters, which borrowed its
tragical incidents and figures from the Scriptures, includ-
ing both the Old and the New Testaments. Here the
Nun’s Priest falls in, appropriately enough, with the
nursery fable of the Cock, Chanticleer, on which the Nun
relates the legend of Saint Cecilia. Somewhat in oppo-
sition to the plan of the work, the Canon’s servant
TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER. 243

interrupts her with his satirical attacks against the
alchemists ; on which the Manciple tells the story of the
Crow, which betrayed to the husband the faithlessness of
his wife, but whether the tale is borrowed from Ovid,
Gower, or some other source, is not very certain. The
Parson finally declares himself strongly opposed to all
fables and scandalous stories, and ends by giving his
companions a long, somewhat dry and scholastically
orthodox prose sermon, which certainly reminds us less of
Wiclif and his adherents than the description which we
had previously had of the “ parson” himself would have
led us to expect. With his Amen the finished portion
of the Canterbury Tales closes, for the few concluding
lines in which the author, after the manner of Boccaccio,
is made to recall all that is sinful in his poem, can
scarcely be the production of Chaucer.

It indicates a very limited and senseless comprehension
of this great work to reproach the Poet for the coarse
ribaldry which he has introduced into these incomparable
sketches of genuine national life, for they could as little
be spared from his pictures as his adventures of chivalry,
his legends, or his moral sermon. It must indeed be
admitted that he has been most successful in the tales of
the first kind, while he necessarily is obliged to maintain
in the others the special tone of colour that belongs to
them, and hence the former still retain their original
freshness, whilst the latter, independently of their
literary interest, have become a dead letter to us.
Within the domain which he had so richly cultivated
and which he knew how to enliven by such vivid
representations, and in his composition of a form of
speech, which still survives and which can never grow

R2
244 TWO POETS, GOWER AND CHAUCER.

wholly obsolete, very few approach him, whilst in
respect to genuine poetic realism, he is not even ex-
ceeded by Shakespere. He moreover understands, as
a true poet should, how to retain breadth and unity in
the midst of the great diversity of his representation.
This is perfectly in accordance with his mode of treating
the great political and religious questions of his age,
which never appear to have embarrassed him; for, instead
of suffering himself to be drawn to opposite extremes,
as was the case with Gower, he seems, as far as one
can judge, to have arrived at a perfectly clear com-
prehension, through his own feelings, of the interests
which they involved, and hence he was able to treat
them with that objectiveness which seems to belong to his
whole nature, and to render the work that has made his
name immortal as nobly and richly endowed as his own
nature. He may not indeed claim to rank equal with
the few chosen spirits to whom Fame has granted her
noblest laurels; but no one is more worthy than himself
of the honourable name of The Yather of English Poetry.
VIII.

JOHN WICLIF.

Wirt the Normans the principle of uniformity ac-
quired undisputed pre-eminence both in the State and
in the Church of England. The island which had
first been brought within the fold of Rome by St.
Augustine appeared to link itself more and more closely
to Romanism in proportion to the temerity and daring
evinced by the Church in its aggressive advance to the
summit of its power. Speculative and mystic objec-
tions to its doctrines, such as the specially gifted mind
of John Hrigena had started in the early days of the hier-
archy, had for centuries past ceased to be advanced; and
it was only here and there that a faint echo of the hereti-
cal storms that were disturbing the Continent made
itself heard on the shores of Britain. Instead of this,
the most renowned leaders of scholastic philosophy had
laboured assiduously to maintain in England the fun-
damental basis of the doctrine of the immutability of
the Church, and had thus contributed to raise up an im-
penetrable bulwark against sectarianism. In England
the Crown and Mitre were indeed often brought into
collision in their efforts to maintain the supremacy to
which each laid claim, and at times the contest between
246 JOHN WICLIF.

them was sharp; but both prince and people—indeed
every class of society, from the summit to the very
lowest stratum of the population — seemed disposed
to adhere without wavering to the orthodox faith of
their fathers.

The Papal Court had succeeded in circumscribing
within the narrow limits of nominalism and realism the
area of contention for all thinking minds, where they
could do no special harm either to the internal or ex-
ternal pretensions of the colossal government of the
Church, and where, being entirely surrounded by the
powers of the hierarchy, they must always remain
under its supervision. It was only when Rome herself,
in the thirteenth century, broke down these barriers by
the exorbitant pretensions to universal supremacy ad-
vanced by her pontiffs, (the Innocents, Gregories, and
Bonifaces), and when, by her financial exactions, she
had betrayed her own internal corruption, and when
the Babylonish exile of her popes to Avignon began
to reveal to the still childlike simplicity of Europe the
hollowness, weakness and hypocrisy of her rule, that
from the ranks of those who had hitherto been her most
faithful defenders there arose the first voice of opposi-
tion, which was indeed for a time raised only in favour
of the State, and with the most anxious desire to avoid
the slippery path of heterodoxy. The miserable theses,
in which the adherents of Thomas Aquinas and Duns
Scotus so long carried on their bitter warfare of words,
first attained notoriety when the former party merged
in the order of the Dominicans, and the latter was
represented by the Franciscans, by which these two
ecclesiastical bodies were thus brought into enmity with
JOHN WICLIF. 247

each other. The polemical disputes of that age centred
in the very summit of the hierarchy; for the greatest
and most influential portion of the Franciscans had
taken part with the Emperor Louis IV. in his quarrel
with John XXII, not hesitating even to accuse the
pontiff himself of heresy, and to demand that he should
submit himself to the decision of a council, and thus
bow to a temporal power. No one had raised his voice
more loudly in this dispute than a Franciscan of Eng-
lish descent, named William Occam, who, having found
a safe asylum from the anathemas of Rome under the pro-
tection of the Emperor, unsparingly and perseveringly
attacked from this place of safety the usurped powers of
the Court of Rome, and the moral corruption that was
being fostered in the clergy by their riches. It was he
above all others who cherished the spirit of opposition;
whilst from different sides various antagonistic elements
were gathering together, ready to burst with destructive
violence over the colossal edifice of the Romish power.
We can scarcely call it a matter of chance that it should
have been a countryman of Occam who, urged on by an
undaunted spirit, was successful in attacking with hitherto
unknown weapons that point of the colossal structure
which had hitherto been supposed to be invulnerable.
This agitator had, like Occam, been educated in one
of those seminaries, in which for some time past the
true national strength had flourished with renewed
vigour, and had already begun to test its own rising
powers. An adherence to the orthodoxy of the Church,
and a sturdy maintenance of the doctrines it had once
admitted, appear to have characterised the University
of Oxford at every period since the twelfth century,
248 JOHN WICLIF.

when, together with Bologna and Paris, it first acquired
its academic character. But it was almost at an equally
early period that an important spring of national life
began to flow to every part of the land from the Uni-
versity, which, on that very account, assumed an essen-
tially different place in the history of England from
that to which the Sorbonne can lay claim in the annals
of France. At the period of the Wars of the Barons
against the Crown, the youths studying at the Univer-
sity repeatedly took part in the contest, when their sym-
pathies were unanimously given to the popular party.
They were among the first who rose against the extor-
tions of money which were then being made by a Papal
Legate; and while they used their hands to throw down
the booths of his money collectors, they made free use
of their tongues against the person of his eminence.
The memorable parliament, in which the nobles sought
to deprive Henry IJI., who was in league with the
Pope, of the whole of his prerogatives, was held at
Oxford in 1258 ; and when, a few years later, the same
party ranged themselves under the standard of Simon
de Montfort, a considerable body of Oxford men took up
arms in defence of the rights of the nation. This spirit
among the academic youth is due to the circumstance
that among their most efficient teachers were numbered
Bishop Grosteste and Adam of Marsh, the personal
friends of De Montfort, and thus a number of influences
were combined to heighten their patriotic feelings and
active courage. Everywhere the third order of the
State exhibited fresh and active vitality. At Oxford it
made common cause with the Franciscans, who had of
late advocated similar views to those of the popular
JOHN WICLIF. 249

party; and there are still extant letters and songs which
originated there, and’ which breathe a genuine political
spirit, as well as a mature judgment regarding questions
which then agitated both the Church and the State,
while they moreover afford evidence that the Anglo-
Saxon spirit had again awakened among the lower
and more widely diffused masses of the population,
and that it had already taken deep root at the Univer-
sity, which had hitherto constituted the stronghold of
Romanism.

The mode of goverment, and the important conces-
sions which Edward I. made to Parliament, had indeed
brought the machinery of the State back into its normal
course, and hence for a time the inner history of Oxford
is closed to us. This, however, was the age in which
the first colleges were founded by rich benefactors, when,
after a short and last attempt to gain admission for the
study of the Roman law, the schools resumed their use-
less discussions, whilst Roger Bacon was looking with
deep and almost prophetic insight into physics, and,
alike shunned and feared, was occupied in making
wondrous experiments in his solitary tower above
the gateway of his college. The special forms of
English university life’ were now founded, but the
national spirit seemed to have departed from Oxford,
and did not return to it till a new popular ex-
citement roused the English people into opposition to
Rome.

The struggle for the crown of France, whose best ally
was the Pope at Avignon, rapidly increased the influ-
ence and power of the House of Comaions. Now, for
the first time, the questicn of a real English nationality
250 JOHN WICLIF.

presents itself to our notice; and as this spirit contri-
buted towards the brilliant renown of England, it
became a matter of common interest both to the king
and people to establish efficient defences against the
ever-erowing encroachments of the Pope, which were
cloaked under the pretence of maintaining supreme
spiritual authority. This spirit of opposition received
support from the demoralization of the clergy, who, as
long as their own lives were fraught with benefit to their
f:llow-countrymen, had been able to reconcile the claims
of the Church with the requirements of the nation.
The Mendicant Friars had, through their own fault,
been converted from the friends to the opponents of
the people; and by their conduct, more especially at
Oxford, had excited a rapidly spreading hatred of their
order.

In such an age as this, and under such circumstances
as these, appeared John of Wiclif. It is supposed that
he was born in the village of Wiclif, on the Tees, on the
northern boundary of the county of York, where the
Norman spirit had only recently influenced the popu-
lation, which with the exception of its admixture with
Scandinavian descent, was of old English origin. The
district was peopled by a hardy robust race, who had
grown up in intimate relations, both of war and peace,
with their Scotch neighbours, and who were respected
by their more polished southern countrymen for their
keen understanding, and their great intrepidity. In
these parts of England the tenure of small freehold
properties had retained a firmer footing than in the
south ; and there is no question that the Wiclifs had
for generations past been settled on their own hereditary
JOHN WICLIF. 251

patrimony at the place from which they took their name.
John Wiclif had been early destined for the Church;
and, in accordance with this purpose, he was sent to the
University of Oxford; but, unfortunately, neither the
year of his arrival there, nor the college of which he
became a member, can be fixed with certainty. The
late discovery of another John Wiclif increases the
difficulty of tracing his academical career, and all that
we know definitely in regard to this period of his
life is, that in the year 1356, he was a Fellow of
Merton College, whicli had already been long cele-
brated for its scholastic reputation, and at which
Duns Scotus and William Occam had studied, while
latterly it had numbered amongst its alumni, Thomas
Bradwardin, another remarkable man, who, by his
return to the stern doctrine of predestination, as taught
by St. Augustine, had entered upon a new path of
ecclesiastical reform from within the Church itself, and
had even attracted attention in the highest quarters;
for we find that Edward III. carried him with him, as
his chaplain, during his various foreign campaigns.
The example and writings of such men as these were
the load-stars that guided this young man, who, in
addition to his rich gifts of understanding and feeling,
possessed a large amount of zeal and industry. The
guides whom he followed soon led him, however, upon
paths of inquiry very different from their own. The
time at which he lived, and his place of study, led him
to turn with zealous industry to the study of the
Aristotelian philosophy of that day and of the scho-
lastic theology which was allied to it; and we have the
testimony of one of his opponents, that Wiclif speedily
252 JOHN WICLIF.

attained such proficiency, that no one at Oxford was
his superior, or even his equal, in these subjects.
On the other hand we may, however, regard Brad-
wardin as his predecessor and guide; and there is cer-
tainly no doubt that the writings of Robert Grosteste,
which were distinguished by their warmth and imagi-
nation, and had been carefully read by Wiclif, must
have contributed essentially in influencing him to
read the Bible with fervour and earnestness, and by
studying the Holy Scriptures for himself, to rise superior
to the dark pedantry of his times. To these acquire-
ments he added the study of the canon law, which was
indispensable to one of his calling, combining with it,
as we are told, the knowledge of the Roman civil law,
as well as of the common law of England. The
latter he studied with special predilection, which, while
it had been purposely neglected at all the renowned
seats of Romanised culture, on account of its doubtful
scientific value, had attained a very high degree of
favour in regard both to public and official questions
in England. Thus Wiclif early acquired two advan-
tages, which the University did not generally require
from her teachers and their scholars, viz., the recogni-
tion and knowledge from the fountain head of the eter-
nal principles of Christian ethics, and an acquaintance
with the Germanic principles of law, which were at that
time gaining ascendency in the estimation of his coun-
trymen over the Roman and feudal systems. Both
these points were of great value with regard to his life
and efficiency, since they opened his eyes to the truth
that Christianity, and the people who professed its
doctrines, were destined for far higher and different
JOHN WICLIF. 253

vocations than those which the stubborn spirit of Rome
had endeavoured to impress upon them. A presen-
timent of his own destiny seems to have possessed the
mind of Wiclif, and he felt that his place was at Oxford,
where, to use a modern phrase, he would make for him-
self a university career, instead of accepting some pas-
toral charge, and serving, like many of the clergy of his
own day, as the cherished pastor of his flock. He
received ordination, but he early felt a decided disin-
clination to become a monk. We unfortunately possess
no details of these years of preparation which he passed
in industrious reading and study, and in the prosecution
of devotional exercises and academic disputations in his
own college, and in the University; but certain it.is,
that the scientific reputation which Wiclif acquired
could scarcely have exceeded the purity of his morals,
and the genuine Christian course of his life, which
appears to have been so blameless from his youth up-
wards, that much as his most violent opponents may
have desired to find grounds of complaint against him,
all who have spoken of him have concurred in express-
ing themselves in reference to these points of his cha-
racter, in terms of the most unqualified praise. We
do not know how far he participated in the academic
divisions of that period—the contests of the Boreales,
which he himself so worthily represented, and the Orien-
tales—or in the disputes between the University and the
town and Government; nor do we know to what extent
he entered into the public affairs of England during her
great conflict with the continental powers, although
these were subjects which must very materially have
influenced Oxford-life at that period.
254 JOHN WICLIF.

He was, at all events, not blind to the circumstances
and signs of the times in which he lived ; and, in the
year 1356, he ventured upon his first literary produc-
tion, which consisted of a treatise, entitled the ‘‘ Latter
End of the Church.” We are naturally led to speculate
on the motives which led to this composition and to ask,
whether it was the fearful plague of 1348, with its
many concomitant evils, which pursued its devastating
course over almost every part of the then known world,
or whether it was the condition of the hierarchy and
the lower clergy which led him, like so many both
before and after his time, to the study and application
of the prophecies of the Apocalypse? This much,
however, is certain, that he began with a warning call
to repentance, and the turning away from sin while it
was yet time, specially addressing himself to the ser-
vants of the Church, under which term he included
the entire body of the hierarchy, from its highest to
its humblest supporters.

Very soon, however, Wiclif came down from these
mystic heights, and directed his attacks against all
assailable opponents in his own immediate vicinity.
As early as the year 1360, he entered upon the struggle,
which he prosecuted with unwearied perseverance to
the end of his life, against the Mendicant Friars gene-
rally, but more especially those belonging to the
Franciscan Orders. The latter had already been long
at variance with the beneficed clergy, before the scien-
tific promise with which their early history had been
characterised, was wholly lost. When, however, the
originally healthy tendencies of the brotherhood had
been wholly smothered by dry formalities, and when
JOHN WICUIF. 255

the Minorites strove alike by bad and good means, and
mainly for impure purposes, to control the consciences
of men by insinuating themselves into families, and
when, lastly, they tried to bind the academic youth
wholly to their interests, the enmity against them rose
to a formidable height. The moral sense of the com-
munity had sunk to a deplorably low ebb, and it was
owing to a fear of the Franciscans, who had ruined
many youths, or, at any rate, gained them over to their
own side by deceptive arts, that parents would no longer
send their sons to the University. The census, which
is said at one time to have shown the astonishing number
of 30,000 students, had fallen as low as 6,000, whilst all
earnest study was utterly crushed. Richard Fitzralf,
Archbishop of Armagh, who had been Chancellor of
the University from 1333 to 1347, was the first who
endeavoured vigorously to put down this evil, and to
excite a systematic agitation against the mendicant
orders. In vain, however, did this admirable man plead
for the support of the Papal Court at Avignon; for when
a statute of the University was passed which aimed at
setting bounds to these unprincipled innovations, it was
rejected by the Pope with a view of favouring the Fran-
ciscans. The head of the Church himself therefore stood
in the way of the maintenance of the national spirit,
and the ancient authority and forms of the university.
At this crisis Wiclif entered the lists, and at once carried
with him all the support that could be afforded him by
these elements of university government. His attack, as
we learn from the thesis that is still extant, under the
title of “Reproaches against the Mendicant Friars,”
unsparingly laid bare the internal corruption of the
256 JOHN WICLIF.

brethren, who, with mixed hypocrisy and assumption,
concealed the most revolting depravity under the coarse
russet robe of their order. The injunction to maintain
absolute poverty was, indeed, externally complied with,
but in its inner sense it was most grossly evaded; and
this corruption next infected the laity, among whom
the Franciscans had insinuated themselves as chaplains
and confessors, and on whom they preyed like some
noxious vermin. The indignation with which the
clergy heard such charges as these spoken in plain Eng-
lish words was great, although scarcely greater than
the approval with which they were welcomed by the
opposite party.

Balliol College, which had been founded by a noble
lady of the family who owned Barnard Castle, which
was only a few miles distant from Wiclif’s birthplace,
bestowed a living upon the daring north countryman, and
raised him to the dignity of its Master in the year 1361.
He must have resigned this place after a year or two,
since we find him renting rooms in Queen’s College, in
October, 1363. In the year 1365, soon after ihe death of
Archbishop Simon Islip, who had selected Wiclif to be
the Master of Canterbury Hall, which he had recently
founded, Wiclif had a contention with the new pri-
mate, who, being friendly to the monks, was anxious
to give the mastership to Woodhall, one of their own
body. Wiclif took his stand upon the testamentary
wishes of the founder, and appealed to the Pope. As
the latter, after a long delay of four years, decided
against him, Wiclif’s opponents declared that to this
decision alone was due the bitter hatred which he exhi-
bited against the mendicant orders. The chronological
JOHN WICLIF. 257

sequence of events proves the contrary, and still more
his own participation in another and far more important
matter, in which the Pope himself was specially and
individually interested, and from which Wiclif would
undoubtedly have held himself aloof, if he had been
waiting in a spirit of selfish ambition for the decision
of the Roman pontiff.

The dissensions between the King and the State on the
one hand, and the Court of Rome on the other, had for
some time been constantly on the increase. Stringent
laws had been passed against the Romish provisions by
which the insular benefices were still constantly bestowed
upon foreigners, and English Church-money was poured
into the treasury at Avignon; and when the Pope
attempted to draw the disputants to his tribunal as the
ultimate court of appeal, counter-appeals to foreign
courts of jurisdiction were interdicted under heavy
penalties. Yet, notwithstanding the difficulties which
were daily pressing more and more heavily upon him,
Urban V. had the temerity again to advance a claim for
that disgraceful tax of a thousand marks which King
John in the dark hour of his deepest humiliation had
consented to pay to Innocent III., but which Edward I.
had refused in express terms to continue, and which for
a whole generation had not even been claimed. This
was one of the many false steps made at that time by
the court of Rome, which seems to have been most
thoroughly blind to the actual extent of its powers; and
how completely the Pope himself had misjudged the
character of Edward III., and of the recently elected
Parliament, was proved by the unanimous indignation
with which his demands were met. Their only result

8
258 JOHN WICLIF.

was that more stringent statutes were passed to meet
the case; while the agents for collecting the fine were
punished with the loss of property, and in some cases
even of life. At this time a monk who wisely concealed
his name, but who, bolder than his superiors, had pub-
lished a tract, in which he maintained the supremacy of
the Pope in England, challenged Wiclif to come for-
ward and refute his proposition, which the latter was
not slow in doing, and it is in itself a proof of the
consideration in which the future Reformer must have
been held, that he should have been individually re-
ferred to on the occasion. At that period he was already
chaplain to the king, as we learn from his reply, which
bears the date of 1367. In this document, in which he
had, with great judgment, followed the form of a debate
in the House of Lords, he takes his stand wholly on the
ground of nationality and legality ; while on the strength
of his knowledge of English law, he maintains the
perfect independence of the crown and country, and
repudiates the papal claim as a national insult. The
Anglo-Norman island of Great Britain had in truth
never sunk to the level of a dependence of the Papal
Chair, like the Norman sovereignties in southern Italy.
Such a skilful defender, who never lost sight of his
Oxford controversy with the Minorites and Dominicans,
was a person whom the high authorities, who were con-
tending against the same enemies, were necessarily
anxious to draw more closely to themselves. Thus,
when Wiclif, in the year 1872, received his degree of
Doctor of Divinity at Oxford, and his teaching acquired
a much more extensive range of influence, both in regard
to ecclesiastical and social questions, his connexion
JOHN WICLIF. 259

with the Court and Government rapidly increased. A
man like Wiclif could indeed scarcely have failed to
stand well with the executive Government; and hi

popularity both at the University and among the people
at large, continued most deservedly to augment from day
today. In the year 1373, we find that his merits were
rewarded by the gift of additional benefices, such as the
rectory of Ludgarshall, and a prebend’s stall at West-
bury. In respect to the motives which have from time
to time been maliciously assigned as the cause of his
opposition to the papal supremacy, it is very signi-
ficant to note that Pope Gregory XI. did not hesitate to
confirm these appointments in a special brief, in which
he commends the great learning of the celebrated theo-
logian, and his spotless course of life. Immediately
after this period, however, Wiclif stood in very different
relations to the Pope.

The negotiations for an armistice between England
and France, which were opened at Bruges, led also about
this time to an attempt to arrive at some satisfactory
understanding with the Pope. For this purpose the
doctor of divinity, John de Wiclif, was appointed by
royal letters patent to be one of the commission, which,
under the presidency of the Duke of Lancaster, had
long been endeavouring, but without success, to settle
these two highly important matters. And although
Gregory did make a few apparent concessions in regard
to the preposterous claims of his predecessor, he was in
fact only following the old and crafty policy of Rome,
and endeavouring by subterfuges and procrastination to
avoid yielding a single point under dispute. The Papal
Oourt neither could nor would renounce the system which

$2
260 JOHN WICLIF.

it had hitherto pursued in England in regard to church
fines, annates, and other remunerative methods of raising.
money, nor would it relinquish its obnoxious practice of
forcing foreign prelates upon the English Church. This
tortuous policy necessarily led to a rupture of the con-
ferences in the year 1376 without any result, while it
redoubled the indignation of Parliament against the
Pope. We unfortunately have no definite information
in regard to Wiclif’s share in these transactions; but
there are, at all events, two circumstances connected with
his residence in Flanders, which were of no common
importance in reference to his life and efficiency. In his
intercourse with the papal plenipotentiaries he had
obtained so clear an insight into the lying and shuffling
policy of Rome, that in his just indignation at all that he
had himself seen and heard, he, like Luther in later
times, hesitated not to enter into personal contest with
him who called himself the vicegerent of Christ on
earth. In addition to this he had become more closely
connected with the Duke of Lancaster, who at that
period, owing to the age and infirmity of his father,
King Edward, possessed the highest influence in the
state. John of Gaunt was disposed from principle,
although as much from ambition, to favour the rule
of the laity, and he therefore opposed the aggressions of
Rome no less than the pretensions of the native English
clergy. He hoped by the help of the popular party to
further his own ends, and though these, like his moral
conduct, must be characterised as the reverse of pure, he
was a man of comprehensive ideas, and animated by a
lively interest in all the spiritual aspirations of his age.
He had known how to attract to himself the affection of
JOHN WICLIF. 261

the poet Chaucer, and he now attached to his person the
great theologian, who had already entered upon the path
of ecclesiastical reform. Who can say what a beneficial
influence his communion with these gifted spirits might
have exercised on his mind if his natural character had
been similar to that which future ages admired in the
noble elector of Saxony ? His regard for Wiclif, even
as early as on his return from Bruges, was shown by the
fact, that the crown, no doubt at the suggestion of Lan-
caster, rewarded his labours by presenting him to the
valuable living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. The
Duke, moreover, protected him at a later period, when
he had adopted a more decided tone in those writings
and addresses, in which he inveighed with ever increas-
ing severity against the horrible depravity of the secular
and monastic clergy, not even sparing the Pope, who
had perverted the power of the keys of Rome into an
instrument of unholy usurpation, and who had become
the Antichrist, as prophesied in the Apocalypse. Wiclif
too, in his turn, adhered to the Duke, when the latter was
threatened with disgrace. The so-called Good Parlia-
ment of the year 1376, had indeed expressed itself with
severity against the lust for wealth which prevailed in
the sinful city of Avignon, and against the holy Father
himself, of whom it said that God had commanded him
to feed his flock, but not to fleece them; while it had
insisted that these abuses should be discontinued, and
that the Anglican Church should be put upon the same
footing which it had occupied in the days of Gregory
the Great. But the opposition on the part of the English
prelates, who for a time had taken part in the popular
excitement against Rome, now began to gain strength,
262. JOHN WICLIF.

and their adherents soon formed a considerable majority
even in the lower house against Lancaster, whose
government they successfully attacked on the ground of
its illegality. This influence was, however, not wholly
destroyed, owing undoubtedly to the steady adhesion ot
Wiclif and his special adherents. At this very time the
Duke, acting by authority, and in conformity with the
views of the anti-papistical party in parliament, had
passed a remarkable act in favour of the proposition,
that the Government should adhere to its resolutions to
forbid money being sent to Avignon, even in the event
of the Pope having recourse to ecclesiastical punish-
ments. A feeling in opposition to Romanism was thus
continually being fostered in England, while Wiclif was
gradually led to a more thorough comprehension of the
questions at issue. As long as his patron maintained
his position, he directed his attacks more and more
against the inner being and the spirit of the doctrines of
the Church, rather than as heretofore against the more
external frame-work of the hierarchy.

The old-established and conservative party in the
State determined to resist this opposition both on the
part of the reformer and his powerful patron. William
Courtnay, Bishop of London, a man sprung from a
haughty aristocratic family and full of priestly arrogance,
induced the clergy, assembled in convocation, to summon
the Oxford doctor to answer for his heresy. Accord-
ingly, on the 19th of February, 1377, he was commanded
to appear before the commission sitting in St. Paul’s
Church, London; but it is not easy to understand why
he was thus brought before a tribunal beyond the pre-
cincts of his own diocese. Wiclif obeyed the summons,
JOHN WICLIF. 263

but he entered the Church accompanied by the Duke in
person, and by another friend and well-wisher, Lord
Henry Percy, the earl marshal of England. A numerous
retinue of knights accompanied them, and a crowd of
citizens followed them into the sacred building. Both
parties exhibited great irregularity of conduct, and a
tumultuous conflict seemed to be impending. When
the Bishop rose to forbid the Lord High Marshal from
exercising the prerogatives of his office on consecrated
ground, and gave way to a passionate outbreak of
temper because Percy, pitying the debility of the
accused, had offered him a seat, there arose a violent
altercation between Lancaster and the prelate, in which
the former gave utterance to threatening and offensive
language. The consequence was a fearful tumult within
the Church itself, and an uproar in the streets, during
which the Londoners, who, from other causes, were
irritated against the Duke, without giving themselves
time to consider, took the part of their bishop. It was
not without personal risk that Lancaster and his com-
panions were able to secure their own safety and that of
their protégé. A few days sufficed, however, to show
that the chief administrative power of the State was
still in the hands of the Duke, for the populace was soon
obliged to submit with all humility, while the clergy,
although embittered to the utmost, were compelled to
desist from their meditated acts of vengeance. These
events were speedily followed by the death of Edward,
to whose age and feebleness the past disturbances were
ina great measure due. Under his grandson and suc-
cessor, Richard I1., the Duke of Lancaster, as the uncle
of the young king, enjoyed a position which enabled
264 JOHN WICLIF.

him to exercise still greater power. The mother of the
young king and her court made no secret in the mean-
while of their anxious wishes for the success of Wiclif
in the ecclesiastical controversy in which he was
engaged; and this sympathy on the part of the Govern-
ment with the new opinions, was also manifested in
many different ways on various other occasions.

But the opposite party did not either fail to benefit to the
utmost of their power by the change in the Government.
The lay opposition adhered to the clergy, who hastened
to appeal to the Pope, entreating him, without delay, to
bring the heretic to judgment. In five bulls, bearing
the date of the 2d May, addressed to the crown, the
primate and bishop, and the universities, the Pope
required and authorised these powers to take stringent
measures to quell the special danger which was to be
apprehended, lest the heads of the State and the nation
should be infected by the new heresies. Express refer-
ence was made to the dangerous sympathy with these
opinions, which prevailed in the court circle. But the
University of Oxford could not be induced to persecute
and expel the man who stood higher than any other of
her teachers and scholars, for no better reason than that
he had begun to attack the monks and their system.
The University was, nevertheless, obliged to let him go
forth, in January, 1378, to present himself in the hall
at Lambeth, where the zealous and exasperated heads
of the Church had assembled to constitute themselves
into a court of judgment over matters of faith. He
again appeared before the tribunal, but on this occasion
without his armed and powerful supporters. Scarcely,
however, had the court been formed, when the London
JOHN WICLIF. 265

citizens thronged into the hall, urged in this instance by
anxiety for his safety. They tumultuously surrounded
the archiepiscopal palace, and eagerly pressed into the
chapel, where they loudly demanded that no harm
should be done to the person of this honoured man. The
Princess of Wales, moreover, despatched a knight to the
assembly, who was commissioned to protest against
judgment being given upon any ground whatever.
Once more, then, the ecclesiastical court was constrained
to yield to the power of the laity, and to content itself
with the written declaration of the accused, that he would
be perfectly ready to recant whenever he should be con-
vinced of his errors. He, however, unconditionally
maintained the proposition that popes and priests are
sinful men like other mortals, that limits must be put to
the secular pretensions of the Papal Court, and that the
State has the right to oppose the shameful mal-appro-
priation of ecclesiastical funds. The law of Christ, he
said, stood higher than the often upheld, but shame-
fully misused, power of the papal keys. Itisa falsehood
to assert, as has frequently been done by Catholics, that
Wiclif made an abject recantation at Lambeth, in order
to escape martyrdom; and that it was only in a pamphlet,
which was composed subsequently to the trial, that he
ventured to express those opinions which it is certain
that he had actually laid before the court itself.

The papal power was, in the meanwhile, not in a posi-
tion to wreak its vengeance upon him ; for scarcely two
months later there broke out a schism, which was not
wholly settled until thirty years afterwards, at the
Council of Constance. This was, indeed, a triumph and
an ample confirmation of Wiclif’s propositions, which
266 JOHN WICLIF.

had, moreover, never been controverted; and the reformer
soon took occasion in a new tract to expose the great
significance of this monstrous scandal of Christendom.
“Let us put our trust in Christ,” he exclaims, “ for the
head of the anti-Christ is split into two, and the one half
is contending against the other. The word of God
alone can now save men from destruction.”

It was well for himself and for the future destiny of
the Gospel in England, that Wiclif had recourse at this
moment to weapons whose edge nothing can rust. or
if he had attacked only the jurisdiction and supremacy
of the popes, he would scarcely have fared better than
Marsilius of Padua, or Johannes Gandavensis, with
whose heresies the recent judgment of the Papal Court
had confounded his opinions. But he had for a long
time appealed to the Bible in his fierce and dangerous
conflict with the Church; and now the time was come
that his knowledge of the Word sufficed to enable him to
stand forth before Christendom, and demand an answer
to the questions, What say the Scriptures? and what
say the Decretals? and in how far do they agree ?

We will now consider the attitude which he assumed
in regard to the study and authority of the Scriptures.
Since the beginning of his academic course, and in the
“midst of the learned yet practical labours, into which he
had thrown himself with the greatest ardour, the word of
God, or the law of the Lord, as he delighted to call the
Scriptures, became more and more dear to him. When
the reading of the Scriptures had absorbed all his mind,
and filled his heart with peace, he began with the most
eloquent enthusiasm to expound the Bible both in his
class and from the pulpit. The teachers and students
JOHN WICLIF. 267

of Oxford listened with rapt attention to the life-giving
words of his preaching; and soon, in accordance with
the scholastic habits of the day, they designated
him universally by the title of the Doctor Evange-
licus. It was then that the idea first dawned in his
mind of transferring the dead letter of the Latin version
of the Scriptures into the recently developed speech of
his mother-land. He himself stated at a later period,
that he had seen in the hands of the young Queen
Anne, the wife of Richard II. and the daughter of the
Emperor Charles IV., a copy of the Gospel, in which,
in addition to the Latin, there was also a Bohemian and
a German translation, which had specially delighted
him ; but it is an error to refer the origin of his design
to the sight of this beautiful MS., since the royal pair
were not married till the beginning of 1382. It is pos-
sible that one of the numerous MSS. in which pious
Anglo-Saxon monks had transcribed considerable por-
tions of the Old and New Testament in their own
tongue, may have fallen under his notice. It is sufficient
for us, however, to know that this great idea was ever
present to his mind from the first, and that he presented
his fellow countrymen with the gift of the whole Bible
in English—a task which his predecessors in the work
had only done in fragments and paraphrases, and the
like of which had long been vainly wished for in Ger-
many and Bohemia. His was destined to be a trans-
lation into his mother-tongue, such as that tongue had
become after eventful periods of the national history, and
by a remarkable admixture of native dialects, which
had made it the property at once of the high and
the low, and the characteristic exponent of a na-
268 JOHN WICLIF.

tion rapidly advancing to mental and physical inde-
pendence.

This great work, which appears to have occupied him
especially during the years 1379 and 1380, was indeed of
necessity based exclusively upon the Vulgate, for Wiclif
did not understand the fundamental Hebrew or Greek
texts, and the age in which he lived had as yet no
knowledge of linguistic criticism. But a faithful verbal
translation of the Bible, in a form of speech comprehen-
sible to the whole people, was a treasure possessed by no
other modern nation. It was accomplished chiefly through
Wiclif’s own exertions, although recent research has
shown that some of his best pupils must have aided
him truly and effectually in the work; for it is to be
noted that there prevailed during the next few years a
perfect emulation among the Wiclifites in this depart-
ment of study. The English translation of the Bible
of the fourteenth century, although extant only in indi-
vidual portions and incomplete copies, is in fact the best
specimen of the English prose of that day, in which the
Norman or Romanized element had thoroughly per-
meated the Saxon groundwork; for, in addition to the
natural force of the latter, we cannot overlook the pre-
sence of a certain facility in the mode of bringing
abstract ideas before the notice of the reader. How
much this was the case is proved by the wonderful
effect which was at once produced by the appearance of
the volume. Jt was now for the first time that the
lower classes of the people began eagerly to learn to
read, and to approach directly to the fountain-head from
whence life and truth flow. If we assume the point of
view taken by an orthodox chronicler, who has many
JOHN WICLIF. 269

things to relate to us of Wiclif, and who probably had
known him personally in Leicestershire, we can hardly
wonder at the feeling which prompted him to upbraid
the Reformer, whom he attacks on the ground that he
had cast his English Gospel like a pearl before swine,
and converted the jewel intrusted to the clergy into a
plaything for the laity, by making the heavenly talent
of the Church the common property of the people.
According to him, the holy text of the Scriptures had
been desecrated by its translation into the mother-tongue ;
for now, all who had learnt to read, whether they were
men or women, were more familiar with it than the most
learned clergy of old. It was, in truth, the first irrepar-
able breach in the bulwark which the hierarchy believed
that they had rendered secure by the help of the Vulgate.
Even during the middle ages, and amid the violence of
orthodox reaction, the Bible penetrated so deeply into
the minds of the people that the knowledge of it could
not again be wholly eradicated notwithstanding all the
efforts of the Inquisition. In the improved Protestant
translations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
this translation was not overlooked ; and no one will deny
that England owes to the old evangelical doctor of Oxford
the first impulse towards those tendencies from which
has sprung the colossal enterprise of the present Society
for the propagation of the Bible.

