The English 
 
 in 
 
 The Middle A^es 
 
 
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 ^J0^ 
 
 !f^^- 
 
 
 tPT V'' vi" 
 
 'Y ■■:
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 CLJjLt^j 
 
 ( 
 
 THE ENGLISH 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES.
 
 THE ENGLISH 
 
 IN 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES; 
 
 FROM THE NORMAN USURPATION TO THE 
 DAYS OF THE STUARTS. 
 
 '^Tfieir MoUt of Hife, Brtss, glrms, inoccupations, 
 anij Amusements. 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MEDIEVAL REMAINS IN THE 
 BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. FREDERICK HODGETTS, 
 
 LaUExamimr to the University and District of Moscow, Professor in the Imperial 
 
 College of Practical Science, and other Crown Establishments of Moscoiv. 
 
 Member of the British Archaological Association, 
 
 A iithor o/" Older England" etc., et*: 
 
 LONDON : 
 WHITING AND COMPANY, 30 and 32, SARDINIA STREET. 
 
 1885.

 
 TO THE RIGHT HON. 
 
 SIR HAKRY VERNEY, Bakt., M.P. 
 
 THIS COURSE OF LECTURES 
 
 IS 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 Dear Sir Harry Verney, 
 
 Presuming on the cordial reception whicli you 
 gave me on my return to England, after an absence of more 
 than thirty years, and which I felt the more as I had no 
 claim upon your consideration beyond being the step-son 
 of an old friend, I now dedicate to you this very humble 
 attempt to render the study of our own historic treasures 
 more accessible to the English public by clothing it in 
 a popular dress, from which the cobwebs of the Dryasdust 
 School have, to some extent, been brushed away. 
 
 I feel more than ordinary pleasure in seeing your name 
 in connection with this work, for you are, perhaps, the only 
 one remaining of a wide circle of friends of my beloved 
 step-father who can appreciate the vast debt of gratitude 
 I owe to him for careful training, and for the cultivation 
 of any taste for investigation I may possess : at the same 
 time it affords me an opportunity of publicly expressing my 
 thanks to you for the kind words which have encouraged 
 me to remain in England and devote myself to the arduous 
 task I felt called upon to undertake. 
 
 This task is no less than to try to interest my country- 
 men in Old English things — especially in their Language 
 and their History. In the following pages I wish to show 
 that we have proofs in the National Museum of the exist- 
 ence of a history and a literature in ancient times of 
 which we have reason to be justly proud.
 
 viii I'rtjatory Litdr. 
 
 Hut wo have been ret'crred, as 1 have already pointed 
 out in other works, to foreif^m models in literature and art. 
 to the nogU'ct of home-born excellence, which has remained 
 hitherto uncared for. Our schoolmasters have taught us to 
 write Litin, not English; while archteologists, antiquaries, 
 and historians are too apt to underrate the importance of 
 our early national records as compared with those of 
 (ireecc and Rome. Well may we exclaim with the 
 ( Icrman poet : 
 
 •Warum in die Feme greifen, 
 Wenn da.s Gate liegt so nah' ?'' 
 
 I>eing neither Greek nor lioman, but a son of that race 
 which hurled Imperial Eome from her seat, I want to see 
 the study of our own ancient and medieval history en- 
 ;^aged in with ardour. I want English people to be really 
 intercsted in the early events of their own race ; and by 
 publishing these Lectures I hope to show them that any- 
 hody working conscientiously in his own sphere, whatever 
 that may be, may do somctliing to throw a light on 
 j>ortions of history which should not be allowed to remain 
 in darkness. 
 
 Believe me to remain. 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 J. FliEDEKICK HODGETTS. 
 
 London, September, 1885.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Tins work is printed from the MS. of a course of 
 Lectures delivered at the British Museum on the same 
 principle and much in the same way as those which 
 appeared under the title of Older England, of which, 
 indeed, it may be regarded as a continuation. 
 
 Those Lectures treat of the Anglo-Saxon remains in 
 the British Museum, and the oljject in them was to build 
 up from those remains a history of our remote forefathers 
 as perfectly distinct from the nations of so-called classical 
 antiquity, and to prove that we were not copyists " in that 
 old iron time". I .showed how the forms of our swords 
 and shields were widely different from classic models — in 
 fact, as different as possible for objects answering the same 
 purposes to be. I showed that we had an early language 
 and a literature which, without any mixture of Eoman 
 taint, were things to be proud of ; and I entered an urgent 
 protest against the system which, in our schools, forces 
 upon us the study of an alien language and literature as 
 guides to our own, with which they have no kinship save 
 the remote relationship proved by Max MilUer to exist 
 among all members of the Aryan family. 
 
 The following Lectures tend to show that even in later 
 times than those taken cognizance of in Older England, 
 the Latin element, introduced by the Norman usurpation, 
 I lid not mingle with the English elements of which we 
 were composed ; and, in fact, instead of our becoming ;/ 
 Noriiiuu, the Nurmaus became English.
 
 X Introduction. 
 
 Kiirtlicr oil Ml the- story di' our nice we certainly do find 
 French and Italian names for pieces of armour, Vmt this 
 wa.^ hccau.se those pieces of armour were of French or 
 Italian origin, and never nourished on English soil, being 
 smashed, as Rome had been, by the heavy hammer or 
 fiercer gunpowder of the opposing Teuton. 
 
 In the progress of this investigation I have had to 
 refer, for customs, dress, habits, arms, and armour, to the 
 priceless manuscripts of our noble collection at the British 
 Museum. And here I must acknowledge the extreme 
 courtesy and kindness of ^f r. E. j\I. Thompson, the Keeper 
 of these precious relics. Every facility was afforded mc 
 by Mr. Thompson, and the gentlemen in his department, 
 for ])ointing out to my audience the actual places in 
 the MSS. themselves on which my assertions are based. 
 No audience ever yet had such treasures displayed before 
 them, and no public lecturer was ever more cordially 
 assisted in his labours than I have been in giving these 
 Lectures. 
 
 Besides the documentary evidence of the MSS., I was 
 enabled, when speaking of the armour worn by our hardy 
 sire.s, to refer to some excellent specimens preserved in the 
 Media3val lioom ; and though the number of these pieces is 
 not great, the lessons they teach are as genuine as though 
 the Museum were crammed with armour. 
 
 To Dr. Bond I have again to express my best thanks 
 for the courtesy with which he has co-operated with me in 
 this endeavour to utilise the resources of the Museum. 
 Under his auspices a convenient lecture-room has been 
 arranged in the building, which obviates the necessity of 
 using the galleries for lecturing in, a custom attended with 
 considerable inconvenience. There is now no reason why 
 men who have made any particular branch of knowledge
 
 Introduction. xi 
 
 their special study should uot make use of the public col- 
 lection to illustrate their views, and take advantage of this 
 new lecture-room to enunciate them. 
 
 It may seem like ingratitude in me to take exception 
 against a work to which I am so much indebted as Sir 
 Samuel Eush Meyrick's Critical Encj_uiry into Anticnt 
 Arms and Armour, but, in carefully considering the sub- 
 ject of chain-mail armour, I have been reluctantly com- 
 pelled to show that he has been carried away by theory in 
 that part of his subject. Authority as he unquestionably 
 is, on plate-armour, I am sorry to say that I do not find 
 his assertions regarding chain-mail borne out by the 
 evidence of the monuments and the manuscripts. 
 
 With regard to the subject of non-metallic armour, I 
 found it too large a subject to treat in one and the same 
 Lecture with metallic armour, and to my great regret it 
 was found to be beyond the scope of the series to devote 
 another to the subject of armour. 
 
 If the perusal of these pages should induce any scholar 
 to throw aside his Xenophon or Cicero, and bring his 
 trained skill to bear upon the equally " classic" lines of 
 our forefathers, albeit of less remote antiquity, I shall 
 indeed be repaid for the labour which I have expended on 
 the subject. There is an immense field open to English- 
 men, and the work in that field should be to them as it has 
 been to me, a labour of love. 
 
 J. FREDEEICK HODGETTS.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Lecture I. — The Normans. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Considerations connected with the appearance of the Normans. 
 Their origin, language, arms, armour, dress and habits. 
 Their true value in English history. Norman efq)ee. com- 
 pared with the Saxon >iweord. Remains of Norman 
 skill preserved in the British Museum. Testimony of 
 the manuscripts compared with the evidence of the 
 archaeological remains. Independence of " EngUxh,'"' i.e., 
 language, manners, and customs vindicated. Changes in 
 English in this wide sense not due to Norman influence. ... 1 
 
 Lecture II.— The English. 
 
 The peculiar nature of the English national charactei' asserted 
 itself in spite of Norman oppression, which, in fact, caused 
 it to flourish at a time when its extinction seemed at hand. 
 The adventures and quarrels of our Norman tyi-ants not 
 English history. Deeds of Hereward the Saxon and others 
 who shielded England in the early Norman times. Manu- 
 scripts in the British Museum referred to in proof of 
 the independent nature of everything English. The 
 Brnt shown to be more valuable to us than the Lives of 
 the Norman Kings. From 1066 to 1272. more than two 
 liundred years, our ordinary books on history give no 
 history of England. How to learn it
 
 xvi Contettts. 
 
 lif:<Ttiu III -Tin; Monk. 
 
 PAfi K 
 
 MoiiMlic FimtitiitinnH of Kngland. ''The Ancren Riewl." 
 IloligiouH feeling and Church Latin. Norman-French in 
 ihi- Monnstory. Anglo-Norman Abbots. CuriouB- and 
 interesting Ii«t of Abbots, by Mr. Birch, of the British 
 Muacum. Indifference of the English to our own story in 
 the Middle Ages quite unaccountable. Monki.sh histories, 
 their value. Illuminated P.salters valuable as guides to 
 KcclcniaHtical and Mona.stic habits in the Middle Ages. 
 Effect of Norman Priors on English Monasteries. Military 
 Monks. Grand Rer>-ice done to England by the Crusades 
 in getting rid of the Normans. .... 71 
 
 Lecture IV.— Ak.M(»lk. 
 
 The history of Armour dividing itself into three periods : — 
 Chain Mail (Byriiir), Mixed Mail and Plate. Plate 
 Armour. The development of these epochs rapidly con- 
 sidered. Chain Mail Asiatic, and of immense antiquity in 
 the north-west of India and Persia. Revival of Chivalry. 
 Military Sports. Tournaments and Jousts. The Pel and 
 the Quintain. The Plate Armour in the British Museum. 109 
 
 Lectcre v.— Civil Dress. 
 
 Slight changes in English dress effected by the Norman 
 influence. The Surcoat identical with the 'over-slop' of 
 the Engli.sh. Other portions especially of female dress. 
 nhown to have been, in the Norman times, the same 
 things under new names, that had been used in the 
 prc-Norman periods. Long skirts and flowing surcoats 
 affected by the Normans. Continued into the fifteenth
 
 Contents. xv 
 
 PAGE 
 
 century. Multiplication of authorities of all kinds for our 
 knowledge of the dress of the English from the thirteenth 
 century downwards 14;") 
 
 Lecture VI. — Sports and Pastimes. 
 
 Athletic Sports, Hunting, Hawking, Pageants, Masks, 
 Mummeries, Moralities, Mysteries, illustrated by MSS. in 
 the British Museum. Origin of the theatre. Children's 
 games. Balls and the various games played with them. ... 177
 
 LIST OF WORKS REFERRED TO. 
 
 • Aiiclo-Saxon Chronicle" \H6\. 
 •' Ancient Laws and Institutes of England" (Thorpe) 1840. 
 Anglo-Saxon Mannscrii)ts in British Museum (various). 
 ItKi.F.—" Ecclesiastical History" 1840. 
 Bi Kcn (Walter de Gray)— "Fasti Monastici JEv\ Saxonici' 1 872. 
 Cif.DMoN— (Thorpe) J 832. 
 •' Co<lex Exoniensis" (Thorpe) 1842. 
 
 • Diplomatarium Anglium" (Thorpe) 1865. 
 (;rTiii..\f. liifeof St. 1848. 
 IIakmi. — '• (/onqucst of Britain" 1861. 
 
 Do. •■ Anglo-Saxon Sagas" 1861. 
 
 Illustrations to " Cffidmon" 1832. 
 
 L.vrrENnERG — "History of the Anglo-Saxon Kings" 1881. 
 
 Lav.\m<)N's •• Brut'" (Sir F. Madden) 1847. 
 
 M.\i.LET — "Northern Antiquities' 1847. 
 Meyrick (Sir Samuel)— ''A Critical Inquiry into Antient 
 
 Arms and Armour' (Planche) 1852. 
 MoRRi.s (Dr. Richard) — "Historic Outlines of Englisli 
 
 Accidence"; "' Specimens of Early English" 1882. 
 
 Mn.i.F.R (Professor Max) — " Science of Language'' 187j. 
 •• Older England " (J. F. Hodgetts) 1883-4. 
 
 Planch K — "History of British Costume'' 1874. 
 
 Strkxt (Joseph)— '• Dress and Habits." (Planche) 1852. 
 
 Do. Do. " Sports and Pastimes" 1830. 
 
 Do. Do. • Hord Angel CjTina' 1790. 
 
 Ttrneu (Sharon) — • History of the Anglo-Saxons" 1840. 
 
 WaRTon (Dr. Thomas)—" History of English Poetry " 184li. 
 Wriciit (Thomas) — "History of Domestic Planners and 
 
 Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages" 1862. 
 Do. Do. "Essays on Popular Superstitions," etc. 1846. 
 
 Do. Do. "Biographia Literaria" 1842. 
 
 Do. Do. •■ Es-says on Archaological Subjects" 1861.
 
 Lecture I. 
 THE NORMANS. 
 
 in.
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE NORMANS. 
 