But, as with his greater successor, Luther, this labour
was considered as merely a means towards a higher end.
At this period, he gives utterance still more clearly to
his conviction that, as every man has to give account
for his actions, so also must he be guarded in respect to
the causes that give rise to them. The Holy Scriptures,
270 JOHN WICLIF,

he says, are the only rule and gauge for the faith and
life of a Christian. This proposition became to the
Reformer the central point, from which emanated all
the ramifying branches of his activity. The contest
with the mendicant friars, in which he attacked the old
system, was not at variance with those evangelical doc-
trines of faith by which he endeavoured in a series of
treatises and pamphlets to establish a new system of
belief. He repeatedly embraced both points of his
teaching in short but lucid propositions. In one place
he says, “ As Christ is so immeasurably higher than any
other being, so, also, do the law of the Lord and the
word of God stand immeasurably higher than all
human argument and authority.” And again, else-
where, he says, in a tone of quiet, almost national,
humour, “ If there were a hundred popes, supported by
all the mendicant friars turned into cardinals, we could
only believe them in regard to matters of faith in as far
as they are able to verify their words from the Bible.”
We see that he had from principle entirely renounced
that which the Church of the West had for centuries
past prescribed to all believers as immutable dogmas.
The law of God had become to him of far greater
weight than the decretals of popes and councils. He
had indeed no disposition to investigate the condition
of the ancient Church of the apostolic times, for his
mind had no tendency towards historical investiga-
tion, and still less was it inclined to what we should
now term philological inquiry; nor, indeed, could it
very readily have acquired such a bias, considering the
scholastic discipline in which he had been trained. But
Wiclif had already begun to free himself from these
JOHN WICLIF. 271

once powerful influences; and this he had done in the
practical manner, and in accordance with the genuine
national tendency which he had succeeded in giving to
the results which were the unavoidable consequences of
his first propositions. He had indeed taken the bull by
the horns, when he boldly declared war against the
worst perversion of the Romish doctrine, as taught in
the dogma of transubstantiation ; for he thus shook the
corner-stone of the whole system, as John Erigena had
probably meditated doing in the ninth century, pro-
nouncing it to be at variance both with Scripture and
common sense.

The path of inquiry by which he arrived at this con-
clusion had necessarily started from his chief premises
that the commands of God, and not those of man, were
to be obeyed. Through the Scriptures, however, man
learns that the Son of God is the only Mediator between
the Father and His creatures, and that it is only by
entire faith in Christ that he can be helped to perfect
happiness: for neither his own works, nor the worship of
the saints, with which the world was at that time filled,
is able to contribute to its attainment; but God in His
mercy and almighty power raises the repentant sinner,
through the Son, from the dust, in which he lay; so
that faith and repentance are gifts from above, and must
not be imputed to man as acts of merit. It is therefore
only the elect who constitute the community of saints—
the community of God or the true Church. Here he
most completely departed from that which his contem-
poraries understood by the Church; for in their eyes it
was only an institution composed of the higher and
lower clergy, as well as of his sworn opponents, the
272 JOHN WICLIF.

monks, and to which the laity belonged merely in respect
to the outer limits that had been drawn around it by the
hierarchy. According, however, to his conception of
the Church, it consisted of all true believers, who had
access to the Divine mercy independently of any human
intervention; while hypocrites and godless persons,
even though they ranked among the highest prelates,
did not belong to it. This is the same idea of the
priesthood, which so essentially contributed to the
development of the Reformation in Germany.

Wiclif subsequently adhered with signal success to the
same principle, when he began to attack the doctrine of
the sacrament. It is well known how much the Catho-
lic idea of the inextinguishable and spotless nature of
the consecration of the priesthood contributed to the
development of the theory of the Eucharist; and how,
conversely, the holiness of the sacrament must have
served to render the priestly character invulnerable to
all attacks from the secular power. ach of these
dogmas mutually strengthened the other, and raised
the Romish doctrine to its culminating point by sup-
plying the arbitrary proposition, which was regarded
as incontrovertible, that the bread and wine were con-
verted by the hand of the consecrating priest at the altar
into the body and blood of the Lord, while their ex-
ternal form and taste were said, in the scholastic phrase-
ology of the Church, to be merely accidents. Every
earnest reformation of the Church has been directed
against this bulwark of the system, although different
sides of the question have been aimed at by the diffe-
rent antagonists. While Huss opposed the keeping
the cup from the people, and thus endeavoured to fill up
JOHN WICLIF. 273

the chasm which divided the priesthood and the laity,
and Luther especially objected to the Mass as idolatrous,
Wiclif persistingly attacked the erroneous doctrine of
the conversion of the bread into the body. He looked
upon that which was regarded as the sum of orthodoxy
as mere heresy, and in this repect his convictions did
not deviate very widely from the point of view assumed
by the German Reformers. Taking his stand on
evangelical ground, he more especially attacks two
points, viz.—the monstrous and heathenish doctrine that
the priest, by the mystic act of consecration, can pro-
duce the Body of the Lord, and that the Host, after it
has been thus consecrated, should be worshipped. The
priesthood of the Church no longer appear to him as the
representatives of Christ: for their elevation above others
seems to him on the contrary mere blasphemy, and the
worship of the sacrament rank idolatry. But here we
pause to ask, what he was able to substitute in their place,
and how he succeeded in bringing back to its original foot-
ing an institution which had designedly been adapted to
the most unspiritual requirements of the human heart.
The twelve theses in which he openly discussed this
most important subject in the spring of 1381, and the
writings in which he subsequently often recurred to it,
do not set forth his view with clearness and distinctness.
It seems, indeed, as if he had himself by no means been
satisfied with his own final solution of the most promi-
nent contradictions. He and his adherents most clearly
and distinctly niaintain that the visible sacrament at the
altar is actual bread and wine. Yet Wiclif attempted
repeatedly to answer the question, how both were con-
verted into the body and blood of Christ; and this he
E
274 JOHN WICLIF.

did in various ways, but without arriving at any definite
conclusion. In the meanwhile, he approached very de-
cidedly to the doctrine of Zuinglius, that the visible
bodies are only signs and emblems of that which is repre-
sented by them ; while he drew a very unsatisfactory dis-
tinction between natural bread and that which in the
sacrament is assumed to acquire the significance of the
body of Christ. In another part of his theses, however,
he almost adopts Luther’s view, asserting the actual
presence of the body of Christ in the sacrament ; he does
not, however, assume that the body is appreciably and
tangibly present, but merely that its properties have
been transferred to the consecrated bread. This, there-
fore, would constitute simultaneously the actual bread
and the actual body, a conclusion whose contrarieties
no human sophistry can reconcile, and which Wiclif
endeavours to strengthen by insisting, contrary to the
Lutheran view, that faith is indispensably necessary
to the beneficial participation of the Eucharist.

On this doctrine, however undeveloped and incom-
plete we may regard it, Wiclif boldly took his stand,
confident in the eternal truth of the Scriptures; while
his translation of the Bible, to which he at the same
time appealed, met with a glad and welcome hearing
from all ranks and classes of the people. But it
was not only by his writings that he appealed to his
countrymen; for at this time he had recourse more
fully than ever to preaching and public exhortation.
Indeed, for several years, preaching had been his chief
and most favourite occupation. He was wont to take
the practical points of doctrines for his texts, and by
their help to expose the fallacies of the hierarchical
JOHN WICLIF. 275

theories. In this respect he furnished a brilliant
example to all the beneficed clergy, who had been
accustomed almost wholly to neglect the duty, and to
permit the mendicant friars to take out of their hands
the office of preaching to the people, a task for which
they evinced decided predilection. It was Wiclif’s
habit to speak to his congregation in purely biblical
language, and in a truly evangelical manner; and the
powerful result of his teaching is sufficiently manifest
in the many hundred fragments and extracts from his
sermons which we meet with in the manuscripts of that
day, and in the many God-fearing men who were
inspired by his noble example to follow in his footsteps.

We will say no more of the course pursued by this
remarkable man in his endeavours to attain the high
aim which he strove to reach in bringing about a
reformation of the national faith. The more decidedly
he expressed his convictions, the higher waxed the
wrath of all those who were placed in situations of
authority, and who were resolved not to yield the
very least either of the external or internal supports
of the Roman Catholic system of doctrine. They indeed
required some time to recover from the confusion into
which the papal schism had thrown the Christian world.
The twelve theses on the Eucharist presented, however,
a welcome handle for a new attempt to attack the
heretic, who was continually growing more dangerous
to the Church. The first step in this direction was
taken at Oxford, where William Berton, the Chancellor
of the University, who was predisposed in favour of the
hierarchy, submitted these theses to the examination of
a commission of twelve doctors of divinity, among

T2
276 JOHN WICLIF.

whom, as many as eight were monks. The sentence,
as might be expected, condemned the theses as heretical ;
while all who quoted them in their lectures, or who
listened to their enunciation, were threatened with all
the punishments that were in any way compatible with
the academical system, from interdict to imprisonment.
It is related that Wiclif, who still maintained his place
in the University, was in the act of expounding his
propositions in the priory of the Augustines, when the
proctor of the court entered, holding in his hand the
resolution that had just been passed, and commanded
him to cease speaking. Wiclif appears to have been
overcome for a moment by surprise, but speedily reco-
vering himself, he protested against the proceeding on
the ground of his disputation being public. He seems,
however, for a time to have abstained from any further
prosecution of the contest by word of mouth; but the
process gave occasion to the publication of one of his.
most important pamphlets, entitled “The Wicket,” in
which he considered the meaning of the words, “This
is my body;” and to judge by the extraordinary ap-
proval which this production won from its readers, both
at the time and in after years, it may, perhaps, not be
too much to assert, that it must have become a gate of
life to thousands, and hundreds of thousands.

But while Wiclif was writing this little -work, or
rather just after it had appeared, a storm burst over
England, which, in its violence, threatened to over-
whelm and throw down all attempts at ecclesiastical
improvement, and all authorities, both in Church and
State. The fearful insurrection of the peasantry, whick
took place in June, 1381, it was asserted, long after-
JOHN WICLIF. 277

wards, had been brought about mainly through the
preaching and doctrines of Wiclif. It will not be dif-
ficult to refute this assertion as a malignant falsehood,
if we merely take into consideration the thoroughly
different origin of that social movement. As early as
the middle of the fourteenth century, after the burgher
classes had not only become socially and politically imde-
pendent, but after they had even acquired a direct share
in the management of public affairs, the classes still
lower in the scale of society began to bestir themselves.
This body consisted in England of different grades of
villeins and serfs, as they had existed since the Conquest,
of free but poor artisans in town and country, and the
ordained brethren of the different guilds and crafts
belonging to the lowest ranks of the clergy. The exclu-
sive and once beneficial organization of the feudal system
had long been seriously impaired. The subdivided
fiefs were now constantly becoming merged into large
estates, owned by burgher possessors; and the cultiva-
tion of pasture-ground, and the management of sheep,
appeared, on account of the profit to be derived from
the wool, to be more remunerative than mere arable
land. In the towns, the guilds held supreme sway,
and tyrannized over the lives of the poorer classes who
did not belong to them. Thus the day-labourers in the
country, and the artisans in the towns, were everywhere
oppressed and trampled down whichever way they
turned. Suddenly, however, they also seemed to be
seized with the consciousness of that national existence
which now for the first time found expression in the
English language, and the earliest rising of this order
was almost simultaneous with the occurrence of the
278 JOHN WICLIF.

Black Death of the year 1348-49, which pressed most
heavily upon their class. Indeed, the pestilence nearly
decimated this portion of the population, so that the
numbers of the workmen became most sensibly dimi-
nished; while the wages for labour were, on the other
hand, very considerably augmented. For many years
the Government found full occupation in endeavouring
to accommodate these relations by artificial enactments ;
but in all the statutes passed to regulate the price of
provisions and the amount of wages, the privileged classes
Were unanimous in determining that they would not
accede to the just demands of the lower orders, whom they
evidently considered to be doomed to labour like beasts of
burden, and looked upon as mere serfs, who must be sub-
dued, and, if expedient, destroyed by increased severity.

But even then the suffering and oppressed working
classes had begun to form themselves into associations,
in the hope by this means of obtaining bread for them-
selves and their starving families. At first the lower
clergy, who were connected by birth and associations
with these classes, took upon themselves the office of
organizers and leaders; and, although their motives were
in the first instance undoubtedly good, they were by
degrees more and more disposed to favour subversive
tendencies. The House of Commons soon had its
attention drawn to this movement, which they endea-
voured summarily to put down wherever it had departed
from its generally passive attitude, and proceeded to open
resistance. Justice and compassion could not, however,
be obtained by peaceful means for many of these unfor-
tunate outcasts. The manner in which the poor people
themselves arrived at this conclusion, while with a true
JOHN WICLIF. 279

Germanic conservatism they still adhered to some noble
principles, has been mournfully yet forcibly conveyed to
us in the poem of “ Pierce Plowman’s Vision,” a remark-
able literary production of that day, which is said to
have been composed about the year 1362, by an other-
wise unknown priest named Robert Longland. Accord-
ing to this writer, all estates of the realm, but more
especially the clergy and nobility, were tainted with
internal corruption; the only exception being the poor
country labourer, who was bound to the sod, where, with
the sweat of his brow, he tilled the land for others, and
had alone kept himself unspotted from the world, A
deep religious feeling breathes through the remarkable
verses, in which the dreamer recognises his ideal, the
ploughman, personified as it were in the Redeemer. No
less deep and thrilling is the tone in which the hypocrisy
and hardheartedness of those who have brought about
these miseries is described. There is, indeed, as yet, no
thought of an insurrection; and the most that the writer
ventures upon is to thunder forth his prophecies of the
approaching destruction of priests and monks. A king,
he says, will assuredly arise and bring with him redemp-
tion ; and here, as in many other movements of the same
kind, we find that the current of popular feeling inclines
to unite with that of absolute monarchy. From this
remarkable poem we learn how early religious and
decidedly obscure, visionary, and almost utopian ideas
mingled with the fierce waters of strife, which even then
were threatening to burst through every obstruction, and
devastate everything around.

And at length the fierce insurrection actually burst
forth; for the heavy taxation, which pressed most severely
280 JOHN WICLIF.

on the lowest classes, finally kindled the flame of rebel-
lion, Furious demagogues belonging to the working
classes, and fanatic communist priests, appeared at the
head of the rabble, leading them on by enthusiastic
watchwords and party-cries to the perpetration of every
crime. The words of Pierce, the ploughman, passed
from mouth to mouth; and the result was that, for a few
days, the country and town mobs were masters of London
and of the Tower; and that for a few days they revelled
in the blood of prelates and nobles, ransacked the gold
chests of the merchants, and plundered the wealthy
nobles of their wine and plate. Buta decisive catastrophe
was at hand, bringing with it a sudden reaction. The
proprietary and ruling classes quickly rallied from their
panic; and, combining together, retracted the few conces-
sions that had been made in the moment of extremest
need ; and ultimately the insurrection was decisively put
down by the help of arms, and at the cost of much
blood.

We are naturally led to inquire what was the con-
nexion which, it is asserted, existed between this
insurrection and the works and teaching of Wiclif; or
what association can be traced between the sentiments
that inspired John Ball’s levelling distich—

“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman ?”

and the earnest activity which Wiclif displayed in his
teaching, and which always embraced the good of the
monarchy, and was directed with a view to its main-
tenance? Far from there being any ground for assuming
such an idea, it would be more easy, on the contrary, to
JOHN WICLIF. 281

prove that his own sermons and those of his immediate
followers were directly opposed to the tendencies of the
popular orators. In fact, Wiclif desired to maintain the
system of the State precisely as it then was, and he
regarded the Church as a most dangerous opponent in
consequence of the vast secular power to which the
ecclesiastical institution had attained; while those who
favoured the insurrection were desirous of doing away
with lords and masters of every kind, whether ecclesias-
tical or secular, excepting, indeed, only the King, whom
alone they wished to retain, whilst they had fixed upon
the mendicant friars as the guardians of their souls ;
‘for these men, who were the irreconcilable enemies of
Wiclif, had, from the beginning of the outbreak, made
themselves indispensable to the ereat masses of the
people. Wiclif’s connexion with John of Gaunt is well
known, and yet the Duke was one of the men against
whom the rebels were most excited. His noble town
residence, the Savoy Palace, in the Strand, and his
castles at Leicester and Tutbury, were almost razed to
the ground; while he himself was compelled for a time
to take refuge in Scotland from the hatred of the popu-
lace; nor can the slightest harmony be traced between
the*dogmas of Wiclif and the wild communism of the
peasants. The high clerical and monastic inquisitorial
judges, who most assuredly never lost sight of Wiclif,
neither then nor at any other time ventured to accuse
him of having been the companion of Wat Tyler;
although, in accordance with his usual practice, he seized
the occasion to make known his own views, which were
embodied in a tract on ‘ Masters and Servants.”

Wiclif in his day, as Luther did in 1525, fully
282 JOHN WICLIF.

comprehended the excessive danger with which such
an insurrection threatened his work, and these dangers
now assumed a twofold character; for the Duke of
Lancaster, who had been driven away from all influential
connexion with public affairs, began to be frightened,
and timidly withdrew from the great reformer, while he
lacked the moral strength to attach himself with enthu-
siasm to the new doctrines. Then, moreover, the pious
and noble archbishop, Simon Sudbury, who had been
murdered in the insurrection, was at this time succeeded
by the proud and imperious fanatic, William Courtnay,
who became primate at a time when everything was
in a state of transitional reaction, and who was well
known as the determined antagonist of heretics, whom
he had resolved to exterminate by sword and fire.

His first step was to cause the new doctrines to be
examined and judged in accordance with the forms and
usages of the Church; and then, without mercy, to
punish to the utmost al who refused to recant their
errors. Nor did he rest till he had brought this purpose
into execution; for on the 17th of May, 1382, he con-
voked a solemn synod, which was summoned to meet in
the priory of the Black Friars, London, and consisted of
seven bishops, besides thirty-one bachelors of divinity
and law, of which almost all were, without exception,
members of the four mendicant orders—the Franciscans,
Dominicans, Augustines, and Carmelites, and therefore
most virulent opponents of Wiclif. The primate laid
before them a list of twenty-four articles, which were
somewhat irregularly drawn up, and which were not
even all of them taken from the propositions of Wiclif.
After three days’ careful deliberation, the synod con-
JOHN WICLIF. 283

demned ten of these articles as heretical, and the
remainder as fallacious. During the sitting of the synod
an earthquake was felt in London, and Wiclif ingeniously
took advantage of the occurrence, cxclaiming, in the
midst of his confession of faith, “‘ You accuse Christ
and the saints in heaven of heresy ; and verily the earth
has responded in the place of God to the voice of man,
as it did at the time of His passion.”

The archbishop in the meanwhile had, on the strength
of the last year’s occurrences, applied to Parliament for
authority to put down these dangerous men, whose teach-
ing and preaching were sowing dissension among the
people in every part of the country. On this occasion he
gave the first description that we have of these renowned
itinerant preachers, who had been trained in Wiclif’s
school. In a worn, coarse, russet-brown robe, which
was, not without design, made after the pattern of those
worn by the regular orders, barefooted, with staff in
hand, these men go from county to county, and from
town to town, preaching daily without having received
the licence of their bishop. Not only churches and
churchyards are selected by them for this purpose, but
the market-places, the streets, and even the open fields
are held good enough, provided there is a sufficient
crowd collected to listen to their astute, wily and
heretical sermons. Here we see the persecution turned
directly against the most faithful followers of the great
divine. The interests of the ecclesiastical and secular
lords had been again united by the common panic, and
the Upper House showed itself perfectly ready to pass the
law proposed by the primate. This was the first time
the Church had attempted to avail itself of the services
284 JOHN WICLIF.

of the secular power to carry out its sentences of con-
demnation. The Commons, however, manifested their
anti-clerical tendencies by refusing to pass the bill. The
archbishop was, therefore, obliged to content himself
with a royal ordinance, which thoroughly betrays the
vacillating spirit in which the weak governmentof Richard
II. was carried on; and on account of which the hier-
archy, not without some show of reason, took vengeance
by falling off from their allegiance, and taking part with
his rival and successor. In this ordinance, which could
not have the weight of a legal enactment, the prelates
were permitted to arrest all heretical teachers and their
adherents by the hands of the servants of the Church,
while all officers holding secular places, and the laity
generally, were called upon to afford them whatever aid
they needed. At that period it was still impracticable
to get a bill against heresy through Parliament.
Courtnay, nevertheless, was well satisfied with the
concessions that had been made to him, and he lost no
time in taking his own measures against the evils which
he had resolved to put down. Threats and announce-
ments of prosecutions were posted up throughout all the
diocese, and in all the churches of his province. During
the week of Whitsuntide, a solemn procession was held
in London ; after which a Carmelite friar ascended the
pulpit by St. Paul’s Cross, and defended in his sermon to
the assembled people the orthodox doctrines of the Church
against these scandalous heresies. The principal attack
was, however, to be made against the University of
Oxford, which Courtnay had long regarded as the
centre of the entire movement. On the 28th of May,
Peter Stokes, himself a Carmelite, received orders rom
JOHN WICLIF. 285

the primate to publish the resolutions of the assembly at
Blackfriars, in order that the University might be regu-
lated by them, and forbid for the future such heresies
from being preached or discussed in its churches and
halls. But the extent to which the new doctrines had
spread in the University is shown by the fact that the
chancellor, Robert Rigge, made no secret of his adher-
ence to the opinions of Wiclif, while he even authorized
Nicholas of Hereford, one of the most zealous friends
of the reformers, to preach the university sermons at
St. Mary’s. The archbishop, therefore, saw himself com-
pelled to address an earnest appeal to the chancellor ;
and when this was found to be of no avail, he summoned
him and Brightwell, a doctor of divinity, to appear
before him in London, on the 12th of June. They were
forced, after some delay, to obey this citation, to submit
to ecclesiastical power, and to acknowledge the condem-
nation of the twenty-four propositions. Rigge was now
sent back to Oxford with an open commission to proceed
against Wiclif and four of his adherents, viz., Hereford,
Philip Reppington, Dean of Leicester, where the new
doctrines seem to have been fostered with special zeal,
John Aston, and Lawrence Bedeman. They were to be
deprived of all academical rights and privileges until
they had cleared themselves from the heavy charges
made against them. The chancellor himself, however,
did not conceal his old sympathy for the reformers, as
soon as he was beyond the jurisdiction of the inquisitorial
court; and he forbade abold monk, named Henry Crompe,
from continuing the lectures in which he had been
inveighing with bitterness against the Wiclifites, or
Lollards, as they were called from this time forth. This
286 JOHN WICLIF.

man would not, however, suffer himself to be quietly put
down, but hastened to the archbishop, whom he induced
not only to recall the chancellor’s interdict by means of
a royal decree, but also to confirm the last ecclesiastical
ordinance, in which stringent measures were ordered to
be taken without delay against these men and their
adherents, while their tracts and other writings were to
be confiscated, and they themselves ordered to leave the
city within a week. This blow took effect, for even the
university authorities were now compelled to submit.
On the 18th of the month Hereford, Reppington, and
Aston appeared in the hall of Blackfriars Abbey, where
Archbishop Courtnay himself presided over the court of
inquisition, They made an obstinate and firm resist-
ance, and gave vent to their opinions both by writing
and by word of mouth during the different sittings.
Their explanations in respect to the eucharist were not
found satisfactory. On one occasion, Aston was so far
carried away by his zealous convictions that, notwith-
standing Courtnay’s order that he should speak in Latin,
on account of the laity who were present, he turned to
the numerous assembly collected around him, and
defended his opinions in an animated English address.
All the scholastic arts that were expended for the pur-
pose having failed to induce these men to recant, the sen-
tence of excommunication was pronounced against them
on the 13th of July, notwithstanding their appeal to
Rome, and a notification of the fact was posted up on all
the churches in town and country, and at the University
of Oxford. A few months proved, indeed, that eccle-
siastical censures had not yet lost their efficacy. The
zeal of John Bokyngham, Bishop of Lincoln, whose
JOHN WICLIF. 287

diocese had been specially affected by the new doctrines,
seems to have contributed largely to this result. In
October and November, Hereford, Reppington, Aston,
and Bedeman, successively gave in the required recanta-
tion, received absolution, and were reinstated in the
offices which they had formerly held as parish priests
and university teachers. We are not told how they
reconciled their consciences to such a step, or how great
was the sorrow which filled the mind of Wiclif when he
saw the abject submission of these once brave champions
of the faith. There is some significance, however, in the
fact that some of them had benefited by Lancaster’s
intercession, and we know that Hereford returned at a
subsequent period to his former opinions.

The clergy believed themselves almost certain of
complete victory, when the commission, which had been
appointed to judge Wiclif, and which in the mean-
time had been countermanded to Oxford, opened its
sittings. He appeared before them on the 18th of
November; for even his failing health had not hin-
dered him from coming up from his living at Lutter-
worth. Although he was not yet old in years, he was,
nevertheless, extremely feeble, and suffered severely
from gout; his spirit, however, was still unbroken, and
his faith never wavered. He did not look upon his
cause as wholly lost; and he had only recently addressed
a new appeal to his countrymen, a proof, considering
the state of his health at the time, of his great facility
for composition. This address appeared in the form of
a petition to the king and parliament, which had now
again met together. Taking his stand on the evidence
of the Scriptures, he mainly treated of the four points
288 JOHN WICLIF.

in which centred all his practical and theoretical pre-
mises, viz., the worthlessness and futility of the monastic
vow ; the power of the State to dispose of Church pro-
perty; the right of withholding the tithes from the
clergy when they were convicted of crime or misde-
meanour; and, finally, the purified doctrine of the
eucharist. This tract met with approval in the House
of Commons, and contributed to throw out the Dill
against heretics, which had been proposed by the recent
co-operation of the peers. It had also the effect of
making the ecclesiastical court, before which the re-
former was summoned, very careful to abstain from the
discussion of questions that might bring it into conflict
with the State, and it now required only that he should
justify himself in regard to his opinions on transub-
stantiation. But this was ground on which no one
would follow this bold inquirer, and the Duke of Lan-
caster, after he had in vain counselled Wiclif to give
up his resistance, now even publicly withdrew from
him. Weak and suffering, without human support, and
trusting only in God’s help, he yielded not a step in
this battle for his faith. His own words completely
give the lie to the old and recently revived assertion
of his recantation, for he uttered not a syllable that
could be construed in such a sense; and this is shown
in the judgment of the court, which simply treats of
his expulsion from the University. Nevertheless, the
great moderation with which he was treated is very
striking. He was judged, not in London, but at the
University, of which he was one of the most distin-
guished members, and even without the presence of the
archbishop ; and the court did not venture to deprive
JOHN WICLIF. 289

him of his benefice, or the cure of souls; nor was the
sentence of excommunication pronounced against him.
It is evident, therefore, that the nation and the univer-
sity still required to be treated with a certain amount
of consideration, and that Wiclif could not, at any rate
in this life, be given over to the inquisition.

After these events, Wiclif withdrew to his living at
Lutterworth, which had long been very dear to him;
and where the pulpit in which he preached is still reve-
rentially shown to strangers. As far as his feeble health
permitted, he endeavoured to complete his work, by
writing and teaching; and it was here, too, probably,
that he composed his principal work, the “ Trialogus,”
in which he expounded, in the ponderous scholastic
style of his times, the principal points in his system
of reformation. Latterly he was assisted, both in preach-
ing and in the discharge of his other parochial duties,
by his faithful scholar and companion in the faith, John
Purvey, who had aided him in the translation of the
Bible. When Pope Urban VI. summoned him to
appear before him at Rome, he was able with truth and
dignity to excuse himself on the ground that he was
already on the brink of the grave; and, indeed, very
soon afterwards, he was relieved by death from all
further persecution from priests and monks. He closed
his eyes in peace, on the last day of the year 1384, shortly
after he had been attacked by apoplexy, while attending
mass in his own church, after having experienced several
premonitory symptoms of his fatal disease.

In the pictures and representations that have come
down to us, he appears as an old, thin, and slenderly
formed man, while in some he is represented as having

U
290 JOHN WICLIF.

sunken features. He is dressed in the robe commonly
worn by ecclesiastics at Oxford during that age, and
carries a staff and book in his hands. In one portrait
of him, which has only been recently discovered, his
name has been carefully covered by the words, “ Robert
Langton;” and it is obvious that this must have been
done by some friend and adherent, who wished by this
device to save the picture during the period of perse-
cution. From the testimony of all who came in contact
with him, he must have possessed very remarkable
powers of exhortation and persuasion ; for, three and.
twenty years after his death, one of those who subse-
quently suffered martyrdom for adhering to his doctrines,
declares that Wiclif was the first theologian of his age ;
while, in the year 1406, the University of Oxford gave
expression to its admiration of the man by declaring,
that both in word and deed he was a true champion of
the faith, untainted by the leaven of heresy; and that
he stood foremost and without a rival among all who
had either taught or written on logic or philosophy, or on
ethical and speculative theology. His knowledge, his
talents and his piety secured to him the esteem and
devotion of all classes, whether high or low. His rela-
tions to the courts of Edward III., Richard II. and
John of Lancaster, as well as the enthusiasm and zeal
with which Lord Latimer, and the knights Trussel,
Clifford, Stury, Nevil, and Montague, took his part,
sufficiently show the falsehood of the assertion that it
was only the common people who adhered to his cause.
Instead of this, a generation had passed away before
the Wiclifite opinions were eradicated from among the
nobles and the members of the university; while the
JOHN WICLIF. 291

practical tenor of his teaching lingered covertly, but
persistently, from that time forth, among different
classes, although more especially, indeed, among the
lowest ranks of the community.

No one will deny, however, that if we consider from
a Protestant point of view the reformation aimed at by
Wiclif, we shall find much to object to. He was him-
self fully sensible of the great proportion of error and
weakness that clung to his system. But it must not
be forgotten, that in the age in which he lived it was
a matter of the first importance to cleanse the State
from the corrupt secular pretensions of the Church.
Nothing but the mode of thought peculiar to his day
could have led him to the illogical assertion, borrowed
from the principle of feudalism, that every earthly pos-
session, like a dispensation of mercy from heaven, can be
forfeited through sin, both by the layman and the priest.
We can now see that he was deficient in scientific and
critical knowledge, which might have aided him in his
expositions of theology and philosophy, and more espe-
cially in his translation of the Bible. But we cannot
reproach him for these deficiencies, and still less that
he continued to his last days to attend mass; for he
did not attack this hierarchical idolatry from the same
point of view that was subsequently assumed by Luther.
On one occasion he expressly stated, that his worship
of the Host was conditional and spiritual, for the body
of Christ dwelt in heaven. He never attempted to form
a new communion; and his itinerant preachers were
designed only to give new vigour to the inner being of
the Church, and in no way to disturb its existing exter-
nal traditionary system.

U2
292 JOHN WICLIF.

Notwithstanding all his short-comings, he must be
regarded as the worthy precursor of the German Refor-
mation, however much the limited and arbitrary ten-
dency towards one special direction has led certain
writers to deny his claims to this merit. We confidently
hope that the Anglican Church, and more especially
the University of Oxford, will carry out the purpose
that has often been expressed, of publishing the many
unprinted tracts and sermons of Wiclif, and thus erect
the noblest monument that could be raised to his
memory, by proving that his life and actions were truly
those of a messenger sent by God himself as a witness
to the faith. Let us not forget the testimony borne to
the memory of the great Reformer by Milton, in his
forcible and eloquent speech to the Parliament of Eng-
land for the liberty of unlicensed printing ; when, in the
fervour of his Protestant patriotism, he exclaims, with
almost mournful emotion: ‘And had it not been the
obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine
and admirable spirit of Wiclif, to suppress him as a
schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian
Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther, or of
Calvin, had been ever known; the glory of reforming
all our neighbours had been completely ours.”
IX,

KING HENRY V. AND KING SIGISMUND,

THERE is something very significant in the fact,
that Wiclif should have arisen among a people of Ger-
manic origin, living near the narrow margin of Celtic
population which in his time was regarded as the western
boundary of the world, while Huss followed him in the
remote east, where the University of Prague formed the
connecting link between civilization and barbarism among
a nation of Slavonic origin. The vast extent of Germany,
from the midst of which Luther was destined in a future
age to arise, still remained apparently unmoved in the
centre of these disturbing influences. It afforded, how-
ever, many links of connexion which were not appre-
ciable at other spots. Among these we may instance the
remarkable fate of the imperial dynasty of Luxemburg.
This house, which from its hereditary tendencies had
been drawn within the sphere of French policy, naturally
continued during the greater part of the fourteenth cen-
tury to be at enmity with the Plantagenets, until the
relations existing between Edward III. and Italy, and
more especially the divided power of the popes, first
brought this prince into connexion, within the trans-
alpine territory, with the wretched schemes of King
294 KING HENRY V.

Wenzeslaus. To this intercourse it would appear that
the marriage of the young King Richard II. with Anne
of Bohemia is due, which although it did not produce a
new royal race, was momentous on account of the new
ideas which it was the means of diffusing, and which
were destined to agitate the entire world.

It is a matter of no little importance that these rela-
tions between both reigning houses were not severed
even when each had experienced the remarkable vicissi-
tudes that mark their several fates. Richard II. was de-
throned for many reasons; among the least of which we
can scarcely reckon the lukewarm assistance which he
gave the Church against the heterodox movements of those
days; while his brother-in-law, Wenzeslaus, not only lost
the German kingly crown, but saw himself at the same
time totally without support in Bohemia on the break-
ing out of the heretical movement among the Tchechs.
The English dethroned monarch was succeeded by his
cousin, Henry of Lancaster, and the Bohemian sovereign
by his brother Sigismund, who became the next king of
Rome. Both these newly-elected monarchs perceived
that it would be to their special interest to secure the
deeply irritated authorities of the ancient Church as
their firm allies; while both gave the weight of their
kingly power towards the extinction of heresy within
their dominions. It is scarcely likely, however, that
Henry could have forgotten, that his father, old John of
Gaunt, had once been the personal friend and patron of
Wiclif, and that he had stood by him to protect him at
a time of great danger. Nor is it less improbable that
Sigismund should have lost all sympathy for his brother,
and that he should have retained no recollection of the
AND KING SIGISMUND. 295

opinions which his shrewd father, Charles IV., the friend
of Petrarch, had entertained towards Rome; or of the
good-will which he had shown towards the pious
preacher and Friar of Strasburg, Johann Tauler. The
force of circumstances, and an insecure tenure of the
throne to which each had unexpectedly attained,
served, however, in both cases, to outweigh more im-
portant considerations.

Very different were the scenes and personal relations
in which the Lancastrian and Luxemburg princes
were placed, and scarcely less different were the na-
tural dispositions of the two sovereigns. Sigismund,
who had sprung from a race that was half French
and half German, had been carried along with the
singular destinies of his house. Neither as Margrave
of Brandenburg, nor as imperial vicegerent in Poland,
was he able to command the means and material re-
sources necessary for the permanent maintenance of his
authority ; while his easy, careless disposition had led
him, notwithstanding the many estimable qualities with
which he had been gifted by nature, into fierce
differences with his blood relations, and plunged him
irretrievably into debt. His love of pleasure, his extreme
susceptibility to female attractions, and hig romantic
adventures, early exercised a baneful influence on his
moral principles. In addition to this, when he was
king of Hungary, he was in some degree, perhaps to his
own advantage, suddenly thrown in the midst of a mass
of popular confusion, in which Germans, Slavonians, and
Magyars were constantly brought into a state of political,
ecclesiastical, and social antagonism, from which they
were unable to develop clear and constitutional order
296 KING HENRY V.

It was only the wish of averting the fearfully increasing
danger with which the Turks were threatening Europe
from the east, which was able for a moment to fuse
together these antagonistic elements. Still more severe
trials seemed to be impending over princes and people,
for the followers of the Cross and the Crescent, which
had for ages contended against one another in Western
Asia, were turning the east of Europe into a field of
strife. Sigismund had fought and suffered at Nicopolis
as a true hero of the Cross; and when he ascended the
throne of Charlemagne, he. endeavoured to reconcile the
contending powers; striving, like a second Barbarossa, to
lead the united Christians of the West against the unbe-
levers of the East.

The Lancastrian prince, on the other hand, although
he sprang from the Norman race of the Williams and
Henrys, had, in fact, raised to the throne of his native
land a new dynasty, which, while it was strongly influ-
enced by the national interests of the people, was also
the first which spoke the English tongue, or sympathised
in the feelings of the English nation. With him, there-
fore, everything was made to bend to the maintenance of
his government at home, which he endeavoured to
strengthen by making skilful compromises with the
popular feelings of the day, and proffering strong support
to the Church. There were many causes of ferment
remaining in the country as the result of the late forcible
usurpation of the crown; but Henry perceived that he
might easily open a channel for these feelings by
directing them against the continent, and he therefore
intentionally rekindled the old enmity against France.
Henry IV. appears before us as the personal expositor
AND KING SIGISMUND. 297

of this feeling, while his government presents itself to us
as that of a crafty politician, who knows how to weigh
accurately the means at his disposal. An uncommon
degree of self-control was the chief thing required of him
if he would maintain the exalted station to which he had
raised himself. It was only very rarely, and at the
beginning of his reign, that he was present himself in
battle, or tried his own strength in the contest with his
opponents ; although he seems to have felt that he had
a special vocation for the life of a crusader, and yearned
for the glory of taking part in the struggle with the
heathens. He had once even shared in the combat of
the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, and in the expeditions
of the Knights of St. John against Rhodes; and it is
probably on one of these occasions that he first entered
into relations of amity with Sigismund. He died de-
ploring his inability to fulfil the vow he had made of
going to Jerusalem.