 No nation in the world, ancient or modeni, possesses, or 
 ever possessed, so perfect a literature as we do. And 
 though much of our ancient wealth in the hand- written 
 books of the Early English time (vulgarly called the Anglo- 
 Saxon period) perished in the destruction Ijy the Danes of 
 the grand library at Peterborough in the ninth century, 
 we still have enough to teach us how our fathers lived, 
 dressed, and thought in the old time, before us. 
 
 It was the custom of the illuminators of the Middle 
 xVges to represent the personages in their account, whether 
 historical, fabulous, or mythic, in the dress and with the 
 arms of their contemporaries, thus teaching us how those 
 contemporaries lived and dressed. Consequently, we can 
 gain from the drawings in these manuscripts more 
 information on these suljjects than from any other source. 
 
 As, however, few manuscripts that remain to us are 
 older than the tenth century, and certainly none, furnished 
 with the illustrations from which we gain our information, 
 are older than that date, we are referred to it as the starting 
 point in these historical considerations. Still, bearing in 
 mind how very slow the changes were in fashions, arms, 
 and art, before that period, we have every reason to conclude 
 that tho pictures of the tenth century would also represent 
 
 H 2
 
 4 The Normans. [leCT. 
 
 \\w «liv.vic.s, maiiiu'i-.iiiMl customs ^A livt- Miituiics Ijiitore ; 
 and this we timl, on (.oniimiing histories, legends, and 
 irnminHli'li in the tonihs, to be actually the case. This is 
 true (»f the habits, dress, and customs of our own race, and 
 of the allied Scandinavians, whose remote traditions and 
 numennis archaological remains, of earlier date than the 
 imniigmtion to England, are, when not absolutely identi- 
 cal with our itwu, so nearly akin to them as to furnish 
 corit)l)orative evidence (»f what they were, and to show us 
 that our pictuivs of the tenth and eleventh centuries 
 miiiht have been drawn in the fifth and sixth. 
 
 This refers to mediaval matter's. Of more ancient 
 customs and dress our forefathers could have no idea, 
 and therefore they rei)resented the heroes and historical 
 |H'rsonages of higher antitjuity, and of other races, 
 in the di-ess, arms, and armour of the time in which the 
 limner lived. Thus, .Tudilh and llolofernes, Cain and 
 AUd, the daughter of Herodia.s, and others, are dressed as 
 Anglo-Saxons in Saxon MSS, ; while the changes taking 
 l»lace in the Xornum jieriod are clearly pointed out in the 
 later documents, in the Bayeux Tapestry, and other 
 nionunicut.s of the Norman times. These show that the 
 ( hange in question was not very important in any way, 
 though .suHicient to be distinctive to the eye of the 
 antiquary. 
 
 Uowever people may doubt^ the authenticity of some 
 of the relatmns in these precious documents, disputing the 
 accuracy of the statements in Liyamon's Brut concerning 
 the adventures of certain British kings in the course of 
 their wars against the English, not the shadow of a doubt 
 can be cast on the authoritv of the illuminations as to the
 
 I.] The Ncnnaiis. 5 
 
 dress, habits, manners, and custdins uf tlie tinio at which 
 the drawings were made. 
 
 The valuable collection of Early Englisli, commonly 
 called Anglo-Saxon, remains, now preserved in the British 
 Museum, is sufficient, as I liave already had the honour of 
 pointing out to you in former lectures, to establish the 
 fact that we are a pure race, descended from the Scandi- 
 navian settlers of the fifth century, having from educa- 
 tional and national prejudices as little mixture in our 
 l)lood as any people in Europe. The statements I then 
 made were confirmed by numerous references to manu- 
 scripts preserved in the British IMuseum and in other 
 wealth-hoards of learning, and to the relics under the 
 guardianship of Mr. Franks. I have now to direct your 
 attention to times more familiar to the majority of my 
 audience, though often viewed in a strongly coloured 
 light by our historians. 
 
 I want to .show you that the unfortunate issue of the 
 struggle at Hastings did not Gallicise or Normanise tlie 
 English ; and that customs, manners, dress, habits, nud 
 language are, and have been, essentially Englisli all 
 through. The rapid glance which I shall have to throw 
 over six centuries will not fall beyond the walls of our 
 n<jl)le national collection. 
 
 In tlie Aiiglo-Saxon room I have shown you the grand 
 old swords wliich won tliis land for us fourteen liundred 
 years ago. Tlie steel remains, so does the form of the 
 Idade; and so do the Runes on the rich gold ornaments ; 
 and in tlie same way wesliall, I lii»])e, be able to say that 
 our true metal remains unchanged ; that tlie \ery form of 
 our external show is Englisli, and that our language, like
 
 r) Tlu Normans. [LF.CT. 
 
 those Hnnps, 1ms un<lergonc no more actual change than 
 other Teutonic tonfoif's have suffered which have not heen 
 pxiwsed to the external intluence of a foreign idiom 
 growing up and i>erishing (like Norman-French in 
 Kngland) hcside them. 
 
 [,(•1 us rnmmeuce, as we did in tin' last course of 
 leetures which I had the honour to deliver before you, 
 with the sword. The .same weapon that converted Britain 
 into England plaeed a Xorman duke on the English 
 throne, and so securely placed him there, that in counting 
 our kings we reckon from him, a foreigner, rather than 
 from our own P^nglish line, excluding Alfred and other 
 great men of whom we ought to l)e proud, while we con- 
 tinue the practice through a line of aliens of some of 
 whom we certainly ought to he a.shamed. 
 
 The Normans, like ourselves, were descended from 
 Scandina^^an ancestors ; but, unlike ourselves, they aban- 
 doned their language and religion when accepting the 
 1 )uchy of Normandy at the hand of Charles the Simple. 
 Their tastes remained Scandinavian and warlike to the 
 last ; their acceptation of Christianity being in the first 
 instance nothing but a stratagem. Eolf Ganger, the 
 fomnler of the dynasty, certainly did his best to improve 
 th(> land which came into his possession ; and very probably 
 the exaggerated forms of arms, armour, and vestments 
 which he introduced were the result of his design of 
 retaining them at any cost, and forcing them upon his 
 retainers, both Scandinavian and Frankish. 
 
 IJnlf CJanger was the son of Yarl Kegnvald, and was 
 banished from Norway by Harald Harfagra for under- 
 taking a Viking expedition after it had been prohibited
 
 I.] The Normans. 7 
 
 by that king. Rolf was a famous Viking, and in every 
 respect an accomplished warrior, so that when he came to 
 govern his duchy, it is no wonder that he made the people 
 of Normandy as warlike as himself and his followers. 
 But, unlike Hengst and Horsa, he at last foreswore the 
 faith and language of his fathers. 
 
 What was the result ? A modification of everything 
 which had previously marked him and his men. The 
 sword, the most distinguishing feature of a nation, changed 
 its form. Instead of the stout, stern Scandinavian weapon 
 of former days, with its Oriental-lool<ing hilt, its flattened 
 " ball", small guard, and sturdy l)lade, we get the modifi- 
 cation called by us a Norman sword, and by them the 
 lonrjuc 4'p6e. 
 
 In this word 4pic we stumble upon something un- 
 familiar as applied to a sword. There is nothing for our 
 ear answering to the spell that lies in the word " blade"^ 
 with all its various meanings, whether of the leaf or the 
 sword. We don't like qn'e, and <!pi''c never was and never 
 could Ijecome English. We turn to a Latin dictionary, 
 and find the word even there a foreigner, existing as 
 spatha, derived from the Greek airddrj, a flat piece of 
 wood for stirring mixtures, our medical "spatula". The 
 name is applied in the form " spatha" by the Romans to the 
 leaf of a ])alm tree, and to a In-oad flat sword without n 
 point. Unfamiliar as this proud Norman word for a sword 
 may be, it lives in our humble spade. Nor does it seem 
 anything more or less than a Teutonic word in its 
 origin, existing, as it does, in tlic oldest Scantlinavian 
 dialect with wliicli we are acquainted — Icelandic — wliere 
 we find it as spa^i, a spade. A spade in Swedisli and
 
 8 The Normans. [lect. 
 
 DaniHli is cnlU'd .•»/>f'//'', in flennnn Hpothi- or sprttken, all 
 from llu" r<»ot ajia, wlience also our i^prni, meaning to 
 spread out. From this foreign \vor<l the neo-Latinisms of 
 .tjxidn, spardoii, tpadille, and so forth, are derived, all 
 tienoting a very broad sword ; and we are able to see the 
 »»rigin of the Greek word itself, as being nothing more 
 than a borrowed expression from another race to denote 
 expansion, or sprewling. 
 
 Hut, as in the cases of gladius and blade, we are referred 
 t(i leaf-like fnmis in nature, so we find in that of spaihe a 
 connection with the vegetable world. It is the name 
 given to the broad sheath of a flower called qxithi: by 
 l)otanists. Yet it does not seem that the application of 
 the name to the part of a flower is the primitive use of 
 the word. In the derivations from the root f^pa (whence 
 span, space, and other words of the kind) we find one of 
 the earliest words to be the Sanskrit sphdy, to swell, 
 increase, " broaden", having no special reference to the 
 swortl whatever. I need not say that the old form of 
 the French i^pic was t'spi^>\ whence the s has been 
 elided. 
 
 Tlie evidence is that the old Xormau name for the 
 old blade is artificial, as the object itself, a mere modi- 
 Heation or alterati»tn. It died off as a t^rm for the sword 
 in England, where it had already flourished in the form 
 of sixidu, a spade, long before the advent of the Xormans. 
 The Imll at the end of the hilt, called by the Xormans 
 the ^HunmeUc, or little apple, has survived in our own 
 military nomenclature, l)ut almost all the other portions 
 of the sword remain English. The two extremes, the 
 l^mmelle and the point, are foreign, while hilt, i^uard
 
 I.] The Normans. 9 
 
 (from warian), tang, lilnde, and grij), are all ]Mire 
 English. 
 
 The Norwegians under Tiolf Ganger lieing nearly all 
 men who had Ijeen lianished hy Harald from Norway, or 
 who had quitted the land voluntarily, were colonists, nor 
 can we helieve for a moment that they suddenly ceased to 
 be Teutons, and became Eomance. No act of volition 
 could ha^'e effected such a change. We have to remember 
 also that the Frankish language which these f^candinavian 
 Teutons determined to adopt was not a \mve descendant 
 of Latin. The Franks were Teutons too, and in the course 
 of years had acquired the debased Latin called French, 
 referred to 1)y jNIax Midler as "a Romanic dialect, whose 
 grammar is l)ut a blurred copy of the grammar of Cicero. 
 But its dictionary is full of Teutonic words, mure or less 
 Eomanised to suit the pronunciation of the IJoman 
 inhabitants of Gaul." 
 
 This " Germanised Latin", as ^lax Midler calls it, was 
 the language which the Norwegians had to acquire, and 
 they, in doing so, introduced into its vocabulary many 
 Scandinavian words and phrases that deflected Norman 
 French still farther from Latin than the German of the 
 Franks had done. And this hotch-potch was to be thrust 
 into the mouths of the English, who had preserved their 
 mother tongue at least pure and uiicontaminated. What 
 was the result ? It was as oil on water — the two forms 
 of speech lived on independently of each other, and never 
 coalesced. Norman French died for want of cono-enial 
 soil wherein to grow ; and being very much akin to what 
 we call " slang", has passed away entirely, existing in no 
 spoken form, being only preserved in a sort of dried
 
 10 The Nonnans. [lkct- 
 
 iiminmitiiMl rf»n«litinii in some u\ nur le^'iil tenns, which 
 takr Mill- hiwycrs so luiij,' to k-ani, ninl cost 7/.s so much 
 wht'M tlicy know thcin. 
 
 Tht' Ohl Kii^'linh sword was a more useful weapon 
 than the Xorinan capee, especially f<>r troops accustomed 
 to riL,'ht on foot. The Norman hlade was longer, the hilt 
 Inr^'rr ; the hall, instead of heing an ol)late spheroid, was 
 a glohular piece of iron; while the guard, instead of curving 
 gently downwards on each side of the blade, originally to 
 ])revent the weajtou fmrn slipping through the aperture in 
 the armour tlirough which it was thrust, became a long 
 straight piece of iron, forming a cross with the hilt and 
 blade. 
 
 I have in former lectures alluded to the veneration in 
 which the sword was held by our forefathers. I have 
 shown you how the oath on the sword was of more 
 imivirtance to them than the oath on the bracelet, which 
 was oidy l»inding in civil, not military, cases; and now 
 we find that their Xorman cousins, though Christian 
 warrioi-s, jiad as great, if not a greater, respect for this 
 mystic weapon than their pagan sires. Doubtless tlie «tld 
 feeling surviveil, and, like many other pagan observances, 
 " sword-worship" passed into Christianity, and became 
 accounted fm- by the form of the weapon being identical 
 with the gi-acious symbol. Certain it is that Xorman 
 knights knelt to their cross-swords in the Holy Land with 
 ns nnjch devotion as a monk bowed to his crucifix, or a 
 priest to the holy sign on tb.e high altar. Xotwithstanding 
 this, the Norman warrior tmsted more in his lance than 
 in his sword in the hour of battle, because he had become 
 accustomed to act more on horseback than on foot, more
 
 I,] TJic Normans. 
 