His son, Henry V., was called upon to carry out his
father’s work on the grandest scale. In his younger
days he had shown similar tendencies to those which
were once manifested by his elder contemporary
Sigismund. His life had been full of the most trying
vicissitudes from his youth upwards, for while the
Luxemburg prince had once been made captive by the
Magyars, Henry had been imprisoned in Ireland ; and
while the former had once valiantly thrown himself into
the midst of the hordes of the Osmans, Henry in his turn
had distinguished himself in the struggle with Owen
Glendower’s Welsh followers; for he had in truth been
compelled to win both the title and territories of Prince
of Wales by his own personal valour and daring. It
298 KING HENRY V.

cannot, however, be denied that he fell at this period of
his life into evil companionship. An excess of buoyant
genial vitality led him for a time to find pleasure in
associations and pursuits which could not fail to leave
some bad effects upon his character. Mournfully his
father shook his heavy, sorrow-burdened head over his
son’s delinquencies; and amid his many other cares he
was troubled to think that his first-born, who was
endowed with such noble gifts, and to whom an undis-
turbed succession seemed now assured, might perchance
misrule the land after he was gone. But great was the
change exhibited by the young Prince on his accession to
the throne! All the blemishes and taints which might
still have clung to him from those unruly days of his
youth were cast aside with a light but manly touch ; and
resolute and strong in the full maturity of his powers, he
at once grasped the sceptre and the sword of state with
a firm hand; showing on his first accession to the throne
that no one had better understood the tendencies of his
father’s rule than himself ; while his head and hand were
alike ready to execute all that his vigorous intellect was
capable of planning. From this time forth, Henry lived
and laboured only in the performance of the great duties
of his rule. All his energy seemed indeed to be directed
with unflinching accuracy in certain definite directions ;
and everywhere men recognised in his measures the
tangible results of a sound and powerful intellect. The
condition of his government and kingdom was the very
opposite of that into which Germany and the neigh-
bouring Slavonic nations were rapidly sinking, and of
which the weak king Sigismund was the apt personal
representative.
AND KING SIGISMUND. 299

If we examine the most essential and important direc-
tions followed by English policy at the beginning of the
fifteenth century, we can scarcely overlook the extent to
which it was implicated with European politics. The
change of dynasty had re-kindled the old animosity
towards the great neighbouring kingdom of France,
which had been almost extinguished under Richard II.,
while at the same time heavy trials and difficulties were
undermining the throne and government of the French
royal house. Henry, who had gathered together new
links of alliance both in the Romanized as well as the
Germanic kingdoms of the West, and had formed new
alliances, which were destined, as he hoped, to give to his
dynasty a supreme place among the rulers of the world,
never for a moment lost sight of the factions by which
France was being dismembered; and while both parties
turned to him, and both received his promises of
support, they were themselves opening to him a path
towards the much coveted throne of the Valois. The
old pretensions of Edward JII. were again revived
in their fullest force, and were destined within a few
years to acquire the most remarkable validity. That
which neither Crecy nor Poitiers had been able to
effect, Henry achieved for himself by his incomparable
victory at Agincourt. It was scarcely to be doubted
that with his Anglo-Burgundian army he would suc-
ceed in subjecting the greater portion of France to
his sway; but an achievement of this kind, the object
of which was to fuse into one the destinies of two
nations, produced no less excitement in the west of
Europe, than the advance of the Turks had done in
the east.
300 KING HENRY V.

Another, and most certainly an equally important,
agent in the excitement which was then shaking the
whole of Europe to its very foundation, was the influence
of the Church. The Lancastrian dynasty secured sta-
bility for their throne by upholding the Romish dogmas
against all heretical attacks, and maintaining the national
clergy in all their long-established rights, and thus
converted this order of the community into its most
staunch allies. It is easy step by step to follow this
contest.

The politico-religious movement excited by Wiclif
had found the most zealous supporters in his successors,
the Lollards, although the original purity of his motives
and objects soon began to disappear among his followers.
The fall of Richard in no way disheartened the sect, for
notwithstanding every form of persecution, the itinerant
preachers persevered in their ardent and enthusiastic
course of action; while persons belonging to the higher
classes still adhered to them, and their followers among
the lower grades of society constantly increased in num-
ber. Any one who at that day had been gifted with an
unprejudiced judgment in regard to matters of faith,
could not possibly have been blind to the necessity and
the passionate desire evinced by the English nation for
a purer and more evangelical form of doctrine. But at
the same time, the unfavourable elements, which like
weeds continued to grow with an ever-increasing
luxuriance, were equally apparent; while the revolution,
by which the Lancastrians raised themselves to the
throne, had given them redoubled vigour. In the
attempts that were made in favour of the defeated party,
Lollard influences soon became conspicuous; while the
AND KING SIGISMUND. 301

vague reports current that the murdered Richard was
still alive, found eager and ready credence among the
enemies of the Church. The diffusion of those incen-
tives to further rebellions and the heretical doctrines of
the adherents of Wiclif were, however, now speedily
condemned in one and the same statute; and the more
closely the anti-Catholic tendencies became identified
with political conspiracy, the more energetic and com-
plete were the measures taken by the government.
Even during the reign of Henry IV. the Crown had been
able to keep in check the religious opposition at home,
without reference to the continent, and had successfully
erected the standard of orthodoxy in its former high
place. One of the first declarations of that prince had
been, that he would uphold not only the ancient consti-
tutional privileges of the Church, but also the doctrines
established by the fathers of the Church and by the
doctors of the schools. By such stringent measures as
these he effected an union between the different parts of
the legislature and state, which could not have been
attained under Richard, for now the crown, with the
clergy and barons conjoined, passed a fundamental law
against heresy, by which ecclesiastics who had relapsed
after their recantation, could be punished, and their
heretical writings judged by the episcopal tribunals,
which, in case they were committed, were to give them
over to the secular authorities for further punish-
ment and final judgment. On the 26th of February,
1400, the first fires were lighted at Smithfield, when
William Sawtree, a Wiclifite pastor, was burnt. This
was the beginning of a whole century of bloody perse-
cution, the extent of which we cannot fully realize,
302 KING HENRY VY.

although many individual cases are well known to us.
The object aimed at was, however, manifestly not
attained, as the reformation of the sixteenth century
amply proves. Although the strength of the English
nation was long doomed to strive against such severity
on the part of the inquisitorial authorities, the unbending
spirit of the German character was shown in their
firm rejection of opinions of which they did not ap-
prove. The Lollards even did not for a long time
regard their cause as wholly lost. The more severe the
oppression with which they were threatened, the more
earnest grew their preachers, and the more excited and
zealous were their adherents. One is also surprised to
find how long the old spirit of reformation which had
been transmitted through so many national channels to
the University of Oxford, survived the repressive mea-
sures adopted for its annihilation; but the influence of
Wiclif continued even after his death to exert a powerful
and beneficent effect on the hearts of his countrymen.
Courtnay’s successor, Archbishop Arundel, “ that tower
of the orthodox faith,” as his friends called him, directed
his attention from an early period to this university,
which seemed to him in a pitiable condition, and which,
as he expressed it, “had once been a full and juicy vine,
but now produced only sour grapes.” Here Wiclif’s
memory had recently been exalted to the skies in a
university decree, and here some few of his adhe-
rents might be found as late as the middle of the cen-
tury. At Arundel’s instigation, the Inquisition was
converted into a permanent court in the year 1409,
when the university authorities were enjoined, under
the threat of excommunication, to visit every month each
AND KING SIGISMUND. 303

individual college and hall, and to expel all the teachers
or scholars whose opinions had laid them open to the
suspicions of heresy. Three years later, however, the
academical authorities entreated the primate to make a
personal visitation of the colleges and halls ; while they
met his zeal half way by extracting hundreds of passages
from the writings of the reformer, which they cha-
racterized as unorthodox. These measures were quite in
harmony with the ecclesiastical censure that was now
levelled at all Wiclifite works generally. It was
decreed that only such works as had been approved of
by the proper authorities, were to be transmitted to
booksellers for copying and distribution ; while all trans-
lations into English, either of the Biblical text or of the
writings of the Fathers, were strictly prohibited. Thus,
the bar which had once been removed was again applied;
but we see how stringent were the measures required to
meet the enemy with vigorous opposition at this single
point.

Almost more important, however, was the position
which was still maintained by the Commons, who were
entrusted with the principal participation in the enact-
ment of the laws. The penal statute against the
Lollards had not passed into a law of the land with-
out a strong protest on their part. An important
section of the representatives both of the civic and
rural population, still maintained certain dangerous
principles, which they looked upon as perfectly prac-
tical, and which had already, many years before, been
promulgated by the sectarians. According to these
views, nothing could be more expedient, since all worldly
corruption appeared to have taken root among the over-
304 KING HENRY V.

wealthy clergy, than to incorporate the property of the
Church with that of the State, by which means the
inadequate resources of the financial and administrative
departments would be relieved of some of their exces-
sive pressure, and the purses of the taxpayers less
heavily drained. In the year 1404, to the intense in-
dignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, some of
the knights of the shires seemed disposed to lay hands
on the property of the clergy ; and in 1410, the members
of the Lower House, when irritated by the exactions of
the Crown, surprised the other portions of the legislative
body by a remarkable motion, which aimed at nothing
less than a secularization on a large scale, which was
conceived very much in the same spirit as that of the
succeeding century. They proposed, in real earnestness,
to take a sufficient sum from the revenues of the prelates
and the monastic institutions to bring into the field
fifteen earls, fifteen hundred knights, and six thousand
squires, in addition to which the Church was to supply
the funds necessary to erect a hundred hospitals for the
poor—propositions which were so nearly communistic
in their nature, that they lead us to suspect some con-
nexion between the doctrines of Wiclif and the tenden-
cies of the year 1381. The extreme sympathy evinced
by this parliament towards the views of the Lollards, is
clearly manifested by the series of motions and petitions
brought under notice during the session. The Commons
demanded that all persons suspected of a relapse to heresy
should be brought before the secular judges, and not be
subjected to the ecclesiastical courts; and that the penal
statute of the year 1401 should be modified. This gave
rise to a violent conflict with the King and the Upper
AND KING SIGISMUND. 305

House, in which the Commons were finally compelled to
submit by withdrawing their petition. This appears, more-
over, to have been the turning point of the affair in par-
liament, for, from henceforth, the impression evidently
gained ground among other classes as well as among
the clergy and nobility, that theological reform was con-
nected with tendencies inimical to the possession of pro-
perty ; while, moreover, the Commons began to perceive
that the spoliation of the Church would only be the
prelude to an overthrow of the other estates of the
realm. Thus, therefore, a rupture was avoided between
the different sections of the legislature, and Henry IV.
had the satisfaction of finding that he could govern his
kingdom strictly in harmony with the wishes of parlia-
ment, while, at the same time, he redeemed his pledge
to the Church of upholding the cause of orthodoxy.
Thus supported, his son entered upon the prosecution of
his acknowledged purpose of thoroughly eradicating
heresy, against the adherents of which an act of outlawry
had been passed.

Even when still Prince of Wales, he had manifested
in the midst of his mad pranks an almost fanatical
hatred against heretics. He appears in the year 1406
to have brought about a combination of the Lords and
Prelates, who, in their turn, took upon themselves the
task of gaining over the Commons, with the view of
their proceeding conjointly against the adherents of the
perfidious Richard and the Lollards. When, in the
year 1410, a miserable wretch, named Badby, a smith by
trade, was to be burnt at Smithfield, and had just been
secured within the tun, the Prince of Wales stepped
forth from the crowd. It is difficult to understand

x
306 KING HENRY V.

why he came, but certain it is that he began to
argue with the poor creature, who could not be in-
duced to renounce his belief in Wiclif’s doctrine of the
sacrament. Perhaps the Prince hoped by converting
him to the doctrine of transubstantiation to rescue him
from the flames, and thus acquire merit to himself. But,
as all was to no purpose, the faggots piled up round the
tun were kindled, and the torture of the victim began.
As his cries and lamentations fell upon the ear of those
who stood around, Henry commanded the executioners
to pause, and he once more attempted to accomplish the
work of conversion; but the faith of Badby was stronger
than his love of life, if it had to be saved under such
conditions, and the flames soon destroyed their miserable
victim. Praise of the Prince was on the lips of all
who adhered to the side of the priestly order; and, in
the ardour of his youthful enthusiasm, it is probable thay
the impression which the heroism of the martyr might
have made upon his heart was soon effaced.

When, on Henry’s accession to power, another insur-
rectionary movement broke out among the Lollards, he
did not hesitate to aim a blow which fell in the first
instance upon a man who had been personally dear to
him. The knight, Sir John Oldcastle, who, as the hus-
band of a peeress, also bore the title of Lord Cobham,
had shortly before done important service to the crown
in Wales and in France, and had for several years sat
in the Upper House. It would appear that Wiclif’s
writings had suddenly made a deep impression on his
mind, and he openly confessed that his eyes had for the
first time been opened to his own sinfulness. He now
favoured the new doctrines whenever and in whatever
AND KING SIGISMUND. 307

manner he could; and at his house in Kent the Bible
was read in English, and sermons were preached in
accordance with the prohibited manner, while many a
poor itinerant preacher, who had been hunted from
village to village, found a secure place of refuge under
his roof. Oldcastle seems even to have appealed to his
services and his friendly relations with the Prince of
Wales as a ground for effecting a better understanding
between the King and the Lollard party, or, at all
events, for preparing a milder fate for his brethren
in the faith. Henry, however, gave evidence of his dis-
satisfaction with him, at the coronation, although he
allowed some months to pass before he made up his
mind what measures should be taken against his old
friend. He first tried the effect of gentle persuasion ;
for, once at Kennington, and once at Windsor Castle,
he had a private interview with the knight, who de-
meaned himself humbly and respectfully, although he
adhered resolutely to his convictions. The King, on
this, resigned the matter into the hands of the Arch-
bishop, who had long thirsted for a victim for the
inquisition. The remarkable suit that now arose
showed how deeply the evangelical tendencies of this
first English Reformation had sunk into the hearts of
the nation, and how little all the restored power of the
clergy had as yet prevailed against it. Oldcastle
neither yielded to the representations of the King, nor
did he retract in any particular in his defence before the
court; and he quietly waited in the Tower the termina-
tion of the fifty days’ grace allowed by the statute, after
which it was customary either to give the accused a last
opportunity of recanting, or else to commit him over to
x2
308 KING HENRY V.

the torture of the stake. At the end of this period, no
one knows how, Oldcastle escaped across the walls and
moat of his prison, and made his way in safety to
Wales.

But soon after this event, in the early part of the year
1414, the authorities struck their long meditated blow.
The Lollards of the capital who had long been in a state
of intense excitement, were now incited to treasonable
actions by the fate of their distinguished brother in the
faith, and, perhaps, even by his encouragement and aid.
Crowded meetings were held every night, at which the
audience not only listened to the discourses of their
highly honoured preachers, but, as the government
authorities asserted that they had grounds for knowing,
also deliberated on the downfall of the Lancastrian
dynasty. Henry himself had long been convinced that
heresy went hand in hand with hatred to his house, and
it is therefore scarcely a matter of wonder that he should
have placed himself at the head of the armed force,
which on the night of the 7th of January, arrested
in St. Giles’ Fields, a large body of Lollards, who had
met there in secret, and who may possibly have enter-
tained similar views to those which were held by the
peasants in Richard II.’s time. Now, at all events, the
power of the state was wielded by a very different land,
for Henry V. had made it the first duty of his govern-
ment to crush all internal dissensions in the realm, in
order that he might be the better able to prosecute his
plans on the continent. His severe measures against
this mob were speedily crowned with success, and
resulted in the capture of nine and thirty of those more
especially implicated in the movement, and who were
AND KING SIGISMUND. 309

principally aimed at in the attack of the royal party.
A few priests and nobles were still to be found among
their number, but a short and summary trial before the
ecclesiastical authorities sufficed to include all under one
and the same sentence of condemnation; and on the
24th of January, all the insurgents that had been taken
perished either on the gallows or at the stake. A new
statute which was hereupon adopted without dissent,
gave additional force to the previous enactments of this
penal act, and decreed that whoever was convicted of
heresy was henceforth to forfeit all his worldly goods in
the same manner as those guilty of high treason; while
the further diffusion of heretical literature was to be
finally stopped by the confiscation of the property of all
copyists and sellers, who still continued clandestinely to
prosecute their business, which it is evident was by no
means unremunerative. A few years later, Sir John Old-
castle was seized in his Welsh place of concealment, and
brought to London, where he was tried upon the old
charge, and burnt at St. Giles’. It had been impossible
to prove that he was implicated in any treasonable con-
nexion with the recent incursions of the Scotch; and
equally impossible to make him swerve from his faith ;
but his condemnation and death aided the stern Lancas-
trian Prince in successfully restoring external orthodoxy in
his country ; and driving back the anti-papistical tenden-
cies, which had formerly been exhibited by the higher
classes, "into the lower and hidden grades of the popu-
lation. And now Henry was enabled to turn his attention
prominently and exclusively to conquest, and to the con-
sideration of the great questions of Kuropean policy.
Who shall say, however, that both these objects were
310 KING HENRY V.

not closely connected with the uprooting of heresy?
The campaigns in France drew a number of unruly
spirits from the country, and coincident with that cir-
cumstance, we find now for the first time that knights
and burghers were alike agreed in approving of the plans
of the higher ranks in regard to the unconditional protec-
tion that was to be awarded to the Church. Henry’s
European policy connected him with the Council of
Constance, whose purposes and measures he maintained
and promoted with especial zeal. It had become a vital
question with the sovereigns of western Europe to put
down the schism which had even led to a triple partition
of the papal dignity, and princes were now as much alive
as the people to the urgent necessity of regenerating the
Church, both in regard to its head and members; while
the clergy even showed a decided tendency to change
the government of their powerful hierarchical institution
from a monarchical into an aristocratic form of adminis-
tration. This scheme was, however, intended to embrace
the examination and final condemnation of all the errors
and heresies that had shot up like mushrooms during the
preceding century. The Council of Constance was an
assembly met together essentially for ecclesiastical pur-
poses, but it was very nearly as much a political
congress for the whole of the West. It was not without
a special object that choice was made of a considerable
city within the Holy Roman Empire, for it was of
the greatest importance to oppose the endeavours and
plans of the Italian prelates, whose purpose had recently
been made known at Pisa, to be that of ruling the
world—at any rate spiritually—by the help of the Pope.
King Sigismund had, indeed, the special merit of bring-
AND KING SIGISMUND. 311

ing about the meeting of such a council as this, notwith-
standing the many contending interests and wishes by
which it was opposed. Circumstances had made him as
it were the protector and bailiff of an ecclesiastical court,
which was the highest in Christendom, since it was the
tribunal on which devolved the task of passing sentence
alike upon popes and heretics, and of re-establishing
peace by its intervention, wherever it had been disturbed.
Sigismund, moreover, formed the connecting link that
held together the thread of those dynastic and spiritual
combinations, which had so long existed between the
English and the natives of Eastern Germany.

It is a universally known fact, that in consequence of
Anne’s marriage with Richard, many Bohemians, anxious
for knowledge, had for the first time begun to resort to
Oxford, for the purpose of studying there. They found
the minds of men as much excited in the British island
as they were in their own home, where disputes had then
arisen with the monks, and earnest wishes were entertained
for the removal of the restrictions which impeded freedom
of belief. A teacher like Wieclif they did not, however,
as yet possess. Is it then a wonder that ardent spirits,
such as the knight Jerome of Prague, Nicholas Faulfisch,
and many others, should have been penetrated and im-
pressed by the force and purity of the English move-
ment, and that even before Wiclif’s death, his most
important works should have been known at the univer-
sity of Prague? There were no doubt many Bohemians
who returned to their homes bearing with them precious
relics,—such, for instance, as a piece of the stone that
covered Wiclif’s grave at Lutterworth—and we find in
the early part of the fifteenth century, and even muoh
312 KING HENRY V.

later, many traces of the lives and actions of English
Lollards at Prague. Two of these men, who were for-
bidden by the academical authorities from teaching and
lecturing, avenged themselves by the execution of two
frescoes in their house, on one of which was represented
Our Saviour entering Jerusalem, meekly riding upon an
ass; while the other exhibited a gay procession, com-
posed of the pope and cardinals proudly mounted upon
noble chargers.

This connexion powerfully accelerated the progress of
the reformation that had been aimed at by Huss; and
which, although it was supported by less learning, was
more popular than that of Wiclif, on whose writings it
was, however, based in theory. Unrestricted preaching
was in the meantime continued in Bohemia, where it
boldly maintained its ground, notwithstanding all the
interdicts that were directed against it. The national
element likewise contributed its part, although in these
respects it was in direct opposition to the feelings of the
German part of the population, which now greatly ex-
ceeded the original race on which it had been ingrafted.
In the year 1409 the Tchechs seized upon the University,
and the Germans were obliged to retreat to Leipsic,
Amongst the orthodox prelates difference of race exerted
no influence, although the question was again revived by
the position which King Wenzeslaus and his brother
Sigismund had assumed towards those of the new faith.
Wiclifite writings and works were never earnestly inter-
dicted by them, notwithstanding the decrees of the pope
and clergy, and they even took Huss and his followers
under their protection at the decisive moment. The
work of reformation, therefore, became much more
AND KING SIGISMUND, 313

thoroughly a popular movement in Bohemia than it had
ever been in England, and it thus coincided with the
turbulent conditions which had for a long time pre-
vailed in the country. The royal authority was nearly
extinguished at the moment when Sigismund brought
about the meeting of the great council, chiefly with the
view of saving the Crown and Church of Bohemia. It
must not, however, be forgotten that he had taken his
own views independently of party spirit, as far, at least,
as his somewhat shallow perceptions permitted, for he by
no means sanctioned the violent demonstrations of the
prelates and doctors of Prague, while, on the other hand,
he had used his friendly influence with Huss to induce
him to appear in person before the great council. He
probably hoped that this enthusiastic man would be able
to prove the purity of his doctrines before the assembly,
and without any ulterior object pledged him his royal word
by giving him a safe-conduct signed by his own hand.
It is well known how, in the month of November,
1414, the council opened its sittings amid a crowd of
high prelates, learned doctors, monks, princes, noblemen,
and soldiers. Its first act was to decide, among many
conflicting interests, upon the order in which the various
questions and matters of business were to be discussed ;
for while Pope John XXIII. wished to strengthen his
very equivocal position by beginning with the ques-
tions relating to the Wiclifite and Hussite dogmas, the
majority of the prelates, together with the secular autho-
rities, demanded that the dissensions of the Church, and
some decided measures for ecclesiastical reform, should
be the first subjects brought under discussion. John had
vainly endeavoured in some degree to make himself
314 KING HENRY V.

equal to his two papal rivals, but the resolution to vote
by nations, and not individually, made his deposition
almost a matter of certainty. It is worthy of notice,
that among the four national groups the English were
recognised as a special nation. They appear to have
voted with the Germans in regard to all the main ques-
tions under consideration. The first act of the council,
mainly instigated by the pope, it must be admitted, was
to cause Huss to be thrown into the prison of the
Dominicans, notwithstanding his safe-conduct. His
countrymen, who had accompanied him, were beside
themselves with agitation and trouble, but they could
do nothing to avert the evil. Even the just anger of
Sigismund was speedily forgotten, when amid all the
pomp and pageantry in which he delighted, he made
his first entry into Constance at Christmas, and flattered
and dazzled by the high position that had been accorded
to him, suffered himself to be made use of by others,
instead of adopting any independent course of action,
based on his own convictions. How happy did he feel
when, clad in the imperial mantle and wearing his crown
on his head, he availed himself of all the traditional
spiritual rights of his dignity, serving before the pope
at high mass as a deacon, while he chaunted with sonor-
ous voice the verse, “ And it came to pass in those days
that there went out a decree from Cesar Augustus.” He
certainly soon afterwards contributed very materially
towards forcing John XXIII. to abdicate, but when the
humbled pope escaped under the protection of the Duke
of Austria, he made no opposition to the fathers of the
council who wished to have Huss taken from his keep-
ing and given over to a far worse captivity under the
AND KING SIGISMUND. 315

Bishop of Constance. While, in the course of time, his
sincere endeavours to aid in bringing the schism of the
Church to an end were destined to be crowned with
success, he was sdon placed under the painful necessity
of sacrificing the man, whose life he had taken under his
protection. It is assuredly not too much to conjecture
that all those who had gone hand in hand with the
King of Rome, in regard to the other questions, should
now have used their utmost endeavours to induce him
to make this important concession to the council. In
the foremost ranks were undoubtedly the English, who
were numerously represented by a large body of prelates
and doctors from Oxford and Cambridge. Henry V.
had designedly selected as the advocates of the Anglican
Church the Bishops of Bath, Salisbury, and St. David’s,
with whom was associated, in the capacity of a secular
plenipotentiary, Richard, Earl of Warwick, who was
alike distinguished in war and diplomacy; for the king
hoped that by the appointment of such a deputation his
country might take an important share in the delibera-
tions and decisions of this European conclave for the
eradication of heresy. The Lollards had been prevented
from securing any mode of representation for their doc-
trines at this great assembly ; nor do we hear, on the
part of the English, one word in favour of the writings of
Wiclif, which were made the subject of repeated discus-
sion. The English, on the contrary, who contributed to
the best of their power to bring about the abdication of
the worthless John XXIIT., now required with the rest
of the members that judgment should be declared in
regard to the imprisoned heretic; while under the idea
of a reformation of the Church, which ‘was to include
316 KING HENRY V.

both its head and members, they understood, first and
above all, the restoration of the ancient orthodoxy.
Sigismund rapidly came to the same conclusion, more
especially as the Bohemian prelates had endeavoured
with elaborate sophistry to persuade him that there had
been no violation of the safe-conduct, as it had not come
to the hands of Huss till after his captivity ; and that in
consequence of his having failed to obey the summons
by which he had been called to Rome, he had long
since fallen under the ban of excommunication. After
this, the long but thoroughly prejudiced trial could
naturally have no other termination than the condemna-
tion of the accused, and of all the doctrines—but espe-
cially those of the divine, John Wiclif—on which his
arguments were based. We will not enter into the par-
ticulars of the proceedings, as we have only here to
speak of the unjust treatment which the martyr met
with from the king. After the third and last sitting,
Sigismund stepped forth among a number of cardinals
and bishops, and declared that each one of the articles
under discussion was sufficient to convict the heretic;
but he recommended that even if Huss should recant, he
should not be allowed to return to Bohemia, but rather
that the branches as well as the trunk should be lopped
off within the Bohemian dominions, and that Jerome,
who had also lately been entrapped, should be destroyed
at the same time. A few of their countrymen, who
were friendly to both the reformers, had accidentally
been unnoticed auditors of this conversation, and in the
sequel the king was made to pay dearly for his words;
for the Bohemians, in their insurrection, did not forget,
that instead of interceding for the man to whom he had
AND KING SIGISMUND. 317

given his royal word, he had incited his enemies to his
destruction. Huss, although he had been thus cruelly
undeceived, made no recantation, and was consequently
condemned ; and when, after the reading of the sentence,
he once more appealed to his safe-conduct, a deep blush
was observed to spread over Sigismund’s face. The sen-
tence which condemned Huss and Jerome to the flames
was indeed inevitable, if the task which the council had
taken upon itself were to be performed; but it destroyed
a great part of the merit which the King of Rome would
otherwise have earned for himself. The loss of Bohemia
during the war of the Hussites, and the miserable posi-
tion of the German empire, are sufficient proof that the
government of Sigismund was not strengthened by his
conduct at the Great Council of Constance.

But he no longer listened to the voice of conscience ;
and now bent himself with increased zeal to accomplish
the many other charges with which the fathers of the
assembly had honoured him. In the first place, it was
desirable, after two of the contending popes had been
compelled to renounce their rule, to induce the old and
obstinate Benedict XITI., who had hitherto found sup-
port in the kingdom of Spain, to do the same. Sigis-
mund was to effect the accession of Arragon and Castile
to the council, together with the abdication of their pope.
There was still a last faint glimmer of imperial authority
around Sigismund, when the representatives of Western
Christendom solemnly invested him in the cathedral
ehurch of Constance with this great dignity, and
pledged themselves to celebrate high mass, and to per-
form processions for his well-being every Sunday during
his absence. Here, then, began an episode in the
318 KING HENRY V.

adventurous life of this prince, which was in the highest
degree strange and romantic. An expedition of this
kind was most thoroughly in accordance with Sigis-
mund’s taste, for he longed to visit new lands and new
courts, and to see gallant knights and fair dames to
whom he had hitherto been a stranger; he flattered
himself that he should shine before foreigners in all his
knightly accomplishments, while he might also, perhaps,
enlist volunteers for the crusade against the Turks, and
thus relieve the pitiable condition of his principalities
in the south-east of Germany. Even a visit to Paris
and London did not appear beyond the bounds of
possibility. In order, however, to be able to appear in a
manner that was in some degree in accordance with his
high dignity, he needed considerable advances of money,
which it was not very easy for him to obtain, consider-
ing that he had been labouring under pecuniary difficulties
all his life. It was at this period that he resigned to the
astute and wealthy Burgrave of Nuremberg, Frederick
of Hohenzollern, who hath long been his creditor, the
Margravate and Electorate of Brandenburg, in return
for fresh supplies of money ; while he pledged to the
Swiss, on behalf of the empire, all the places which had
lately been wrested from the Duke of Austria. It was
only by these means that he could hope to be able to
maintain the motley retinue of 4,000 men who followed
him, among whom were a number of foreign magnates
and prelates. Thus attended, he passed through Savoy
in the summer of 1415, and through Provence to Nar-
bonne and Perpignan. But weeks and months were
frittered away in fruitless negotiations, for the self-
willed obstinacy of the old Pope Benedict, who persisted
AND KING SIGISMUND. 319

in maintaining the pontifical title, although unsupported
by any adherents, was not to be moved. Sigismund’s
position among the foreign Catalans now began to be
extremely unpleasant, and there was even a mutiny
among his own people, while the young Count of Wur-
temberg withdrew without leave, and betook himself
homewards, attended by three hundred horsemen. In
the following December, Arragon, Castile, and Navarre
gave in their adherence to the Council of Constance, and
some months later Portugal and Scotland followed their
example. ;

Thus, then, Sigismund had, at all events, achieved a
portion of that which he had attempted, but instead of
returning and hastening the proceedings of the council
by his presence, he betook himself, about Christmas
time, leisurely to Avignon, where he enjoyed himself
with jousting and dancing, while he freely accepted of
the hospitality and presents of the priests and burghers
of the town. He seemed, indeed, much more at his
ease in foreign parts than in his own home, although,
perhaps, he scarcely played a better part on these
occasions than those Paleologi, who from time to time
came from Constantinople seeking aid at the courts of
Western Christendom. At this juncture occurred the
great defeat which the French had recently experienced
at Agincourt at the hands of Henry V. of England.
Even before this event Sigismund had offered his ser-
vices and mediation between the contending parties,
both in his own name and in that of the Council of
Constance; but the ambassadors, who had been sent
by him into the English camp, were stopped on their
way by the haughty French. What if he should now
320 KING HENRY V.

succeed in executing the sacred duty of acting as a
mediator in this struggle which was shaking Western
Europe to its very centre ? He had gone up the Rhone as
far as Lyons on this mission, when he was met half way
by the emissaries of the French government, who came
to implore his intervention, and to promise him free
living and royal entertainment during his stay in the
country, which, considering his circumstances at the
time, must have been a most welcome offer. Sigismund
made his entry into Paris on the 1st of March, 1416,
and alighted at the palace of the Louvre, where he and
his eight hundred mounted attendants were received with
state, and entertained as well as the existing condition
of the monarchy allowed. He must, however, have
been painfully impressed with the unstable character of
the ancient relations between the houses of Luxemburg
and Valois, and he was, moreover, very ill-fitted tocounsel
the best means of allaying the fierce flames of discord
and faction with which France was devastated, and by
which even the royal family had been divided. Count
Bernard D’Armagnac, the constable of France and the
leader of the Orleans party, who, in his bitter anger and
mortification at the late severe defeat, would not hear of
a peace with the English, now turned his back on the
capital in order not to meet the lately arrived guest.
Sigismund, however, enjoyed himself right pleasantly
for four weeks ; and from all appearances, we may judge
that he adapted himself very readily to the Parisian
mode of life, which, even in that age, was brilliant and
luxurious. He, at all events, had no scruples in giving
a sumptuous entertainment to a hundred and twenty
ladies of Paris, to each of whom he presented a ring.
AND KING SIGISMUND. 321

Another fancy in which he indulged was considered
by the French to be somewhat less harmless. It would
appear that the respect and marks of honour which were
shown to him in the midst of the terrible anarchy of the
kingdom, were not wholly without a tinge of deference
for his imperial dignity. Thus on one occasion, when
he was present at a sitting of the Parliament of Paris,
he was permitted to take his place on the throne. In
the business under discussion, to which the royal guest
listened with undivided attention, a petitioner was dis-
missed without obtaining satisfaction, because he was
not a knight, and therefore not equal in rank to his
adversary. On this Sigismund arose, drew his sword,
and conferred on him the accolade. This emanation of
imperial power in a foreign country deeply offended
the French, and the Orleans party adroitly availed
themselves of the occasion to their own advantage.
The King of the Romans could not fail to perceive that
it would not be an easy matter for him to cement a
peace under existing circumstances, and he therefore
decided upon accepting the invitation of the King
of England, who, with a keen political foresight, was
disposed, from more than one motive, to desire a personal
interview with a prince who showed so decided a taste
for wandering about the world. Henry was naturally
anxious to enter into more definite arrangements regard-
ing the suppression of all heretical doctrines, than any
which were likely to be brought about by the Council of
Constance ; while it was especially important to him to
remove from all contact with French influences the
prince who had come forward as a mediator, invested
with the full powers of the empire and the Church, and

YX
322 KING HENRY V.

by drawing him to his own side, to render him harm-
less in regard, at least, to his own designs upon France.
Henry kept this object firmly and clearly in view; and
we will now proceed to consider how far he attained
it by the help of the memorable conference which took
place between him and the German monarch, and which,
in several other respects, is not unworthy of being more
fully considered by the help of the various particulars
which have come down to us regarding it.

In the latter part of April the royal traveller and his
retinue passed through St. Denis, Beauvais, and Amiens,
towards the coast, on the road to which the King found
that at some places—for instance, at Abbéville, Mon-
treuil, and Boulogne—the burghers were not very well
disposed towards him. It is not very clear whether
political grounds, or any undue assumption on the part
of the Emperor, gave the first incentive to this feeling,
or whether it was merely called forth by the haughtiness
of some of the foreign horsemen; but, at all events, a
bad feeling obviously existed between the head of the
German nation and the French people. Such being
the case, Sigismund was naturally well pleased to enter,
on the 27th, upon the English territory at Calais, while
he was still better satisfied to think that the interview
between himself and Henry was not to be held there but
in England.

Henry wisely thought that it would be best that his
visitor, who was most susceptible to all outward mani-
festations of pomp, should see the splendour and power
of his kingdom, and receive from him those honours
which, however little meaning or significance they
retained, were still awarded to the successors of Charle-
AND .KING SIGISMUND. 3823

magne. It was also said that the English nation was
looking forward with anxious hope to this distinguished
visit. The King, attended by his imperial retinue,
which had been again augmented to about a thousand
horse, among whom were several German and Italian
princes of the empire, and some Hungarian and Polish
noblemen, conspicuous by their oriental style of dress,
was respectfully met and escorted by all the knights
assembled at Calais. At their head rode the Earl
of Warwick, whom Sigismund must have known at
Constance, and two knights, scarcely less distinguished
in the field, viz., the Lord Talbot and Sir Walter
Hungerford. The Cinque Ports of Kent and of the
Thames were required to send forth their numerous fleet,
which was equipped for warlike service, to convey the
guests across the channel, and it would appear that
some three hundred sail were despatched to receive
them. Sigismund embarked on the 30th at noon, and
made the passage to Dover, with a favourable wind, in
five hours; whilst a portion of his attendants, who did
not leave till the following day, were tossed about on a
rough sea for two days and nights.

The landing of Sigismund, who was the first King of
the Romans that had set his foot on British ground,
was regulated in accordance with a special programme,
and was accompanied with elaborate ceremony ; for the
Lancastrian prince was fond of displaying his power
with all the pomp he could command. It was here
that a strange scene is said to have been enacted ; for
it is recorded that, before the guest could leave the
ship, the Duke of Gloucester rode forward with
adrawn sword in his hand, and demanded of him

x2
324 KING HENRY V.

solemnly to promise, before he set his foot on English
ground, not to perform any act of imperial sovereignty
during his presence in the kingdom, such as he had
lately exhibited in Paris. It was not till this promise
had been given that ke was permitted to land below
Dover Castle, where all the knights of the neighbouring
shires—among whom there were many who could tell of
the glorious day of Agincourt—were ranged in close
ranks on horseback, ready to give their knightly greet-
ing to the hero of Nicopolis. Their road led them
through Canterbury, where, like so many other distin-
guished pilgrims of that age, the Germans did not fail
to offer up their prayers at the grave of the national
saint, where they admired the golden and gem-studded
shrine that enclosed his remains, and then went on their
way to Rochester, where they were met by the Duke of
Bedford, and thence to Dartford, at which place the Duke
of Clarence, another of the King’s brothers, welcomed
them in Henry’s name. At length, when they reached
Blackheath, and the spires of London were already in
sight, the Lord Mayor and the city authorities appeared
on horseback, clothed with that excess of finery in
which they had always delighted, accompanied, we can
scarcely doubt, by the master and members of the
German Hanseatic Guild, happy in the joyous feeling
of being permitted to wait upon the sovereign lord of
their native land. Their welcome was probably hearty
enough, but time pressed ; for, as they approached the
gates of Southwark, King Henry himself appeared at the
head of an especially brilliant retinue of 5000 horsemen,
in order that he might escort his guest over the bridge
and through the streets of the city to his own royal resi-
AND KING SIGISMUND. 325

dence, with the same pomp and ceremony with which
he had himself been recently received when he returned
from France, crowned with victory, as the leader of his
valiant army. Eberhard Windeck of Mayence, Sigis-
mund’s German secretary, cannot find words enough to
depict all this pomp and magnificence. “I truly believe,”
he says, “ that never before did any man receive a king 01
a prince in a more splendid way than the King of Eng-
land has received Sigismund, King of the Romans. For,
upon that day, all was so costly and so full of glorious
pomp, that it would be impossible to describe it. There
was the King of England himself, with his two
brothers, the bishops, the noble lords of the land, and
knights and squires. The great costliness of the horses
and arms, and the crowd of nobles, and of tender and
lovely ladies, and the costly dresses of the burghers and
burghers’ dames, were beyond anything one could ima-
gine ; and all these grand people and horses went forth
to meet the King of the Romans and to escort him into
London with great magnificence.” The splendid apart-
ments of the royal palace at Westminster had been set.
in order for the reception of Sigismund, while his cour-
teous host contentedly took up his abode on the other
side of the river, in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s
palace at Lambeth. Henry hoped by all these atten-
tions to win over his guest so completely to his own
interests that, in case the differences with France should
ever in earnest be submitted to Sigismund, he need have
no apprehension in regard to the result. There was, there-
fore, no lack of honours and amusements, although the
earnest affairs of Christendom were by no means forgotten,

It is, perhaps, not wholly uninteresting in regard to
326 KING HENRY V.

German history, that when on the 4th of May, the
parliament, after having been prorogued till Sigis-
mund’s arrival, assembled in a combined meeting of
both houses in the great hall of Westminster, the King
of the Romans was present. The highest seat of honour
under the canopy was, however, not offered to him, as
it had been at Paris, for Henry himself was seated on
the throne, dressed in his royal robes, and wearing the
insignia of his dignity. He made a ceremonious address
to his faithful estates, not forgetting to refer specially
to his distinguished guest, who, as he said, had taken
the most unselfish pains to induce the French govern-
ment to enter into a compact of peace and concord with
England. Negotiations were pending at that very time
with the Archbishop Rheinald of Rheims, who had
probably been sent to England as the ambassador of
Charles VI. at the suggestion of Sigismund. The
powers with which he was intrusted were, however,
no longer sufficient to satisfy a victor like Henry V.,
who would only renounce the title and crown of France
on the sole condition that the peace of Bretigny, which
had been extorted in 1360 from the French by Edward
IIL, should be made the basis of the agreement, in
accordance with which the half of France would have
to be resigned to him. The envoy naturally enough
protested that he could not enter into the discussion of
so disgraceful a condition, and that rather than accede
to it, his government would have recourse to the last
and most desperate extremities, and again take up arms
at once. It was obvious that there was no alternative
but to reject all the overtures for peace. The English
were, moreover, well aware of the irreconcilable hatred
AND KING SIGISMUND. 327

entertained towards them by the Count of Armagnac,
and the national party which he represented. As if to
fill the measure of his embarrassment, Sigismund was
informed by one of his messengers, who had lately
arrived from Paris, that notwithstanding all attempts
to conclude a peace, the Orleanists were taking measures
to recover the important town of Harfleur at the mouth
of the Seine, which had been captured by Henry. This
news, we are told, brought tears to the eyes of the Ger-
man King; and it is evident that he must either have
deceived himself by his over-sanguine hopes, or, what
is more probable, that he was already too far compro-
mised. Henry, however, saw that he must retain him
at his court, since it appeared certain that war was now
unavoidable.

A series of feasts and sports, such as only the bril-
lant and knightly court of Westminster could devise,
soon followed; while more splendid than all was the
solemn meeting of the Chapter of the Order of the
Garter, which was held on Sunday, the 24th of May,
in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. Henry had re-
solved to admit among the members of this distin-
guished Order, which had been founded by Edward III.,
the imperial stranger who placed so high a value on
honours of this kind, and who had himself founded an
Order of the Dragon. At the same time with Sigis-
mund, Sir William Harrington, Lord de la Zouche,
and the Earls of Huntingdon and Oxford, were admitted
into the Order, to fill up the vacancies which had re-
cently occurred. The occasion was regarded as so
extraordinary, that new and especially costly robes were
ordered to be given at the king’s expense to all the
328 KING HENRY V.

members and office-bearers, while the servants con-
nected with the Order, including even the musicians
and the court-fools, received new suits of clothes. The
collar and garter, with which Henry himself invested
his imperial guest, were richly adorned with jewels;
and it would appear that Sigismund took special plea-
sure in obeying the regulations of the statutes, which
enjoin upon the knights to wear the insignia of their
dignity as often as possible. Much pleasure is expressed
by the English plenipotentiaries at Constance when
they are able to inform their royal master that Sigismund
had appeared fully equipped in the robes and insignia of
the national order of knighthood, when he attended
high mass the first time after his return; and an equal
amount of ill-feeling was excited in France when it
was known that the prince, who had offered to act as
a mediator between the French and English govern-
ments, had allowed himself to be bound in such a
manner to their national enemy. The Chapel at
Windsor preserved, till the days of Henry VIIL., the
heart of St. George, which was presented to them by
Sigismund.

Almost more flattering and significant, however, was
another mark of esteem which the German King received
from the King of England, who issued a command to
the bishops, that in the customary service of the Church,
they should associate with his own name that of the King
of the Romans, who for a long time had given himself
the most unwearied trouble in foreign countries, to re-
store perfect union to the holy Church, and to procure
for the princes and nations of Christendom a lasting
peace. We seem here to catch a glimpse of the motives
AND KING SIGISMUND. 329

which actuated the enthusiastic Henry, who knew well
how to estimate at its right value the purer elements in
Sigismund’s zeal; and who, in after years, on many
occasions was wont to confide to his intimate friend and
brother-knight, in certain secret documents which are still
extant, the relations in which he stood to France and
Burgundy. The Order of the Garter and the object
which both entertained in common in regard to the
Church, were the means of cementing a union between
the two dynasties, which was not again loosened until
the course of public affairs had taken a perfectly different
direction.

All these attentions and intimate associations with the
sovereign could not however exempt Sigismund, even in
England, from the many vexations connected with the
charge that had been entrusted to him by the Council.
William, Duke of Holland, a grandson of the Wittelsbach
Emperor Louis, had been invited to take part in the
conferences, and he accordingly made his appearance in
England at the beginning of June. It is related how-
ever, that Henry, in accordance with English etiquette,
recommended Sigismund not to ride forth and meet the
Duke, as was the German custom on such occasions, and
that he thus was the cause of arousing a feeling of ill-
will between the two. The Duke of Holland did,
however, first pay his respects at Westminster, and then
at Lambeth. The proposal for an armistice was dis-
cussed by the three princes, on the 13th, when it was
resolved that the town of Harfleur, which was especially
interested in the matter, was to remain in the custody of
Sigismund and William. The Armagnac party, in the
meanwhile, do not appear to have paid much attention
330 KING HENRY V.

to this compact, for they endeavoured soon afterwards to
take the place by force, but in this attempt they
were frustrated by the arrival of an English fleet, under
the Duke of Bedford, which, after giving them a severe
repulse on the 15th of August, relieved Harfleur.
While the London treaty proved thus useless from the
very beginning, further differences arose between Sigis-
mund and William. The latter had indeed been invested
at Westminster with the principality which he held
under the German Empire, and no objection had been
made by the English to the proceeding ; but when he
expressed a wish of having the succession secured to his
only child, a daughter named Jacqueline, Sigismund
refused to comply with his demand in consideration of
the rights of established descent. William, hereupon,
angrily left his presence, and on the plea of going out
for a ride, embarked on board his own ship, without
having taken leave of theEnglish court. Nothing could be
more ill-timed for Sigismund, who had formed the design
of returning home at his leisure with the Dutch squa-
dron, and it now became more and more clear to him
that he was entirely in the power of the King of England.
Henry, indeed, detained him with all possible show of
welcome, although in parliament and among the populace
in London, voices were already raised in disparagement
of the foreign sovereign, whose plans of mediation had
all vanished in empty air. It was probably on this
account that Sigismund left the royal palace as early as
July, and took up his abode either at Canterbury or at
Ledes in Kent. The preparations and equipments which
Henry was at that very time personally superintending
at Southampton, are indeed the strongest evidence of
AND KING SIGISMUND. 331

the impracticability of the entire scheme of mediation.
He had been more than three months in the country, and
it was already whispered at the Council of Constance
that the king was a prisoner in England, while accord-
ing to some reports he was dead ; and what was perhaps
almost worse, the Parisians asserted that poverty and
debts had compelled Sigismund to enter into the English
alliance.

The amount of truth in all these reports, and the secu-
rity with which Henry V. pressed on towards his aim,
were made clearly apparent on the 15th of August,
when the two monarchs signed a treaty, both offensive
and defensive, at Canterbury, at the very same time at
which Bedford defeated the French. They promised in
their own names, and in those of their successors, to
maintain peace and amity to the end of time, and Sigis-
mund even upbraids the French government with
having prolonged the schism, while he solemnly pledges
himself to aid Henry, King of England and France in
maintaining his rights; and the latter, m his turn, pro-
mises to assist the King of the Romans in winning back
for the German empire the territory that had been so
long occupied by the French. An application was made
to parliament and the electors of the Empire to ratify
this treaty ; but although the former complied with the
demand in the month of October, all Sigismund’s endea-
vours proved of no avail to induce the diet earnestly to
take the matter into consideration.

Henry now at length ordered the long wished-for ships
to be made ready, and presented, as parting gifts to his
friend, costly gold and silver vessels, set with pearls,
diamonds and sapphires, and a purse of 5,000 golden
332 KING HENRY V.

crowns, together with the mantle and insignia of the
Order of the Garter, which were worth fully 11,000
crowns. With these treasures Sigismund crossed to
Calais on the 24th of August, attended by a stately
retinue, and conveyed across the channel by a fleet
manned with 3,000 sailors. And a few days later,
on the 4th of September, King Henry and he again
met, when Sigismund made a final attempt to secure
peace for the west of Europe. We now learn that
the French government, exasperated at the treaty of
Canterbury, had again despatched the Archbishop of
Rheims to Henry ; but this time with additional stipula-
tions, coupled with the invidious proposal that England
should satisfy her thirst for the acquisition of land by
taking possession of the territory under dispute between
Germany and France. In October, Sigismund had a
conference with John, Duke of Burgundy, who, on this
occasion, did homage for the imperial fief of Alost. The
interests of all parties were, however, diametrically
opposed, and the only result was a short armistice for
the winter months. On Friday, the 16th of October,
King Henry returned to England after he had accom-
panied Sigismund on board ship, and taken a most
affectionate leave of him. We are told that the two
monarchs could not tear themselves from each others
arms ; for they had lived together so long and so inti-
mately, that each had opened his whole heart to the
other; and it is related that there was a general and
glad surprise evinced by every one who witnessed these
marks of affection.

Now, however, Sigismund was at last compelled to
think of his further progress, and miserably and un-
AND KING SIGISMUND. 333

comfortably he fared in his attempts to reach his own
states. He had sent Eberhard Windeck to Bruges
with the commission to pawn most of his beautiful pre-
sents, and raise money upon them among the Lubeck
merchants there. As the passage through the domains of
the Duke of Holland, as well as through Burgundy and
the Flemish cities, which did not belong to the empire,
had been interdicted to him, he did not think that it would
be safe for him to venture by that route. Fortunately
for him he found the town of Dordrecht willing to grant
him some vessels, in which he entered the Rhine under
the convoy of four English ships of war, which had
accompanied him from Calais to protect him from the
attack of any hostile powers. Thus, almost like a
criminal, did the bearer of the German crown return to
his empire, and it was only when he found himself un-
der the protection of the Duke of Juliers, and in the
city of Aix la Chapelle, that he felt safe and at his ease.
More than a year had passed when he again entered
Constance, on the 17th of January, 1417, after finding
all his efforts to procure peace utterly unavailing, and
when Henry V. was already prepared to enter upon the
conquest of France.

The Council in the meantime succeeded, notwith-
standing the threatening discords of the Church, in re-
storing unity to the hierarchy in the person of Martin V.
The heretics, Wiclif and Huss, and their anti-Catholic
doctrines, had been condemned ; while a decree had even
gone forth, in obedience to which the quiet grave at Lut-
terworth was forcibly opened one day in the year 1428,
and the bones that lay mouldering within it burnt on
the spot, and their ashes cast into the stream, whose
334 KING HENRY V.

waters might have borne them through the Avon and
the Severn to mingle in the ocean with the last remains
of the Bohemian martyr. But what availed all these
triumphs? The spiritual opposition which the Reforma-
tion had contributed to produce, could never again be
allayed by any recognition of the infallibility of popes
and councils; while the national convulsions, to which
the new ideas gave rise, filled the world with more
bloodshed than any that had been witnessed before the
pious fathers of the Council of Constance sent forth
their imperial envoy on his futile mission.

It appears, however, that although henceforward the
course of events flowed in a parallel direction both in the
east and west, the bonds of union which were cemented by
the two monarchs at Canterbury continued unbroken. In
May, 1420, Henry, after his great victories, dictated the
terms of the peace of Troyes, by which he assumed the
place due to the dauphin, and among the attesting wit-
nesses of the deed, the name of the King of the Romans
stands foremost. Sigismund had, however, excused him-
self from a direct participation in the war with France on
the valid ground that he must make head against the
rebellious Bohemians, who had adopted the same here-
tical doctrines as those which the followers of Wiclif pro-
fessed ; and, in the spring of 1420, he entered upon his
first crusade against these heretics.. The termination of
this expedition, and the fearful contests to which it gave
rise, are well known. King Henry followed the course
of these events with the most vivid interest; and we
still find among the English records the reports which
reached him regarding the siege of Prague, and similar
events. In the year 1422 a personal interview between
AND KING SIGISMUND. 335

Sigismund and Henry was again made the subject of
discussion ; but at that very time the valiant Lancastrian
prince fell a victim toa rapidly fatal illness, while at the
very summit of his fame, and in the very fulness of his
maturity. In one of his testamentary papers he charac-
terised the King of the Romans as the most faithful
defender of the Church and of the faith, and bequeathed
to him, as a memento of himself, a costly sword.

When, in the sequel, the unnatural rule of the Eng-
lish in France threatened to become more and more
insecure, and the embittered Luxemburg prince was still
contending with the Hussites for his lost crown, the
English princes showed themselves especially anxious
to maintain the alliance of the year 1416. Thus, on
one occasion, about the year 1427, Henry’s uncle, the
wealthy and politic Cardinal Beaufort, announced his
intention to lead a band of English crusaders against
the Hussites, who were then waging a fearful war. The
entire orthodox world rejoiced, for the pope had named
him to be his legate in Germany, Bohemia, and Hun-
gary; and the Lancastrian and Luxemburg princes
were now ranged for the first time side by side on the
field of battle. At this moment, however, the troops
which it had taken so long a time to enlist and to convey
across the channel, were diverted from this object, that
they might afford the aid that was so much needed to
counteract the first great achievements of the Maid of
Orleans.

Sigismund, in his later and less happy years, was
wont to assume on St. George’s day the badge of the
garter; whilst, at the coronation of Henry VI. at
Westminster, in the year 1430, a magnificent plateau
336 KING HENRY V. AND KING SIGISMUND.

was used, which represented the Emperor, and his
departed friend, Henry V., with the infant king on his
knees before him, holding in his hands a ballad against
the Lollards. And, finally, when Sigismund died, on
the 9th of December, 1437, masses for the repose of his
soul were, by royal command, read in all the churches
of England; and Henry VI., in person, surrounded by
the great officers of the crown, attended these solemn
services for the dead at St. Paul’s; while the garter,
which Sigismund had received, was transferred to the
Grand Duke Albert of Austria, his son-in-law, and
successor in the empire. About the period when the
house of Luxemburg ceased to bear the imperial dia-
dem, we begin to note the first traces of the downfall
of the Lancastrians. Thus similar tendencies are met
with in the characters of princes, who exhibit very few
other evidences of mutual affinity, and thus at some one
moment of their lives an indelible character is impressed
on their union which may for generations influence the
fate of their dynasties.
X.

THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

History presents certain periods of transition, during
which a long established order of things passes away
and disappears almost before another has begun to
dawn. In this struggle between the old and the new
elements, we often notice special phenomena, which are
peculiar not only to individuals, but to the circumstances
surrounding them, and to which there attaches a charm
of novelty, which from their isolation in regard to other
things, seems to impart to them an almost miraculous
character. The fifteenth century was an epoch of this
kind, when the middle ages had not yet wholly past
away, and the modern world had not fully dawned.
Many of the special supports which for centuries together
had upheld the structure of the Church and State, had
indeed long since grown rotten, threatening to fall to
pieces on the first vigorous assault of that new force
which was infusing a fresh spirit into the secular as well
as the ecclesiastical system; but the germ that had been
planted amid the mouldering remains of the past, had
not yet attained sufficient vigour to replace the growth
that had been matured by the culture of the middle
ages.

ZL
338 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

In Germany there reigned an emperor, who, however
insignificant his power might be, was still able to with-
hold from the princes of the empire the full rights of
sovereignty which they were striving to wrench from
him. In England the monarch still considered himself
able to maintain undivided sovereignty, although the
two houses of parliament were conjoined with him in
the administration under the same forms which they now
present. The pope, as the supreme head of the one
undivided Church of western Christendom, still claimed
the long undisputed obedience of all the kingdoms of the
west, although their rulers would no longer permit the
ancient streams of their national wealth to be poured,
as in bygone days, into the coffers of Rome. This
opposition was supported by a spiritual party, which,
disregarding mere verbal authority, seemed disposed to
attack the fundamental doctrines of the Church itself.
Everywhere the minds of men were filled with religious
aspirations; and while in Germany pious men were
trying to find peace for their souls in the indulgence of a
spiritual mysticism, a fire was smouldering in two remote
parts of western Christendom. In England, a brave and
simple-hearted priest had ventured, in a spirit far in
advance of his age, to attack with an almost puritanical
zeal the right of the Church to its worldly possessions ;
appealing to the pure word of God in attestation of the
truth of the enlightened doctrines which he advanced.
The stake and the scaffold had in vain been erected as a
defence against the heresy of the Lollards in England.
The sparks of truth which had flown far over land and
sea, had been kindled into flame amid the distant valleys
of Bohemia, Then burst forth, in the midst of those
‘THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 339

terrible wars with the Hussites, a spirit of fierce enthu-
siasm, whose all consuming flames extended far and
wide, under the stimulus of religious faith, moral con-
victions, hatred of race, and the wildest fanaticism. But
the remedy had been too early applied; the miseries of
Europe and the disruption of discipline and morals which
had spread alike among the great and humble, could not
be mitigated by such severe measures, and neither party
was as yet permitted to rejoice in victory.

France was, in many respects, situated the same as the
countries by which she was surrounded. The power of
her princes had, however, increased more steadily, and
while they had endeavoured to comprise the monarchy
within its natural boundaries, they had succeeded to a
certain extent in maintaining a national position in
regard to the Church of Rome. It even sometimes
appeared as if the state policy which was now dawning
upon the coming age, had been developed more rapidly
here than elsewhere. The country and its rulers were,
however, destined to meet with a trial which had the
effect of turning them aside for many years from their
onward path of progress. King Charles VI. had lost
his reason soon after his accession to the throne; and
although he may sometimes have been visited by lucid
intervals, such a rule as his, which was continued for
more than forty years, afforded free scope for the display
of the selfish views and passions of his scheming foreign
consort and of a number of the princes of the blood.
It had been the custom to bestow upon the latter the
larger provinces and principalities of the kingdom ; but
the more sensible of the kings had shown a disposition
to consider these’ endowments merely as crown fiefs,

z2
340 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

without allowing them to assume the character of patri-
monial dignities. Now, however, when the crown was
worn by an imbecile prince, the magnates of the land
were not contented with merely striving to become
independent chiefs ; and two of their number, the king’s
uncle, the Duke of Orleans, and his cousin, the Duke of
Burgundy, carried on a bitter contest for the regency of
the kingdom. At this time too, a love of pleasure and
luxuriance, and the most unbridled immorality, to which
the Franco-Gallic races seem at all times to have been
easily disposed, had become so deeply ingrafted among
all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, including
prelates, nobles, and burghers, that all the bases of
family union had been overthrown while the ties of
relationship and patriotism seemed about to fall into
equal disregard. In the midst of this abasement, the few
God-fearing men who still ventured to call upon their
brethren to repent, could not command a hearing. At this
moment the murder of the licentious Duke of Orleans,
which had been accomplished by a band of men wear-
ing masks, who fell upon their victim in the streets ot
Paris, on a dark November night, in the year 1407, was
the signal for a succession of the most terrible outrages,
and the deepest humiliation. The deed, which had been
executed by order of the Duke of Burgundy, gave
rise to one of the most horrible forms of civil war ever
witnessed. Paris scarcely endured more fearful excesses
in the year 1793, than those which the factions of the
Armagnacs and Burgundians perpetrated against one
another. The Duke of Burgundy was supported by the
scum of the populace and all the democratic elements
in the land; while the nobility, more especially in the
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 341

southern portions of the country, adhered to the house
of Orleans. It was at this moment that the new and
powerful ruler who had just ascended the throne of
England, determined to follow the example of his ances-
tors, and to declare war against the neighbouring land,
which was then sinking under the weight of its own
disorganization. The pretext for this expedition was a
pretended claim to the crown of the Valois; but the object
was to occupy in an extensive foreign war those restless
ee at home who were either infected by heretical
ideas, or who bore ill-will to the House of Lancaster for
the bold stroke of policy by which it had gained
possession of the throne. Every one is familiar with
Shakespeare’s Prince Harry ; and every one has followed
his Henry V. in his daring landing before Harfleur, on
his way to that unparalleled victory at Agincourt, where
numbering one man for every five of the enemy—for
he had only a small army of 10,000 men, composed for
the most part of irregular bare-footed archers—he
defeated the flower of the French nobility, whose forces
amounted to upwards of 50,000 men. A large portion of
ancient France soon lay subdued at the feet of the victor,
whose advantages had been further augmented by the
alliance of the Duke of Burgundy, who, after having at
first maintained an attitude of neutrality, went over to
Henry’s side, in consequence of the bloody deed that had
been perpetrated at the bridge of Monterau. Here,
during a conference which both parties had entered upon
for the sake of effecting a reconciliation, and which was
ratified by the most solemn oaths, the Armagnacs, in the
presence of the Dauphin, had slain Duke John, in expia-
tion of the murder of the Duke of Orleans, which was
342 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

due to his instigation. And now Philip, the son and suc-
cessor of the murdered man, stretched forth the hand of
friendship to the conqueror ; while Isabelle, the queen of
France, entered into an unnatural compact, by which, in
accordance with the treaty of Troyes, Henry V. was to
receive the hand of Catherine—the Kate who is described
by Shakespeare as lisping her broken English—while
after the death of the imbecile Charles he was, moreover,
to succeed to the throne of France. Thus the Dauphin,
by the consent of his own parents, was to be alike
excluded from the possession of land and people. Two
years later, however, in the summer of 1422, the valiant
conqueror died in the prime of life, only a few months
before the death of the old King Charles, when England
and France were, de facto, united under one head. A
child in the cradle, not yet a twelvemonth old, wore
the crown of those two countries, which had hitherto
been almost as completely separated by policy, as they
were by position. This was indeed a marvel, and many
must have asked, with anxious forebodings, whether
such a state of things was destined to be permanent.
At first it appeared, indeed, as if the union might
prove binding; for France, thoroughly exhausted,
bowed her head almost unresistingly to the foreign
yoke. The departments in the north of the country
hoped, perhaps, that their privileges, which had often
been crushed under the feet of the sovereigns of their
native dynasties, might meet with greater respect from
the parliament of England. The whole strength of
the nobility seemed to have been annihilated on the
field of Agincourt. The young and brilliant Duke of
Orleans, who had been drawn living from beneath a
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 343

mass of dead bodies, was pining within a dismal
castle in a remote district of the north of England;
where he poured forth his grief and longing in plain-
tive songs, addressed to his country and his mourning
bride ; while he employed his leisure in learning English,
which he mastered so thoroughly, that he was able to
turn his own poems into an English form of verse, an
accomplishment in which few of his countrymen have
been able to emulate him. The Dauphin, Charles,
charged with his mother’s curse on account of the
murder which he had tolerated, and detested by many
of his countrymen, wandered restlessly and in poverty
along the banks of the Loire, attended only by a few
unwavering but blood-stained companions. The death
of the conqueror did not appear to open any better
prospect to him, for Henry’s brother, the Duke of
Bedford, a man whose gifts in the field equalled those
of the deceased monarch, whom he perhaps surpassed
in regard to the qualifications necessary to a politician,
held the reins of government with a powerful and steady
hand. Bedford governed the subjected kingdom for a
time with a sagacity that excited the wonder of all;
and the highest tribunals of the land, the parliament
and university of Paris, showed themselves more will-
ing, day by day, to submit to his commands. Had the
finances of both countries not been hopelessly embar-
rassed in consequence of their long-continued wars, and
had not his measures been thwarted by many of the
evils incidental to a minority, and finally—and perhaps
principally—had Bedford's life not been prematurely cut
off, his powers of mind would probably have enabled
him to prevent any systematic and enthusiastic rising
344 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

of the French, and he might thus, perhaps, have main-
tained a double Anglo-Gallic rule. At one time he
was master of all the districts north of the Loire, and
of the coast lands as far as the Pyrenees. Only the
territories which were then included under the names
of Touraine and Languedoc, and the central and south-
eastern parts of France, were still in the hands of the
French; for here no English seneschal commanded the
fortresses, and no Lincoln or Derby bowmen guarded
the roads with their arrows. There was, indeed, no
lack of fighting in the north of France either ; for, from
time to time, the Armagnacs made inroads into Nor-
mandy and Champagne, but a handful of Englishmen
always beat them in the open field ; and, after a time,
the opposition of the French did not go beyond disputing
the possession of a few strong and high castles.

In the year 1428, it was finally determined at a
council of war, held by the English captains at Paris,
to carry the war across the Loire, and by the conquest
of the city of Orleans, which was the key to that dis-
trict, to strike the first decisive blow. It was in vain
that the Duke of Bedford, conscious of his insufficient
means and the lack of sympathy with which the Eng-
lish were regarded in the south, warned them against
this attempt; for evil influences in the government at
home overpowered his warning voice. A valiant army,
under the Earl of Salisbury, undertook the assault.
After the suburbs on the south side of the river had been
occupied, Orleans itself was surrounded by entrench-
ments; for the citizens and garrison had begun to
defend themselves with the most desperate intrepidity,
and many bold marauders had joined their number,
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 345

making their way unmolested under the guns of the
enemy, laden with provisions and booty of every kind.
Thus passed six long winter months, in which the weal
or woe of France and her whole future seemed to be
linked to this one spot. The want and despair of the
besieged increased to the most terrible degree, and after
the last reinforcement had been thrown into the city,
the nation appeared hopelessly to collapse. What chance
of better days remained, now that their legitimate prince
had relinquished every expectation of success? Like
a degenerate type of his wretched people, he wasted
his days in the society of his mistress, and regardless
of honour or shame, looked unconcernedly at the un-
speakable miseries which his valiant city was enduring,
and heeded not the strange warnings which, even at
that very moment, heaven was sending to him.

The religious spirit of the times had at length reached
the French nation; but the mendicant friars, who wan-
dered through the land, preaching repentance to the
wretched people, and interpreting to them the dark
visions of the Apocalypse, had been expelled and perse-
cuted by Charles, as much as by the English. ‘When
it was now announced that Orleans must fall, and that
with it the rest of his country would be lost to him,
Charles, who was wrapt in his own sensual dreams,
conceived that it would be better at once to flee than
to perish with the last brave heroes of his land. The
schemes of Henry seemed about to be realized; and
France, which had hitherto been an independent link
of connexion between the civilization of ancient and
of modern times, had very nearly become a province of
the British island, when an event occurred of so strange
346 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

and special a nature, that history presents no parallel to
it; for it was as if an angel from heaven had brought
salvation to France. Strange indeed was it that a
woman should be destined to lead to unparalleled vic-
tories a nation, whose men had gloried in their own
knightly deeds, and whose women had as yet never
been permitted to assume the social dignity to which
they were entitled.

It is not our purpose, in the present place, to give a
complete delineation of the life and deeds of the Maid
of Orleans; nor do we purpose to lift the mysterious
veil that shrouds the psychical characteristics of this
wonderful being. We will only attempt, by the aid of
the very comprehensive materials at our disposal, clearly
and perspicuously to sketch the main features of her
character. She appears before us, in her life and actions,
so humanly lovely, and so tenderly dignified, that none
of the arts—whether poetry, painting, or sculpture—have
hitherto done her justice. Be it remembered that the
narrative we give is not a legend or a myth, but an
earnest, trustworthy history, recorded in the dry, matter
of fact chronicles of the times in which she lived.

Not far from the sources of the Meuse, near the borders
of Champagne and the Duchy of Lorraine, where,
from olden times, the German dialect had been spoken
by French tongues, lies the hamlet of Domremy, which,
together with the village of Greux, was included in the
diocese of Taul, which was, in those days, undoubtedly
a portion of the German empire. It was a home-like,
peaceful valley, enclosed by hills, on which an ancient
oak forest—the Bosc-chesnu—raised aloft its leafy sum-
mits. Here lived, in their simple hut, Jacques Dare
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 347

and his wife, Isabeau Rommée, true-hearted, pious pea-
sants, whose immediate ancestors had probably been
bound to the soil as villeins. Among their five children
a daughter had been born to them in the beginning of
the year 1412, who received at the sacred font the name
of Jeanne, though by the villagers she was called
Jeannette. She had early learnt from her pious mother
to repeat her Paternoster and her Ave Maria; and she
was soon able to assist her in sewing and in other
domestic labours. She was in all respects a willing,
truthful, and sincerely pious child. While she was in-
debted to her mother for her religious faith, she owed to
her father her love of her country. Jacques Dare and
his kindred often led a sorry life in their village, which
was situated in the midst of a population that adhered
to the Burgundian party. At their own fireside, the
family often talked of the general necessities of France,
and of the sufferings of her prince ; although these good
people, in their secluded home, knew of these things
only from hearsay, through the heavy pressure of in-
creased taxation, or from the squabbles and mock-fights
among the youth of the neighbouring villages, when
they played at being Burgundians and Frenchmen.
Only on one occasion a troop of Burgundian marauders
burst in upon the valley, and compelled the Dares to
take refuge for a fortnight in the neighbouring strong
town of Neufchateau. On their return home, Jeannette
resumed her industrious and domestic course of life,
which was only interrupted by her devotional exercises,
or when she received the commission, which did not
often happen, of driving to the pasture-ground the few
sheep which her father owned. It is a mere myth,
348 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

although certainly a very ancient one, to represent her
as a shepherdess—Ia pauvre bergerette—musing through
the long hours of the day as she roamed along the hill-
side, holding secret communion with the birds on the
trees. Instead of this, it is certain that she grew up
under the very eyes of her pious parents. There is also
another assumption, on which the blackest accusations
were subsequently based, which also admits of decisive
contradiction. In the neighbouring wood there was in-
deed a spring which had the reputation of curing fevers,
and near it an aged beech, round which, as the old people
still maintained, the fairies danced at night upon the
elfin rings. The terror of the country people was, how-
ever, no longer excited by this enchanted spot, and the
young men and maidens were wont to celebrate the
return of spring and keep their May games here; while
even the pastor of the village, on Ascension Day, read
aloud the Gospel in the open air, under the leafy boughs
of the old majestic tree. Most probably Joan Dare had
often taken part in these joyous sports; but those who
knew her well, and had been eye-witnesses of her daily
course of life, most emphatically deny that she had ever
shown a superstitious belief in the ancient traditions of
the spot, or that she even had any special tendency to
believe in mysterious or supernatural things. She was,
on the contrary, known to attend diligently the services
at the little chapel, which lay within the wood, either to
hear mass there, or to make an offering to the Virgin of
her little taper. She was most decidedly not supersti-
tious, although she had the ready credulity of a child.
It happened that one day, in the summer of 1424,
when the young girl was walking in her father’s garden,
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 349

she thought she heard a gentle voice which seemed to
come to her from the direction of the church. Although
it was noon and bright sunshine, the light appeared to
her to brighten on the spot where she stood. Twice
this strange phenomenon was repeated, and the terrified
girl believed for a certainty that an angel had spoken to
her, who promised her help from God, and commanded
her to go forth and aid the kingdom of France. These
visions recurred in a few days, when her imagination
had been excited by physical causes, and at length they
were manifested twice, and even thrice, in the week;
and it seemed to her as if she distinctly saw and heard
the Archangel Michael, who at times appeared to her to
be accompanied by St. Catherine and St. Margaret.
She felt herself directly addressed as “the dear child,
the dear maiden Jeanne.” Her terror vanished; and
her voices, as she called them, soon became dear to her
and identified with her religious faith, which, it must
be admitted, had a leaning to mysticism. Devoutly she
now prayed to the two saints, whom she determined for
the future to strive to imitate. She doubted not that
she held direct communion with heavenly beings, in
whose palpable existence her vivid imagination had
become thoroughly absorbed. Her tender years may
also afford some explanation of her condition; but we
have the testimony of medical witnesses of that age
that she was of a thoroughly sound body. Her pure
mind, moreover, exhibited not a trace of deceit, while,
as we shall presently see, she was endowed with a clear-
ness of understanding which is utterly at variance with
the idea of a thoroughly sentimental enthusiasm. The
singular condition in which she believed herself to be
350 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

placed was, at any rate, a reality, a manifestation, and
an absorption, which gave the first impulse towards the
liberation of France.

Five years passed away, during which the maiden
grew in stature and in beauty. Those who saw her at
that period of her life give the most favourable account
of her appearance, and describe to us her graceful and
slender figure, her open and animated countenance sur-
rounded by long dark curls, the charming and almost
melancholy expression of her eyes, and the soft, me-
lodious tones of her voice. But the manifestations,
which she had not as yet revealed to any living being,
accompanied her continually ; and in the year 1428, as
she herself afterwards asserted, the heavenly admonitions
became more frequent and more urgent, commanding
her to arise and betake herself to the neighbouring city
of Vaucouleurs, to demand from the seneschal, the knight
Beaudricourt, an escort to attend her to the court of the
Dauphin. Her parents and her confessor may, perhaps,
have observed from certain hasty expressions, which
referred exclusively to the king and the country, the
agitation of her mind; but every thing admitted at that
period of being referred simply to the sufferings of the
whole of France. At this time, however, attempts were
made to induce her, almost by force, to consent to a mar-
riage that had been proposed for her; but she resisted
all these efforts, and declared that she would serve only
God and her country. Then her father, for the second
time, dreamed that he saw his daughter going off with a
troop of soldiers, but he would rather, he asserted,
drown her with his own hands than survive such infamy.
On this account he kept her carefully under his own eyes.
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 351

When, however, she was allowed shortly afterwards to
visit for a few days an uncle, named Durand Laxart,
who lived near Vaucouleurs, she disclosed for the first
time to this relative that she, the poor maiden of Dom-
remy, had been called to go to the Dauphin, and accom-
pany the king to Rheims for his coronation. The peasant
no doubt listened to her with wondering surprise; but
at length her importunate entreaties induced him to go
and announce her coming to the knight Beaudricourt.
This nobleman received him ungraciously enough, and
recommended him to bring the foolish girl to her senses
by soundly boxing her ears, and to take her home
to her parents. But Jeannette would not rest; and,
notwithstanding all the contempt which she met with,
she persisted in going to Beaudricourt, even though it
were only to announce to him that during the next
season of Lent the Lord would bring salvation to the
Dauphin, and that she it was who was to lead him to
Rheims.