 II 
 
 in firm line than in single combat. The snre and sturdy 
 formation of the wedge he had abandoned, and had 
 adopted the system of attack in line three or fonr deep. 
 Had the English only retained their wedge at Hastings, or 
 rather at Pevensey, many disasters to the nation would 
 have been avoided, f(n- the Norman lance could not 
 penetrate that solid mass, while the Norman knights went 
 down before the English axes to an extent that gained the 
 battle the name of Sanglac, or sea of blood, among the 
 invaders. The ruse of i)retended flight drawing the 
 English from their impenetrahle wedge lost them the 
 victory, which, despite their inferiority in numbers, would 
 have attended their efforts had tliey only retained their 
 formation, for the Normans had lost such numbers that 
 they were already in despair of success. William would 
 never have hit u})on the ruse had he not seen the fatal eager- 
 ness with which the Phiglish pursued the foot and cavalry 
 of Bretagne and other allies in his left wing. The death 
 of Harold was the real cause of the victory, for if he had 
 not fallen, that victory, supposing he could liave gained 
 it, would liave contributed but little to give William the 
 sceptre. The force of England was unconquered — a small 
 portion of it only had been exerted ; and if Harold had 
 survived, or any other heir at all competent to the crisis, 
 William would have gained no more by the victory than 
 the privilege of fighting another battle with diminished 
 strengtli. 
 
 Tn this invasion the Norman Duke came to a crown 
 wliieli liad been assured to him by its former possessor, 
 and which h;id liccn assumed by a man wlio had sworn 
 allegiance to William. The court [KUiy, so to say, was
 
 12 The Normans. [lect. 
 
 prepared to receive liim, and recognised him as the rightful 
 claimant, regarding Harold more or less as a usurper. 
 Many of the "upland thanes", or country gentlemen, 
 as we should now call them, affected Xonuan manners, 
 and William was crowned at Westminster with great 
 rejoidngs as a rightfid successor. 
 
 ( )n the utlier hand, the conquest of Britain by the 
 English was the commencement of a war of extermination, 
 perhaps the most cruel recorded in history. Like their 
 favourite wedge formation, the tine edge was introduced 
 in the fifth century, when certain Xorthern heroes came 
 to assist the Britons. These were succeeded by more ; and 
 the tide of conquest rolled in increasing waves of military 
 occupation, with the deadly purpose of driving out and 
 cutting down the dwellers in the land, until Scandina\'ia, 
 or that part of it which furnished forth these fierce 
 warrioi-s, was better represented here than in the land of 
 tlieir birth, William brought at once his whole force of 
 Gt>,000 men to assist liis claim, and had he been killed 
 instead of Harold, there would have been an end to the 
 Xormans in England. As it was, he lost more than half 
 his army at Hastings, or rather Pevensey, and if there had 
 been a strong feeling against him in England, he woidd 
 never have reached Westminster to be crowned, ^^^len 
 we take into consideration how many troops had deserted 
 from Harold : how many were on board the English shijts 
 sent to cut off William's retreat ; how many refused to 
 take up arms in the quarrel ; and, tinally, how many were 
 directly favouralde to William, we shall see at once that 
 the small force of Normans were not conquerors of the 
 nation, but of Harold.
 
 I.] TJie Normans. 13 
 
 Much has been said of the Xormauisint^ pUNver uf the 
 invasion, the real fact of the matter being that the con- 
 sequence of the assertion of absohite power by the 
 N'ormaus was tlie'-f^^-Normanisation of the English, who 
 had assumed certain Normanisms under the Confessor. 
 We find very few remains of Xorman war in the shape of 
 arms and armour, while we possess plenty of Anglo-Saxon 
 swords, shields, spear-heads, arrow-heads, and so fortli. 
 What do we find { Casth's — strong towers for the robber 
 baron to hide in from the just fury of the oppressed — 
 castles, unknown to the free, open-hearted Englishman, 
 whose only defence was his shield. The conquest of 
 liritain showed the weak British, imitation Eonian, 
 sword in numbers lying in the beds of rivers, and the big 
 Scandinavian weapon by the victor's side in his "rave. 
 lUit, save a very few specimens scattered here and there 
 in museums, there are no Norman swords in England, and 
 the castles are all decayed ruins. A strange conquest, 
 truly, where the conqueror had to huh from the conquered ! 
 Contrast this with the conquest of Britain by the English, 
 where open fields remained, and the warrior — farmer, 
 soldier, sailor, and ploughman, all in one — lived on the 
 land lie i'ought for, cheered by the tender ties of wife and 
 child, wliich have come down to us undisturbed by fcmmc 
 and enfant. 
 
 When William saw that the time was come, he threw 
 off the mask and showed his intention of making England 
 a part of Xormandy. Tlion, for a time, by the fault of 
 the English themselves, tlie history of England is taken up 
 by Xorman chroniclers, who, to flatter the great Duke, 
 wrote songs to his praise in the slang tliey loved. The
 
 14 TJic .\'(>i iiiiiiis. [li;ct. 
 
 Kn^'lish, ton Iat(\ siiw llicir eiror; Imt tlie .strongholds 
 stiiiiding all over the country kept tiieni in check. Their 
 Ixtw.s ami arrows were of slight avail against stone and 
 mortar. Still, many brave outlaws, from Hereward down 
 to hold IJiiliJii Hood, kept \\\i a guerilla warfare again.st 
 the Norman rule, thereby immensely improving their 
 knowledge of the bowman's craft. 
 
 Where are we, then, to look for the history of our 
 race t Not in the one-sided, vain-glorious boastings of 
 the menials of the robber barons. Xo ; our history is 
 written in the ballads of our race, in the quaint English 
 of the Chronidc, in the more modern story of the Brut, 
 and in the rich store of illuminated MSS. — to be found 
 in the I'.iitish Museum. 
 
 Look at the Norman .^aword in the Mediieval Ifooni. 
 What does it tell us ? It tells us a story of pride and 
 boast fulness. It is too long to wield with comfort, for the 
 Normans fought with lances on horseback, trusting to the 
 impetuous shock derived from the speed of their animals. 
 For a cavalry charge, when the lance was shivered, or its 
 point made blunt, the long Norman sword was useful, but 
 was far from being the comfortable weapon (for the 
 possessor, of course) that the true English blade had proved 
 in many a ci»nd)at with the Kelt. And the Kelt knew 
 which was best. He never copied the Norman csp^e and 
 c&riu ; the English sword and shield were the prototypes 
 of the claymore and target still to be found in the 
 Highlands. 
 
 As the sword was preposterously elongated, so were 
 all the other articles of the warrior's equipment made 
 longer than had been the custom in Scandinavia. While
 
 I.] TJie Normans. 15 
 
 we retained the short, light, useful rock, or tunic, of 
 our remote Scandinavian home, the Norman lengthened his 
 cote hardi until it became necessary to cut it back and 
 front to enable him to ride. This gave the idea of fastening 
 the inside of each portion of the garment round the inside 
 of the leg ; and this form was imitated in the shirt of mail, 
 which now became known by the German name of hau- 
 hcrJc, from hals, the neck, and hergen, to protect, with its 
 diminutive, habergeon. Tlie end of the centre half-hoop of 
 iron protecting the top of the head became elongated until 
 the Norman nasal helmet was formed. And, finally, the 
 shield was carried to an extravagant length, assuming a sort 
 of kite shape, the head of which was like the half of the 
 old Scandinavian round target, while the lower portion ex- 
 hibited the Frankish triangle joined on to the half circle 
 the whole being greatly lengthened. 
 
 The great autliority for these assertions is the wonder- 
 ful piece of tapestry at Bayeux, in Normandy, worked by 
 the hands of ^Matilda, wife of Duke William, representing 
 the events preceding the battle of Hastings, and showing 
 the Normans in their fantastic elongations of the ancient 
 fashion, and the English in the dress of their ancestors. 
 
 The English rather despised tlie custom of wearing 
 armour at all. We tind tliem in stout leather wcks, 
 tru.sting to their skill with axe and shield rather than to 
 mail defences ; and this national garment (the name of 
 which still continues to be used for a modern coat in 
 Scandinavia and Germany) was as short at the time of 
 Harold as it had been in the days of Hengst and Horsa. 
 
 Some few Norman women, coming over after the coro- 
 nation of the Duke as King of England, set the fasliion
 
 1 6 The Noruiinis. [lixt. 
 
 aiuoii^'st the Eiij^'lisli liulics y^K calliii;,' iirLiclo>i of dress by 
 Xtiriuaii-Freucli namos: thus, the wiui])le came to be 
 callfd the 'eoiivre-clitT', so(»Ji corrupted into kerchief, in 
 wliich fnrni it is not iiuite dead yet. But the form of the 
 wimple iiiiderweiit no change, as you may see by consult- 
 ing almost any MSS. of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 
 Slrutt, in his excellent wurk on the Brca^ and HahiU of 
 ihr En'iUsh, alludes to the super-tunic or sur-coat as a 
 Xorniaii invention, alUiough he has drawings of English 
 wunicu in tlu' " over-slop", wliich is precisely the same 
 thing, though much shorter. Here is an instance of 
 Xormanising, though not a very important one ; besides, 
 it seems to have been quite as much the fashion among.st 
 English ladies to adopt Norman names for common 
 articles before the Conquest as at the present day. 
 
 Certainly the Xormaus did not, as a rule, bring their 
 wives and families to England, as the English brought 
 theirs to BriUiin, so that intermarriages were common 
 between the English and Xormans ; and this had the result 
 (tf swamping the latter, or Anglicising them, rather than 
 Xormanising the English, as far as the actual population 
 \\ as concerned. That the sceptre was in the hands of a 
 foreigner necessarily rendered the language of the court 
 that of the foreign king. The judges, as appointed by 
 him, were almost of course his direct servants, because they 
 would be powerfully instrumental in bringing aU cla.sses 
 of the conmuiuity under the same rubric. But liis laws 
 were not very numerous. Of the fifty-two laws, properly 
 called the laws uf William the Conqueror, many are only 
 translations of the laws of Alfi-ed into Xorman-French 
 and Latin ; others are rather niodifications than translations
 
 r.] The Normans. 17 
 
 of the English laws. Thus, the thirty different cases of 
 injury to the person, with the respective fine for each 
 case, forming thirty different laws, are simplified into 
 one, with seven small clauses covering the whole ground. 
 The original laws, though few, are not very different in 
 spirit from the old English laws amongst wliich they 
 stand. Williamx retained the old weights and measures, 
 and especially confirmed the laws of Edward the Con- 
 fessor. It is worthy of remark that he does not call 
 himself King of England, Eex Anglian, but Eex Anglorum, 
 King of the English, which, according to heraldic ideas, 
 is a very important difference. 
 
 We might come to the conclusion, in carefully looking 
 through the laws of the Conqueror and of Henry I, that 
 the written code at least is nothing like so severe as 
 we should have expected. But the apparent equity of 
 William the Conqueror was, after all, a mere blind, for the 
 greatest injustice ever done to a nation was perpetrated 
 through the medium of this seeming fairness of conduct. 
 He gave his word to govern according to English laws 
 already existing, but he translated them into Norman- 
 French, which to the mass of his subjects was unin- 
 telligible; besides which, all the new laws promulgated by 
 him were given either in French or Latin, or both. This 
 does not strike one as being so very bad, after all, if the 
 laws were only good and upright; l)ut the real hardsliip 
 consisted in his expecting, or rather requiring, that all 
 Englishmen should know and understand them, although 
 presented in a language of wliich they were ignorant. 
 On their failure, the punishment was swift and sharp. 
 Ignorance of the laws could not be pleaded, and liy 
 III. c
 
 1 8 The Normans. [lixT. 
 
 putting the enactments of the oM line of kings out of 
 the reach of Iiis subjects, lie was enabled to commit a 
 most refined and uni)rincipled act of tyranny, worthy a 
 liomau emperor <lealing with a conquered province. 
 
 The clamour for the old laws therefore had not so 
 much reference to the enactments themselves, as to the 
 language in which they were written. The new enact- 
 ments were very similar to the old ; but of what use was 
 this to English people, to whom they were presented in 
 Latin or French ? When we lose sight of this important 
 fact, and fail to see the wolfish cunning of the Normans 
 beneath the surface, their laws seem to be as English in 
 spirit as any of those of Alfred or Edward. 
 
 So much for the testimony of the laws. But the 
 witness borne by the Castle is far stronger. The thick 
 walls, the dungeon, the moat with its drawbridge, tell tales 
 of deeds of violence requiring unheard-of security to keep 
 the perpetrator from the just vengeance of the injured 
 race. Compare the wide hall with its open doors and 
 indiscriminate hospitality, with the perpendicular walls, 
 narrow eyelet holes for shooting down new comers whose 
 appearance might not please the warder, — compare the 
 state of things when each scoundrel baron could imprison 
 whom he liked, with that condition when prisons were 
 unknown ! 
 
 The English Thane, when not armed in his king's war, 
 was a jovial, hospitable, careless, thriftless, hearty fellow. 
 The Norman was always prepared for war. He never 
 rode out unarmed, and his well-trained steed, his complete 
 covering of chain-mail armour, and his long lance, made 
 him as in\-ulnerable as he was formidable.
 
 I.] TJic Normans. 1 9 
 
 I think the two pictures are sufficient to show us, 
 descendants of Edgars, Edwards, and Alfreds, why we are 
 Englishmen, and not Normans ; and why, save in a few 
 frivolous expressions, our English tongue disdained to lend 
 itself to Norman speech. The wrath of many an outraged 
 hearth lives in our hatred of the Norman jargon ; and the 
 blood that drenched the pleasant fields of England has 
 cried, and not in vain, to Him to whom vengeance 
 belongs. 
 