We find her now again at home, more restless and
more enthusiastic than ever; for the report of the siege
and threatened fall of Orleans was passing anxiously
from mouth to mouth through the length and breadth of
the land. Then it was that she thought she heard the
clear voice of the Archangel, saying, “‘ Arise, my daughter,
it is thou who shalt bring salvation ;”” and now she could
no longer tolerate delay. Persuading her parents that
her uncle required her services in the house, she left
home. She was conscious at the time of her untruthful-
ness and deception; but in after years she declared that
she knew herself to be absolved from this sin, for God
had willed it so, and He was more than a hundred
352- THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

fathers and a hundred mothers. It was in the depth of
winter, in the year 1429, that she left her native village
with her uncle, only bidding a hasty farewell to the
companions whom she met on the way. The season of
Lent had not yet begun when she again presented herself
before Beaudricourt, who, regarding the whole affair as
inexplicable and suspicious, summoned his chaplain in
order that, in case of necessity, the reverend father might
exorcise the evil spirit that had possessed this obstinate
maiden. But when she had asked for his blessing, she
said, ‘‘ Know ye not that it is written, that the kingdom
which has been brought to destruction through a woman
shall be redeemed by a maiden of the marshes of Lor-
raine?” And, in fact, the increasing excitement of the
minds of men in those days had revived certain pro-
phecies, which were popularly ascribed to the old and
wise Merlin —a circumstance which unquestionably may
have contributed to induce several persons to believe in
her during her second visit to Vaucouleurs—and in addi-
tion to her uncle, there were some brave and honest men,
as the knight Jean de Metz and the Sieur Bertrand de
Toulengy, who were well disposed to her, and in whom
she might safely trust under all circumstances. She
could not, however, as yet move the seneschal to give
her an escort. He delayed, either because he would
have nothing to do with such a strange adventure, or
because he was waiting for the instructions which he
had demanded in regard to this matter from the court of
his sovereign, at Chinon. At length, on the 23d of
February, he allowed her to depart, accompanied by
these two knights, a royal herald, and three serving-men.
As she would in future associate only with men, she
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 353

assumed masculine attire for her own security, not
omitting even the customary greaves and spurs. The
inhabitants of Vaucouleurs, whose hearts she had rapidly
won, had combined together to purchase a horse for her ;
and on her departure, Beaudricourt himself presented her
with a sword, which, however, was accompanied by the
cold and doubting words, “Go forth, let what will
happen.” Thus closes the first episode of this remark-
able history, in which we find this enthusiastic maiden
imparting to her countrymen the hopes and schemes
which she had long cherished in her own heart, and which
she was now for the first time bringing into execution.
Success, however, could only be achieved by the aid of
similar sympathetic feelings and aspirations throughout
the whole of her native land. Jn those very districts
where once St. Remigius had baptized and crowned the
Frankish king Clovis, there still lingered the old faith
in the royal house, and an unshaken fidelity to the
crown and lilies of France. The village church of Dom-
remy, like many others in the neighbourhood, had been
dedicated in ancient times to this saint, and bore his
name. It was to a certain extent a religion of the
national kingdom, that had lain dormant among the
masses, which was now awakened ito life at the ap-
pearance of Jeanne Dare.

But we must now follow the maiden on her mission.
On the eleventh day, not without dangers and difii-
culties, she crossed the Loire and entered Chinon.
After having spent one day in the most violent agitation,
in the poor tavern in which she had taken up her abode,
she was summoned to her first audience on the 9th of
March. She passed with composure and perfect self-

AA
854 THE MAID OF OKLEANS.

possession up the brilliantly-lighted hall, and through
the midst of the gaudily dressed attendants, towards the
prince, who was simply dressed, in order that he might
not attract her notice, and addressed him in these words:
“‘ Noble Dauphin, I am the maiden Jeanne who has been
sent to you by the Heavenly King, to announce that you
shall be crowned in the city of Rheims, and be his vice-
gerent upon earth.” The conversation which Charles
now entered into with her, and the questions which he
put to her, were heard by only a few witnesses, and the
revelation of some secret, or a communication of a mys-
terious nature appears to have excited a disposition to
confidence from the very first in the mind of the prince.
The nature of this communication is not very clear, but,
according to one report, Jeanne reminded him of a prayer
which he had once, in the stillness of his chamber,
offered up to Heaven, that if he were the true scion of
the royal house he might find safety in Castile or Scot-
land. Charles received her in a friendly manner: his
light and feeling heart was probably able to appreciate
the genuineness of the enthusiasm, which here spoke to
him from the lowest grades of the people through the
lips of this young girl. He was struck, too, by her reply
to the greeting of the Duke of Alencon, to whom she
said, ‘‘ Welcome! the more princes of the blood hold
together the better it will be for all!” His attention
was arrested when she spoke with almost tender
emotion of the Duke of Orleans, who must, she said,
be rescued from his prison in Pontefract castle. All the
fire that glowed in her breast was reserved for her prince
and her native land; for any other love, such as the vin-
dictiveness of her foes and the imagination of poets
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 855

would ascribe to her, her heart could find no place. But
however well-disposed the Dauphin showed himself to
her, and although he may have realized to some degree
the mysterious enthusiasm by which she was impelled,
he did not the less listen to the many influential voices
which whispered to him, that the peasant girl was
deluded, nay, perhaps, bewitched, and that she must be
tried by the holy Inquisition, before any compact could
be entered into with her. The very indifference with
which Charles always treated her, affords the noblest
refutation of the violent accusations advanced by the
English, who declared that the French had made use
of her as a mere puppet to instil enthusiasm into the
minds of the soldiery against the national foe. While
she herself was incessantly urging those around her to
adopt active measures, a small but powerful party at
court was indefatigable in trying to frustrate the whole
of her great scheme.

And such was probably from the first the object aimed
at when Charles sent her to Poitiers, in order that she
might be brought before a tribunal of doctors of
divinity. Certain it is that treacherous plots were laid
against her, but she triumphed over all these machinations
by the pertinent replies which she made to her judges,
in which she displayed an amount of sound common
sense which has not been sufticiently regarded in the
estimate of her character, but which affords a proof that,
in addition to her high mental excitement, her mind
possessed a strong practical bias. Her examiners
naturally made inquiries regarding her visions. One of
the pious and learned fathers, who spoke with the strong
provincial dialect of the Limousin, had the simplicity to

AA2
356 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

ask in what language the saints conversed with her ; on
which Jeanne replied, “ In a better mode of speech than
your own.” “Dost thou believe in God?” demanded
another of her judges ; on which she returned the answer,
“Yes, and perhaps more than you do: ” and whena third
asked still more unnecessarily, “ Why shouldst thou need
soldiers if these voices have announced to thee that God
will release France?” she rejoined with equal prompti-
tude, “The soldiers must fight, but it is God who gives
the victory.” The reverend doctors were, however, pro-
bably more surprised and touched than convinced, when
they gave it*as their opinion that she was a weak and
simple girl, who was manifestly moved by divine inspira-
tion, and that she should be allowed to go to Orleans.
When she had sustained an examination with a similar
result before the Queen of Sicily, the mother-in-law of
the Dauphin, and other noble ladies, and all had been
unanimous in their praise of this pure and innocent
creature, she was finally allowed, after a month’s time, to
carry out her project. Charles himself gave her, at her
own request, a complete suit of steel armour, and the
Duke of Alengon presented her with a horse. Her stan-
dard was prepared in accordance with her own directions,
and kore upon a white ground, sprinkled with golden
lies, a figure of the Saviour standing on the globe, and
having two angels praying at his side, the whole being
surmounted by the words, “ Jhesus. Maria.” A discovery
has lately been made of the account of the twenty-five
, livres which were paid to the artist who executed the
painting. A sword had been brought for her, at her re-
quest, from the Chapel of St. Catherine, at Fierbois,
where she had once paid her vows when on her journey,
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 357

and where she had seen the weapon on the monument of ©
a knight. At the same time she received a fixed retinue
similar to that of a general or other military commander,
for she was attended by both her faithful knights, several
pages, a chaplain, and, as esquires, by two of her bro-
thers, who had come, to her unspeakable joy, to assure
her of her parents’ forgiveness and blessing, and to whose
protection the lowly girl could more securely trust than
to that of any other men. With this array she now
entered Blois, where a small army had been collected
together, with which an attempt was to be made to
rescue the city of Orleans.

With what surprise was she regarded when she
entered armed cap-a-pie, and showed that she was able
after a little practice to wield her weapons with skill! It
was only during the first few nights that she passed in
her armour that she felt as if the weight of her coat-of-
mail would stifle her, and she rose on the following
mornings thoroughly exhausted ; but her robust frame and
habit speedily enabled her to tolerate the burden. More
difficult, in the meanwhile, was it for her to endure the
rudeness of a camp life; but here again she was nobly
supported by brave men, and by her own example she
stimulated others> not only to fight, but also to pray
and to confess. Thus a spirit of religious enthusiasm
gradually found place in the camp, although Jeanne had
still frequently to complain of the excessive cursing and
swearing of the men. It is, indeed, remarkable that she
herself should have fallen into this knightly failing ; for
when she had for some time heard those about her
swearing, some by heaven and by hell, and others by
their ladies, and some still more egotistically by their own
358 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

beards, she fell into the habit, whenever she was in
a passion, of making use of the asseveration of “ Par
mon Martin!” Martin being the name which she gave
to her baton of command.

The opposite party at court gave her only too fre-
quently occasion for such outbursts of passionate and
righteous indignation. Instead of pressing on into the
city, and forcing a passage through the entrenchments
of the English as she recommended, they crossed to the
southern bank of the river. She was therefore obliged,
in company with the valiant Count Dunois, to approach
Orleans by boat, on the 29th of April, under the fire of
the enemy’s guns. The exhausted garrison was made
aware of her appearance by a spirited and threatening
letter, in which she communicated to the English her
approach. It is scarcely necessary to give a detailed
report of the entrance of the armed maiden-warrior, and
of that first achievement of hers, which fell upon the de-
pressed spirits of her countrymen like an electric spark,
rousing them at once to sudden action. In one short
week—in which she inspired all who fought on her side
with the most enthusiastic and devoted respect, by
her humble and meek devotion at church, her sen-
sible advice at the council, and her heroism during the
assault upon the enemy’s lines—the freedom of Orleans
was achieved. On the 8th of May, the English hastily
raised the siege. The first charge in her heavenly
mission had therefore been fulfilled, and the national
desire for liberty was unloosened, and now burst forth
like water that has broken the dam that opposed its
course. The heroine, who had wept like a timid girl
when first she saw her own blood flow, after she was

2

*
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 359

struck by an arrow, must have seemed to her country-:
men like an angel from heaven, when she appeared in
the midst of the smoke, or wherever showers of arrows
were falling the thickest, equipped in a coat of mail, with
a helmet on her head, and holding the sacred standard
in her hand; while the English, at whom she hurled
defiance from the walls, and who encountered her bright
and gleaming form in the thickest of the fight, declared,
with equal sincerity of conviction, that she must be the
offspring of hell, a limb of Satan, or some devilish witch;
for the consciousness of victory which she had so fiercely
wrung from the foes of France, she had restored to her
own countrymen.

Her voices in the meanwhile constantly urged her for-
ward to her next charge. But at court, where she had
indeed been received with acclamations after her first
deed of heroism, she had again to contend with the
procrastination of the prince, and the evil thoughts of
those proud unbending nobles, who entertained nearly as
bad an opinion of her as her enemies, and who saw in
her origin, and in that rising of the lower classes,
which had been effected through her means, a worse
danger to the kingdom than the rule of foreigners could
have brought upon it. But she alone knew no fear.
Once when the council had assembled, she knocked at
the door of the hall, and entering, threw herself at the
feet of the prince, exclaiming, “ Noble Dauphin, delibe-
rate no longer, but prepare with all speed to go to
Rheims, where your crown awaits you.” The young
Duke of Alengon was again the one who entered more
fully than others into her schemes, and he readily asso-
ciated himself with her. She accompanied him when
360 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

he went to take leave of the duchess: and when the
latter entreated her with tender earnestness to watch
over her husband, she answered with knightly assurance,
“Fear nothing, madam, I will bring him back to you
‘in health and safety, so that you shall have cause to
rejoice.” Great was her joy when she found herself
again mounted on horseback, and following the banks of
the Loire, where she drove the foe from their last strong-
holds!) Two young nobles, named Laval, who had
joined the banners of the duke, wrote to inform their
mother of their delight when first they met the maiden.
“ When we visited her in her quarters,’’ they said, “she
ordered wine to be brought, and expressed the hope that
ere long we might pledge each other at Paris. ... But
how can we describe to you her heavenly countenance !
we found her fully equipped in bright steel armour,
having only her head bare, and holding a small battle-
axe in her hand. A large black charger stood before the
door, impetuously pawing the ground, and would not
suffer her to mount; but when she ordered him to be led
past the cross by the church, he stood motionless, so
that she was able to get into the saddle. When she was
mounted, she said with quite a womanly tone, ‘ Priests,
pray for us! and now, soldiers, forward!’” And thus
her band of followers rode forth, following her standard,
under which another fierce day’s fight was won on the
11th of June. The assault of the castle of J: argeau
may indeed be characterised as the crowning glory of
her heroism. “ Let the trumpets sound, and forward,
noble duke, in God’s name!” she cried to Alencon, as
she made her way by his side up the wall. “Fear not;
have I not promised the duchess to lead you home in
TUE MAID OF ORLEANS. 861

health and safety?” Even when she was struck by a
powerful stone ball, and thrown violently back into the
moat, amid the joyful shouts of defiance of the enemy,
she instantly sprang to her feet, and rushed forward with
the words, “Up, friends! up! the Lord hath cursed the
English, and given them even this very day into our
hands!” and, indeed, from that moment the victory was
decided. Such confident assurance as this could not fail
to lead to success. One day at Patay, when she found
herself near a strong detachment of the enemy, com-
manded by the much dreaded Lord Talbot, she suddenly
asked the knights around her, “whether the men had
good spurs?” “That they may the better get out of the
way?” was asked in return. “No!” she exclaimed,
“Tt is not of you I speak, but of the English, who
will not keep their ground; but, we shall indeed
need good spurs to follow them!”’ She was again in
the right. The English, for the first time after many
years, suffered a defeat in the open field, when their
bravest leaders were taken prisoners. The princes and
commanders who were with Jeanne could not sufficiently
admire the skill she displayed in arranging the troops
and artillery; while they acknowledged the certainty
with which victory followed her enthusiastic appeals to
the troops.

Now, however, she was to return once more to Or-
leans, for the Dauphin had not yet begun his journey:
his delay being obviously due to the evil influence of
La Trémouille, who endeavoured in every way to de-
preciate her triumphs, even after she had begun victori-
ously to clear the roads to Rheims from his enemies. It
was owing to his advice that several weeks were allowed
362 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

to pass in inactivity. But at this time the name of this
heroic maiden was beginning to be bruited abroad
throughout the world, and it is to this period that the
first authentic records belong which we still possess
regarding her. Jean Charlier de Gerson, the renowned
old doctor of the Council of Constance, in his last work,
which was composed when he was on the very brink of
the grave, said of her, “The grace of God has been
manifested in the maiden.” In Germany all men
watched the progress of her career with interest. The
university of Cologne was divided into two parties, one
of which took part with her, and the other against her.
An ecclesiastic at Spires named her, as Shakspere has
also done, the Nibyl of France, and compared her to the
sibyls of ancient days. There is still in the royal
library at Munich a report, which had been drawn up
by order of the Emperor Sigismund, of the marvellous
events that had happened in France; and at the annual
market at Ratisbon there was displayed in the year
1429 a picture of the Maid of Orleans.

All obstacles were at length removed, and finally, in the
month of July, the royal progress to Rheims was effected
without much danger, and without being farther retarded
by waiting for the fall of Troyes. We may spare our
readers the description of the anointing and crowning of
King Charles within the same sacred precincts, where for
centuries past his ancestors had received the crown and
sceptre. Jeanne stood near the prince, holding her stan-
dard in her hand; but, at the close of the Ze Deum, she
threw herself at his feet, and, in the midst of tears of
joy, exclaimed, ‘“‘ Now the will of God is accomplished
which commanded me to relieve Orleans, and to lead you
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 363

to your coronation!” This day of her greatest happiness
derived additional value from the presence of her aged
father, who had come to Rheims for the sake of seeing his
king and his child, and who, as we learn from accounts still
extant, was treated as the honoured guest of the city.
In almost all the books that have been written on
Jeanne Darc—and there are hundreds of them—it is
asserted, that after the coronation she demanded leave to
retire, because her mission was now completed, but that
Charles retained her against her will; and that ever
afterwards she was deserted by her voices and by her
former good fortune. This is one of the many legendary
errors that have been interwoven into her marvellous
history. Had she ever really expressed this wish, she
would not have been prevented by the court party from
returning home. We, however, possess abundant testi-
mony of the fallacy of this assertion. She announced
to the English regent, in a threatening letter, that she
was come to drive himself and his countrymen from
France; and the Duke of Alengon afterwards declared
upon his oath, that she had considered it as her mission
to relieve Orleans, conduct the Dauphin to his corona-
tion, drive the English out of the country, and liberate
Charles of Orleans from his captivity. She remained
the same to the last; and if fortune at length departed
from her, and if the enthusiasm which had been kindled
by this heroic maiden was no longer attended by the
same results as at first, this was rather to be ascribed
to the evil counsels of those to whom the king gave his
confidence. Fearless as before, but not, as she herself
once said, unsuspicious of treachery, she continued her
earnest pleadings, till at last an advance was made
364 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

against Paris. A fierce encounter took place in the
suburbs, during which she showed her old spirit, not-
withstanding that she was suffering from a severe
wound. A secret understanding had already been en-
tered into with many of the inhabitants, who longed for the
return of their hereditary rulers, and there was, moreover,
every prospect that the foreign yoke would be finally
shaken off, when the command was given to return to
the Loire. We may conceive the grief of Jeanne, whose
only thought was the complete liberation of her native
land, when she saw herself thus maliciously thwarted in
her valiant enterprise. Even when Alencon offered, in
conjunction with her, to attack the English in Nor-
mandy, the proposal was not accepted. And, with the
exception of some slight skirmishes, the winter passed
in complete inactivity. The patent of nobility which
Charles VII. gave her as a Christmas gift, in acknow-
ledgment of her great services, scarcely afforded her
any pleasure, for she herself never bore the proud arms
that had been awarded to her, and which represented a
crown supported on the point of a sword between two
fleurs-de-lis or.

This inactivity appeared inexpressibly wearisome to
her; and having at length begun to doubt the goodwill
of her sovereign, she set forth in the spring of 1430,
with a handful of men, without taking leave of any
one, confident that wherever she appeared the French
would join her ranks, and stand by her in her contest
with the enemy. On her march, she learnt that the
Burgundians were again laying siege to the town of
Compiégne, which had been taken in the previous
autumn, and she immediately determined to hasten to
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 365

the aid of the besieged, since the smallness of her num-
bers gave her no uneasiness. In the night between the
22d and the 23d of May, she broke through the enemy’s
lines, and threw herself into the city. As soon as it
was morning, she called the garrison under arms,
addressed them in fiery words, and then made a sortie
at their head with such impetuosity that the Anglo-Bur-
gundian division at once began to waver. The prepon-
derance of their numbers was, however, too great; and,
as one detachment yielded, fresh supplies of troops came
on from every side, and she was in danger of being sur-
rounded and cut down. Yet she covered the retreat
with heroic fortitude, and was the last to tum her back
on the foe. The men had almost all crossed the draw-
bridge, when an archer boldly sprang towards her, and
seizing the end of her coat, dragged her from the
saddle.’ The Knight of Wandonne caught her as she
fell powerless to the ground, before a sortie from the
castle had time to come to her rescue—and she was a
prisoner. Fortune had fled from her, never to return!
With the speed of lightning the tidings of this event
sped through the country. The English rejoiced, and
all France was plunged in the deepest sorrow. If
Charles VIJ. had possessed manliness enough to feel
gratitude to the woman to whom he was indebted for
his crown and almost his life, he would have broken
through the trammels with which others had surrounded
him, and roused himself from his listless inactivity to
rescue her from her bonds; but he remained listless and
inactive on the banks of the Loire without making
the slightest effort for her rescue, while Jeanne was im-
patiently looking for help, and making vain attempts to
366 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

escape from the strict custody of the Count de Ligny,
to whose keeping she had been entrusted. As she had
fallen into the hands of Burgundians, she may, perhaps,
still have cherished hopes of meeting with a milder
fate. The worst, however, was still to come, as the
English had resolved to have her in their own power.
A few days after her capture, the Inquisition and the
university at Paris applied to Duke Philip to have the
Maid of Orleans given up to them, on the ground that
she was a witch and a heretic, and must therefore be
brought before an ecclesiastical tribunal. Soon after-
wards, the Bishop of Beauvais, who was known under
the by no means flattering appellation of ‘“ Pierre
Cauchon,” presented himself at the Burgundian court,
and was, in fact, the instrument through whom this
innocent and inspired creature was to be treacherously
and wickedly sacrificed. Although a Frenchman, the
bishop had devoted himself, body and soul, to the English,
from whom he hoped to obtain the vacant archbishopric
of Rouen. He declared that as the prisoner had been
seized within his diocese, it was his duty to conduct the
process against her; and when Jean de Ligny had
taken from the English government the blood-money
which had been raised in the subjected French provinces,
she was yielded up to him. We know that Jeanne, on
being told of the agreement by which she had been thus
sold to her enemies, threw herself from the tower of
Beaurevoir, and was taken up alive, but much injured.
In her confession she admitted that she had acted
against the counsel of her voices, and that she had thus
been guilty of a sin. But she knew what she had to -
expect from the English, and she was not deceived ;
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 367

for, when at the close of the year she was carried to
Rouen, a decree of King Henry VI. was published, in
which it was announced, that even if she should not
be found guilty of the charges advanced against her, it
was the royal will that she should be kept in custody.
We come now to the last tragical portion of this short
and wonderful history. We see a girl, scarcely nineteen
years of age, accused of heresy and witchcraft—the most
horrible crimes with which any one could be charged
in the Middle Ages—and this because she had done
greater deeds than were ever accomplished by any other
woman. Her case, moreover, was submitted to a high
ecclesiastical tribunal, consisting of more than sixty
members, many of whom, as, for instance, the canons
of Rouen, were good patriots, and could only be
induced through threats to take part in her trial. For
two months the sittings and her examinations were con-
tinued. From the dark and narrow dungeon, in which
she lay chained hand and foot, and where at night her
body was fastened to her bed by a long heavy chain,
she was dragged day by day before the stern assembly,
which held its meetings in the chapel of the castle.
The bishop who presided over the court, unrelentingly
refused her earnest entreaties to be allowed to attend
confession, and to hear mass. She was in future to be
regarded as a poor sinner, or even as a sorceress, who
had been led astray, and expelled from all commu-
nion with Christians. The present is not the place to
describe this horrible process in its full significance.
Let it suffice if we draw attention to the heroism which
this poor weak girl manifested in the season of her
extremest need, and which even exceeded her valour
368 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

in the field of battle. As she had not been allowed to
have an advocate to conduct her defence, this poor pea-
sant girl, who could neither read nor write, and who
trusted solely to her own good cause, her innocence, and
her clear understanding, was compelled to defend herself
before these highly learned doctors, who, in the estima-
tion of the world, were both wise and pious. She was
made to swear that she would speak only the truth ;
and this she did most willingly in reference to every-
thing that had befallen her from her childhood upwards.
It was only in regard to her manifestations, and to the
secret conversation which she had had with the Dauphin,
that she exhibited any reserve; but these things she
declared no human being should ever learn from her.
She was especially upbraided for having worn masculine
attire, and for having devoted herself to war, by which
the learned doctors declared that she had brought con-
tumely upon her own sex ; but even here all her answers
betrayed a touching purity. She declared that she had
always loved to carry her standard far better than to wield
a sword, which she had done to avoid the shedding
of blood ; and, as far as she remembered, she had never
slain any one. When, however, they retorted that she
had taken special delight in her masculine dress, she
tried, with diffidence and modest shame, to make them
understand that it was only in such attire as this that
she had felt herself safe, even in her prison, where she
dared not lay it aside for fear of her guard. She was
also tried, with an almost devilish art, by many insi-
dious questions; but the only answers which they elicited
were expressions which bore testimony to the most
spotless innocence, the purest faith, and the strictest
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 369

orthodoxy. Her tears, which had always flowed easily,
proved to all who saw her how entirely womanly and
maiden-like her nature still remained. After the sight
of the rack, with its instruments of torture, had failed
to move her—and after the poor girl had fallen into
a dangerous illness, induced by the terrible bodily and
mental suffering she had so long endured, but of which
she was cured by careful nursing to endure a yet more
terrible fate—she was condemned, on the ground that she
had been familiar with fairies, and had practised witch-
craft from her childhood, that she had led an immoral
life in her youth, and had with shameful effrontery
clothed herself in men’s attire, and wielded the sword;
and, lastly, that she had instigated the masses, through
satanic agency, to revolt against the established govern-
ment. A judgment of this kind could only be delivered
by distorting her words and by shameful lies and inven-
tions. There is not a syllable which can justify such
a sentence in the protocol which the tribunal drew up,
to their own shame, unconscious that it would enable
posterity to judge of the entire proceedings. The
judges did not even venture to condemn her to death ; for
when, on the 24th of May, the sentence was proclaimed
in the public streets of Rouen, before the assembled
population, the poor and heavily-tried victim was in-
duced to recant on being brought face to face with her
executioner, and his horrible instruments of torture.
Weakened by the many endless torments which she
had endured, and almost stupified, moreover, by the
effect of the fresh spring air after her long confinement,
she answered with a wild, vacant, and smiling face,
“Yes!”? when she was asked if she concurred in what
BB
370 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

was stated in the paper that was read to her. Her long
hair was then cut off, she was dressed in women’s clothes,
and the sentence was read which condemned her to cap-
tivity for life.

Her ultimate release was, however, near at hand.
After a few days it was noised abroad that she had
relapsed into heresy. Some persons had brought the
dress she formerly wore and laid it by her, and to avoid
the rudeness of her guards, and also, it was said, to pro-
tect herself from an English nobleman, she again put it
on. Her Spiritual Manifestations, according to her fre-
quent and open admission, had not left her either, and
with a heroic determination to meet death she firmly
declared that she knew nothing of that which was
contained in the formula of her recantation. In the
eyes of her judges nothing more was, therefore, now
needed than the confirmation of the first sentence. On
Wednesday, the 30th of May, the old market at Rouen
was densely crowded before eight o’clock in the morning,
by all classes of the citizens, including the high eccle-
siastical tribunal, and the members of the English court
and government. The condemned had at length been
permitted to confess, and to receive the last consolatory
offices of religion. When these were completed she
entered upon her last and terrible journey, accompanied
by several tender-hearted priests. To these sympathising
friends she freely confessed that a death by fire terrified
her beyond measure, and that she would far rather have
lost her head on the block. She also asked them,
“Where do you think that I shall be this evening?”
“My daughter,” replied one of her reverend companions,
“dost thou not believe in God?” “ Most assuredly!”
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 371

she answered, ‘and I have full confidence that He will
receive me into His paradise.” Clad in long white gar-
ments, and loaded with chains, the pale and girlish-
looking victim stood once more before her judges to
receive their final judgment. Then she fell upon her
knees, and with scalding tears declared that she still
adhered to the truth of all she had said. At her request
a little cross was handed to her, which an English
soldier had expeditiously put together from the frag-
ments of a broken staff. When she was fastened to the
stake, and the flames were beginning to rise towards
her, she made a gesture with her hand to the pious monk
who had refused to leave her side, beckoning to him to
retreat from the heat of the fire. No sound was heard
to escape from her lips save the words, “ Maria, Jesus!”’
and then in a few moments all was over. When the
fire was extinguished nothing was found but a heap of
ashes, in which some persisted that they could still
trace the once brave heart. All that remained of the
poor victim was then speedily cast into the deep river,
when the executioner himself declared that she, whose
life he had destroyed, was in truth a meek and holy
saint.

Thus ended the life of the Maid of Orleans—a creature
as noble and pure-minded as any that the Church has
ever canonized. Her foes had, indeed, satiated their
vengeance in her death, but they could never again
check the progress of the work which she had accom-
plished. It was she who gave the first impulse to the
liberation of her king and country, and her life had now
been sacrificed for both. It was not till years afterwards,
when the English were driven from the soil of France,

BB2
372 THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

that Charles VII., who had been so deeply implicated
in the catastrophe of her death, but who had never raised
a hand to help her, was impelled by the voice of public
opinion to rescue her honour from the obloquy that
had been cast upon it. In the year 1455 a process was
tried, with the consent of Pope Calixtus IIL, and at the
earnest request of the mother and brothers of Joan, to
re-establish her fair fame, when all the witnesses who
still survived were called upon to give their evidence, and
the earlier sentence was reversed as contrary to justice.
Theactsand documents connected with these two processes
are still extant, and in the eyes of the historian they must
ever constitute the noblest justification of Joan Dare.
The short account that we have here given of her life
has been derived from a very small portion of the ines-
timable collection, which has only of late years been
published in a complete form. When France had
recovered her freedom, monuments were raised at Orleans
and Rouen, and festivals instituted in honour of the
national heroine. But now, when after the course of
ages many direct traditions have either been lost or fal-
sified, when—after Voltaire, in the eighteenth century,
ventured uncondemned to vilify, with his revolting and
prurient misrepresentations, the memory of the purest
heroine of past times—and after the revolution had con-
demned her, together with everything appertaining to
the idea of royalty, it has been reserved for the present
age to comprehend her in her truthfulness and greatness,
and again to seek to award to her the homage and the
respect to which she is entitled. May France ever con-
tinue proud of the honour of ranking among the chiefest
of her daughters Jeanne Darc, THE Map oF OrLzEans!
XI.

DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

A FRAGMENT FROM THE LIFE OF A PRINCE IN THE FIFTEENTH
CENTURY.

Amone the sons of Edward III., all of whom were
endowed with sufficient talent and ambition for attaining
notoriety, not the least distinguished was the third in
point of age, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. His
great wealth and the possession of a degree of cultivation
not common in his day rivetted the attention of his con-
temporaries. As the son-in-law of Peter the Cruel of
Castile, he had laid claim to the crown that had been
wrested from his father-in-law by a usurper, and had even
attempted to defend it by force of arms. In the great
and important events which occurred in the parliament
of his own country he was regarded as the head of a
special party; and while Chaucer, the first great English
poet, rejoiced in his patronage, Wiclif, the earliest
British reformer, endeavoured, not unsuccessfully, to
secure protection under his powerful arm. In the midst
of an age which was deeply stirred in every sphere of
legislative and intellectual life, we find John of Gaunt
taking an active share in all the great questions of his
times.
374 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

As is so frequently the case, the grandson had in-
herited more of the spirit and qualities of his grandsire
than of his immediate parent, although perhaps not
entirely without being influenced by a later generation.
We know that John’s only legitimate son, Henry, did not
entirely follow in the footsteps of his father; for he early
placed himself at the head of the opposition against
Richard IL, and his careless and easy rule both in
regard to church and state, and the idea which he formed
of elevating himself to the royal dignity, was brought to
a rapid and, in the estimation of many of his country-
men, a most undesirable realization. Henry IV. however,
founded a new dynasty; and while he suppressed the
fallen royal party with energy and sagacity, gave free
scope to the orthodox clergy, in order as far as possible
to eradicate all liberal evangelical tendencies, to which
his father, for a time at least, had shown a decided
leaning. We will here pass over his short though most
important rule, and without pausing to speak of his three
elder sons, who were all distinguished men, we will turn
to the fourth and youngest, who seems to us to present
a greater resemblance to John of Gaunt than any of the
other grandsons of the duke.

The future Henry IV. was simply Earl of Derby,
and had very probably never thought of bearing any
but a ducal coronet. He had recently taken a zealous
part in the first movement of the great barons against
King Richard JI.; and on the restoration of a more
peaceful state of things he had entered, in the year 1390,
upon a crusade, an undertaking for which this prince
seems to have shown a special inclination throughout his
life. At the head of a small and chosen band he had
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 375

set forth to take part with the Teutonic knights in Prussia
in a great expedition which they were going to send
against the heathen Lithuanians; and after the campaign
he had wintered at Danzic, where at the beginning of
the following year an English skipper brought him the
news that his countess Maria, the heiress of the great
Earl de Bohun, who had once been all-powerful on
the Welsh marshes, had shortly before presented him
with another son, who had received at the font the name
of Humphrey. Nine years later Henry became king of
England, and the throne was thus suddenly and unex-
pectedly supported by four promising heirs to the crown,
whose several pretensions were determined by special
acts of parliament, which were rendered necessary in
consequence of the violent interruption that had lately
disturbed the regular order of succession.

We hear little of Humphrey, the youngest of these
princes, until he reached his twenty-third year, and it is
only from subsequent events that we can draw any con-
clusions regarding the manner in which his youth was
spent. At this period, however, during the parliament
of the year 1414, his brother King Henry V. conferred
upon him the titles of Earl of Pembroke and Duke of
Gloucester; and under the latter name he took part in the
following year in the first campaign against France, and
was present at the glorious victory of Agincourt. It is
related that in the last terrible and decisive attack which
the English infantry—consisting of the valiant peasantry
of Lincoln and Derbyshire, who were only armed with
bows and battle-axes, and who fought under the leader-
ship of their heroic king—made against the mail-clad
knights of France, amounting to three times their
376 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

number, Duke Humphrey, like many other noble lords,
was wounded and struck down, and only saved from
death by his brother the king, who, fighting with the
courage of a lion, defended his body by standing with
his right leg across him.

After having taken part in the most brilliant feat of
arms of that age, Gloucester participated equally in many
other scarcely less memorable events of that victorious,
but unhappily too short reign. His wounds had long
been healed when, on the 30th of April in the year 1416,
he was called. upon, in his office of Constable of Dover
Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, to receive
with becoming state a guest of exalted rank. This distin-
guished visitor was Sigismund, King of the Romans and
King of Hungary, who had been intrusted by the high
council, then sitting at Constance, with full powers to
settle peace in the kingdoms of western Christendom, in
order that they might combine to put down the scandal
with which the schism in the pontifical court had filled
Europe, and after these disturbances had been allayed,
rise unanimous against the Mohammedan foes in the
east. The ship which bore the imperial visitor to
England had made the passage across the channel in five
hours. The standards and pennants at the mast head
were fluttering gaily in the breeze, the trumpets were
sounding, the knights of the neighbouring counties were
drawn up along the beach, well mounted and glittering
in their bright armour, when Prince Humphrey advanced
at the head of several noblemen and dignitaries of the
court towards the vessel which bore the successor of
Charlemagne. Spurring his horse into the water up to its
middle, and holding his drawn sword in his hand, the
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 377

Duke of Gloucester demanded of Sigismund, in the name
of his brother and king, that during his presence in
England he should not attempt to execute any act of
sovereign power or jurisdiction. It was only after Sigis-
mund had given a promise to this effect, which does not
seem to have been quite superfluous, considering the act
of which the King had lately been guilty at Paris, that
the foreign prince was permitted to set his foot on English
ground, or to receive the honours which were awaiting
his arrival, It is a singular circumstance that Duke
Humphrey should have had to take a similar marine ride
in the course of the same year; for when a conference
was arranged to be held in October between the two
kings, Sigismund and Henry, and Duke John of Bur-
gundy, at Calais, and the latter prince refused to agree
to the meeting unless hostages were given for his safety,
Gloucester was obliged to give himself up to the Bur-
gundians as a security for their duke during the con-
tinuance of the conference; the place selected for this
transfer being at the boundaries, which run through the
water at Gravelines. Humphrey seems also to have
accompanied the King of the Romans on his journey
home as far as Dort. In the campaign which was opened
in 1417, with even greater success against the French,
Gloucester was again near the person of his royal
brother. We do not, however, frequently hear of him
in the annals that have come down to us of those days,
and the history of the times records no valiant deeds in
battle, and no special act of valour on the part of this
Lancastrian prince. It would almost seem as if he had
temporarily withdrawn from the theatre of public affairs,
and already begun in his own home, and in secret, to enter
378 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

upon that course of intrigue which laid him open in
future years to just animadversion.

His brother, the victorious Henry V., the conqueror and
heir of France, had died prematurely, to the great sorrow
of the nation, on the 31st of August, 1422, and had left
his throne to an infant, mine months old, who, as Henry
VL., was de facto monarch of both countries. Gloucester
now showed himself in a two-fold character, and like his
grandfather during the minority of Richard II., he began
forcibly to interfere in the existing order of the State,
and like him he endeavoured to secure influence and
power by marriage, which in his case was made with a
foreigner. He had the misfortune of having allied him-
self to a woman who was the object of scandal both at
home and abroad, and it would almost appear as if she
had been selected by the prince for that very reason.