 The Norman baron, shut up in bis tower, with just a 
 few retainers — enough to hold the castle against a host of 
 foes, though insufficient to face them in the field — had 
 but a dreary time in the long winter evenings. He had 
 fought for William, who had rewarded him with some fair 
 English land, whose true owner was either dead, fled 
 beyond the seas to serve in far Byzantium, or else hidden, 
 either as a monk or other obscure character, with neither 
 hope nor courage left. The land is now granted to the 
 Norman, who, having robbed his tenants all round, and 
 his neighbours where he could prevail against them, 
 prepares to enjoy himself. How are his dismal evenings 
 to be passed ? He is not a drunkard ; he cares more for 
 refined delicacy of flavour in his wine than for quantity. 
 "Where an Englishman would have swilled some gallon or 
 two of ale, the Norman is contented with a modest cup of 
 exquisitely flavoured wine, which gratifies his palate, but 
 which he is far too cautious to drink excessively. He 
 does not amuse himself by consuming enormous quantities 
 of food; he takes as little as possible, but delicately 
 prepared. He does not read, for he has been trained to 
 war. As in the hall of the plundered Thane, the Glcc- 
 
 c 2
 
 20 Till' Normans. [lecT. 
 
 man formerly chanted the deeds " of the brave days of 
 ohl", so now the minstrel sings in Norman-French the 
 ])ro\voss of tlic great Hollo, as Eolf Ganger lias come to be 
 called. There is no very large audience ; the knight's 
 squire, some other noble perhaps, and half a dozen 
 retainers, are all who listen to the lays. The rest are on 
 duty in various parts of the building. Some bloodhounds 
 and a Danish wolf-dog of singular strength and ferocity, 
 seem well matched with those stern, dark-browed, un- 
 bending warriors. 
 
 The chansons sung have not come down to us, but 
 William of Malmesbury refers to the " Song of Eolaud" 
 as coinincnced to be simg by William himself, "that the 
 warlike example of that man might stimulate the soldiers." 
 Other authorities put the song into the mouth of the 
 minstrel Taillefer. But whoever sang it, the effect was 
 that of a military band at the present day. 
 
 Instead of listening to the " Glad Gleeman" in a hall 
 blazing with light from an enormous fire in the centre, 
 while, all around, friends, retainers, and guests sat 
 partaking of Ms hearty hospitality, the new lord sat, like 
 a robber in his lair, suspicious of every sound, surrounded 
 by people who had followed liim, as he had followed 
 William, for plunder, all listening with one ear to the 
 minstrel's words, with the other to the howling blast, to 
 detect, perchance, a warning note from a warder's horn. 
 It was not exactly merry England just then. 
 
 This taste for minstrelsy, bright on the one hand and 
 somewhat gloomy on the other, was the ilirect offspring, 
 among both English and Norman, of the veneration of 
 the Scandinavian scald who had delighted theii' mutual
 
 I.] The Normans. 21 
 
 ancestors with songs of Thor and Odin. But the subjects 
 changed with the surroundings, and the saga which told of 
 the adventures of Odin with his twelve companion gods 
 of Valhalla, who were overthrown at the last day by the 
 giants and monsters, and who rushed to battle, called by 
 the notes of the wonderful horn of Heimdall, the warder 
 of the gods, would, in the mouth of a Christian-Norman- 
 Frenchman, be changed into the song of Charlemagne, his 
 twelve peers, and gjallar-horn to " that dread horn whose 
 blast on Fontarabian echoes borne to great King Charles 
 did come." The descendant of that minstrel in England, 
 hearing in his wanderings of the supposed deeds of 
 Arthur and his Knights of the Eound Table, turned liim 
 into the hero of the same lay, and sweetly confusing 
 Saracens and Sassanachs (or Saxons), put the latter in the 
 place of the more ancient frost giants, while Odin and the 
 ^sir on the round plain of Idavallr pass naturally 
 through the Charlemagne phase into Arthurian romance, 
 becoming associated with such thorough Frenchmen as 
 Launcelot and the rest. 
 
 The association with the south has done the pure old 
 Scandinavian saga no good. It comes out a very corrupt 
 and objectionable production when clad in the indelicate 
 and vicious habit, which the grand old Scandinavians were 
 too proud to adopt. We may turn with pleasure from the 
 scandalous Norman to the pure and high-souled Scandi- 
 navian Englishman of seven hundred years before the 
 Norman invasion. 
 
 Many of these stern Norman warriors wanted otlier 
 amusement, and of a more serious kind, than mere songs 
 in praise of their own deeds, or ballads on those of the
 
 22 The Nonuatis. [lpxt. 
 
 fictitious pcrsoiia;:joH that liad taken tlic places of Charlc- 
 magiu! and Ailliui-, hntli of whom are Normans. The 
 minstrel would he asked news on all subjects, and was 
 applii'd to for universal information. Our baron, scowling 
 in almost solitude, like a melodramatic bandit in his cave, 
 was of course much too great a " swell" to read and write ; 
 still lie felt a sort of craving for knowledge, which the 
 minstrel had to gratify. To enable him to do this, he was 
 referred to histories and the accounts of natural science 
 contained in so-called bestiaries, all written in rhyme, so 
 as to be easily committed to memory. The earliest 
 Norman bestiary, by Philip de Thaun, is now in the 
 national collection, where it is marked as Nero A. v, 
 among the MSS. in the Cottoniau Library. It is most 
 curious as a specimen of what kind of learning these 
 illiterate nobles delighted in. Here is part of an account 
 of the Lion :— 
 
 " Ceo que en Griec est leun, en Franceis rc'i ad nun ; 
 Leuns en mainte guise mutes bestcs justise, 
 Pur ^'co est reis leuns, or orez Ics facuns. 
 D ad le vis heduz, gros le col e kernuz, 
 Quarre lu piz devant, ardez e combatant. 
 Greille ad lo trait dcrere, cue de grant manere, 
 E lo gambo ad plates juste les pez aates ; 
 Lcs pez ad gros cupefz, luns ungles c curvez ; 
 Quant faim ad u maltalant, bestes mangue ensement ; 
 Cum il cost asne fait, ki rechane e brait. 
 Or oez senz dutence di^eo signefiance. 
 Li leun signefie le Fiz Sancte Marie ; 
 Reis est de tute gent, senz nul redutement," etc. 
 
 Wliich is in English :— " "Wliat is in Greek a lion, has in 
 French the name king ; the lion in many ways rules over 
 many beasts — therefore is the lion king, now you shall
 
 I.] The Noniians. 23 
 
 hear how. He has a frightful face, tlie neck great and 
 hairy. He has the breast before, square and hardy, and 
 ready for fight. His shape behind is slender, liis tail of 
 large fashion, and he has flat legs, constrained down to the 
 feet. He has the feet large and cloven, the claws long 
 and curved. When he is hungry or ill-disposed he devours 
 animals without distinction, as he does the ass, which 
 resists and brays. Now hear, without doubt, the signifi- 
 cation of this : The lion is the son of St. Mary ; he is 
 king of all people without gainsay." And so forth, to 
 a considerable length, drawing mystical parallels between 
 the animal and our Lord. 
 
 These minstrels were called trouveiirs or finders, show- 
 ing they hunted about for whatever they could find, and, 
 without much caring about its quality, converting it to 
 their purpose. Thus the sagas of the North, the tales of 
 England, the legends of Britain, and the mysticism of 
 later Latin writers, were all crammed into their tedious 
 verses. A very remarkable fact connected with this 
 subject" has been pointed out by George Ellis in his 
 excellent work entitled Specimens of Early English 
 Metrical Romances, namely, that the first works ever 
 written in French were derived either from Normandy 
 or England. 
 
 The trouveur sings the Norman lord to sleep, like 
 Eustace in Marmion, " with song, romance, or lay" ; and 
 the squire, or shield-bearer, as we should call him, gives 
 the musician his due share of the wine used in the castle, 
 and asks him news from the North, or whencesoever he 
 longs to have tidings, and he learns that a body of 
 Normans has been attacked by a party of English and
 
 2 1 The Xoniiaits. LICCT. 
 
 utterly dofeatcMl, bcciuse of .some afl'ront oficied to tlic 
 iiili;il»it.'ints of ii villa;,'e, forsootli. In great indignation, tlic 
 ih{]\\\xv stalks up auil down tlio hall; this wakes up the 
 knight, who asks what has produced this display of 
 emotion. On learning the circumstances, and .seeing that 
 it is now early morning, he arms himself and his train, 
 rides forth with them and desolates a village or two to 
 relieve his feelings, and so forth, and so forth, with 
 terrible sameness in the " good old times", when we were 
 taught refinement by our Norman rulers. Heaven save 
 the mark ! 
 
 This description of our Norman baron is a picture of 
 the average type, and it continued to be a fair picture of 
 him for the whole of the period when a Norman was still 
 a Norman, and had not yet become English. Shrouded 
 within his stone walls, he had no s)Tnpathies with the 
 outer world, and beyond riding on a foray to gain food 
 for his retainers, had no interest in it. As long as the 
 feudal system lasted the feudal barons had their minstrels 
 and house friars to read the feudal rolls, telling of the 
 history of their own families, their Norman sires, and even 
 of the island of liritain itself. 
 
 Tliere are such " Rolls" in the British Museum, which 
 fomierly graced feudal halls in the IViiddle Ages. Some 
 have been privately printed by Mr. Mayer of Liverpool, 
 to whom I am indebted for a very interesting volume con- 
 taining copies of six of these manuscripts. 
 
 The persons who recited the metrical histories which 
 have been preserved to us, seem to have been somewhat 
 .•superior to the ordinary minstrels : they were pei-sons 
 whoso poetical talents had already acquired fame for
 
 I.] The Normans. 25 
 
 them in the land. With true poetic disregard of the 
 prosaic nature of hard facts, they embellish their narra- 
 tions with stories of Kng Arthur and other heroes of 
 romantic fiction, in such a manner as to make their histories 
 veritable mosaics of florid poetry and heavy prose. 
 
 These poems, and these relations of wonderful events 
 in the history of chivalry, are supposed to have immensely 
 softened the manners and improved the customs of the 
 hearers. Those manners and customs must have been 
 curious " studies", if these wonderful productions were to 
 cure them, for they are nearly all foully obscene in their 
 language and offensively immoral in tone. The manners 
 of the iSTorman aristocracy were not formed upon the plan 
 of elevating and refining those over whom they had the 
 sway. On the contrary, the tendency of their presence 
 in the island was to degrade the moral tone all round. 
 When we compare the dignified purity of the Scandinavian 
 songs and sagas with the ribaldry of Norman French, and 
 again with the descendants of these in many an old 
 English poem of long past Norman times, we are puzzled 
 to see the benefit conferred upon us by these licentious 
 foreigners. 
 
 The holy reverence for the sacred name of woman, so 
 earnestly breathed in our Anglo-Saxon writings, was 
 unknown to tlie irouvhres and minstrels of the Norman 
 times. Tlieir flimsy chivalry was but a poor substitute 
 for the devout adoration of the crown of the Creation, so 
 characteristic of the Scandinavian school, from which our 
 own is the descendant. With an absurd and overbearing 
 self-complacency, the robber-baron regarded the villagers 
 of the country round about his gloomy, prison-like castle
 
 26 The Normciiis. [LKCT. 
 
 as ail inferior race, with whom social intercourse was out 
 of thc! ([Ui^stion ; but lie did not think liimsclf above 
 avaihiig himself of the produce of their industry in the 
 licld or worksliop; while the gentler sex, though of a race 
 too far beneath him to furnish him with a legitimate wedded 
 piirtner, was too often brought to lament the attractive 
 nature of those personal charms M'hich have distinguished 
 English women ever since the coming of Hengist. This 
 is too painful, and at the same time too delicate a subject 
 for discussion before a mixed audience ; but one circum- 
 stance, to which I have before alluded in other lectures, 
 speaks volumes on this point, namely, that while the 
 English brought their wives and families with them to 
 colonise Britain, the Normans came without. No further 
 comment is needed. 
 
 But the object of the lighter songs of the Norman 
 poets was not merely to make fun of the villan. They 
 devoted much of their wit to the ridicule of the manners 
 of their own priesthood, and the unfaithfulness of their 
 own matrons, whose escapades are regarded as a subject 
 for mirth and social entertainment, rather than for avoid- 
 ance as degrading, vicious, and injurious to the well-being 
 of society at large. Such, however, is the insidious 
 nature of vice, that this kind of literature spread like the 
 plague, and foully infected the poetry of the English 
 school which arose after the Normans had been swallowed 
 up and forgotten by the English proper. 
 
 Thus we can point to a glaring defect in our mediaeval 
 poetry, as clearly resulting from our Norman invaders ; and 
 as the poetry of a given period shows the manners of the 
 time as truthfully as the illuminations in a manuscript
 
 I.J TJie Normans. 27 
 
 show the dresses, we may judge of the Norman mamiers 
 as having been cruel and profligate to an extent without 
 parallel in history. 
 
 The despised villan was regarded as a being of lower 
 caste, quite in the sense of the word which we use when 
 speaking of the natives of India. This caste, a French 
 poem of the thirteenth century divides into twenty-three 
 classes or kinds, and as this is important in judging 
 of the manners of the time, I will enumerate them. 
 
 "First of all comes the piggish villan, who labours in 
 the field, and who, when a passenger inquires the road, 
 replies, 'You know as well as I.' The doggish villan, 
 who will sit before his door on festive days and Sundays, 
 to laugh at everyone who passes ; and if he see a gentle- 
 man with a hawk on his fist, he will cry, ' Ha ! there 's a 
 cawing bird, that will have for his supper a-night a fat 
 hen which would be enough for all my family.' The 
 frothy villan is a frenetic villan, who utterly detesteth 
 God and holy church, and all gentility. The villan 
 asinine is he who carries to the feast the cake and the 
 barrel of wine; if it be fair weather he will carry his 
 wife's cloak ; if it rain, he will strip himself to his 
 breeches to cover her, that she may not get wet. The 
 apish villan is he who stands before the church door, and 
 looks at the kings, calling out their names as he sees their 
 effigies, whilst some one behind is cutting his purse. The 
 prince villan is one who goes to plead before the bailiff 
 for the other villans, and says, ' Sir, in the times of my 
 grandfather and my great-grandfather, our cows were in 
 these meadows, our sheep in those copses' ; and thus he 
 gains a hundred pence from the villans. The hooded
 
 28 The Nonimiis. [lkct. 
 
 villiiii is tho poor married clerk, wlio f,'oe3 to labour with 
 the other villaiis. Tlie crab-like villan is he who returns 
 from Ihe fdrest laden with wood, and enters his house 
 backwards, because the door is too low. The grafted 
 villan is one who takes a gentle dame for his wife, exactly 
 as if one should gi'aft a fair pear upon a cabbage, or upon 
 a thornbush, or upon a turnip." 
 