Jacqueline, or Jacobea of Bavaria, was the descendant
and heiress of Margaret, the Empress of Louis IV., and
possessed as herown patrimony the northern and southern
parts of the Netherlands, the counties of Holland,
and Hainault. Although only twenty-one years of age,
she had already been twice married. Her first husband,
John, the Dauphin of France, died soon after their mar-
riage; and her second husband, Duke John IV. of
Brabant, had been so grossly outraged by this passionate
and unprincipled woman, that, after a very few years, a
reconciliation between the two could no longer be thought
of. These matrimonial dissensions kindled into flame
many inflammable political elements, which had long
been smouldering in almost every part of the Nether-
lands. In Holland, where the emperor Sigismund had
refused to recognise Jacqueline on the ground, that as a
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 379

fief of the empire, this principality could not be held by
a woman, the country was threatened with complete
disorganization in the struggle between the two national
factions of the Hoeks and the Kabeljaus. The Duke
of Brabant adhered to the former of these, and his wife
to their rivals; but the duke had been instigated by his
shrewd cousin, Duke Philip of Burgundy, to refuse to give
up his claim to the management of his wife’s patrimony,
more especially in Hainault, although she had chosen to
leave him. Philip was well aware that a reconciliation
between this couple was no longer possible, and that
John of Brabant was an effeminate weak man, the very
last who would ever be likely to rouse himself to any
permanent exertion, and he, therefore, already foresaw
that all the dominions of the Netherlands would
necessarily revert within no very long period to him as
the lord of Flanders. In the meanwhile, Jacqueline,
on the strength of a bull of the deposed Pope Benedict
XIII., had divorced herself from her husband, and after
making fruitless attempts to reinstate herself in Holland
and Hainault, had turned to England for support. It
would appear that it was the knight Lewis Robessart, a
friend and confidant of the Duke of Gloucester, who, in
the year 1422, conducted her to thiscountry. Henry V.
made her a monthly allowance of £100 sterling during
her stay in England; and it is probable that she had
already become the wife of Gloucester, during the king’s
life-time, although no doubt without his knowledge.
There were very few persons even in England who con-
sidered her marriage with the Duke of Brabant as
illegal, on the ground of near consanguinity, or who
attached any weight to a bull that had been granted by
380 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

a pope who was only recognized in one small section of
Spain, and who had recently been deprived, in the most
solemn manner, by the Council of Constance, of his
assumed dignity.

This did not, however, prevent Duke Humphrey from
assuming the claims of his wife as his own, and as soon
as the infant Henry VI. was proclaimed king, he
endeavoured to enforce them by the help of his position
in England. Instead, therefore, of disinterestedly sup-
porting his elder brother, Duke John of Bedford, who
was contending with great sagacity and valour against
ever increasing difficulties, both at home and abroad, he
set up the most senseless opposition, both in the council
and in parliament; and trusting to the goodwill of the
great mass of the people, thwarted in every way those
who were striving vigorously and honestly to carry out the
policy of Henry IV. and Henry V. as the indispensable
means of upholding the reigning dynasty. Gloucester
was, moreover, at this time making a foolish attempt
against the Netherlands, by which he embroiled the
English government in France with the only important
ally whom they possessed. in the Low Countries. We
will now briefly consider the course of events that had
led to these results.

Henry V., on his deathbed, had entrusted to his elder
brother, John, Duke of Bedford, the regency of France,
together with a superintendence of the affairs of Eng-
land, while the young Duke of Gloucester was appointed
Protector. A few weeks afterwards these enactments
were ratified, and acquired the force of law at a sitting
of the English privy council, and hence it was made
evident that the actual power rested with this body. In
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 381

vain did Duke Humphrey, moved by ambition and an
eager love of power, rebel against this species of de-
pendence, urging that he had already, on previous occa-
sions, acted as his brother’s representative without being
subjected to any further supervision. He was equally
unsuccessful in his endeavours to secure the support of
parliament to the protests which he had presented at
the opening of the session, which took place a few days
later. The lords and commons were agreed that he
should not be proclaimed as governor or regent of the
kingdom, but that he should merely hold the title of
Protector and Defender of England, and that solely for
the time that his brother was occupied in France. They
made him clearly understand that he was by no means
the ext in succession to the crown, and that they were
thoroughly well acquainted with his designs. Bitter
was his indignation when he found that his powers
scarcely went beyond that of bearing the title of presi-
dent of the privy council, signing his name at the head
of the other members, and, at most, having the direction
of the royal parks, and the power of distributing the
patronage of the church as he liked.

It was from such fetters as these that he now tried to
emancipate himself by means of a foreign enterprise.
Gloucester and his restless consort, Jacqueline, left
England in the month of October, 1424, without the
concurrence of Bedford, or the knowledge of the English
council of state, and, at the head of 5,000 English
troops, they landed at Calais, and proceeded straight
through French Flanders to Hainault. In the month
of December the countess recovered possession of her
own patrimony, but she was only permitted for a short
382 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

time to enjoy her success. The Duke of Burgundy,
who was not idle, showed a strong inclination to go over
from the side of the English to that of their opponents,
and he induced the much-aggrieved Duke of Brabant to
enter into a treaty with him, the object of which was
to expel his faithless wife. Gloucester, however, in
accordance with the manners of the times, challenged
him to single combat, and on this occasion, strange to
say, his own brother, the Duke of Bedford, agreed to
act as umpire. We do not definitely see the motives
which could have induced Gloucester to return to
London in the spring of 1425, considering the dan-
gerous position of public affairs in Hainault. Contem-
poraneous narratives record that he was obliged to make
preparations and take various preliminary steps in anti-
cipation of the meditated duel, and they bear testimony
to the great tenderness with which he parted from
Jacqueline. We should rather conjecture that he had
grown heartily tired of her by that time, and that he
was especially anxious to promote his own intrigues at
home. He undertook nothing in earnest to avert the
catastrophe which he himself had been the means of
bringing upon the Netherlands. And thus the Bra-
banters threw themselves unchecked into Hainault,
blockaded Mons, and even as early as July constrained
the garrison to give up their royal mistress, and to
evacuate this stronghold. In the capitulation, which
was now drawn up, the countess was obliged to resign
herself to her fate, and remain quietly at Ghent, in the
safe keeping of Duke Philip of Burgundy, until the de-
cision of Pope Martin V., regarding her affairs, could
be obtained. The pontiff, however, anathematized her
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 383

last marriage with the English prince, while he objected
most strongly to the meditated duel. A few months
later the quarrel became even more complicated in con-
sequence of the escape of this eccentric princess from
her prison. She had succeeded in eluding the vigilance
of her guards, and disguised in male attire, had em-
barked in a vessel at Antwerp, and afterwards entered
Holland. She no sooner showed herself at the Hague,
than her adherents, the Hoeks, joyfully flocked around
her, while her opponents did not rest till they had
brought the Burgundians to their aid. For nearly three
years Jacqueline endeavoured, with ever-varying success,
to maintain this, her last province, against the powerful
forces of Duke Philip, by which she was surrounded on
every side. At first Gloucester afforded her some help,
for 500 Englishmen, under Lord Fitzwalter, undertook
to fight for her cause, but in time the pecuniary supplies,
which had hitherto been given in the name of Henry VI.
to his dear and well-beloved aunt, the Duchess of Glou-
cester, were more and more sparingly granted, and very
soon she is even spoken of in the grant under the far
less courteous appellation of the “Lady of Glou-
cester.”” At this time, when John of Brabant was
dead, and Duke Humphrey had long lost his interest in
Jacqueline and her concerns, the miserable policy of
England had come to a complete standstill in the Nether-
lands, and, in 1428, the countess was obliged, a second
time, to submit to the power of the Duke of Burgundy.
In the treaty which was signed on the 3rd of July, she
herself declares that she has never been the legal wife
of the English prince ; she pledges herself not to marry
again; and recognises Duke Philip as Ruwaert of
384 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

Holland during her life, and acknowledges him as the
heir, at her death, of all her possessions. Yet, notwith-
standing all this, the faithless woman broke her word
after a very few years, and, by throwing herself into
the arms of a nobleman of the country, named Jan van
Borselen, merely accelerated the termination of her
career. In the year 1433 she was compelled to surrender
all her states to Philip, after he had seized upon her
lover, and threatened him with the extreme penalty of
the law ; and on the 8th of October, 1436, her agitated
life was brought to an early close. This remarkable
princess presents some evil traits not unlike those which
distort the representations which have come down to us
of Mary Stuart. Yet it was for the sake of this woman
that Humphrey had suffered himself to be led so far
astray as to irritate an already wavering ally, and to
contribute, by his conduct, to give to the most powerful
vassal of the French crown an accession of power and
territory, by which he acquired a degree of political and
commercial independence, which proved of incalculable
detriment and significance in regard to England.
Without owning a foot of land either in Hainault or
Holland, the Lancastrian prince proudly named himself
Humphrey, by the grace of God, the son, brother, and
uncle of kings, Duke of Gloucester, Count of Hainault,
Holland, and Flanders, Earl of Pembroke, Lord of Fries-
land, Lord High Chamberlain of England, and Pro-
tector and Defender of the Anglican Church and Realm;
and, what is more, he made repeated attempts to sub-
stantiate his claims to these high-sounding titles. For a
long time, however, he had been restrained by a man
who stood in his way like a tower of strength. Cardinal
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 385

Beaufort, in accordance with Shakespeare’s striking
representation, has been generally considered as an
odious impersonation of monstrous avarice and bound-
less ambition ; and from this point of view he has been
regarded as the disturbing agent in all the party
struggles of those times. A glance at the historical
materials referring to that epoch is, on the contrary,
sufficient to show that this prelate maintained the
Lancastrian policy in a conservative and patriotic spirit,
while Gloucester was perpetually engaged in senseless
intrigues to undermine it. Henry Beaufort was the
second son of John of Gaunt, by Catherine Swinford,
who, after having been his mistress, became the third
wife of the duke, and he was consequently the uncle of
Gloucester and his brothers. He, like the rest of his
mother’s children, had been subsequently legitimatized,
although expressly excluded from all pretensions to the
crown. His wealth and distinguished position were
some compensation for this exclusion, for Henry had
been early advanced in the church, and his nomination
to the richly-endowed see of Winchester gave him para-
mount influence both in the church and state. He had
shown special predilection in former times for the then
Prince of Wales, who afterwards became Henry V., and
there is still a tradition in Oxford that the young prince
studied under his direction in Queen’s College; there
are also obscure indications that, in the differences which
had once existed between the light-hearted young
prince and his suffering and fretful father, Beaufort
took the part of his favourite nephew. Nor did Henry
pass him by in his will, for he expressly appointed him
as one of the guardians of his infant son; and, as a
cc
386 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

member of the privy council, Beaufort took part in the
settlement of all great questions, and was even for a
time invested with the dignity of chancellor. His
colossal fortune, which he understood admirably well
both how to manage and how to spend, and whose
augmentation seems, indeed, to have been the special
joy of his heart, was repeatedly placed by him at the
disposal of the government in their increasing embarrass-
ments. He had already advanced £30,000 sterling to
Henry V., and the regency speedily became indebted to
him for a similar sum. The proud bearing of the
prelate, his speculations, and his energetic conduct on
many occasions, raised against him, as may easily be
supposed, both detractors and enemies. As he was
often compelled to express himself depreciatingly in
reference to his nephew Gloucester, on account of his
ambitious views in regard to the government, his unca-
nonical union with Jacqueline, and his proceedings in
the Netherlands, it is not to be wondered that both
should have been violently opposed to one another, and
that each should have striven to secure supremacy for
himself. The bishop, like so many prelates of his day,
without being endowed by any actual spiritual dignity,
was gifted with much political foresight and talent, and
he consequently appears before us as the spokesman of
the nobles, who were almost all sincere adherents of
the Lancastrian party; while the duke, on the other
hand, who was not trusted by the upper classes, sought
adherents among the populace. Among his partizans
the most enthusiastic were the citizens of London, whom
he understood how to win over by his engaging conde-
scension, and by his arts of flattery.
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 387

While Humphrey was engaged in his expedition against
Hainault, Beaufort was for the second time invested
with the chancellorship. He availed himself of the
absence of his restless nephew to throw a strong and
trustworthy garrison into the Tower, hoping from
this streng point to be able to hold in check the unruly
spirits of the metropolis. Scarcely, however, had Glou-
cester made his sudden and unexpected reappearance
in England when the Londoners, with the lord mayor at
their head, took up arms in his cause. They did not,
indeed, venture to seize upon the Tower, but they crossed
the bridge, meaning to exercise their courage by an attack
on the bishop’s palace on the opposite bank of the river.
Beaufort, however, had not shown any remissness in
providing for their reception, for he had defended all the
approaches with knights and archers, and posted
sentinels in all the neighbouring houses. For a time
the contending parties maintained a threatening attitude,
and it was only after a prolonged mediation on the part of
the clergy that these eager combatants could be induced
to separate. The anger which possessed the minds of the
two princes was by no means allayed, as we see from a
letter which the Bishop of Winchester wrote to the Duke
of Bedford, who was then in France, and which bears
the date of the 30th October, 1425, the day after this
occurrence; for he begs him to hasten back to England
to settle their strife, lest the country should be plunged
into the horrors of a civil war. ‘Such a brother,” he
says, “ye have here; God make him a good man!”

However difficult it must have been to Bedford to
leave France in the grave circumstances in which thie
country was then placed, he did not long delay ; for

co2
388 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

if the English conquests abroad were to be maintained,
it was imperative to secure peace in England. The regent,
therefore, set forth in the beginning of the new year
for London, in order to effect a reconciliation between
Gloucester and Beaufort, and to dispose those disaffected
spirits to the prosecution of one great aim. His plan
was to endeavour, once for all, to bring his brother to a
better state of feeling before the matter was brought
before parliament. With this view, he drew up a special
commission under the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which
Gloucester was urged to explain his causes of dissatis-
faction with the chancellor, some days before the opening
of parliament. Gloucester preferred, however, laying
before the house his bill of accusation against his uncle,
but he soon perceived, to his no small vexation, that the
lords and commons did not hold the same views as
himself. Beaufort’s dignified conduct left him no alter-
native but to offer him his hand in pledge of amity,
saying, as he did so, ‘“‘ Fair uncle, since you so declare
yourself such a man as you say, I am right glad that it is
so, and for such I take you.” This was not said, however,
in full sincerity of heart. Bedford appears to have
remained a whole year in England, with the view of
allaying the differences which were already then begin-
ning to exert so injurious an influence on the position
of affairs in France. When, before his departure, he
voluntarily renewed the oath to maintain the regency
as it had been established during the minority of
Henry VI., his brother kept aloof from the meeting,
and by representing himself to be ill, endeavoured to
evade a similar pledge. And he said, moreover, loud
enough to be heard by all around him, “ Let my brother
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 389

govern as him lusteth, whiles he is in this land; after
his going over into France I will govern as me seemeth
good.”

The next few years, in which England reaped the
bitter fruits of this ambitious foolhardiness, made
apparent the dissensions that had been fomented by
Gloucester. Blow now followed rapidly upon blow.
The extraordinary achievements of the Maid of Orleaus,
the rising of the French against their foreign conquerors,
the untimely death of the Duke of Bedford, after this
brave man had made almost superhuman efforts to
counteract the troubles that were gathering round him,
and the open defection of Burgundy, were events which,
in less than twenty years, brought about the thorough
expulsion of the English from France. If we turn to
the consideration of the conduct which Duke Humphrey
pursued in relation to these matters, we shall find him
once more at variance with his uncle, the Bishop of Win-
chester, who was now elevated to the dignity of cardinal.
This new Romish title afforded sufficient grounds to
instigate the Commons against him; and the old
statutes against the encroachments of the pontifical
court were now revived, for the sake of removing this
English prelate from the privy council and from all
participation in the affairs of the government, at the
very time when he had raised troops at his own expense,
which, although they did not indeed fulfil the purpose
for which they were intended, and proceed to Bohemia
to fight against the Hussites, contributed not a little to
check the first energetic rising of the French under
Jeanne Dare. A charge of high treason was, in the
meanwhile, impending over the head of the cardinal,
390 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

who, however, again succeeded in averting the danger,
when he returned, with the young king, from the conti-
nent to England, where the increasing embarrassments of
the state led to his being welcomed, on account of his great
wealth, as a national benefactor in the hour of need.
We once more meet the Duke of Bedford in Eng-
land, and this time shortly before his death. He had
again come over to restore peace and quiet to the land;
but he was at the same time compelled to defend himself
against some spiteful accusations, which, without doubt,
emanated from Gloucester. Even then he would not
displace this disturber of the peace from the position
that had been granted to him; but he endeavoured to
put a stop to his injurious interference with the em-
barrassed finances of the state. With bitter vexation
Humphrey saw himself obliged to follow the noble
example of Bedford, when he voluntarily renounced his
allowance of £1,000; and he revenged himself upon
him by the most injurious and malevolent expressions
in regard to those measures which his brother had been
indefatigable in carrying out for the vigorous prosecution
of the war. It was not till after Bedford had been laid
in his grave at Rouen, that Gloucester, whose only
participation in the war had hitherto consisted in mere
talk, (im which he indulged, however, in the hope that
he might influence the minds of the multitude to his
own advantage,) again personally took part in any deed
of arms. The Burgundians advanced against Calais
in the year 1436, in the hope that they might boldly
wrest from the enemy this ancient and renowned
conquest of Edward III.; but at the very moment in
which they thought themselves secure of their conquest,
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 391

an English squadron appeared under the command of
the duke, who arrogantly assumed the title of Earl of
Flanders, and with all expedition the assailants made
off without even having drawn their swords against
their opponents. The English prince, however, did not
wait to gather fresh laurels on this occasion; for he
returned in haste to England, where we now find him
constantly pursuing the old and tortuous paths by which
he thought he might attain independent power. While the
cardinal stood firm and resolute at the head of his party,
who were striving to bring about a public accord and an
honourable peace with France, Gloucester was urgent for
war, without having ever seriously made any preparations
for it; and to his incessant intrigues must be ascribed the
ruin which, after its downfall in France, was now threa-
tening the rule of the house of Lancaster in England.

It happened, strangely enough, that, as in past years,
a woman was now again destined to exert a deep and
fatal influence on the life and history of Gloucester, and
to share in no inconsiderable degree in the strange cata-
strophe which we are about to describe. In the expe-
dition into Hainault, which took place in the year 1424,
there was, in the suite of the countess Jacqueline, a
young lady, named Eleonor Cobham, the daughter of
Reginald Lord Cobham, of Sterborough. We do not
hear that her charms were especially attractive, and her
reputation was certainly none of the best, even at that
time. In June, 1425, she returned to England with
Duke Humphrey, and it was very soon no secret in
London that she was living with him as his mistress.
Not long afterwards, however, he married her; indifferent
to the fact that his union with Jacqueline had been hal-
392 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

lowed by a priest’s blessing. The Countess of Holland
was, at that time, faithlessly and obstinately contending
with her enemies. The marriage with Eleonor gave
rise, however, even among the partisans of the duke,
to loud expressions of discontent. It is related that,
on one occasion, a number of worthy London dames
carried a petition up to the house of lords, in order to
express to this highest tribunal of the land their sense
of the disgrace and infamy that attached to a prince of
the blood, who allowed his own wedded wite to remain
deserted in Holland, while he, contrary to God’s com-
mandment, had united himself to a person of evil repute.
But what availed such representations as these? It was
evident that Gloucester had a special inclination for ladies
of exceptional character; and his own volatility and want
of principle had long made him averse to a marriage
such as befitted his rank. His influence at court and
in the government was still strong enough to secure for
Eleonor the privilege of being acknowledged as his
wife. King Henry VI. treated her for years as such,
and sent gracious presents on the new year’s day “to
the Lady of Gloucester,” as she was now also called.
This Lady of Gloucester was, however, destined to
experience a most terrible reverse, and to bring upon
the duke irretrievable disgrace at the very moment
when he had begun to anticipate a successful issue to
the plans he had meditated against his hated uncle; for
the efforts to arrange a peace, in which the cardinal had
been engaged, and the liberation of the King of Scot-
land and Duke of Orleans from their English captivity,
would, he flattered himself, supply strong grounds for a
new charge of high treason against the prelate.
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 393

A charge of this kind was actually in contemplation,
and Gloucester was again appealing to the memory of
his renowned brother, Henry V., and trying by his
outcry for war to circumvent the policy of the cardinal,
when, in the year 1441, a report, entirely in harmony
with the feelings and spirit of the age, was spread in
regard to a strange proceeding, which speedily filled the
city and country with dismay and horror. Among the
many learned astrologers and adepts in the black arts,
with whom the Duke of Gloucester, in his insatiable
thirst for knowledge, took pleasure in associating,
there was a person named Roger Bolingbroke, who had
received the ordination of the church. This man was
now suddenly taken up on the serious charge of having,
in common with a companion and associate of his own,
endeavoured to compass the death of the king by incan-
tations and similar arts of sorcery. Two nights after
the Sunday, when the accused, in accordance with the
prescribed usage, had done penance at the pillory, the
Lady Eleonor suddenly escaped from her residence, and
took refuge in the sanctuary at the abbey, of West-
minster. It was then rumoured that she also was
deeply implicated in similar acts of high treason ; while
Bolingbroke forthwith confessed that he had been insti-
gated by her, to try and ascertain her future destiny, by
means of magical arts, for her husband and she stood
so near the throne, that she thought she might, perhaps,
ascertain, by means of supernatural powers, whether they
were destined themselves to occupy it. A sorceress,
known as the witch of Eye, was also taken up, who
had many years before been condemned on account of
similar unprincipled proceedings. This person was also
394 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

believed to have assisted the Lady of Gloucester in
ensnaring the duke, her husband, into her power by
means of philtres. This was probably the popular,
or rather the official interpretation of these extraordinary
revelations, and was intended, in some degree, to remove
from the duke the grave suspicion which must necessarily
otherwise have fallen upon him also. A tribunal, composed
of ecclesiastical and criminal judges, and organized after
the manner of an inquisition, charged her with having
caused an effigy of the king to be made in wax, and to
be exposed to the action of a slow fire, with many secret
ceremonies, (such as those which Horace describes, and
which were practised at many other places in the middle
ages,) in the idea that the bodily health of the king
might decay, as the wax melted. If we remember that
Henry VI. never attained a perfect state of develop-
ment, either of mind or body, and that he soon afterwards
sank into a state of imbecility ; and if, farther, we bear
in mind that in that age, when the physical sciences were
still in their infancy, the mysterious powers of nature
were appealed to by the weak and superstitious for the
elucidation of the secrets of the heart, as well as for the
pretended investigation of the future, we need not wonder
that such follies should have been punished with the
severest penalties awarded to high treason. The accom-
plices of the Lady Eleonor died a horrible death like
the commonest criminals; and although her life was
saved, out of respect to the duke, she was not suffered
to escape from doing penance, in a manner that was
alike humiliating to herself and to the man who had
made her his wife. The chronicles of the city of
London vie with one another in giving the most minute
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 395

description of the manner in which Eleonor Cobham
was brought one Monday morning in a barge from
Westminster to the Temple wharf, bare-headed and
bare-footed, clad in the white penance-sheet, and carry-
ing a burning torch in her hand. As soon as she
landed, she was received by the lord mayor and the
other civic authorities, and conducted up Fleet-street,
through the dense and gaping crowd, who followed the
strange procession to St. Paul’s church, where she
made her confession at the different altars, and extin-
guished her torch. On the Wednesday and Friday she
was led in a similar procession to the other churches of
the city, after which she was given in charge to Sir
Thomas Stanley, a tried knight, and the ancestor of a
distinguished noble family. The remainder of her life
was passed in the strict custody of this knight, first in
Chester castle, then at Kenilworth, and, lastly, in the
Isle of Man. Thenceforth she disappeared from the his-
tory of the life of the duke, who never recovered from
the disgrace which she had brought upon him, nor ever
fully rallied from this severe blow. How far he was
culpable in regard to Eleonor’s first participation in
these events it is difficult to determine from the materials
at our disposition ; but there are other, and, undoubtedly,
nobler features in his character, to which we shall pre-
sently refer, which lead us to conjecture that he was
implicated in these events.

In the meantime, however, the generation of men had
changed in England with the times ; and although Glou-
cester endeavoured to take advantage of the good will of
the populace, which he had not yet wholly lost, in order
to excite resistance against the national foe, he was as
396 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

much removed from the theatre of public affairs as the
aged Cardinal Beaufort. In the year 1444 the weak-
minded king had been married to Margaret of Anjou,
whose unbending and harsh spirit has left indelible
traces in the history of England. It was thought that

- by this marriage the way might be opened for an honour-
able peace with France. The Earl of Suffolk, who had
boldly taken upon himself to conclude the requisite
treaties, must be regarded as the prosecutor and con-
tinuer of the cardinal’s policy, and his government was
strictly based upon the hierarchico-aristocratic principles
of Henry V. We are ignorant of the individual details,
or the special reasons which influenced Suffolk and Queen
Margaret, whose youthful ambition for the first time
found scope for its aspirations, in making their rapid
and crushing attack upon Gloucester. But there is little
doubt that, in accordance with his nature, he had perse-
vered in his old intrigues; although, in this case, he
seems to have fallen unsuspiciously into the snare that
was laid for him.

On the 10th of February, 1447, a parliament was
summoned to meet in the spacious abbey of Bury St.
Edmunds, a favourite place of abode of the king. Duke
Humphrey did not arrive till the 18th, when he took up
his residence, with his not very numerous retinue, in the
hospitium for pilgrims. The distribution of troops
along the roads, and the strict watch that was kept over
all the approaches to the king’s place of residence,
should have warned him to be upon his guard, as some
one was undoubtedly aimed at by these precautions.
On the very day of his arrival, the Dukes of Somerset
and Buckingham, together with the constable, Lord
-

DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 397

Beaumont, came to his lodgings at noon, to arrest him
on a charge of high treason. All minds were anxiously
awaiting the trial, which was, without delay, to be
opened before the peers, when, on the afternoon of the
23d, he was found dead in his bed, on the door of his
closed apartment being broken open. The body showed
no signs of external injury, and the manner of his death
must ever remain a mystery.

Contemporaneous witnesses differ in the most remark-
able manner in regard to this point. Among Humphrey’s
adherents m London, the report was naturally spread
that he had been murdered; and some persons even de-
clared that he had been found smothered under feather-
beds, as had happened fifty years before in the case of
his great-uncle, a former Duke of Gloucester; whilst
others again affirmed that he had suffered the same
horrible death as the unfortunate Edward II. The violent”
mode of his arrest, and the resolute character of the
dreaded Suffolk, lent no slight degree of colouring to such
an assumption. It would seem, too, as if in accordance
with a preconceived purpose, which was verified by the
results, that on the same day—the 18th of February—
a considerable number of the dependents and servants
of the Duke of Gloucester were arrested on his estate at
Greenwich, and, by a summary proceeding, at once
brought to the very foot of the gallows. They were
accused of the serious crime of having audaciously
advanced, with arms in their hands, towards Bury St.
Edmunds, to dethrone the king, and place Humphrey of
Gloucester on the throne, and to liberate his wife,
Eleonor Cobham, from her prison. The circumstance
that the accused were pardoned, militates indeed against
398 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

the truth of the charge; nor must it be forgotten that
the duke undoubtedly fell into the snare that was laid
for him without suspecting the danger which he incurred ;
and that, moreover, he had not come direct from Green-
wich, but had arrived at Bury from his Wiltshire
stronghold of Devizes. The poor, weak-minded king con-
stantly persisted in declaring that his once loved uncle
had aimed at his life and crown, and he would never
permit parliament to clear the memory of the deceased
from these charges; nor was it without difficulty that
permission could be obtained to bury the body, in a
manner becoming its rank, in the abbey of St. Albans.
These circumstances do not, however, tend to prove
that the duke met with a violent death. Those who
were specially friendly to him, and who have handed
down to us the history of Prince Humphrey, whom they
style “the good” Duke of Gloucester—no doubt in con-
sequence of his affable demeanour to the citizens of
London, and of his resistance to the justly obnoxious
form of government as it then existed,—are all unanimous
in ascribing his rapid end to the grief and vexation
occasioned by the sudden and harsh mode of his arrest.
We possess, moreover, the testimony of another witness,
which, although indirect, appears to us definitely to clear
his opponents from the suspicion of murder. It is
doubly important, because it moreover throws a strong
light upon the whole character of this prince, in which
dark and bright traits are strangely blended together.
At the age of forty-five, and consequently eleven years
before his death, the duke requested his physician,
Gilbert Kymer (the same person who was afterwards
employed by the parliament to draw up a report of the
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 399

imbecility of Henry VI.), to examine the condition of
his bodily health, and to inform him of his opinion. It
was probably less from the fear of approaching death than
from that eagerness for knowledge which seems to have
attracted him alike to good and evil things, that the
duke was led to inquire into the character of the diagnosis,
which proved to be most alarming. We refrain from
giving the repulsive details of this report; suffice it to
remark that the physician, with true scientific percep-
tion, considering the time, had no dependence on the
health of his noble patient, as he found the internal
organs to have been thoroughly vitiated by immoderate
excesses, while his nerves had been injured by over-
excitement of mind and body. What an insight does this
afford us into the wild unbridled passions by which the
duke was swayed, and what a light does it throw upon
the tendencies and disposition of his mind! We scarcely
need any further testimony to show that so corrupt a
body might suddenly be stricken down under the effect
of a violent agitation of mind. Eleven years before his
death a wise physician had thus detected his condition,
although he probably was not able to secure attention to
the warning which he gave him. The portrait of this
prince, which has been preserved in a painted window of
the parish church of Greenwich, exhibits the features of
aman who has grown old and debilitated before his time.

It seems almost a contradiction if, after giving such
traits as these of the life of Gloucester, we were to close
our remarks with a few words of praise. Let us not
forget, however, that his foibles and errors closely verge
upon the most noble qualities. Even his pleasure in
alchemy and magic, as well as his desire to understand
400 DUKE HUMPIIREY OF GLOUCESTER.

the internal structure of his own body, had its origin in
a genuine scientific tendency, which was as vast and
unbounded as were his passions. In an age of change,
and of transition to a new and better state of things than
any that had hitherto been known, when we cease to
meet with the fantastic and rudely vigorous forms of the
middle ages, and have not yet begun to encounter the
daring spirit of modern times which seizes upon the
reality of things, the Duke of Gloucester stands forth,
almost alone in his own country, as a man whose aspira-
tions and conceptions carried him far beyond the age in
which he lived. Folly and genuine wisdom, superstition
and enlightenment, are all blended together in his mind,
In a work by Sir Thomas More, we meet with an
amusing account of the manner in which Duke Hum-
phrey, who had long ceased to believe in miracles and
legends, once, when he was at St. Alban’s—a place with
which he seems to have been often associated—unmasked
with sharp ridicule a begging impostor, who had pretended
that he had recovered his sight through the agency of
the relics. Like his grandfather, who had taken a sincere
pleasure in the friendship of the great poet Chaucer,
Gloucester was at all times ready to gather round him
all the poetical and inquiring spirits of England. Unlike
John of Gaunt, he lived moreover at the period of the
first dawn of a genuine classical learning, whose germs
had been fostered on the soil of antiquity, and whose
fresh shoots had been transplanted, more especially
through the agency of the council of Basle, into the
states that had sprung up in the north of Europe during
the middle ages. It would appear that there still exists
at Vienna a manuscript letter which was addressed by
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 401

Gloucester to this great assembly of the church. The genial
breath of Italian literature had, therefore, undoubtedly
reached him also; and, with all his characteristic pecu-
liarities, he must be regarded as one of the earliest culti-
vators of this learning in England. It is impossible to
say by what means he acquired this knowledge, and
whether it was due to his occasional residences in France
and the Netherlands, or whether this newly developed
mental taste had been engendered in his mind indepen-
dently of time and place. Certain it is that no soil could
have been found more ready for its reception than the
eager mind of the duke. But as it is everywhere diffi-
cult in a first crop to separate the weeds from the corn,
so we also find that the evils and vices of the school of
the Italian literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, are most prominently brought to view in this
remarkable scion of the house of Lancaster.

At the court, which he was wont to keep in his
character of Protector, in the metropolis, where he
lived at Baynard Castle on the river, or when he resided
without ceremony at one of his numerous country
houses, many people of foreign descent, of the strangest
character, and of very widely different worth, must have
met together. Here, for example, were some of those
ecclesiastics who, as we have seen, were cultivators of
the physical sciences, although physics and chemistry
were still included by them in the domain of the
black art and of sorcery. They must have lately heard
of those discoveries which are themselves sufficient to
mark an era, and by which those two phases of life,
peace and war, were destined to be completely metamor-
phosed, for they must have been familiar with the ex~

DD
402 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

periments and writings of their great and incomparable
countryman, Roger Bacon, who appears before us like
some English Faust of the thirteenth century, half as a
magician and half as a natural philosopher. This was
an age, too, in which successive governments granted
eagerly-demanded patents for the discovery of the philo-
sopher’s stone, which was to convert common materials
into precious gold. Men who entered into such pursuits
as these enjoyed the special favour of their exalted
patron, and appealed so openly to his protection that
their arts can scarcely have been carried to the length
of criminality without his participation.

He moreover gathered round him the few Englishmen
who possessed any literary reputation at that day; as,
for instance, John of Whethamstead, the abbot of St.
Alban’s, who, in his turgid and vapid Chronicle, speaks
with warmth of the prince, to whose memory he erected a
monument in his abbey, by the side of the proto-martyr
of England; and William Botoner, another historio-
grapher of the time, who, like a genuine son of that age,
occupied himself with chronological, heraldic, astrono-
mical, and even medical, investigations. We naturally,
also, meet with John Lydgate, the court-poet of those
days, a monk of the abbey of Bury St. Edmund’s,
who, without possessing the slightest approach to poeti-
cal talent, or a trace of Chaucer’s genius, nevertheless
poured forth a flood of verses, of which the greater num-
ber have, fortunately, never been printed, and which
were composed in the metrical form that had been
adopted by the poet of the Canterbury Tales. The
duke is said to have induced him to translate a book
of Boccaccio into English, and he received his full share
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 403

of the flatteries and adulation which Lydgate seems to
have had at hand on every occasion, whether public or
private. The duke’s ambition must have been fully
satisfied with the notice which he received in the enco-
mium on the coronation of Henry VI. at Paris, in which
the poet says :—
“Duce of Gloucester men this prince calle ;

And notwithstanding his state and dignyte,

His corage never doth appalle

To studie in booke of antiquite ;

Therein he hath so gret felicite

Vertuousli hymself to occupie

Off vinous slouth to have the maistrie.”

Lydgate, no doubt, begged with some success for “THis
empty purse,” when he sent this poem to Gloucester.

It was not, however, only the writings of the old
Florentine novelist that Duke Humphrey loved so well,
for he also extended a friendly welcome to the first
learned Italians who came to England, more especially
to a native of Forli, who had followed the practice, which
was by no means uncommon amongst his countrymen,
of adopting the name of some celebrated Roman classic,
and had styled himself Titus Livius. Although a poor
man, as he himself tells us, his love of travelling had
led him to wander forth in search of some princely pro-
tector, who would know how to esteem and reward his
talents. Such a patron he found in the Duke of Glou-
cester, by whom he was induced to write the life and
deeds of the renowned Henry V., and the work he com-
posed is by no means deficient in merit. Humphrey
rewarded the author by nominating him his court-poet
and orator, and he even induced the king to grant him
an act of naturalization in England, The duke also

DD2
404 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

stood in intimate relations with other more celebrated
Italian literati. There is a memorable notice on re-
cord that Leonardo Aretino, one of the ornaments of the
learned court of the old Cosmo de Medici, and a man
who was not only distinguished for the good Latin
which he wrote, but who also understood Greek, had
dedicated to the prince his translation of the “ Politics
of Aristotle.” This seems to have encouraged another
learned man, named Pietro Candido Decembrio, the sub-
sequent keeper of the archives of the erudite Pope
Nicholas V., to offer him a translation of a not less
celebrated work, the “ Republic of Plato.” The Arch-
bishop of Milan does not hesitate to enforce this request
by a warm recommendation ; while he flatters the duke
by comparing him with Julius Cesar and Augustus.
This interesting correspondence exists in a manuscript
form, together with other documents, at Munich and
Durham, where there are also preserved the answers
which Gloucester wrote from London and Penshurst, and
in which he expresses the lively satisfaction which it
has given him to hear of the impulse that had been im-
parted to literature, and of the zeal of many men who
were acquainted with Latin and Greek, while he accepts
the dedication with thanks ; and as Decembrio had only
sent him the five first books of the “Republic,” he begs, in
March, 1439, for the whole of the work, although the
individual portions were originally to have been dedicated
to different patrons of learning. The duke, as is re-
peatedly noticed, acted with a truly princely munificence
towards all these persons.