 The last contemptuous allusion is quite in the true 
 spirit of caste, and yet, asWright, the late eminent antiquary 
 whom I quote above, continues : — "From the subject of 
 many of these fahliaiuc we might be led to suppose that, 
 in spite of the strong feeling of caste which then existed, 
 such unions between persons of the two classes were by no 
 means uncommon. The parties are always a peasant, or a 
 villan who has become wealthy, and the daughter of a 
 poor knight, who possesses more beauty than money. The 
 husl.)and is stupid and brutal, the lady cunning and 
 crafty ; he is always jealous and suspicious. She resents 
 tlie ill-treatment she receives, and proves faithless as often 
 as she can find an opportunity ; and the writers of the 
 fabliaux seem to think her conduct in tins case extremely 
 right and proper. The peasant, indeed, in their eyes, had 
 as little right to the possession of such property, as he had 
 to keep hawks or hounds of chase. The frequency of this 
 doctrine, the general character of the stories, and the 
 disgusting obscenity with which many of them are filled, 
 give us no high notion of the morality of the ladies and 
 gentlemen before whom they were recited."* 
 
 Among those who lived as parasites upon the vices of 
 
 * Wright's Essa>/s on the Litrrattirc, Superstition, ami nistorij of 
 England in the MuldU Ages. J. R. Smith, 1846, vol. i, p. 45 et seq.
 
 I.] The Norinans. 29 
 
 the Norman aristocracy, there arose a new class, the 
 ribalds and Idchcrs (ribaldi and leceatorcs). The latter 
 word, signifying dish lickers, is easily nnderstood, but 
 ribald is not so readily explained. The termination "aid " 
 seems to point to a Teutonic origin, but there is no positive 
 explanation to offer of the word itself beyond its signifying 
 a low licentious person. And accordingly we find the 
 ribalds, or ribands, to be persons who, as Wright says, 
 " had so completely abandoned every sentiment of morality 
 or shame, that, in return for the protection of the nobles, 
 they were the ready instruments of any base work." 
 
 " In the crowds which attended the feasts of the 
 princes and nobles, the letchers were not content with 
 waiting for what had been sent away from table, but 
 seized upon the dishes as they were carried from the 
 kitchen to the hall, and it became necessary to invent a 
 new office, that of ushers of the hall, to repress the dis- 
 order." " In those great courts", says the Ancreu liicivl, 
 " they are called letchers who have so lost shame, that 
 they are ashamed of nothing, but seek how they may work 
 the greater villany. This class spread through society 
 like a great sore, and from the terms used in speaking 
 of them we derive a great part of the opprobrious words 
 still used in England."* 
 
 For these new expressions, and many more relating to 
 vice and wickedness, we are indebted to the Normans. A 
 vast benefit to a nation, truly ! 
 
 It has been observed with great truth, that though the 
 English were celebrated for their wool, with which indeed 
 
 * A H'mtory of Domestic I'ifdnnn'it and Snithurvta hi Etxjland 
 during the Middle Ayes. By Thomas Wright. Loudon, 1802, p. 104.
 
 ^0 The Normans. [liX'T. 
 
 thoy supplied the rest of tlie i\w\\ known world, their 
 use of silks was one of the results of the Conquest ; and 
 the increase of luxury in the article of dress extended 
 to other matters. The intercourse with the Flemings 
 tended greatly to increase this state of things. But if the 
 desire of finer clothing, and the vice of aping French 
 manners, were benefits to our nation, as some writers 
 think, we have a friglitful set-off against this questionable 
 good in the unquestionable harm brought on us in the 
 reign of the "worthy peer", King Stephen, in the 
 following account, which I take from the Anglo-Saxon 
 Chronicle : — 
 
 "Anno 1137. This year King Stephen went over sea 
 to Normandy, and he was received there because it was 
 expected that he would be altogether like his uncle, and 
 because he had gotten possession of his treasure, but this 
 he distributed and scattered foolishly. King Henry had 
 gathered together much gold and silver, yet did he no 
 good for his soul's sake with the same. Wlien King 
 Stephen came to England, he held an assembly at Oxford; 
 and there he seized Eoger, Bishop of Salisbury, and 
 Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and Eoger, the Chancellor, 
 his nephew, and he kept them all in prison till they gave 
 up their castles. When the traitors perceived that he was 
 a mild man, and a soft, and a good, and that he did not 
 enforce justice, they did all wonder. They had done 
 homage to him, and sworn oaths, but they no faith kept. 
 All became forsworn, and broke their allegiance, for every 
 rich man built his castles, and defended them against him, 
 and thoy filled the land full of castles. They greatly 
 oppressed the wretched people by making them work at
 
 l] The Normans. 3 1 
 
 these castles, and when the castles were finished they 
 filled them with devils and evil men. Then they took 
 those whom they suspected to have any goods, by night 
 and by day, seizing both men and women, and they put 
 them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured 
 them with pains unspeakable, for never were any martyrs 
 tormented as these were. They hung some up by their feet, 
 and smoked them with foul smoke ; some by their thumbs, 
 or by the head, and they hung Ijurning things on their 
 feet. They put a knotted cord about their heads, and 
 twisted it tiU it went into the brain. They put them into 
 dungeons, wherein were adders and snakes and toads, 
 and thus wore them out. Some they put into a crucet- 
 house, that is, into a chest tliat was short and narrow, and 
 not deep, and they put sharp stones in it, and crushed the 
 man therein, so that they broke all his limbs. 
 
 " There were fearful and grim things called sachcntcgcs 
 in many of the castles, and whicli two or three men had 
 enough to do to carry. The sachentege was made thus : 
 it was fastened to a beam, having a sharp iron to go round 
 a man's throat and neck, so that he might no ways sit, nor 
 lie, nor sleep, but that he must bear all the iron. Many 
 thousands they exhausted with hunger. I cannot and I 
 may not tell of all the wounds and all the tortures that 
 they inflicted upon the wretched men of this land ; and 
 this state of things lasted the nineteen years that Stephen 
 was king, and ever gi-ew worse and worse. They were 
 continually levying an exaction from the towns, which 
 they called Tenseric; and when tlie miserable inliabitants 
 had no more to give, they plundered and burnt all the 
 towns, so that thou mightest well walk a whole day's
 
 32 The Nor ma US. fi,i:cT. 
 
 journey nor ever shouklst tliou find a man seated in a 
 tuwn, or its lands tilled. 
 
 " Then was corn dear, and llesh and clicese and butter, 
 for there was none in the land. Wretched men starved 
 with hunger; some lived on alms who had been erewhile 
 rich ; some lied the country ; never was there more 
 misery, and never acted heathens worse than these. At 
 length they spared neither church nor churchyard, but 
 they took all that was valuable therein, and then burned 
 the church and all together. Neither did they spare the 
 lauds of bishops nor of priests, but they robbed the monks 
 and the clergy, and every man plundered his neighbour as 
 much as he could. If two or three men came riding to a 
 town, all the township fled before them, and thought that 
 they were robbers. The bishops and clergy were ever 
 cursing them, but this to them was nothing, for they were 
 all accursed, and forsworn, and reprobate. 
 
 " The earth bare no corn ; you might as well have 
 tilled the sea, for the land was all ruined by such deeds, 
 and it was said openly that Christ and his saints slept. 
 These things, and more than we can say, did we suffer 
 during nineteen years because of our sins." 
 
 The conquest of Britain by the English contrasts 
 favourably with the conquest of England by the Normans. 
 The first was an open war of extermination, in which the 
 inhabitants of the soil were beaten in successive battles, 
 forced into the mountains of the West as the English 
 came from the East, and no show of mercy was extended 
 to them, for the English pagans had none to show. In the 
 case of the Normans, there was a wily pretext for the 
 invasion ; false promises were made of governing the
 
 I.] The Nor mans. 33 
 
 people by their own laws, and then for more than a 
 centurj^ there was nothing but rapine, murder, and foul 
 play throughout the length and breadth of the land. 
 
 The language of the Ancjlo-Scuxon Chronicle tells the 
 story but too well. The Norman influence succeeded in 
 raising up a barrier of hatred between the two people 
 that remained until the Normans ceased to be, and the 
 English flourished over their graves. The few trumpery 
 alterations in dress and manner, to which allusion has 
 been made, were too superficial to be regarded as exponents 
 of the national character, which triumphed over the 
 Norman element more emphatically and more lastingly 
 than any other conquest ever made. This part of English 
 history has been \vrongly read, for it was the English 
 conquest of the Normans that was achieved. ^' 
 
 The reformation of the monasteries was the chief 
 work of the Conqueror in the way of improvement. 
 Anglo-Saxon proclivities are not favourable to monastic 
 rule ; but there is nothing to be brought against the 
 English which can be compared for a moment with the 
 conduct of the Normans. Monastic institutions are 
 always a source of trouble and of more disorder than 
 they pretend to cure, so that the improvement of 
 the monasteries was, after all, no good thing for England. 
 They sucked the life's blood out of the people in succeed- 
 ing ages, and though emphatically the seats of learning 
 at the time, the learning they fostered, being for the most 
 part Latin, was of no use to us as a nation, and was indeed 
 only intended by monks for monks to read. Queer things 
 they are, too, some of these monkish Latin works in 
 prose and poetry ! From tlic specimens preserved to 
 
 III. D
 
 ^4 The Norviaus. \\.V.v\'. 
 
 us, we may have cause for rcjoiriiij^ that so many hav*- 
 perished ; wliile the Saxon works, on the other hand, 
 present us with a strength, a vi<,'our, a flavour, an aroma, 
 that will, I trust, prove invaluable by showing us whence 
 our English freshness, heartiness, and hatred of vice 
 come. 
 \/ We are told that the Normans invented the feudal 
 
 system. This again is a mistake. The system by which 
 a lord holds his land of his king, returning certain service 
 for tlie tenure, is Scandinavian all through. In Scandi- 
 navia the king was elected, being one of the royal family, 
 and the yarl held his yarldom on condition of furnishing 
 a certain number of armed men, horses, and arms for his 
 king's wars. This custom was brought over by the Angles 
 in tlie fifth century, and in the later "Anglo-Saxon" times 
 we find the contributions to the king's wars kept up and 
 very constantly referred to. " An eorl's heriot, or her-geatu, 
 ■i.e., contribution to the army, was four horses saddled and 
 four horses not saddled, four helms, four byrnies (coats of 
 mail), eight spears and shields, four swords, and two 
 hundred mancuses of gold, which was twice a thane's 
 heriot. To be an eorl was a dignity to which a thane 
 might arrive, and even a ceorl."* 
 
 All through the so-called Anglo-Saxon period we 
 discover nobility dependent on landed property, and the 
 distinction in the laws between men as to their rank is 
 given in language referring to their land. Thus, a twy 
 hyud-man is equivalent to a ceorl (churl), while a twelf 
 hyud-man is of the highest aristocracy. No thane could 
 have less than five hides of land, and it is especially stated 
 
 • Sharon Turners ffiston/ of the A nglo-Sajonn. vol. iii. book 8, 
 chap. 0.
 
 I.] The Normans. 35 
 
 in the laws that "although a ceorl had a helm, a suit of 
 armour, and a gold hilted-sword, if he had no land, the 
 laws declare that he must still remain a ceorl." Besides 
 this, there is some evidence to show that the title of Thane 
 went with the land. It was, in fact, the same thing as 
 the Norman baron, the Thane-land being equivalent to 
 the Norman barony. 
 
 Thus we see that some of the very customs ascribed 
 to the Normans were well known to our forefathers before 
 the Normans ever went to Neustria. 
 
 Much has been said about the improvements in the 
 arts under the Normans, but with the exception of their 
 architecture, which was founded on that of the Saxons, I 
 am at a loss to know what great improvements we owe to 
 them. The drawings in their manuscripts are not better 
 than those in the English MSS. of the time, and the 
 finish is greatly inferior to that in the English MSS. 
 Certainly there is more animation in the so-called 
 Anglo-Saxon drawings than in those of the Normans. 
 They tell the story better, and appeal to the imagination 
 more vividly. 
 
 I am heterodox, I know, but any Englishman may 
 
 judge for himself. The British Museum unfolds its 
 
 countless treasures to the English people, and when they 
 
 would hold counnune witli the mighty dead, let them, by 
 
 the aid of the mystic manuscripts, call up the spirits of 
 
 their forefathers, who will tell them that the improvements 
 
 commonly attributed to the Normans were nothing more 
 
 than the results of ordinary progress, and that these were 
 
 in fact retarded, rather than accelerated, by the advent of 
 
 the usurpers. 
 
 d2
 
 Lecture II. 
 THE ENGLISH.
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE ENGLISH. 
 
 Philologists have started various schemes for denotinj? 
 the periods in the history of our English tongue. Some 
 call the first period, from 450 to 1100, Anglo-Saxon ; the 
 second period, from 1100 to 1230, Semi-Saxon; from 
 1230 to 1330, Early English; from 1330 to 1500, Middle 
 English; from 1500 to 1600, Later English; and from 
 1600 to the present day. Modern English. But besides 
 being somewhat arbitrary, this system is unpleasant. 
 "What can be more barbarous than tlie expression Semi- 
 Saxon ? Again, what authority have we for calling the 
 language of Alfred Anglo-Saxon ? He calls it English 
 (as I have had the pleasure already of pointing out), and 
 he must be admitted to have been a better judge of what 
 the name of his language was than we are who live a 
 thousand years later. 
 
 Dr. Morris, in his excellent Historic Outlines of 
 English Accidence (which ought to be in the possession of 
 every English-speaking individual who can read), very 
 properly classifies these forms of the language as English 
 of the first, second, third, fourtli, and fiftli periods, sub- 
 dividing the fifth into English from 1460 to 1520, and 
 from 1520 to the present day. 
 
 For whatever names be given to the dinVrcnt phages
 
 40 'lite English. [Li:CT. 
 
 of its growth, lliu lan^ua^c in ([uustiou is uud remains 
 En,L,'lisli after all. Writers born in England of Norman 
 strain tried hard to make an Anglo-Norman language, 
 but they tried in vain. We cannot make a language. 
 Language grows and develops, decays and is restored, just 
 like any other phenomenon taken cognizance of by 
 physical science, as the great master of the Science of 
 Language, Max Miiller, has shown. 
 
 Now although this is perfectly true as far as volition 
 is concerned, although it is a fact that no monarch, not even 
 our own beloved Queen, could change a word in the 
 language by an effort of will ; yet it is equally a fact that 
 language is an exponent of the state of the people speak- 
 ing it. Thus the foul ribaldry that wells out from the 
 lips of the London rough is an exponent of the state of 
 his mind, albeit he never invented a word of it. In the 
 same great town of London you may hear the very rustle 
 of angels' wings in the sweet sounds expressing the still 
 sweeter thoughts of England's brightest womanhood. 
 
 The English heart could never be a Norman heart, 
 so its pulsations became vocal in sympathetic tones as 
 English as itself. " Out of the fulness of the heart the 
 mouth speaketh" is a dictum the truth of which becomes 
 vividly apparent when viewed by the light of linguistic 
 science. That the Normans were more conquered by the 
 Franks than we were by the Normans is evidenced in the 
 unerring test of language. They became Frenchmen, while 
 we never did; and although the French language and 
 manners were imposed by force upon us, they did not 
 thrive. The very act of trying to force a language on a 
 nation was itself sutticient to make the indigenous form
 
 II.] The English. 41 
 
 of speech more hearty, more vigorous than ever. Imagine 
 the consequence of such a proceeding nowadays. Suppose, 
 after the siege of London, the successful Esquimaux should 
 order us to resign the language of Shakespeare, and adopt 
 their unctuous tongue. Should we, could we talk it ? I 
 trow not ! The very children in the street would resist it ; 
 and though in public they might prattle a few words of 
 the detested speech, liow they would talk English in 
 private. English people are very prone, even now, to 
 copy foreigners as a matter of cliic (as I borrow this 
 word) ; but try to force them to use such expressions, or 
 adopt such manners, as they assume for fashion's sake to 
 please themselves, and see how the attempt would work. 
 
 Just so was the history of our Normanization. The 
 weakness and the folly of Edward the Confessor turned 
 the heads of many English who sought, as far as the 
 outer man was concerned at least, to become Frenchmen. 
 When once the screw was applied to force them to become 
 Frenchmen, the old English stubbornness was roused, and 
 the English language flourished all the more strongly 
 for tlie attempted repression. 
 
 In the same way the customs of the Normans were 
 rejected, and those of the English kept up. How the 
 feeling against these tyrants showed itself may be seen 
 by the English books of the twelfth century that have 
 come down to us. Look at the Brvi, a history of 
 England, in pure English poetry, by a monk named 
 Layamon. This poem is a very long one, extending over 
 32,233 lines in one of the texts, and 24,567 in the 
 second, or more recent, text of the early part of the 
 thirteenth century. And yet in these 56,800 lines Sir
 
 42 rite l-.u,^lisll. fl.l ( T. 
 
 Fn-duriuk Madden detects about 00 words of French 
 oripin in the combined texts, those in the earlier MS. 
 beiup 50, and those in tlie second 40, in number. 
 
 This is a very small proportion to the number of 
 words in so lonp u work, especially when we remember 
 that the back bone of the poem is due more to Romance 
 than to English originals. The author himself declares 
 his poem to be compiled from three sources ; namely, a 
 book in English by Saint Bede ; another in Latin by 
 Saint Austin ; and a third made by a French clerk named 
 Wacc. As he has adopted hardly anything from Bede's 
 Ecclesiastical History, the only English book he refers to, 
 we have the majority of his sources decidedly Eomance. 
 Under these circumstances the number of Romance words 
 is remarkably small, and many of these are such as had 
 been already used in the Anglo- Saj:on Chronicle. 
 
 Now, if, as some people think, the whole language of 
 England had been Normanized, there would have been no 
 occasion for an English version of the Brut in the twelfth 
 century. It was not written for people who could not 
 read, therefore there must have been a reading public suf- 
 ficient to justify at least two "editions" of Layamon's Brut. 
 
 The truth is that the Brut is not a translation of 
 Wace, but an English poem founded upon him, and 
 employing a few expressions of the Frenchman's text, 
 which were readily understood at the time, and either 
 happened to suit the versification better, or were 
 allowed to remain from carelessness on account of 
 their being so well understood. In either case it is a 
 strong argimient against the Normanists, to find a poem 
 so grandlv English as the Brvi. in tht.' vc-rv zenith nf the
 
 II.] The English. 43 
 
 " Norman" times. The celebrated Danish scholar, Grund- 
 tvig, says of the Brut : " tliat, tolerably well read as he is 
 in the rhyming chronicles of his own country and of 
 others, he has found Layamon's beyond comparison the 
 most lofty and animated in its style, at every moment 
 remiiiding the reader of tlie splendid phraseology of 
 Saxon verse."* 
 
 Sir Frederic Madden very strongly points out the error, 
 commonly indulged in, of supposing that the changes in 
 the English in the twelfth century were due to Norman 
 influence. He says, in his preface to his delightful edition 
 of the Brut : — 
 
 " It will readily be admitted by those who have investi- 
 gated the history of the English language, that the most 
 obscure, and yet in many respects the most interesting, 
 period of its progress, is that during which the Anglo- 
 Saxon language, already, from the time of Edward the 
 Confessor, predisposed to change, was at length broken 
 up, and clothed with those new characteristics in which 
 the germs of our modern tongue are found. That this 
 important change was occasioned solely, or even in a large 
 proportion, by the influence of the Norman invaders, is a 
 proposition specious indeed, but wholly intenable ; and it 
 has been argued, with every appearance of probability, 
 that the same effects would have been produced had 
 Williaru and his followers remained on their native soil. 
 
 " Assuming this to be true, it will necessarily follow 
 that such an organic change in the structure of a language 
 must have been very gradual,t and effected by certain and 
 
 * Preface to Layamon's Brut, liy Sir Frederic Madden, 
 pp. xxiii, xxiv. London 1847. f Preface to Brut, page I.
 
 44 'i Jt<^ Eiiglisli. [lp:ct. 
 
 detcriuiuatc laws." In confirmation of this assertion, Sir 
 Frederic refers, in a note, to Price's preface to Warton's 
 U'lstory of EnrjUsh Poetry, who brings forward tlie fact 
 " that every branch of the low German stock, from whence 
 the Anglo-Saxon sprang, displays the same simplification 
 in its grammar." This view of the question is confirmed 
 also by Professor Latham, who adds, " that compared with 
 the Icelandic, the Danish and Swedish do the same."* 
 
 My learned friend Dr. Morris, the eminent philologist, 
 says : " Before the Norman Conquest the English language 
 showed a tendency to substitute an analytical for a syn- 
 thetical structure, and probably, had there been no 
 Norman invasion, English would have arrived at the same 
 simplification of its grammar as nearly every other nation 
 of the low German stock has done."f 
 
 So much for the language. The tliov.glit of Layamon 
 (a thing of much greater consequence) is English, and 
 not French. There is no delight in indelicate allusions, 
 no gloating over stories which would make even a modern 
 divorce court blush for shame, no diabolical attempt to lower 
 that respect for women which is a legacy to us from our 
 stout Anglo-Saxon forefathers. In this important matter 
 the Brut stands far above the Norman-French poems wliich 
 have come down to us, and whose ribaldry aflected our 
 poetry, not only all through the Middle Ages, but down to 
 a later time. 
 
 The Genius of Scandinavia, or, more broadly speaking, 
 the Teutonic Genius, is opposed to the Romance Genius in 
 every possible way; but the most emphatic distinction 
 
 * Preface to Bnd^ page 1. 
 
 t JJistoric Outlines of English Accidence, p. 49.
 
 11.] The English. 45 
 
 between North and South is to be found in the difference 
 of treatment of woman in these two grand and opposing 
 branches of the Aryan family. 
 
 In Scandinavia, woman was regarded as possessing a 
 power, wanting in man, of direct communication with the 
 gods. A conviction of the inadvisability of a given expe- 
 dition uttered by a woman, woukl often be allowed to weigh 
 against the combined wisdom of a whole conclave met in 
 " Ting" or parliament ; therefore women were, to the 
 immense surprise of the Eoman Tacitus, admitted to the 
 councils of state. In religious matters there were ten 
 priestesses to one priest, and the vala or prophetess was 
 looked up to with an amount of awe and veneration as 
 simple as it was genuine. On the testimony of Tacitus, 
 vice and immorality were almost unknown, and were 
 regarded with disgust and loathing by the stalwart race 
 that overthrew Eome. To the fact that marriage 
 was entered into at a comparatively late period, after 
 the full development of the frame had been attained, 
 and the character, as well as the nerve and muscle of the 
 warrior had been duly proved and found to be of the 
 sterling kind, Tacitus ascribes the gigantic height and 
 indomitable courage of the whole German race. In fact, 
 no Teutonic lady would accept the addresses of an un- 
 tried warrior. The young hero with the white shield and 
 no eagle's wings in his helmet had no chance with the fair 
 sex when compared with the tried warrior. 
 
 Wlien a grand expedition was planned, and the 
 warriors of a little kingdom marched out, ascended 
 their dragons and put to sea, they were accompanied by 
 their priestesses, by the wives of the elder leaders, and.
 
 ^6 The pjiglisli. ("l,l( T. 
 
 ill some cases, by their dau^flitors. In colonisnif^ a uew 
 country they were forbidden all inter-raarriages with 
 the race subdued, which was, as a rule, exterminated. 
 
 When such an expedition left the fiords and bays of 
 the " Nurse of Heroes" — the North — it was sometimes 
 impossible for all the women and children to accompany 
 the army, especially when the object of the expedition was 
 an attack on some neighbouring petty king or yarl, in 
 which case they were left behind. To guard and shield 
 these dear ones was a holy office, and no one could be 
 selected for it who had not given proofs of his prowess 
 and skill. Thus to be left in charge of the women was no 
 disgrace, inasmuch as the office could only be entrusted to 
 a warrior, to a champion whose valour and probity were 
 beyond the reach of any suspicion. 
 
 Mother and wife were holy words, while the name for 
 the collection of sacred myths which has come down to 
 us as the " Edda", signifies the " Grandmother", a term of 
 endearment combined with veneration which in itself 
 offers a striking proof of the purity and respect felt for 
 woman by our ancestors. 
 
 Contrast this with the ribaldry of Norman romances, 
 with the impurity of the tales and gestes of the trouveres 
 and minstrels. We may give the songs of the Edda to 
 any English maiden to study, but not the foul immoral- 
 ities of the Norman school, which, unfortunately for us, 
 crept into our literature, and thence spread like the 
 plague all round. 
 
 We should be thankful that in the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries few of the English portion of the 
 population could read. The Norman barons had their
 
 1 1 . 1 The Rus^lisli. 47 
 
 minstrels, who sang these foul songs to them, and the 
 Norman priors insisted on Latin as the only tongue worth 
 reading amongst the monks. Yet still the plague-spot 
 spread, and affected all classes ; so that in the fourteenth 
 century, when the English had thrown off the Norman 
 yoke, the shameful taint remained. It was, however, a 
 disease rather than a part of the frame, and our hearty 
 English nature has, I hope, with other disorders, been 
 able to fling this away. That the few Normans surround- 
 ing the king spoke only Norman-French, and hated and 
 despised us, was a blessing to the nation ; firstly, because 
 the generality of the people understood nothing of their 
 ribaldry ; and secondly, because many good men and 
 true, already despising such thoughts, would learn to 
 hate them all the more for being couched in the 
 detested tongue. So that, although the literature of 
 England was not so scrupulously pure in the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries, it was nothing like such a mass 
 of corruption as that of the Romance people. 
 (. Another great source of oppression and wrong was the 
 monastic system, which, by making lawful wedlock a 
 thing opposed to religion, opened a door for all kinds of 
 impropriety of conduct, and, as it were, at a blow hurled 
 woman from her throne. What resulted from this ? The 
 monasteries and convents of England were the hot-beds of 
 vice and profligacy. So far did this reach, that all kinds 
 of domestic evils were traceable, not only to the monks, 
 but to the clergy. Of this, proof enough is furnished by 
 the stories of the fourteenth century, of which many are 
 found in Chaucer. But all this was un-English, and 
 brought forth a " Bitter Cry" in the vision of —not the priest,
 
 4^ The Ejiglish. [lIvCT. 
 
 not tlic jiope, but the " ploughman," who criecl out against 
 Ivomance devilishness, as presented under the forms of Nor- 
 man priest and scoundrel monk. The, Vision of Piers Ploufjh- 
 inan is the grandest land-mark in the history of our race ; 
 while the successes of Edward the Third in his French 
 wars have nothing more to do with it than to give the 
 English a fresh cause of dislike to Itomance feeling and 
 Romance influence. 
 