We also meet with abundant evidence that he was a
most zealous collector of books. Thus we find that the
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 405

heads of various rich monasteries, who were anxious to
secure his favour, frequently presented him with codices,
ornamented with finely illuminated portraits, on which
occasions he was accustomed to inscribe, on the fly-leaf
before the title, the words, Moun bien moundain— My
worldly goods!”” A manuscript work on the history of
Scotland, now in the British Museum, is not inscribed
with these words, but it contains a notice in French
which was very probably written by Gloucester himself,
designating the book as his property. The same is the case
with regard to a commentary on the book of Genesis,
which is preserved at Oxford, and is the work of the
well-known Augustine monk, John Capgrave, who was
well known as a historian and theologian, and who like-
wise stood on a friendly footing with Gloucester, and is
said to have written his life, which has unfortunately
not yet been recovered. It is probable that Poggio
Bracciolini, who, it is well known, came to England in
1420 in order to search for manuscripts of the classics,
stood even at that time on an intimate footing with
Gloucester, who may possibly have had business trans-
actions with him in regard to the purchase of books.

The old register of the University of Oxford contains
an entry, in the year 1443, to the effect that the duke
had made a bequest to the university of a library of
135 volumes. It is to be regretted that no catalogue of
this collection has come down to us, as it would have
afforded us a deeper insight into the mental activity of
the prince, as well as into the composition of a princely
library, which, although the art of printing had been
recently discovered, must have consisted only of manu-
scripts.
406 DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER.

It is gratifying, after having spoken with so much
blame of the life of the Duke of Gloucester, which was
ruined by ambition and passion, to be able to add a few
words of praise. But even his patronage of learning,
and his effort to foster a taste for literature, do not
entitle him to the appellation of the “ good” duke, a
designation which he probably owed only to political
party-feelings. The weak and evil side of this re-
vived form of literature is, that its disciples should have
elevated the morality, or rather the immorality, of
classical antiquity above Christian discipline and virtue.
In Duke Humphrey’s life there was, indeed, no question
of morality, and still less of religion. The voice of
Wiclif and of his preachers, which had called upon men
in the words of the Gospel to renounce the evil of their
ways, had been stifled in the flames at the stake; and
the Duke, who occasionally also took part in these per-
secutions against heretics, lived in an age when the high
clergy ventured, unchecked and careless of the salvation
of their own souls and that of others, to lead a godless
and God-forgetting life, and when pontiffs and prelates,
and other high dignitaries of the Church, even if they
strove to attain to a nobler culture, could only learn to
believe and to think, as the old heathens of Athens
and Rome had in their day believed and thought. Is it,
then, much to be wondered at if, among so many
examples, Duke Humphrey should have thought that he
might more readily than others attain the power at which
he aimed by putting his trust in Plato and Aristotle,
or that he should have caused the life of his brother to
be written from similar motives, and that even in his
nobler aspirations he should not have remained free
DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. 407

from intense vanity? His want of moral retinence
finally urged his love of knowledge and his thirst for
inquiry into evil and destructive paths; and it would
seem as if the results were very nearly analogous to
those which we see exemplified in the German knight
Ulrich von Hutten, a more trustworthy and a bolder
champion of the same mental tendencies.
XIL
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

Paris may justly boast of having been, during the
middle ages, a representative of ancient Rome, among the
nations which ruled the destinies of the world, and of
having been, both in a spiritual, intellectual, and poli-
tical sense, the metropolis and the central point from
whence emanated the streams of public vitality. The
powerful impulse and enthusiasm of the Crusades met
with the most efficient protection at the court of the
French kings. The University of Paris had, moreover,
become conspicuous as the first in Western Christen-
dom in respect to all those departments of knowledge
which mankind had then mastered ; while even in these
days the Parisians gave the tone in regard to art, taste,
elegance of deportment, and good as well as evil habits,
which was at once followed by all nations of Roman
and Germanic origin. In regard to magnitude, wealth,
and beauty, this city, for a time, undoubtedly far sur-
passed all others north of the Alps.

In some of these qualifications Paris, however, had
very early a rival, who, moreover, was possessed of many
other admirable advantages, which enabled her speedily
to dispute the supremacy in regard to several points.
For if London did not, like Paris, constantly attract the
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 409

eyes of the world to herself in the march of political and
civil progress, this must rather be referred to her in-
sular position. But it was precisely to this cause that
we must attribute many of the enormous advantages
which London possessed in other respects. Situated in
an island, which nature has endowed with inexhaustible
means of self-help, the city rose on the banks of a wide
stream, and not too far from its mouth to be entirely
deprived of the whole force of the ever-persistent
recurrence of the tides. On either side of the stream rise
a succession of hills, in gentle undulating lines, along
which the river-bed of a former age, many miles in
width, may still be traced, which are not of sufficient
elevation to place an impassable barrier against the
immense increase of this the largest city of the world,
and which, on-the contrary, have contributed, like the
river, both in ancient and in modern times, to influence
the character of London. There was scarcely another
spot upon the earth which could have constituted a more
favourably placed intermediate station of intercommu-
nication, when Northern Europe became incorporated
into the universal body of European policy, while it
still maintains its rank, although America and the
Australasian continent are now added to the rest of the
known world.

It is natural that the different races from which the
English nation has been developed in the course of ages,
should have more or less deeply impressed the mark of
their presence on London, which is, in fact, England.
Its connexion with the ancient Britons is, indeed, a
mere matter of mythical fable; and, according to this
tradition, the names London, Caer-lud, and Ludgate
410 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

are said to perpetuate the memory of one of these
mythical kings, who trace their origin through Brutus
to Troy, and even amongst the first known English
poets, London is named the new Troy. More modern
writers would refer the name to the Welsh, in which it
is pretended to signify the city of ships; while they try
to recognise in the Tower the ancient seat of a prince
of the Trinobantes, and in many very remarkable
remains the traces of the presence of the first British
population. This much only is certain, from the unques-
tionable testimony of Tacitus, that the Romans, when
they had begun to examine more closely the condition
of England, discovered a considerable commercial town
on the north side of the Thames, to which many mer-
chants from different countries resorted for purposes of
trade. This admirably-placed town was rebuilt by the
Romans after a general fire, received a Roman name,
and acquired the various establishments and modes of
organization, in respect to which the Roman colonies
strove to vie with the mother city. There are many
places in London where, even at the present day, Roman
pavements, ancient mosaic floors, and similar memorials
of art, have been discovered fifteen feet below the sur-
face; and not only the hill of St. Paul’s, but many
other consecrated spots, must have served as a place of
burial in heathen as well as in early Christian times, as
is proved by the numerous urns that have been exca-
vated at these points. As similar remains have been
found on the opposite side of the river, a wide bridge
may very likely have connected both shores at the time
of the Romans. The old Roman walls which once
surrounded the city as in a quadrangle, and its four
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 41}

principal gates, may even now be approximately traced ;
for many well-preserved bricks indicate the direction
of the one, and the locality of the other.

This early magnificence was miserably destroyed in
the barbaric turmoils of the fifth and sixth centuries.
The Saxons, who were accustomed to their fields and
woods, avoided the city, whose walls for centuries
seemed to have defied both wind and weather, and to
have resisted the attacks of fierce enemies of every kind.
Only one solitary speck of light is visible in the midst
of the darkness, where a bishop's see, the church of St.
Paul, arose from amid the ruins of a temple of Diana,
on the highest elevation of the city; while two or three
miles higher up the stream, in the midst of a small
island, overgrown with thorns, where once an image of
Apollo had stood, a pious king of Essex erected an abbey,
and dedicated it to St. Peter. Of London in the Saxon
times there is scarcely anything to relate; for when
Alfred rebuilt the city, after the fearful devastation of
the Danes, the restoration was undoubtedly effected
with Roman materials, and in accordance with the
ancient ground-plan, which is not yet wholly effaced.
It is only towards the close of the tenth century that
we again meet with indications that the natural position
of the place as a mercantile city had preserved its
original character. Even in the midst of those terrible
times, we find foreign merchants—most probably Ger-
mans, although, perhaps, also Scandinavians—main-
taining a regular and privileged intercourse with the
inhabitants. When the Danish freebooters turned their
eager eyes towards London, they were met by the
citizens, who defended themselves with valour and
412 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

success. It is probable that at that time these formid-
able enemies had attained a secure footing in South-
wark, where, for the sake of sailing round the bridge,
they dug a canal, the course of which could long after-
wards be traced; and where, finally, they settled peace-
fully down. St. Olave’s church and Tooley-street are
very remarkable memorials of the conversion of the
Scandinavians on English soil.

London, like the church and state, entered upon a
new phase of existence with William the Conqueror.
This city, like the rest of England, had been obliged
to submit to his yoke ; and was, as far as we know, for
a time subjected to the absolute power of its enemies.
In the east, where Britons, Romans, and Saxons had
unquestionably maintained a fortress for the sake of
commanding the river, there was now erected a tower,
known as the White Tower, which was composed of
indestructible materials, and was intended to serve as
a place of refuge for the sovereign in all cases of need,
or as a fortress to defy his enemies. T'wo other towers,
somewhat farther up the stream, but in the line of wall
which faced the river, were intrusted by William to two
of his nobles, named Baynard and Montfichet, as here-
ditary fiefs, with feudal rights and duties. The descend-
ants of the former of these, for a considerable time, kept
possession of this property, and enjoyed great privileges
as keepers of the Tower and bannarets of the city, long
after London had attained a high degree of importance.
In return for these privileges they brought twenty horse-
men to the aid of the lord mayor in time of war, and
received the standard of London, at the head of a solemn
procession, at the gates of the cathedral. This was a
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 413

genuine creation of the powerful Conqueror, no less than
the foundation arches of the Tower, which were consoli-
dated with Cyclopean cement, and those walls, which
have bid defiance to the ravages of time, on which
William II. erected his great hall at Westminster. The
recognised power of such princes after those past ages,
which had threatened to overwhelm everything in one
common ruin, bore its own good fruits, and appears to
have abundantly contributed to the benefit of the city of
London. A mixture of people of different rank and origin
found safety and protection, together with the Saxo-
Norman population, behind the solid walls of the city,
where they enjoyed personal freedom, and could devote
themselves with industry and success to navigation, in-
land trade, and every species of useful art; and scarcely
three generations later, William Fitz-Stephens, one of the
contemporaneous biographers of the martyred and canon-
ized archbishop, Thomas Becket, related wonderful
things of the splendour of his native city, which, if they
had not been corroborated by innumerable proofs, would
necessarily brand this first description of London as a
mere fabulous invention. Since these times, its rise has
been steady and uninterrupted. London has often par-
ticipated, directly and independently, in the political
changes of the English state, which was constantly rising
into greater celebrity, while, in a commercial point of
view, it attained the first rank in the country; at the
same time that it acquired from the strangers who
shared in its hospitality, so successful a knowledge of
the several arts in which they exhibited special pro-
ficiency, that the industrious citizens of London had
already, in the fourteenth century, begun to enter into
414 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

relations of business on a large scale, not merely as recipi-
ents of the produce of other nations, but as great exporters
of wool and hides, and other native sources of wealth.
The long and brilliant reign of Edward III. had tended
more than any which preceded it to impress upon
London that medieval character which is not yet wholly
effaced, notwithstanding the great fire of 1666, and the
levelling alterations of modern times; and it is this
character which we shall endeavour to represent in a
few brief notices, such as are afforded by various annals
and other authentic records.

We trust it will not be regarded as wearisome, if we
preface our remarks with a few necessary references to
the topography of the city. The direction of the old
city walls had, in many respects, been very much
altered. It was only in the east, however, that they
had been thrown farther back, in consequence of
Richard Cceur de Lion’s eager desire to secure the space
necessary for a new outwork of the Tower. At all other
parts, but especially in the west, the city walls had,
from the end of the middle ages, been constantly
brought more and more forward. They had, however,
already lost much of their original character; for,
according to the veracious description in Sir Thomas
More’s “ Utopia,” they had been built high and thick
of stones, and strengthened by many bulwarks and
watch-towers, and by the strong barbican which pro-
jected to the north-west. The deep and broad moat
was either almost without water, or a mere turbid pool,
in which grew an abundant crop of thorns and under-
wood. In addition to the four old gates, whose origin
dated from the time of the Romans, there were many
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 415

others that had been added at subsequent periods. Their
names still remain, although, like some great monster,
the city has burst its bonds, and long since thrown aside
both walls and moats, spreading in all directions in the
most gigantic proportions. In the middle ages, how-
ever, these gates served as the protecting barriers of
communication, and were built with great care and with
much attention to ornament, while they retained many
singular memorials of earlier days. In the south-east,
opposite to the Tower, it had been necessary, for the sake
of maintaining intercourse with the royal fortress, to
erect a gate, which the authorities, however, soon suffered
to fall into decay, probably on account of the protection
which was derived from the fortifications of the Tower.
Somewhat farther north was Aldgate, which had been
founded and named by the Saxons. To the north-east
of this was Bishopsgate, whose maintenance and protec-
tion had been assigned in time of war by Henry IIL
to the German Hanseatic Guild as a compulsory ser-
vice, in return for the great privileges that had been
awarded to them. The north side of the city wall was
bounded by Moorgate, where the moat had been extended
into a morass by the conjunction of several streams;
and next came Cripplegate, where, even under the
Saxons, crippled beggars were wont to resort for the
sake of being healed by touching the relics of St.
Edmund. The principal entrance at the north had
always been Aldersgate, as is sufficiently proved by the
Roman remains that have been found there. The New-
gate was built in the north-west in the twelfth century,
and even in King John’s time prisoners were kept in the
upper portions of the building. Ludgate, the principal
416 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

entrance from the west, at the foot of St. Paul’s hill,
was regarded as the most ancient memorial of Celtic
London, and was also employed from an early period as
a prison. The walls along the water-side began to dis-
appear under the Norman kings, when, on account of
the landing-places at the many public and private
wharfs, it was found necessary to open many additional
water-gates. Several of the streets near the water’s
edge, between Dowgate and Billingsgate, remind us of
these structures; there was, however, only one large
gate which faced the south, known as Bridgegate.
London Bridge, which continued, until the last
century, to be the only bridge of the city, was a very
remarkable structure even in the middle ages, and it
retained a character of great singularity up to recent
times. After the Saxons, and the Romans very probably
still earlier, had possessed a wooden bridge at this spot,
Henry II. began, in the year 1176, to construct a stone
bridge, which, however, was not completed till the year
1209, under his son John. Injuries from fire and water,
and inexperience in erecting so difficult a structure, must
have made many alterations and restorations necessary,
until at length the edifice was permanently completed,
and raised upon twenty strong but irregular arches,
made of solid freestone masonry, having a large draw-
bridge in the middle. The powerful stream now
flowed backwards and forwards through these arches,
while on the bridge itself there arose, in the course
of time, a regular street, solid enough to support on
both sides high and stately houses, and affording even
sufficient room for a toumament, which was held
upon its pavement in the year 1395. Almost in the
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 417

centre stood a Gothic chapel, dedicated to St. Thomas,
at which a priest regularly performed mass. Two solid
fortified gateways, having battlements and a portcullis,
closed the entrances at the northern and at the southern
ends. It continued to be the custom for ages to adorn
the battlements of these gates with the heads of traitors
stuck upon spikes; and from thence the heads of
Llewellyn, the last of the Welsh princes, the brave Wal-
lace, the bold favourite, Hugo Despencer, and many other
heroes and ruffians, looked down upon the gay and busy
crowd that passed below. In unquiet times the fate of
the city depended in a great measure upon the possession
of this only bridge; while, in the great rising of the
lower classes in the year 1381, and in Jack Cade’s re-
bellion in 1450, London was lost and saved as often as
the ringleaders became masters of the bridge, or were
driven from it. In the year 1425 Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester lay under arms with his followers on the
north side, and the Bishop of Winchester on the south
of the river, when it seemed as if the uncle and nephew
were on the very éve of settling their personal and
political differences in a bloody contest above the water
of the Thames. Such occurrences as these were, how-
ever, happily of tolerably rare occurrence ; and for many
years, nay, even for centuries together, the gates of the
bridge were not closed against any foe. It was only at
night that, in accordance with the regulations, it was re-
quired that the drawbridge should be drawn up and the
portcullis let down. All further communication between
Middlesex and Surrey was effected by means of ferry-
boats, which plied from definite points, and were, from a
very early period, worked by a special class of boatmen.
EE
418 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

In regard to the interior of the old city, it would
appear that in early times, the more decided alternation
of hills and valleys must materially have influenced the.
disposition of the streets and squares. The Langburne,
a stream which originated at the top of Hampstead-
hill, formerly intersected the city in a southerly direc-
tion, and separated St. Paul’s hill in the west from the
elevation in the east which extends to Tower-hill.
Two other streams, the Walbrooke and the Sherburne,
originated in a spring near the east wall, and fell into
the Langburne, in the heart of the city. These waters,
however, were early built over, and were employed for
the extension of a large system of drains and sewers,
which had undoubtedly been a legacy to London from
the times of the Romans. The Fleet, which ran along
the city wall in the west, and was at one time a much
more considerable stream, experienced a similar fate,
although portions of it remained uncovered until recent
times, or were merely spanned by bridges. Even in the
thirteenth century, several of these brooks became use-
less ; while even the springs at Holywell, Clerkenwell,
and St. Clement’s-well, which had been once highly prized
on account of their clearness, were no longer sufficient
to supply the city with drinking water. The necessity
of the case led to the projection of large water works,
which Fitz-Stephens characterises, together with the
sewers, aS an imitation of the wonders of Rome. The
water was frequently brought for several miles through
leaden tubes, when it was suffered to flow forth from
tastefully constructed wells under gothic arches, and in
the midst of typical figures. The great water-works
which were laid down in 1285 at Westcheap, became a
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 419

pattern for many others, which were erected in the
fifteenth century at different public spots in the city,
and formed the centre of the civic rejoicings on the
occasion of royal proclamations, coronations, and similar
festivals. On these occasions it was customary, instead
of pure water, to let large quantities of white and red
wine flow from the springs, while these spots were
favourite places for the erection of stages for those alle-
gorical representations in which both princes and people
took special delight.

Elevations of ground and the direction of the water-
courses had, however, a more visible share in modifying
the ancient ground plan of London. St. Paul’s church
stood tolerably free upon its own hill; while in the west
ran Fleet-street, through Ludgate and over the Fleet ;
to the east lay Cheapside, with its sale-booths on the one
side of the street, and separating at Langburne and Wal-
brooke into several branches ; Cornhill and Leadenhall-
street came next in order, and then Lombard-street and
Fenchurch-street, extending towards Aldgate. Nearly
parallel with these streets, and close to the river, from
which it took its name (and to its proximity with which
it owed its origin), ran Thames-street, which had pro-
bably existed from a very early age, together with its
continuation, Tower-street, which communicated with
a number of small alleys and passages leading to the
water side. Hastcheap formed, as it were, the central
point, where all these streets were intersected by Fish-
street, which led from the bridge, and ran in a northern
direction, through Gracechurch-street to Bishopsgate,
and north-west to Moorgate and Aldersgate. Other
more or less important streets terminated at the different

EE2
420 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

gates, but all were alike angular and full of turnings, as
is the case in all old cities

The houses were built in early times in a simple and
almost mean way, of wood and mud, and were covered
with straw or rushes. A great and destructive fire,
which took place under King Stephen, drew attention to
the dangers which such a style of building brought upon
the population; and in 1189, the first year after King
Richard’s accession, the first ordinance issued by the
authorities for regulating the mode of building houses,
which is still extant, determined that the side walls
of the houses should be at least three feet thick, and
sixteen feet high, and formed of hewn stones. Above
this was usually erected a wooden gable roof of irre-
gular height, and generally projecting into the street.
It was washed with lime, and then painted, and also
frequently ornamented with carved work; and instead of
straw the roofs of houses were soon covered exclusively
with shingles or tiles, or even lead. The ground floor
was for the most part appropriated to purposes of
business, or to carry on different trades, while the prin-
cipal apartment, which was then known in England
as the solar, together with the sleeping rooms, was
on the first floor, but still within the stone walls. It
was not till after the fourteenth century that any upper
floors were added to the houses; but at that time it was
also the custom to hang out the goods that were to be
sold from the first floor, where they were displayed upon
small moveable wooden frames, which projected into the
streets. The police insisted, however, that these frames
should be raised at least nine feet from the ground, and

that they should not project so far as to interfere with
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 421.

the carriages and horsemen, or obstruct the light. The
large and massive cellars which were entered by a
staircase going down from the street, and the wide
lofts within the gabled roofs, were indispensable require-
ments for the mercantile population of London. Special
care was taken by the civic authorities to secure a good
drainage for the running off of rain-water, as well as for
the arrangement of the sewers. The windows were not
universally made of glass in the time of Richard L, but
about the middle of the thirteenth century, we find this
important article among the objects of regular import,
and from the time of Edward IIT. there existed a special
guild of glaziers, who made it their business to see that
the houses were kept light and warm, by means of glass
windows. Chimneys were for a long time objects of
luxury, and in the ordinary burghers’ houses the smoke
had to make its way out as best it could. It was not
till the beginning of the fourteenth century that chim-
neys made of stone and solid materials were common in
houses. The fire and street inspectors were at that time
enjoined to see that all chimneys connected with fire-
places, at which cooking was done, were not in close
proximity to any woodwork.

The great fire of the year 1666 scarcely spared a
single ornamented building of the old city, although
the delineations which have come down to us of many
of them will enable us to form some idea of their ap-
pearance and position. The City-hall, or Guildhall, lay
pretty nearly in the centre of the city, where, in the
Saxon and Danish times, the hustings had stood for the
public courts and elections. Under the reigns of Henry
IV., Henry V., and Henry VL., the civic magistrates
422 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

caused a stately building to be erected in the ornamented
style of the times, of which there only remain at the
present day the walls, which are now surrounded with
buildings of a later period. A beautiful chapel, with an
admirable library, was in olden times the special pride
of Guildhall. The increasing riches and influence of
the guilds, principally in the fifteenth century, frequently
led to the erection of very beautiful buildings, chiefly
designed for social purposes, and known as the halls of
the various trades to which they belonged ; but, unfor-
tunately, there is not one of these buildings still extant

retains any decided medieval character. The
crown, nobles, and prelates, moreover, possessed pro-
perty and houses of every kind in the city, which were
goon distinguished by the characteristics of wealth and
taste. Many of the noblemen, bishops, abbots, and
priors, who visited London several times in the course
of the year, for the sake of attending the different courts
and meetings of parliament, purchased land, either
within the gates or beyond the precincts of the city,
and erected dwellings which were often of a princely
kind, and were surrounded, in accordance with their
individual tastes, either by gardens or courts. The
Crown acquired possession, either through inheritance
or forfeiture, of many admirable spots in the heart of
the city; thus, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and
after him the House of York, occupied Baynard Castle ;
while Henry IV. gave to his light-hearted son, the
Prince of Wales, a house that had been bequeathed
to him at Coldharbour, on the Thames, and not very far
distant from the attractive taverns in Eastcheap ; and,
shortly before Richard IIT. had effected his bold usurpa-
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 423

tion of the crown, and had removed to Baynard Castle,
he held his court at Crosby Hall, whose Gothic arches
and bow-windows stand strangely out from among the
other houses of the crowded thoroughfare of Bishopsgate-
street.

The greatest architectural designs were here, as every-
where else in the middle ages, the ecclesiastical build-
ings, to the embellishment of which the pious zeal of all
ranks of society had contributed their share. Even
Fitz-Stephens triumphantly relates that London and the
territory belonging to it could boast of a hundred and
twenty-six parish churches and chapels, in addition
to the cathedral and the thirteen great conventual
churches ; and it is scarcely an exaggerated estimate if
we assume that, at the time of the Reformation, more
than two-thirds of the precincts of the city were occu-
pied by the buildings and grounds belonging to ecclesi-
astical proprietors, who, as they constituted a fifth part
of the entire population, must indeed have lived most
commodiously and luxuriously. The old and noble
church of St. Paul, upon the west hill, formed, together
with the ecclesiastical buildings that surrounded it, a
special section of the city. Next to the cloisters stood
a noble Gothic building, used as a chapter-house. The
bishop’s palace, the houses of the canons, and numerous
other buildings and offices connected with the church,
surrounded a tolerably extensive and open space, in the
midst of which stood a cross, formed of freestone and
elegantly carved. Here, on occasions of excitement, the
people flocked together in crowded assemblies, while
the priests and laity were accustomed to address the
multitude from the steps. ven before the Reformation
424 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

a kind of pulpit had been erected close by, from which
sermons were addressed to the assembled multitude on
Sundays and holidays. In the Wars of the Roses it was
from hence that the first note of any unexpected revolu-
tionary change in the government resounded ; and from
hence, too, Richard III. endeavoured, like a genuine
demagogue, to prepare the populace for his ambitious
schemes. Two other characteristic peculiarities had,
in the course of time, become associated with the ca-
thedral. The number of ecclesiastics who were assem-
bled at this spot, and the vicinity of the schools, had led
the dealers in books, at a very early period, to establish
their stalls in Paternoster-row, lying to the north of the
churchyard, where, besides the rosaries and pictures of
the saints, books, both with and without miniatures,
and, as early as the reign of Henry VI., even the
interdicted writings of Wiclif and his adherents, were
offered for sale; while, round the churchyard, which
was ever crowded with a busy throng, confectioners
and tavern-keepers actively plied their several trades
from year to year. These two trades, which supplied
food both for the body and the mind, appear to have
lingered with great pertinacity around the same old
spots.

The numerous churches, which were often dedicated
to very strange saints, who probably scarcely possessed
an altar anywhere else, naturally fell far short of the
cathedral, both as to size and beauty, and they were pro-
bably, with few exceptions, as much pressed upon for
want of space and concealed from view in former times as
they now are. On the other hand, however, the monastic
buildings, of which nothing beyond their names now
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 425

remains, were all the more liberally accommodated with
space; and the mendicant orders more especially, true to
their usual tendencies, settled themselves either within
the city, or else close to the walls. Nowhere, certainly,
does a comparison ketween the past and the present give
rise to more peculiar considerations. The Dominicans,
or Black Friars, lived at one period in a manner so much
at variance with the rules of their order, that the king
and parliament were accustomed to hold their meetings
in their conventual house, when their own quarters at
Westminster did not happen to please them; and now,
on the site of this imposing edifice, an ever-crowded
street leads to one of the large bridges of London;
while, within the precincts of those ancient buildings,
the colossal columns of the Times are now printed.
Somewhat farther westward, the Carmelites, or White
Friars, had their residence; and, very long after their sup-
pression, the right of asylum which they had maintained
still continued to exist: for here debtors, concealers of
stolen goods, and thieves, crowded together, bidding defi-
ance to the officers of the law. The priory of the Augus-
tines appears, even in Thomas Cromwell’s time, to have
given place to the counting-houses of the merchants in
Broad-street, somewhat north of the present Exchange;
but their beautiful chapel, which escaped the great fire,
has been appropriated, since the time of Edward IIL, to
the Dutch Protestants. The Franciscans, or Grey Friars,
who were more influential than the other mendicant
orders, had prepared themselves a noble residence close
to Newgate. After their ejection by order of Henry
VII, their house was devoted by his son, Edward VL.
to the use of Christchurch school, which still flourishes,
426 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

with its ancient building, dress, customs, and system of
education. On the ground which was once occupied by
the conventual church of St. Martin’s le Grand, which
had been nobly endowed by William the Conqueror,
stands the General Post-Office of Great Britain. It
would, however, be wearisome, were we to enumerate
all the monkish institutions, nunneries, hospitals, and
chapels which once existed in ancient London. They
lead us, however, to the suburbs, which acquired great
significance early in the middle ages.

The entire city was then surrounded by a circle of
more or less magnificent ecclesiastical institutions,
whose solid, and often beautiful, buildings were plea-
santly situated in the midst of their own gardens and
grounds. The roads leading to them, which originally
ran between hedges and meadows, were soon converted
into streets, thickly lined with houses, occupied by some
of the surplus population which could no longer find
room within the city walls, and which continued to
spread with ever-increasing rapidity. Among the many
points of attraction towards which these different new
streets radiated from the centre of the city, we may first
instance, in the east, St. Catherine’s Abbey, whose pre-
cincts almost surrounded the fortifications of the Tower ;
the abbey of the Cistercians, in East Smithfield ; and
the stately Trinity Priory. In the north, the Carthu-
sians had built themselves a beautiful house, the memory
of which is perpetuated to the present day in the ancient
Charter House, with its celebrated school. The renown
that appertained to the priory of St. Bartholomew the
Great still lives in the hospital that bears the same
name. Very different, however, have been the fate and
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 427

the memorials of two ecclesiastical orders of knighthood,
which, soon after their foundation, had established pro-
vincial houses of their own in London similar to those
which they already possessed in Paris. The knights of
St. John owned one of the most beautiful abbeys of
London. This building, which was surrounded by
gardens, fields, and woods, was situated to the north-
west of the city, about a mile beyond the gate, and re-
mained in their possession till the destructive days of
the sixteenth century. Princes and kings were often
received there as guests, and important political matters
have frequently been discussed within its walls; now,
however, there only remains an old gateway, which once
led to the interior of the edifice, but which in the pre-
sent day stands isolated, and differing from all around
it, in a densely crowded and even dirty neighbourhood,
showing the antiquarian, by its few architectural ruins,
how richly and tastefully the entire building must have
been decorated centuries ago. A different fate was
indeed reserved for the Temple. It is true that the
miserable and weak Hdward II. did not hesitate to
follow in the steps of the pope and the king of
France, and entirely to annihilate the order by the rack
and perpetual imprisonment. Their stately residence
remained, however, standing, and after it had origin-
ally been given to the knights of St. John, Edward IIL.
appropriated the buildings to the members of the bar ;
who, even at the present day, occupy this small but spe-
cial district at the west end of Fleet-street. The gates
are still adorned with the red cross, while the noble
chapel, which was built after the pattern of the holy
sepulchre, and has been preserved with anxious care,
serves the society as their church.
428 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

The entire district lying to the west of Newgate and
Ludgate was already thickly built over in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. Fleet-street, with its bridge
over the stream that bears the same name, was, as it
were, the main branch of communication through the
district; and the same streets existed then which now
run on either side of this great thoroughfare, leading
south towards the river, and north towards Holborn.
It is worthy of notice that, like the inns of court
in the Temple, there arose, at the same period and
in the same district of London, other legal corpora-
tions of a similar character, as, for instance, Lincoln’s
Inn, which took its name from the former town resi-
dence of the Earls of Lincoln, and was situated in close
proximity to the Court of Chancery, which, at an early
period, became permanently established in Chancery
Lane. Sergeants’ Inn, Clifford’s Inn, and Clement's
Inn, were all in the same neighbourhood ; while further
north, in Holborn, lay Gray’ s Inn, Thayide Inn, Fur-
nival’s Inn, and Staple Inn. ‘Thus there arose, between
the Temple and the priory of the knights of St. John, a
quarter of the town which was specially appropriated to
the study and practice of the law.

The tendency which is very frequently manifested in
large towns of spreading in a westerly direction was
strongly exhibitedin London from the most ancient period.
Thus three miles to the west of Ludgate, above the river,
and behind a sharp bend of the stream, arose the ancient
abbey of Westminster. When Edward the Confessor
had been canonized, and a shrine erected to his memory
at that spot, the abbey church, as if the St. Denis and
Rheims of England had been merged into one, became
at once the place of the coronation and burial of the
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 429

English kings, and more especially those of the Planta-
genet family. Henry III, who was distinguished for
his love of art, took special delight in rebuilding the
church, almost from its foundation, in so noble and
chaste a style of architecture, that the portions which
have been added in a more ornamental style by his
successors bear no comparison with the main parts of
the building. Near the abbey there soon arose, under
the Norman princes, a royal residence and palace for the
use of the kings and their courts, when they deter-
mined to relinquish their general wandering mode of
life, and remain stationary. When after the signing
of Magna Charta the courts of law had become per-
manently established, it was here, also, that they
were located. It was not long before parliament be-
came a standing institution of the land; and the lords
were then allowed to hold their meetings in the state
apartments of the crown, whilst the commons, for the
most part, deliberated together in the beautiful octagonal
chapter-house of the abbey. The present is not the
piace to enumerate the splendours of ancient West-
minster, with its church and palace, its pleasure-gardens,
and its park ; and it will be sufficient if we merely re-
mark, that during the middle ages it constituted, in all
its grand exclusiveness, the residence of the monarchs,
although there was an obvious and strong tendency
to extend it, in the course of time, by the addition of
various contiguous buildings and accessories. The place
rapidly increased, and the royal stables, store-houses,
and the dwellings for the officers of the court, soon began
‘to surround the original church and palace; while a special
church, dedicated to St. Margaret, pressed close on to the
430 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

abbey, like an offshoot from the mother institution.
This atmosphere of royalty naturally attracted to it all
those who had any right to approach within its boun-
daries ; and the nobility and higher clergy soon showed
a decided predilection for the district lying between
Temple Bar, at the western extremity of Fleet-street,
and Westminster, where they built fine houses, sur-
rounded by gardens, which extended down to the river-
side. The palace of the Archbishop of York, which was
subsequently known as Whitehall, was almost close to
the principal courts of the royal residence. Next
followed the house of the Bishop of Durham; but con-
spicuous among the others was the proud Savoy palace,
in which the avaricious Provengal relatives of Henry
III.’s consort had once been domiciled, where subse-
quently the imprisoned king John of France lived dur-
ing his captivity, and where, in the palmy days of his
prosperity, the Duke of Lancaster kept his court. The
entire street or road, which ran parallel with the river
from the old church of St. Clement the Dane’s to Char-
ing-cross, where the road turned southward to West-
minster, and where fresh horses and an invigorating
drink were kept ready for horsemen coming from London,
had probably been already long known as the Strand.
On the other side of the river lay many points isolated
and unconnected with one another, which are now joined
together into a district of the town that numbers its
hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. It was only at
the outlet of the bridge, at Southwark, that there had,
from different causes, arisen in ancient times a town-
like settlement. Two great priories, the monastery of
St. Mary Overies, and the nunnery of Bermondsey, had
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 431

early given rise to the activity and busy intercommuni-
cation which naturally resulted from the vicinity of such
ecclesiastical institutions as these. Near to St. Mary’s,
and not far from the bridge, there stood until the time
of the Reformation the magnificent palace of the Bishop
of Winchester, one of the wealthiest prelates of the land,
whose extensive spiritual jurisdiction included the county
of Surrey. The most important agent in this great
intercommunication was the high road which ran from
the bridge, and extended through the country to the
ports of Kent, Hampshire, and Cornwall. Here heavily-
laden pack wagons were constantly moving to and fro ;
and here, too, assembled, at the appointed seasons of the
year, the motley crowds of pilgrims which were bound
for the shrine of the holy Thomas Becket, at Canterbury.
The Tabard Inn had been known far and near for many
ages, from the vivid descriptions given by Chaucer of
the busy life and stir that blended there with devotion
and adventure. All remains of it are not yet wholly
effaced, although there has been erected in its immediate
neighbourhood the railway terminus of that great over-
land route which connects England with India and
China. The greater part of the land lying on the oppo-
site bank of the river consisted of fields and gardens,
with a few larger hamlets, and some places of amuse-
ment where bear-baiting and cock-fighting were
practised. Immediately opposite to Westminster rose
the chapel, and castellated towers and walls, of the
princely residence which the Archbishops of Canterbury
had chosen before the close of the twelfth century for
their town residence, in the immediate neighbourhood of
the offices of state and the tribunals of justice.
432 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

We have thus briefly given the outlines of the plan
presented by the city and its appendages in the middle
ages ; and we will now pass on to a rapid survey of the
life and policy which helped to fill up this framework.
At the close of the civil war under King Stephen, and
at the accession to the throne of the first of the Planta-
genets, there was at once an end to the absolute rule of
the Normans, and to the prevalence of a wild feudal
tight of the strong over the weak ; and in their place there
arose the first germs of a system of administration
which had been revived and renovated from ancient
Germanic forms. These ancient germs of power were
soon manifested in a special manner within the domain of
the city of London. The provost or bailiff, who had once
been regarded as the king’s vicegerent of the city,
which was considered to be included in the domain of
the sovereign, after having supplanted the Saxon port-
reve, was in his turn obliged to yield to the organs of
municipal self-government. It is worthy of notice that
this new order of things, notwithstanding many symp-
toms of tumultuous disturbance within the city, had
come into force during the rule of Richard Coeur
de Lion. The crown, in return for an annual payment
of £400, had renounced all claim not only to the
administrative and judicial power of the city, but also
of the county of Middlesex, and of the right bank of the
river. Two sheriffs, who were elected by the city on
the nomination of the sovereign, presided over the
administrative, fiscal, and judicial affairs of London, as
their brother sheriffs did in the different shires and
counties of the land. In the year 1189 we hear, for the
first time, of a dignitary who was invested with the
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 433

highest civic rank under the Franco-Norman title of
mayor, and with prerogatives which, in many respects,
correspond with those of royalty, although on a smaller
scale. The first known mayor, named Henry Fitz-
Alwyn, who is said to have held the office for three
and twenty years, had most probably been raised to this
dignity by the general acclamation and concurrence of
the community, and must, moreover, have had the sup-
port of the prince. After this began annual elections,
in which it would appear that great disturbances took
place owing to the participation of all the citizens
in the proceedings. At the close of the century Edward I.
extended his administrative activity to the city, in which
definite representatives now voted instead of the whole
community. The guilds obtained the rights which they
still exercise under Edward IV., but from the earliest
period the confirmation of the crown was required for
the election, and the citizens were wont to go in a
solemn procession, which, in recent days, has become a
kind of civic carnival, on the 9th of November, to
Westminster, that the mayor, like a peer on receiving a
crown fief, might tender the oath of fealty to the king or
his chancellor. We find that even in Magna Charta the
mayor ot London is referred to as holding a rank in
the State which was as important as that of the most
powerful earls and barons, and a century later he was
designated as lord mayor, and enjoyed the title, honours,
and state of one of the first magnates of the land.