 It has been said that the English nation is a mixture 
 of the Saxon, the Briton, and the Norman. But modern 
 research has shown that the Scandinavian principles were 
 opposed to intermarriage with non-Odinic people. The 
 English cut down the Britons, but did not marry them. 
 They viewed tlie alliance with Vortigern with contempt, 
 finding that Eowena had made a misalliance. But the 
 hatred to the Normans was fiercer and more settled than 
 any national feeling that has existed in any other nation. 
 From all the MSS. we find that the Normans were kept, 
 not at arm's length, but at spear's length, by the people. 
 Their number was quite insignificant compared to the bulk 
 of the population, so that even if they had intermarried 
 with the English, as a rule the influence would have been 
 but as a pail of water to the North Sea. But their inter- 
 marriages were the exception, and not the rule. Their 
 own over-bearing self-assimiption, and the national hatred 
 of the Norman name, effectually barred sufficient inter- 
 mixture to afl'ect the national characteristics which 
 emphatically stamp us as English people. 
 
 There are eight MSS. of Piei's Ploughman s Vision in 
 the British Museum. But the one selected by Wright for 
 his text is at Trinity College, Cambridge (marked B. 15,
 
 II.] The English. 49 
 
 17). Professor Skeat has, in his most exhaustive and 
 invaluable edition, given two texts and a delightful 
 account of the various MSS. and their respective merits. 
 Every man, woman, and child ought to possess the two 
 volumes of the Early English Text Society's publications 
 which embrace this interesting addition to our knowledge 
 of the footsteps of our forefathers. 
 
 Few books were ever so popular, and its popularity 
 continued, for it " was printed by the reformers, and 
 received with so much favour, that no less than three 
 editions are said to have been sold in one year. Another 
 edition was printed at the beginning of the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth ; and it appears to have been much read in the 
 latter part of the sixteenth century, and even at the 
 beginning of the seventeenth."* 
 
 The book is sterling English, and the poetry allitera- 
 tive, throwing off what the Rejected Addresses calls " the 
 gewgaw fetters of rhyme invented by the monks to enslave 
 the people ";t and certainly alliterative verse speaks 
 directly to the Teutonic heart, while there is generally a 
 stiffness in rhyme which, unless treated by a great master, 
 renders poetry too much of a jingle to be pleasant. 
 Alliteration appeals to us at once in many proverbs, and 
 in a still greater number of customary phrases, such as 
 " rough and ready," " good as gold," " frank and free," and 
 
 * See Introduction to The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, 
 edited from a contemporary manuscript by Thomas Wright, M.A., 
 F.S.A. London : John Russell Smith, 1856. 
 
 f Rejected Addresses ; or the new Theatrum Poetarujn, by James 
 and Horace Smith. See The Hampshire Farmer's Address (William 
 Cobbett). 
 
 m. s
 
 50 The E)iij:Hsli. [li:ct. 
 
 the like. Siuh a line as " And foremost fighting fell," has 
 great music for an English ear. 
 
 The grand features of this great work are its vigorous 
 assertion of English feeling, the strong recognition 
 of the value of religion, and the utter refusal to submit to 
 the dictation of a vicious and corrupt priesthood. The 
 cry uttered is piteous, and shows what sufferings were 
 still being endured by the lower and middle classes from 
 the abominable Romance invention of monasticism, and 
 the result of the popular feeling throughout the land was 
 an attack on the monasteries. 
 
 Wright, in his introduction to his edition of the poem, 
 says : " During the successive reigns of the three first 
 Edwards, the public mind in England was in a state of 
 constant fermentation. On the one hand the monks, 
 supported by the Popish church, had become an incubus 
 upon the country. Their corruptness and immorality 
 were notorious: the descriptions of their vices given in 
 the satirical writings of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries exceeds even the bitterest calumnies of the age 
 of Kabelais, or the reports of the Commissioners of Henry 
 the Eighth. The populace, held in awe by the imposing 
 appearance of the Eoman church, and by the religious 
 belief which had been instilled into them from their in- 
 fancy, were opposed to the monks and clergy by a multi- 
 tude of personal griefs and jealousies ; these frequently 
 led to open hostility, and in the chronicles of those days 
 we read of the slaughter of monks and the burning of 
 abbeys by the insurgent townspeople or peasantry. At 
 the same time, while the monks in revenge treated the 
 commons with contempt, there were numerous people
 
 II.] Tiic Euglisli. 5 1 
 
 wlio, under tlie name of Lollards, and other such appella- 
 tions — led sometimes Ijy the love of mischief and disorder, 
 but more frequently by religious enthusiasm — went abroad 
 among the people, preaching not only against the corrup- 
 tions of the monks, but against the most vital doctrines of 
 the churcli of Eome, and, as might be expected, they 
 found abundance of listeners."* 
 
 The English people had lost neither heart nor tongue 
 in the interval between William and Wycliffe, a period of 
 three hundred years. The strong corn was growing that 
 liad been trodden down, while the load of Norman 
 vice acted like manure on a field, for which the 
 ripened grain throve all the better, bursting through at 
 last uncontaminated, nor only so, but healthier for the 
 treatment undergone. The language retains the en in the 
 infinitive mood, and the plurals of the present and imper- 
 fect indicative. The charming opening runs thus: — "In 
 a Somer Seson, when Soft was the Sonne. I Shoop me 
 into Shroudes. As I a Sheep were. In Habite as an 
 Heremite : un-Holy of werkes. Went Wide in this World : 
 Wonders to here. Ac on a May Morwening. On Mal- 
 verne hilles. Me be-Fel a Ferly Of Fairy e methought. 
 I Was Wery for-Wandred and Wente me to reste. 
 Under a Broad Bank by a Bournes side. And as I Lay 
 and Lened And Loked on the watres, I Slombred into 
 Slepyng It Sweyed so murye." 
 
 The same linguistic forms may be seen in Wycliffe. 
 
 I take at random the fifth verse of the first chapter of 
 
 the Gospel of Mark as an example : — " And alle men 
 
 of Jerusalem wenten out to liini, and al the cuntree of 
 
 * Wright's P\ev6 Plumnan, Introduction, vii. 
 
 e2
 
 52 The En_(:Iish. [lecT. 
 
 •luilcc, and weroii hapti/t^d of him in iIh- llooil of .ImiliUi 
 knowleching her synnes." 
 
 The parallel passage in Anglo-Saxon of the end of 
 the tenth century is : — " And to him ferde call Judeisce 
 rice and ealle Hierosolima-ware ; end waeron fram him 
 gefullodf (111 Jordenes flode, hyra synna and-detende." 
 
 A glance will show that it is the same stout form 
 of speech with the addition of two foreign words, country 
 and baptize, which do not interfere with the progress 
 and life of the language, but stand forth, as it were, 
 independent of the change, thus forming a pretty illus- 
 tration of the state of the English majority with the 
 Norman foreigners standing amidst them, but evidently 
 not being of them. 
 
 L Having shown you how the English mind stubbornly 
 resisted Norman influence by reference to these precious 
 documents, I shall now call your attention to what may 
 be more popularly regarded as history. To us as English 
 people it is a matter of the most perfect indifference 
 whether William I died in Normandy or Northampton, 
 whether "William Kufus was shot by ^^'alter Tyrrel or 
 drank himself to death. The quarrels in Henry the First's 
 time between himself and his brother Kobert can only 
 disgust us as being a disgraceful feud brought on by 
 disgraceful conduct, but of no interest to us except in 
 showing us the utter unworthiness of the ruling race. 
 The wars between his daughter and Stephen taught the 
 English to curse the very name of Norman, but had no 
 other effect upon our history. Henry the Second was the 
 first Norman who showed any feeling for the English, and 
 he manifested his good will by causing all the castles
 
 I I.J The English. 53 
 
 that had been built to be destroyed. That was a little 
 bit of English history, and his conquest of Ireland was 
 another, for which we have so many reasons to rejoice at 
 the present day ! But the revolting quarrels between 
 him and his sons, and their squabbles with one 
 another, are matters of no consequence to us and our 
 history. To me the greatest interest attaching to his 
 reign is the political squib having reference to him, and 
 describing him as an " old woman", thus — 
 
 " There was an old woman, and she had three sons. 
 Geoffry, Dicky, and John. 
 
 Geoffry was hanged, and Johnny was drowned, 
 While Dicky was lost and could never be found ; 
 So there was an end of the old woman's sons, 
 Geoffry, Dicky, and John." 
 
 Historically, this squib gives an incorrect account of the 
 fate of these worthies, but as a token of the respect paid to 
 the reigning family it is invaluable. 
 
 But if all these disgraceful "family rows" are not the 
 History of England, what are we to do with Hume and 
 Smollett, Keightly, Henry, and others ? Keep them as 
 works of reference, by all means, but read the popular 
 songs, even the Latin squibs of Walter jNIapes. Turn 
 over the MSS. in the British Museum, and .study the 
 manners and customs of our ancestors, portrayed there 
 as ours have been by Leach in our day. And for the 
 deeds of the English during this French usurpation, read 
 the grand story of Hereward the Saxon and liis band 
 of friends. 
 
 As it may be new to many, I will give a short sketch 
 nf thp life of this hero, taken from the arrnunt furnished
 
 54 'f^l'c /'.iii^^/is/i. [I.ICCT. 
 
 l>y Wrii^lit, to mIioiu wo are so niucli indebted for 
 liopul.irisini,' iiicdiiivid iircliU'olo;,'y. 
 
 "llereward was the son of Leofric, Karl of Chester and 
 Mercia, and of that Lady Godiva whose touching act of 
 self-negation will never be forgotten as long as the town 
 of Coventry stands. His boyhood and youth were full of 
 adventure and peril. He was dreaded by everybody for 
 his strength and utter fearlessness. At last he became 
 so turbulent that his father begged the Confessor to banish 
 him the country. Willi the marvellous adventures of 
 Hereward during his exile we have nothing to do at 
 present, but many of them took place in the kingdom of 
 Cornwall. He was mixed up with a most interesting love- 
 story, relating to a princess of Cornwall and a prince of 
 Ireland, in which Hereward performed wonders, and on 
 the marriage of the lovers accompanied them to Ireland, 
 whence he returned to England with certain other 
 Englishmen, his companions in arms. It appears that in 
 the midst of his successes he had heard of the foul chance 
 that had befallen England. 
 
 "He had married a beautiful and noble lady named 
 Turfrida, whom he entrusted to the care of his tried 
 friends, the two Siewards, and arriving one calm evening 
 in 1068, he entered as a stranger the village of Brunne in 
 Lincolnshire, the chief manor of the noble Earl Leofric. 
 He was on foot, for the English preferred walking, as the 
 Normans loved riding. He had one attendant with him, 
 lightly armed like himself. He demanded hospitality of 
 a Saxon knight, one of Leofric's retainers, who gave him 
 a true English welcome. But the faces of the inmates of 
 the house bore marks of sorrow and dejection, and, in
 
 II.] The English. 55 
 
 answer to his questions, they told him that their lord was 
 dead, that a Norman liad been sent to usurp his pos- 
 sessions, and that they were on the point of being 
 delivered over to the rapacity of the invaders. In the 
 course of conversation it came out that a younger brother 
 of Hereward had been slain in defending his mother. The 
 wretches had killed the boy, and fixed his head ignomini- 
 ously above the doorway. 
 
 " Hereward listened to all this in silence. No person 
 had recognised him, and the family retired to rest, leaving 
 the guest sleepless and thoughtful on his bed, until 
 suddenly the distant sounds of music, and singing, and 
 shouts of applause burst upon his ear. He sprang from 
 his couch, roused a serving man of the house, and 
 inquiring the meaning of the tumult, was informed that 
 the Norman intruders were celebrating the entry of their 
 lord into the patrimony of the youth whom they had 
 murdered the previous day. 
 
 " The stranger put on his arms, threw about him a large 
 black cloak, which concealed him from observation, and 
 with his companion, similarly dressed, proceeded tlirough 
 the village to the place of boisterous revelry. There the 
 first object which met his eyes was the ghastly head, which 
 he took down, kissed, and wrapped in a cloth, and then 
 the two adventurers placed themselves in the dark sliade 
 within the doorway, whence they had a full view of the 
 interior of the hall. 
 
 "The Normans were scattered round a blazing fire 
 
 most of them overcome with drunkenness, and lying down 
 
 • with their heads in the laps of their women. In the midst 
 
 of the hall a jonghv.r, or minstrel, was chaunting ribald
 
 56 The English. [M.rT. 
 
 Ron^s against llio Enf,'li.sli, ridiculiiif,' their inannors in 
 coarse dances and ludicrous gestures. He was uttering 
 some indecent jests against the youth whom they had 
 slain, when one of the women, a native of Flanders, 
 interrupted him, saying, ' Forget not that the boy has a 
 brother named Hereward who is famed for his bravery 
 throughout the country whence I come, if he were here, 
 things would wear a different aspect to-morrow.' 
 
 " The new lord of the house, indignant at this boldness 
 of speech, raised his head, saying : — ' I know the man 
 well, and his wicked deeds, which would have brought 
 him to the gallows, had he not saved his neck by flight ; 
 he dare not now appear anywhere this side of the Alps.' 
 
 " The minstrel, or ribald, took the hint, and commenced 
 a series of verses far from complimentary to Hereward, 
 when his skill as an improvisatore was cut short, as indeed 
 he was himself, by a sweeping blow from Hereward's 
 sword, which took his head off. Now began a scene 
 of slaughter in which the Normans, taken by surprise and 
 almost unarmed, fell beneath the sword of Hereward, while 
 his companion stood at the door and cut down all those 
 who attempted to seek safety in flight. The heads of the 
 Norman lord and fourteen of his knights were quickly 
 raised over the doorway in place of that of the youth 
 whom they had murdered. 
 