His power was, however, as far from being absolute
as that of the crown. There had existed from olden
times a civic nobility, which had adopted the once proud
Anglo-Saxon designation of aldermen, who, in the

FF
434. LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

public documents of the middle ages are very distinctly
designated as “barons.” These aldermen were origi-
nally considered as nobles, and even possessed hereditary
claims to the wards over which they presided. As
late as the time of Edward I. the wards took their
names from those who presided over them, and were
transferable by will. A ward, however, corresponded
to the Saxon soka of certain counties, in which the men
and district were bound to supply the lord of the
manor with subsidies in time of war, in return for which
they enjoyed his judicial protection. Among the holders
of these wards appeared, in the thirteenth century,
such distinguished names as those of the King of
Scotland, the Earl of Gloucester, the Abbot of
Westminster, the Chapter of St. Paul’s, the Prior of
Trinity Abbey, and many other prelates, and even the
abbesses of convents situated within and without the
ward. These wards corresponded, therefore, as sub-divi-
sions of the civic principality, to the shires and counties
of England. This feudal condition came to an end
about the beginning of the fourteenth century, when, in
the place of personal designations, we for the first time
meet with the local names, which are still preserved.
The five-and-twenty wards within the city, and one on
the opposite bank of the river, known as Bridgeward-
without, were each under the supervision of an alder-
man, who was elected for life by all the freemen of his
ward, who, including all who paid scot and lot,
constituted the “ ward-mote.” The court of aldermen
became, to a certain extent, a representation of the
upper house or house of peers, after the civic magis-
tracy had begun to imitate the forms of parliament.
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 435

This court was presided over by the lord mayor, who
must previously have served as sheriff, and must belong
to the body of aldermen, and who may in many respects
be regarded as a king of the city.

The civic lower house was, on the other hand, elected
from the freemen, who sent a definite number of repre-
sentatives to the council, according to the size and
population of their wards. They thus represented the
knights of the shires who were chosen to sit in parlia-
ment, and they had the right of sitting with the lord
mayor and the aldermen in a large and general assembly,
known as the common council.

While, however, the democratic tendency of the civic
administration thus made itself appreciable in tolerably
extensive spheres, there arose at an early period a new
class of civic office-bearers, who seemed destined to re-
place the old and abrogated patrician elements and those
aristocratic forms which had been borrowed from par-
liament. These were the corporations or guilds, which,
as everywhere else in the middle ages, brought their
corporate system to great significance in London. We
can scarcely compare the guilds of London with those
of the Anglo-Saxons and of the twelfth century, when
certain native brotherhoods were organized in Eng-
land to meet the requirements of social protection,
or were instituted for religious and military purposes,
as the knights’-guilds, or when foreigners, like the
German Hanseatic guild, were associated together to
enjoy special commercial privileges. In the latter part
of the middle ages handicrafts and trades were required
to form the basis, as it were, of a guild, in which there
certainly still lingered some trace of the exclusive character

FF2
436 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

of a religious brotherhood. The earliest combinations of
this kind may be traced as far back as to the reign of
Henry II. when the weavers obtained their first charter.
The idea of forming influential corporations on the
ground of certain rights being given in return for the
fulfilment of various duties, began first to be fully estab-
lished during the brilliant reign of Edward IJI., when
many of the most distinguished guilds were incorporated
in rapid succession, one after the other, by royal patent,
and in return for an annual sum of money, such as the
city itself had once paid. They were often called upon
to aid the king and the lord mayor with the treasures
of their, richly-filled and well-protected coffers, and in
return they took care to secure for themselves extensive
privileges and ample compensation. They obtained from
the crown the right, which had hitherto belonged to the
wards, of electing their representatives to parliament.
In the common council of the city, in which they sate as
freemen, their influence soon became paramount, as they
belonged to the most distinguished class of the citizens.
In the year 1435, we find the brewers designating the
lord mayor with much humility as their most highly
honoured and gracious lord and sovereign, the Mayor of
London; but some years later this guild secured the right
and privilege that this civic sovereign should for the future
be exclusively elected by themselves. There were twelve
guilds who regarded themselves as the most ancient
and influential, viz. the Grocers, the Drapers, the Fish-
mongers, the Goldsmiths, the Skinners, the Merchant-
tailors, in whose company Edward III. did not disdain to
allow his name to be enrolled, the Haberdashers, Salters,
Jronmongers, Vintners, Fullers, and Clothworkers.
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 437

‘The number of the guilds amounted, however, in the
course of time to eighty-nine, of which many have since
disappeared ; while the twelve already named have con-
tinued to maintain their exceptional position. In recent
times they certainly often lost all direct connection with
the old trade or handicraft to which they had once be-
longed, and became converted into mere social societies
or large charitable institutions. The great wealth of
some of these companies, as, for instance, the Goldsmiths,
Merchant-tailors, and Fishmongers, which is chiefly de-
pendent upon extensive landed property in England and
Treland, has in many instances been nobly applied to the
foundation of hospitals or schools for learning, or to the
endowment of scholarships in the universities ; and the
social influence of these associations has been carefully
maintained and magnificently demonstrated by means of
splendid annual festivals and the display of great hospi-
tality, although perhaps it would be difficult to find among
the members any one who now makes a coat, or brings
his fish to market. All the members were not, however,
equally entitled to exercise the high prerogatives of
electing the lord mayor or the city representatives in
parliament, as this privilege belonged exclusively to the
so-called liverymen, who bear the livery and. badges of
their guild, and constitute, as it were, the select com-
mittee of their several companies. The assembly in
which the guilds discussed their affairs, in their own
stately guild-halls, was named a “ hall-mote.”

While the organs of the civic legislature had been
brought into aflinity with those of the country at large
since the fourteenth century, the courts of justice, which
had existed from an early period in the city, followed simi-
438 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

lar precedents. Thus the principal of these tribunals, the
Court of Hustings, corresponded to the High Court of
Chancery, wills being registered and questions of inherit-
ance decided in there; while the Lord Mayor and Sheriff’s
Court had the control of the administrative business, and
settled civil suits. There was one special court, which met
to decide disputes arising on market-days, or among tra-
vellers and men of business, and which reminds us of the
old English tendency to decide quickly and definitely,
without entering into any long written or verbal consi-
deration of the question at issue; and this was known as
the Pie-powder Court, a corruption of the old French
words, pieds poudres, the Latin pedes pulverizati, in
which the complainant and the accused were supposed
not to have shaken the dust from off their feet. Various
officials of different ranks were employed at these courts,
and the Lord Mayor’s Court comprised at an early period
chamberlains and marshals, swordbearers, keepers of the
records, chaplains, and even masters of the hunt, together
with many other servants, such as those who sur-
rounded the king and the great lords of the land. The
mayor, aldermen, and liverymen were careful to come
forth in all the pomp and display of their ancient
brightly-coloured and richly-furred dresses, at the many
civic festivals, which followed one another in rapid
succession through the year, or whenever they attended
church, their council meetings, or their grand dinners;
and still more magnificent was the display of their pon-
derous finery and their great wealth at the coronation or
the marriage of a monarch, or when a prince, like Henry
V., returned to his native land crowned with victory,
or when some honoured foreign guest came to be
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 439

entertained by the city. For then the worthy civic
authorities, adorned with all their grand decorations, rode
forth, surrounded by halberdiers and bowmen, to meet their
distinguished visitor. During the entry of the procession
the royal standard and the city banners waved from every
tower, while brightly coloured carpets and hangings were
suspended from the lofty gable windows of the citizens’
houses. Dense was the crowd that pressed together on
these occasions to look at the princely or noble guest, and
to take a share in the good things and the merry shows
with which, true to ancient usage, the civic authorities
were wont so lavishly to entertain the populace.

From the many grandiloquent descriptions of these
processions that have been preserved to the present day,
we should be led to conclude that London must indeed
have been the most powerful city of Europe, if its in-
fluence had been in any way commensurate with the
pomp of its variously organised constitution. But it is
sufficiently well known that the municipal governments
in England nowhere attained the same degree of re-
publican independence which was enjoyed by the
Italian, Flemish, and German cities of the middle ages,
where, nevertheless, these institutions, although consti-
tuting incomparably the most complete element in
the state, were exposed to endless restrictions in regard
to other sections of the nation. While London contented
itself with ranking equal to a county, and with
the privilege of exercising, under municipal forms, the
amount of independent power which belonged to it,
when considered in that character, and while it ad-
hered closely to the nobility in the early part of the
struggles for freedom by which England was agitated,
440 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

and then subsequently sided with the gentry and the
commons, it never laid claim to that species of autonomy
which Venice, Genoa, Nuremberg, and Lubeck had
won for themselves, and by this very means bound its
fate so much the more closely and beneficially to that
of the entire country. The history of the English con-
stitution shows us that there was absolutely no place for
a free city, an independent self-governing republic, or
even a Hanseatic League in England, where it was
alike impossible for the nobility or the clergy to attain
the rank of secular or spiritual princes of the land.

An important epoch in the special history of the
development of the city was, without doubt, the rela-
tively late independent participation of its citizens in
the general commerce of the world. London had long
occupied a position of great importance before native
Englishmen shared with foreigners in the importation
of the products of the different countries of Europe.
The guild of the German merchants in Thames-street
continued, like the Italian money-changers and bankers
of Lombard-street, for centuries together, to exert a
great and beneficial influence on the city and country,
which in return allowed special privileges to these in-
dustrious foreigners. Traders from Flanders, the north
of France and Genoa, werd also permitted to take up
their abode among the Londoners. In the fourteenth
century, however, the spirit of native enterprise began to
assume great dimensions, and instead of being sensible
of these advantages London felt only the pressure of
the foreign monopoly. The taking of Calais, the con-
sequences of which had been keenly appreciated by
Edward III, laid the foundation of the first English
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 44]

colony ; and the native traders in the staple commodities
of the land now endeavoured, by means of the rapid
increase of the wool-trade, to compete with all other
branches of commerce. At the close of the century,
the English merchant-ships had made good their
entrance into the waters of the Baltic Sea, which had
hitherto been carefully closed against them by the
Hanseatic merchants ; and the visits of Venetian galleys
to the waters of Southampton were soon returned by
English traders to the Mediterranean. It was no
wonder, then, that all foreigners in London, but more
especially the Germans, should have been looked upon,
in the fifteenth century, with envy and ill-will, and that
they should have been made to feel themselves in danger
of losing their ancient privileges. The city that was
destined to be the great commercial mart of the future,
had begun to feel its own strength even before America
was discovered, and before the reign of that great queen
under whose rule the flag which had hitherto been all-
powerful in the channel only, was daringly and tri-
umphantly borne to the remote regions of the great
continents of the east and west.

There were two small ports upon the Thames which
played an important part in the history of ancient
London, and which have not yet wholly disappeared.
The one of these was Queenhythe, above the bridge,
which continued for a long time to be the property of
the crown ; while the other, Billingsgate, lay lower down
the river. Here all the ships which could not load or
unload at the wharfs in the course of the day, were
obliged to drop anchor and remain during the night;
and here, too, was held a market on a great scale for
442 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

fish, salt, and corn. The lighting and weighing of the
cargoes on the wharfs, where cranes and scales were
always kept in readiness, were regulated according to
definite rules. St. Botolph’s wharf, between Billings-
gate and the bridge, was designed exclusively for
the convenience of passengers going up or down the
Thames. The care which the civic authorities so early
displayed in reference to the great water-way which
was the means of bringing riches to their city, is very
remarkable and well worthy of notice. In order to
keep the river and the stream, which was then perfectly
clear, fit to be used for brewing, baking, and other
trades, it was strictly forbidden to throw the dirt of the
streets, or the refuse of the slaughter-houses, into its
waters; while, in the neighbourhood of the Tower, all
bathing was forbidden under penalty of death, with the
view of keeping the current in a proper condition. The
city also enforced its ancient right of jurisdiction over
the Thames from the bridge at Staines, sixteen miles
up the river, down to its mouth. Ships of every kind,
and of the most various and outlandish build, but none
of a very large size, passed through the drawbridge, and
dropped anchor close to the wharfs. They brought to
the Hanseatic traders oak-beams and fir-planks, furs,
dyeing-stuffs, wax, and stock-fish ; while the southerners
carried glass, the noble metals, silk, dried fruits, and the
many precious spices and perfumes of the east. These
wares did not usually remain long on their hands; for
the main business of the London merchants consisted in
transferring direct to definite inland markets the articles
of foreign as well as native commerce, which were offered
for sale at this great emporium of trade.
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 443

If we would try vividly to recall the busy life of
those olden days, we must follow the sale and prepara-
tion of the principal articles of food. It is surprising
how firmly and tenaciously many of these things have
clung from the earliest times to the same spots. There
is in the first place the cattle market, which already at
the end of the twelfth century, when Fitz-Stephens
wrote, was held at Smithfield, close to the north wall,
from whence it has only been banished within the last
few years, after much opposition and difficulty. The old
monk, indeed, who was a genuine Londoner, seems to
have had special delight in the sturdy pack-horses, the
war-chargers, and elegant ambling palfreys which were
then sold there in great numbers. Smithfield was in
fact the Tattersall’s of the middle ages, for thither
resorted crowds of nobles and knights, who came to make
purchases, or to enjoy themselves at the races, which
were under the charge of a special class of jockeys. In
the immediate neighbourhood were long rows of oxen
and sheep of an incomparable quality, which the rich
grass-lands of the eastern and southern counties sup-
plied, while there were special pens for the pigs, which
the Londoners fattened for salting. The horse market
was soon compelled to yield to the necessities of
the constantly increasing city. The slaughter-houses as
well as the principal market for meat and poultry were
close to St. Nicholas’ church, in the neighbourhood of
Newgate, where the traffic in these things has not yet
wholly disappeared ; while the name of the Poultry still
reminds us of the ancient character of the locality. The
prices, as well as the places and hours at which these
goods were to be sold, were under strict municipal reeu-
444 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

lation. Fish was at that time very generally used
among the Londoners, owing to the many fast-days ;
and in consequence of the intrinsic goodness, variety,
and cheapness both of sea and fresh-water fish, the
most enormous quantities were consumed. The Stocks-
Market,* which stood nearly upon the ground occu-
pied in the present day by the Mansion House, and
where on definite days a market was held alternately
for the sale of meat and of fish, formed, as it were, the
central point for this important article of diet, from
whence numerous smaller places of sale, in different
parts of the town, and more especially in the great
thoroughfares, were supplied. Special care was taken to
prevent every species of deception and fraud. Thus, no
one was permitted to buy a cargo from a vessel before it
had cast anchor, nor could a ship-load be brought on
shore by night, as it was required that everything should
be exposed for sale openly and by daylight; and great
severity was practised in trying to guard against every
kind of fraud in regard to the just measure, and the
freshness of the goods. The millers and bakers were
subjected to a similar supervision, for owing to the great
demand for the articles in which they dealt, and the
ready profits which they gained, they were frequently
induced to practise the worst forms of adulteration.
The bakers indeed, it would appear, had a special hole in
their kneading-troughs, by means of which they were
able adroitly to purloin the bread of their customers.
The millers were obliged to measure their corn before it
was ground, and again after it was converted into flour,

* So called from the Stocks, which stood there.
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 445

before the eyes of the customers, to prevent the meal-
bags being filled with chaff. The pillory, and still more
severe punishments, were directed against all who prac-
tised such modes of cheating, and every precaution was
taken to secure the proper preparation of the admirable
white bread of which London could boast as early as the
fourteenth century, and to enforce that it was offered
for sale, at the markets and at the open booths, of the
proper weight, and at the price prescribed by the
authorities.

The directions of the magistracy were at that time of
a very circumstantial nature, and the constant super-
vision which was exercised by the common council and
the guilds had the effect of limiting the sale of certain
goods to definite spots, and of circumscribing different
trades within the limits of special streets. Thus, for
instance, those who wished to buy wood or any other
kind of fuel, had to betake themselves to Cornhill;
while sea-coal as it was then called, was sold direct from
the boats in Sea-coal Lane, on the Fleet river. It was long
before this kind of fuel became general, and Edward I.
interdicted its use on account of the smoke to which it
gave rise while his Queen lay in childbed in the Tower.
The many woollen goods which constituted some of the
principal articles of export, and whose preparation and
dyeing occupied several trades, were chiefly to be bought
in the churchyard by Woolchurch; the grocers were
to be found in Soper’s-lane, and the furriers in Skinner-
street ; undressed skins were only to be purchased in
Friday-street, while the dealers in leather displayed
their goods, which were often exceedingly beautiful, in
several different streets. A special class of persons,
446 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

known as the Fripperers, provided the poor with old
clothes, after the Jews had been banished from the coun-
try at the close of the thirteenth century; but they, like
their predecessors, were obliged to submit to many vexa-
tious restrictions in regard to the choice of their place of
business, and the amount of examination to which their
goods were subjected.

Special points of attraction for the public were then,
as at all other times and in all other places, the taverns,
eating-houses, ale-booths, and wine-vaults, each of which
was required to be kept as far as possible distinct from
the others. The inns at which people could find enter-
tainment for their servants and horses could only be
kept by citizens; and there is an ordinance extant,
which prohibits the licence from being granted to
natives of Portugal or Germany. The landlord was
answerable for the conduct of his guests, who were
regarded as aliens, and as such beyond the protection of
the civic jurisdiction. He was enjoined to take from
them whatever weapons they might carry upon their per-
sons, and to insist upon their returning at an earky hour
in the evening. On the other hand, he was not to sell
food or drink to any one besides his guests; and his
charges for these articles or for lodging and fodder were
not to exceed the sum fixed by the authorities. Fitz-
Stephens even in his day wrote in ecstasies of the
different eating-houses, and one of these which he
describes, on the river near Thames-street, never lacked
busy customers, and had many wine-drawers ready to
serve the guests. There, too, were to be found smoking
hot roasted and boiled meats and poultry ;

“Rybbs of befe, both fat and ful fyne,”
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 447

as the old ballad has it, from which the hungry workmen
could cut to their hearts’ content, when they rested here,
for a while, from the labours of the day. At a later
period we meet with these pastelers’ or cooks’-shops in
different parts of the city, in accordance with the
increased wants of the population.

Ale and beer have always been known as favourite
beverages of the old English and Germans, but to judge
of the descriptions that have reached us of the mode of
their preparation and use in the middle ages, they could
scarcely have attained any great excellence. The beer
was very poor, and must have been rather a refreshing
than an intoxicating drink, and this may, perhaps,
account for the enormous quantities in which it was
consumed ; although the aldermen watched with special
strictness that it consisted of the right ingredients, and
of the strength prescribed by law. The breweries and
their internal arrangements were still on a very small scale,
and the whole business was held in low esteem. The
trade of selling beer was in the hands of the ale-wives,
who congregated together, more especially in Fleet-
street, where almost every other house was an ale stall.
The retail wine-business was, however, in very different
hands, and was held in much higher repute. The
amount of wine of every kind that was imported and
consumed was, indeed, enormous. The English pos-
sessions in the south of France yielded the best red and
white wines. The Cologne members of the German
guild possessed letters patent, granted by Henry IL.,
for importing Rhenish wine into England and retailing
it; and frequent mention is made, by the writers of the
middle ages, of Spanish, Italian, and even Greek wines,
448 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

including Malmsey and the wine of Crete. The un-
loading and drawing off of the wine, and its retail in
vessels made according to a prescribed gauge, and the
low prices at which this beverage continued to be sold,
were all determined by fixed regulations, which were
modified or renewed from time to time. It was also
strictly prohibited to sell both sweet and acid wines, or
Spanish and Rhenish wines, at one and the same place ;
a prohibition which was intended, as far as possible, to
prevent fraud and adulteration. The drinking of wine
was very general, and drunkenness only too common;
for even Fitz-Stephens, who boasts so-much of the good
morals and habits of his fellow-citizens, was of opinion
that, besides the many fires which were constantly
oceurring on account of the wooden houses which the
city still contained, there was another great plague in
London, namely, excessive and foolish drinking. It
can scarcely be supposed that this evil habit abated
during the next few centuries, for such an assumption
is decisively refuted by the great number of the wine-
shops, which were distinguished, more especially in
Eastcheap, by being surmounted by a long iron rod, to
which was suspended a green bush, which, in defiance of
the prohibitions of the police-inspectors, very often pro-
jected far into the street. Among the three taverns
which, according to an ordinance of Edward IIT. were
alone permitted to retail sweet wine, there is express
mention made of one in Eastcheap, which probably,
even then, was known as the ‘Boar’s Head. The scenes
that were enacted there in the fifteenth century, when
merry Prince Hal resorted thither for his cup of sack,
are described in a humorous poem of that age, known
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES, 449

as “The London Lack-penny.” According to this com-
position, a poor miserable wretch comes to town to try
to get justice done him in some lawsuit, but he soon
finds that without money one can do nothing either with
barristers or judges ; and with a weary heart he trudges
on his way from Westminster to the city. Cries of
“ Hot peascods! Strawberry ripe! Cherries in the rise!
Mackerel! Oysters!” are shouted into his ears right and
left, as he passes along the booths of Cheapside, where
all sorts of people and things are jostled and crowded
together, and where every article of wearing apparel,
from velvet and silk to homespuns and yarns, is offered
for sale. But he has no money, and can buy none of
these fine things; nay, he even sees his own hood, which
was stolen from his neck in the throng in Westminster
Hall, hanging up in Rag-fair. When he comes into
Eastcheap, the landlord of a tavern rushes forth, and
pulling him by the sleeve, cries, “ Come, sir, and try
our wine!” What a bustle and confusion is here!
One is crying, “ Roast-beef!” another, “ Pies!” while
all around there is a violent clattering of tin jugs and
platters. Then, besides, some are playing the harp,
some the bagpipes, and some are singing. One is
calling, “Yea, by cock!” another, “Nay, by cock!
while some are singing, for money, of Jenkin and Julian.
The poor country wight is, however, heavy at heart, and
cries: “ But for lack of money I might not speed.”

The beer and wine shops must naturally have given
occasion to much rioting and disturbance; and on this
account it was enacted that they must all be closed when
the evening-bell was rung. At that time the watchmen
appointed by each ward came on duty, and went their

GG
450 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

beat through the streets, carrying long poles, from which
were hung pots of burning tar, which afforded the only
light with which the streets were supplied. All brawlers,
drunkards, and vagabonds, as well as women of ill-repute,
who in the fourteenth century came principally from
Flanders, if they could not secure a refuge in their many
hiding-places on either side of the river, were seized upon
by the armed watch, and locked up in the cells at the
gates, or in the Tun, a jail in Cornhill. There was no
lack of rioting and dissipation, which at times gave rise
to serious disturbances. The lowest classes, although
they no longer revelled in their original licence, were
still rude and unpolished ; and among them stood fore-
most the numerous apprentices, skippers, carriers and
waggoners, who seem to have been specially noted
for making disturbances without cause. It became,
however, a very serious matter when, as sometimes hap-
pened, they were Jed on by feelings of envy or revenge
to attack the Guildhall of the Hanseatic League ; and an
almost communistic fanaticism seems even to have
overpowered the masses in 1381, and again in 1450,
when rebels from the country remained for a few days
masters of the city. At that time the magistrates could
neither save their homes nor their property by means
of their own police, or any of the powers at the com-
mand of the civic authorities; and they were obliged to
receive aid from the nation, the crown, and the nobles.
Such events as these happened, however, very seldom,
and never, unless from some deep-seated cause. The
people in the meanwhile retained their amusements, and
as long as they did not disturb the community, were
suffered to indulge in their favourite habit of drinking,
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 451

and taking part in the disturbances to which those
habits frequently gave rise.

The sports, which varied with the season of the year
and the festivals of the Church, were entered into, not
only by the young, but by persons of riper age.
Fitz-Stephens, who seems to have had a marvellous taste
for such things, relates that on Shrove Tuesday boys
were allowed free licence, and might amuse themselves
in their schoolrooms with cockfighting. J ootball and
quoits were even at that period favourite recreations,
and in winter-time the ribs and jaw-bones of oxen
were made to do duty as skates for those who amused
themselves upon the ice on the city moats, or at Moor-
ditch. The young men of London exercised themselves
at tilting, as did the youth of the nobility; and at
Easter time, instead of jousting on horseback, they took
a boat, and indulged in a doubly dangerous manner in
this exciting sport upon the Thames, while the worthy
burghers, with their wives and daughters, looked on
from the bridge and the wharfs. The city had its own
woods and fields for hunting, shooting, and hawking ;
and Edward IV., who made frequent demands upon the
purses of the Londoners, had no scruple in inviting to
his royal hunts the worthy aldermen of the city, with
the ladies of their families, for whom this handsome and
.affable prince often showed special regard, and who, on
these occasions, were often regaled by their gallant host
with Muscadine wine and venison. Shows of the
miracles and Mysteries were not wanting in the olden
times ; and we find frequent notices and descriptions of
these great representations, which were under the man-
agement of the monastic clergy. In the year 1391, and

GG 2
452 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

again in 1409, such shows seem to have made a great
impression on the minds of the people ; but these repre-
sentations of the lives of the saints, and exhibitions
of buffoonery, had not yet grown into the modern
theatre; and, on the spot where Shakespere afterwards
acted, bull-fights and bear-baiting were still decidedly
the most popular forms of entertainment.

It must have been very difficult under such a pressure
of mere animal and material life, and in the midst of so
much natural energy and activity, for mental culture to
make its way in London. The city had been long sen-
sibly in want of schools, and the old monk of Canter-
bury can only tell us of three, viz. the foundation schools
of St. Paul’s and Westminster, and of Bermondsey, across
the water. Under the poor, imbecile Henry VI., who
always retained a warm feeling for the young, and who
has immortalized his name by the two great institutions
of Eton and of King’s College, Cambridge, there were nine
grammar schools established in London. It would appear
that the beneticed clergy, among whom even in those days
there were many able preachers, made every exertion,
not, however, without being influenced by the violently
persecuted doctrines of Wiclif, to provide the young
with better instruction. A generation later, the study of
the classics, moreover, gained a footing in London; for,
before the Reformation, John Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s,
a native of London, and the friend of Erasmus, founded
the school that was also named after the cathedral.

In conclusion, it will scarcely be out of place—
although we have already touched upon the subject at
various points—once more to consider the ways and
means by which order and a regular mode of government
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 453

were maintained at the close of the middle ages
among the population of this constantly increasing city,
which, however difficult it may be to determine such
numbers, can scarcely be computed at less than a hun-
dred thousand souls. The authorities, consisting of the
mayor and his council, governed the whole; whilst the
aldermen had everything to manage for their respective
wards by means of bailiffs, beadles, and other officials.
The king and parliament enacted various laws for the
city of London, which were applied and observed with
that respect for the laws of the land which is peculiar to
the English character. The number of laws promul-
gated either in the form of statutes or ordinances,
appears almost incredible in the present day; but still
more surprising is the endless and minute individualiza-
tion of these regulations; for we can no longer com-
prehend how entire classes of the population should
have allowed themselves to be restricted to the use of
certain kinds of food and of a prescribed number of dishes,
or to a fixed shape and material in regard to their clothes.
Nor can we now comprehend how an alderman or his
officials should have had to watch how often the citizens
in his ward were to be shaved, and how often their hair
or their nails ought to be cut. Men, even if they be-
longed to a good family, must have found themselves
fettered, in the midst of much licence, by numerous
restrictions which would be insufferable to us. If, how-
ever, we look at things as they really were, we shall
everywhere find a rude state of nature, both in regard
to trade, social intercourse, and domestic relations, which
made these severe prohibitions necessary, and their still
more severe enforcement unavoidable.
454 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

There were two objects which were regarded as of
special importance and paramount interest by the
citizens of London, viz. that the great traffic of the
city should be kept free from all disturbing causes of
interruption, and that the health of the population should
be preserved by every possible means. Both these
objects are apparent in the regulations issued by the
inspectors of streets. The streets were, at an early
period, carefully paved, and the attendant expenses met
by the imposition of a toll on carriages, on ships lying
in the ports, unless they belonged to owners having
special immunities, and on waggons passing through the
gates, if they were loaded either with sand or clay, or
with corn, meal, or firewood. Every house-owner was,
however, compelled to contribute to the repairs of the
common thoroughfares, which, like the entrances to the
cellars and the sale-booths, which were so frequently
attached to the houses, were regulated by the authorities.
There were to be gutters in all the streets, connected
with the admirable water-works and the sewers, whose
origin is unquestionably to be referred to the Romans.
There are innumerable ordinances extant in respect to
the maintenance of cleanliness in the streets, and not
only was every householder to sweep before his door,
but there was a band of special functionaries appointed
to remove all accumulations of dirt or rubbish. which
might occasion annoyance, or be regarded as a nuisance.
These men were also especially charged to see that the
pigs never left their sties to wallow in the mud, or to
wander at large in the streets. There was, however,
an exception made in favour of the hospital of St.
Anthony, the patron saint of these animals, for the
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 455

swine belonging to this house had bells suspended to
their necks, and must have been held in great considera-
tion, as they were not suffered either to be taken or
killed. Stray dogs did not fare any better, but even in
their case there was an exception made in favour of the
so-called noble dogs, chiens gentils, which were the
property of noble masters. The great people of the
country, such as the nobles, prelates, and barons, many
of whom lived in the city, and maintained relations of
intimacy with the citizens, were treated with great con-
sideration by the civic authorities. Thus the prohibition
against making purchases before the appointed hour at
the great fish, meat, and bread markets, was relaxed or,
perhaps, covertly remitted in the case of nobles and their
servants ; and they, moreover, were the only persons not
debarred from carrying swords and shields, or wearing
masks at the great entertainments which took place at
the seasons of Christmas and the New Year. The city
had, however, early endeavoured to secure itself against
the aggressions of the crown by obtaining royal letters
patent from the different monarchs; thus, before the
claim was abrogated in regard to country districts, the
city obtained immunity from the imposition by which
the court had been wont to keep their men and horses
free from charge ; and, in accordance with the exemption
which they secured, it became illegal to exact lodging,
money, or food from the citizens. On one occasion,
when the marshal and chamberlain of Edward II. had
caused several houses to be scored with chalk, as a
mark that they were to receive billets of men and horses,
the sheriff immediately ordered the marks to be effaced,
and when he was called to account for his conduct
456 LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

before a royal tribunal, which sate in the Tower, he was
acquitted. There was even a law passed under Edward I.
which secured to the house-owner the ancient privilege
of allowing him, in the event of his slaying a royal ser-
vant under the provocation of such enforced billeting, to
free himself from the charge of murder on the oath of
six of his gossips.

The punishments in the ancient city of London were
summary, but by no means excessively hard or cruel.
They consisted mainly in imprisonment, as is sufficiently
proved by the large number of jails, in fines of money,
expulsion from the city, the pillory, whipping, and having
the head shaven; and were all directed against acts of
immorality, which were only too frequent both amongst
the clergy and laity; against the frauds practised by mem-
bers of several of the guilds; against slander, cheating,
and adulteration, disturbance of the peace and rebellion.
The lord mayor was happily not invested with the power
of inflicting the punishment of death; and when this had
been awarded in the year 1340, in consequence of a riot
and a fight between the fishmongers and skinners, the
king only allowed this exceptional case to pass in conse-
quence of the lord mayor having been entrusted with
special powers during his own absence in Flanders.

We see, therefore, how early, in the middle ages,
London presented the aspect of a compact and exclusive
community, which was distinguished by a genuine Eng-
lish character of staunch resolution, but was not actuated.
by any very deep intellectual aspirations, nor possessed
of much appreciation or taste for the arts. The Lon-
doners, in fact, were a practical, material people, deeply
impressed by their own important political character.
LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 457

They had already become conscious of their own strength
and influence, although they never forgot that while they
exercised powers which in some respects were without a
parallel, they nevertheless constituted a portion of one
great whole. Even when, at a subsequent period, Eng-
land once tried a republican form of government, London
never rose to be more than the first city of the land.
Its reputation, magnitude, and influence in regard to the
rest of the world have, of necessity, increased with the
importance of the empire; and who can say when this
increase will have reached its final height? Prophecies
have indeed been rife for more than two hundred years
that the summit of its power has been attained, and that
a retrogression from its high position is inevitable: but
how long will such prophecies continue to be equally
far from their fulfilment ?

THE END.
LONDON :
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tion. By B. Drake, M.A. 144 pp. (1853). 8vo. 7s. 6d.

St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: With Notes. By Cuar.es
Jouy Vaucuan, D.D. 157 pp. (1859). 8vo. 7s. Gd.

X. ENGLISH GRAMMAR.
The Child’s English Grammar. By E. Turina, M.A. Demy

18mo. New Edition. (1857). 1s.

Elements of Grammar taught in English. By E. Turine, M.A,
Third Edition. 136 pp. (1860). Demy 18mo. 2s.

Materials for a Grammar of the Modern English Language. By
G. H. PARMINTER, M.A. 220 pp. (1856), Feap. 8vo, 3s. 6d.

XI, RELIGIOUS.
History of the Christian Church during the Middle Ages. By

ARCHDEACON Harpwick. 482 pp. (1853). With Maps. Crown 8vo. cloth. 10s. 6d.

History of the Christian Church during the Reformation, By

ARCHDEACON Harpwick. 459 pp. (1850). Crown 8vo. cloth. 10s. 6d.

History of the Book of Common Prayer. By Francis Procter,
M.A, 464 pp. (1860). Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. cloth. 10s, 6d.

History of the Canon of the New Testament during the First

Four Centuries. By Brook Foss Westcott, M.A. 594 pp, (1855). Crown 8vo.
cloth. 12s. 6d.

Introduction to the Study of the Gospels. By Brooxe Foss
Westcott, M.A. (1860). Crown 8yvo. cloth. 10s. 6d.

The Church Catechism Illustrated and Explained. By Arruur
Ramsay, M.A. 204 pp. (1854). 18mo. cloth, 3s, 6d.

Notes for Lectures on Confirmation: With Suitable Prayers.
By C. J. Vaueuan, D. D. Third Edition. 70 pp. (1859). Feap. 8vo. 1s. 6d.

Hand-Book to Butler’s Analogy. By C. A. Swarnson, M.A. 55 pp.

(1856). Crown 8yo. 1s. 6d.

History of the Christian Church during the First Three Cen-
turies, and the Reformation in England. By Wiiu1am Simpson, M.A, 307 pp.
(1857). Feap. 8vo. cloth. 5s.

Analysis of Paley’s Evidences of Christianity. By Caaruus H.
Crosse, M.A. 115 pp. (1855). 18mo. 33 6d,
FORTHCOMING BOOKS.

I.

Life and Correspondence of M. de Tocqueville. By
G. De Beaumont. Translated from the Original with the
Author’s Sanction. Two vols. Svo.

1,

Memoir of the Rev. John Clay, late Chaplain of Preston
Gaol. With Selections from his Writings and Correspondence,
and a Sketch of the Progress of Prison Discipline in England.
Edited by his Son. 8vo. with Portrait.

IIL.
The Moor Cottage : A Tale of Home Life. Crown 8vo.

Iv.
Life of Edward Forbes, Tue Narturauist. By Gerorcu
Witson, M.D., late Professor of Technology in the University of
Edinburgh, and ARcHIBALD GEIKiz, 1.G.8., of the Geological

Survey.
v.

Pictures of Old England. By Dr. Pavzt. Translated from the
Original by E. C. Orrz.
VIL
Cicero’s Second Philippic with Notes and Introduction.

Translated from the German of Kant Harm. By Joun FE. B.
Mayor, M.A. Fellow and Classical Lecturer of St. John’s
College, Cambridge, Editor of “ Juvenal,” &.

Vil.

An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions. With numerous
Examples. By P.G. Tait, M.A., Professor of Natural Philosophy
in the University of Edinburgh.

VIII.

A Treatise on Geometry of Three Dimensions. By
Perctrvau Frost, M.A., St. John’s College, and Joszepa WoLsTENn-
HoLmE, M.A., Christ’s College, Cambridge.

IX.

A Treatise on Trilinear Co-ordinates. By N. M. Ferrers,
M.A., Fellow and Mathematical Lecturer of Gonville and Caius
College.

R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL

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