 " When it became known that Hereward was back asaiu 
 in arms, the Normans who had settled in that neighbour- 
 hood fled in dismay, and the injured Saxons rose on every 
 side, and hastened to join his banner. At first Hereward 
 checked the zeal of his countrymen, but he selected a 
 ."trong body of his kinsmen and faniilv adherents, and
 
 II.] The English. 57 
 
 with them he attacked and slew such of the Norman 
 invaders as had been bold enough to remain on his 
 paternal estates. 
 
 "The Saxons always received knighthood from the 
 clergy, and not from superior lords, so Hereward, who 
 had not yet been knighted, went to his friend Brand, the 
 Saxon Abbot of Peterborough, from whom he received the 
 honour. He was attacked by a Norman baron who had 
 been sent against him, but he killed the Norman, and 
 completely routed his followers. He then dispersed his 
 own, promising them to return at the end of a year, and 
 acquainted them with a signal by which his arrival should 
 be known. He then started for Flanders. 
 
 "At the appointed time in 1069, Hereward returned, 
 bringing with him his companions in arms, the two 
 Sie wards and other Saxons who had joined him during 
 his exile. Nor did he leave behind him his beautiful wife 
 the Lady Turfrida. Finding that his paternal estates 
 had, since his last visit, remained unoccupied by the 
 Normans, who found it inconvenient to attempt the 
 further Normanisation of the district, he proceeded direct 
 to Brunne, where some of the bravest of his kinsmen and 
 friends were on the look out for him. Then he made 
 the signal which had been agreed on by setting fire to 
 three villas on the highest part of Brunnes wold. He 
 was soon at the head of a gallant band of Saxon outlaws, 
 who crowded to him in the forest, to which he had retired 
 to await the result of his signal. 
 
 " The historian gives a long list of the English chiefs 
 who joined the standard of the hero ; but they were not the 
 only important people who took up arms against the
 
 58 The Ew^lislt. [lkct. 
 
 Normans, for many ecclesiastics were among the numbers 
 of the i>atriots. Tlie monks of Ely, with their abbot 
 Tlinrstan, fortified tliemselves in their almost inaccessible 
 island among the wild fens, and were there joined by 
 Arclibishop Stigand, Earls Morcar, Edwin, and Tosti, where 
 they were besieged by the powerful Earl Warren, who was 
 cleverly defeated by Hereward, with hardly any loss on 
 his side, although the Normans were discomfited with 
 great slaughter." 
 
 At last King William himself was obliged to attempt 
 the siege of Ely, and was twice defeated. On the last 
 occasion, he had so narrow an escape that he fled with 
 an arrow sticking into the rings of his chain mail, and 
 that, too, in the hack of the armour. 
 
 One Norman knight alone reached the Isle of Ely, 
 and ho was immediately seized and carried to Hereward, 
 who received him kindly, kept him a few days, showing 
 him the resources of the place, and the mode of life of its 
 defenders. He then gave him his liberty, on condition 
 tliat he should give the king a faithful account of all he 
 had seen. The knight strictly fulfilled his promise, and 
 the Norman monarch was beginning to talk of offering 
 terms to the English patriots. This he would have done 
 but for tlie hatred borne by Earl Warren and another 
 powerful baron, Ivo Taillebois, whose hatred of the 
 F.nglish knew no bounds. To them the lengthened 
 struggle was due, and the camp at Ely held out against 
 William's armies for three years, when at last it was 
 surprised through treachery. 
 
 Hereward, however, escaped, and was soon at the 
 head of another band of patriots, teaching the king that
 
 II.] The English. 59 
 
 the loss of Ely had not subdued the English spirit, and the 
 war Avas continued until Hereward was induced to make 
 peace with William and actually to go to court, where 
 he was received with distinction. After this things went 
 wrong with him, for he never could keep peace with the 
 Norman barons, by whose treachery he was at last slain. 
 Geoffrey Gaimar, wlio tells the story of his death observes : 
 — " It was commonly supposed that had there been only 
 four sucli men, the Normans would have been long ago 
 driven out of the land." 
 
 The succeeding Norman reigns, as given in our books of 
 liistory, are rather histories of Normandy than of England, 
 save where time is given to long accounts of the Crusades. 
 But the Anglo-Norman writers, excepting the historians 
 who wrote in Latin and not in Norman-French, and from 
 whose works most of our histories of these evil days have 
 been compiled, are forgotten and uncared for, while the 
 Chronicle, the Brut, the English Lives of Saints, the 
 numerous works existing in the English of the twelfth and 
 thirteentli centuries, are more and more sought after as time 
 wears on. In studying the literary remains of the twelfth, 
 thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, we are struck with the 
 vigour and manliness of the style as well as with the 
 interesting nature of tlie information conveyed. The 
 songs and jiolitical Ijallads all througli tell a similar story 
 to tJiat told by Hereward tlie Saxon, and our old frienc] 
 lioliin Hood stands forward in the same light. Tlie 
 English people, as a race, are remarkably amenable to law 
 and order. At the present day one policeman, unarmed 
 save with tlie authority given liini by the law, can do 
 more in a crowd of English people than a Mhole troop
 
 6o J lie /injr/is/i. [LLCT. 
 
 of mounted and armed ^'endarmes in other countries, 
 because vr love law and order — the v^c includin;^ the great 
 unwashed. Therefore the great popularity of Kobin Hood 
 does not arise from his being an outlaw, in the sense of a 
 modern ticket-uf-leave man, but from his having stood up 
 against Norman oppression, boldly breasting the usurpers, 
 and doing wonders for the Jlnglish party. 
 
 Ivoljin Hood had a special grudge against the abbots 
 and the wealthy barons of his time. He was celebrated 
 for taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Certainly, 
 a dangerous principle to recognise now-a-days, when the 
 Normans have passed away, and we are all English. But 
 then, in the time of Eichard the First, when the English 
 were smarting under the Norman lash, the conduct of 
 such a man becomes heroic. A popular defender of the 
 nation's rights, resigning the comforts of home to assert the 
 manliness of the English race, despite its folly in admitting 
 the Norman, is a figure in history that stands higher than 
 any usurper of the whole fell brood. 
 
 But our friend Dr. Dryasdust tells us that Robin Hood 
 was a myth, that he never lived; that Little John. 
 Scarlett, Friar Tuck, and the gentle Marian were inven- 
 tions of the poet's brain at that time. I will accept the 
 learned doctor's objection, admit the weak place in my 
 argument, and grant (only for the sake of argument, how- 
 ever) that my favourite heroes never were men of thewes 
 and sinews. What were they then ? They were the 
 voice of the English people crystallised into form as of 
 living men. The wrongs were there to redress, and the 
 ideal champion arose. 
 
 T firmly believe in Robin Hood and his exercise with
 
 II.] The Eng-Iish. 6i 
 
 the bow and arrow, which had not been so much culti- 
 vated by the English as by the Normans. And that is the 
 reason why the weapon retained its English name, while 
 the bowman practised until he became an archer. If the 
 bow had not been English, or not of English origin, we 
 should have been talking of arcs and fietches, instead of 
 bows and arrows. We became archers because at one 
 time the Norman archers were better than our bowmen, 
 and we worked hard until we excelled them ; and at 
 Cressy and Poictiers beat the French with their own 
 weapons. 
 
 The Norman wasted villages for his pleasure. The 
 New Forest in Hampshire was the work of the first 
 Norman tyrant, and there his son fell. 
 
 " Where his father bade the wild stag hide, 
 By Tyrrel's arrow the Rufus died !" 
 
 And every cloth yard shaft that whizzed through merry 
 Sherwood was a Tyrrel's arrow against the Norman. The 
 debt we owe to the Eobin Hood thought (whether he ever 
 lived or not) is immense, and his history, whether poetic 
 fiction or Dryasdust fact, is more the history of England 
 than all the splendid little bits of fighting executed by 
 Kichard the First in the Huly Land. 
 
 When a man becomes a nation's darling, and Iiis name 
 lives through ages as a bright and shining star, we may be 
 sure that there is something in him that makes him a 
 representative man ; that is to say, a formula that repre- 
 sents some element in the people ; and the element repre- 
 sented by Eobin Hood is a great fact, a greater fact than 
 any Norman king. 
 
 A king should be, and must be, the exponent of his
 
 C? The lifi^i^lis/i. [hV.c'V. 
 
 people. He is not a simph; " [ myself, I," but lie is We. 
 In other words, he is the people. Now the Norman kin^s 
 were not the people, they were foes to keep them down ; 
 therefore their history is not our history, while the tales 
 of Hereward and Robin Hood are. 
 
 Then arises the question, what is the history of our 
 race, and where are we to learn it ? The answer is, that 
 the history of our race is the tale told in successive ages 
 of the struggle for the freedom of thought, combined with 
 a love of order; and where we are to learn it is in such 
 storehouses of the learning of past ages as the manuscript 
 libraries in tlie British Museum, at the Bodleian at 
 Oxford, at Corpus Christi at Cambridge, and others. 
 
 In the British Museum we have manuscripts from the 
 grand old Beowulf parchment, telling of tlie myths of our 
 remote ancestors, down to the folio volume of Bishop 
 Percy, containing his charming collection of songs and 
 ballads. From these glorious sources you may draw the 
 true history of the English race, in spite of the Norman 
 historian who wrote a feudal roll to please his lord. In 
 these interesting relics we trace the footsteps of our fore- 
 fathers with inerring safety through the tangled maze that 
 was spread for them. 
 
 After mastering Beoivulf, the first thing to be done 
 is to read the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, of which there 
 are no less than four different manuscripts in the British 
 Museum. Then refer to the exquisite photographs of the 
 Bayeux tapestry, which are to be seen in the same depart- 
 ment. By this means you will be able to trace the various 
 events in the true history of the people until their slimiber 
 under the sleepy Confessor. While this is done, other
 
 II.] TJie liiiglish. Gi 
 
 documents may be consulted, in wliicli the representations 
 of various articles of dress, furniture, arms, armour, eccle- 
 siastical and other ornaments abound, which will enable 
 you to fill in the outline of tlie Chronicle with the colours 
 of nature. Take Beowulf for the description of an early 
 English house, then study tlie relics in the Anglo-Saxon 
 room, till, following the footsteps of your forefathers, you 
 hear the clang of their chain mail on the gay pavement, 
 and see them rise from the tomb in their habits as 
 they lived. 
 
 When you have exhausted the tapestry and its teach- 
 ings, turn to Alfric's version of Genesis in the Cotton MS. 
 marked Claudius B. iv, where you will see, as a representa- 
 tion of Abraham's feast on the birth of his child, one of 
 the best pictures of an early English table that can well 
 be imagined. There you learn that they had spotless 
 table-cloths, dainty knives and spoons, wonderful bread 
 baskets of silver, and various drinking vessels. You will 
 see .how the cooks present the roasted meat on the spit, 
 and how the utensils in the Anglo-Saxon Eoom of the 
 British Museum were used. These English things are not 
 done away with and abrogated by the visit of the 
 Normans, and the manuscripts will teach us that the 
 fashions which they introduced were, after all, only modi- 
 fications of the originals on which the English dress and 
 fashions were founded, and passed away with them like 
 an ugly dream. The older forms returned in greater vigour, 
 like the language ; and we find our ancestors emerging from 
 the Norman mist with their ancient vigour, and preserving 
 even their dress and customs. In a manuscript of the 
 fourteenth century in the British Museum (Additional
 
 64 The F.ui^lish. [LECT. 
 
 MS. No. 12,228), we have a dinner table very like that 
 of the geniune early English times. Only one side of the 
 table is occupied by the guests, so that the officiating 
 domestics may have room to act. There is another MS. 
 (Reg. 2, P). vii), where some ladies are represented with 
 the wimple and over-slop of the eighth century, though 
 the MS. is of the fourteenth. There are other ladies in 
 the same MS. similarly dressed ; in fact, at first sight, we 
 might take them all for very early Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 The evidence of the manuscripts in the national 
 treasury, the British Museum, tends to show that the 
 Norman occupation of the English throne did not 
 Normanise the English, that the change in the language 
 has been independent of Norman influence, that our 
 manners and customs remained English, although the 
 Normans, being more addicted to ^vriting and drawing 
 than we, represented Normans rather than English persons 
 in their pictures and lays, so that the history of the 
 English people is not to be sought for in their limnings or 
 verse. The two nations never mixed, but lived on in 
 parallel lines until the Normans died out, or were 
 swamped by the majority of the inhabitants of England 
 being English. 
 
 I have shown in other places that the observances of 
 certain customs, the Yuletide festival, Easter, the Ember 
 week. Ash Wednesday, the names of our days, the peculiar 
 and interesting use made of the mistletoe, the veneration 
 paid to the holly, and more such usages generally referred 
 to Christian influences, are all pagan English, and are as 
 strong in us now as they were two thousand years ago, 
 although tliey have been baptized with Christian names
 
 ir.] The English. 65 
 
 and so received into the church. The manuscripts and 
 other valuable traces of the lives of our forefathers will 
 establish the fact that other things more essential to the 
 English character were preserved, like the creatures in the 
 ark, in spite of the flood which threatened extinction to 
 us as a nation. 
 
 We have been from the beginning bitter foes to the 
 Eomance element in the world. We and our kindred 
 Goths became the apostles of freedom, and hurled 
 Imperial Kome to the dust. When she sent missionaries 
 to England she made converts not conquests. We were 
 the first of her converts not previously subdued by the 
 sword. And we took her dicta cmii grano sails ; we 
 refused to admit tlie doctrine of transubstantiation, even in 
 the earliest times. The celebrated Homily of iElfric 
 insists upon the symbolic, rather than the material, value 
 of the sacrament, and here joins issue with Eome at once. 
 
 This very homily was reproduced, and twice issued 
 from the press between 1566 and 1570, with a view to 
 prove that the doctrine then established was not an 
 innovation but a revival of the doctrine maintained by 
 the Church in England Ijcfore the time of tlie Norman 
 Conquest. Thus the very Iveformatiou itself was as 
 English a piece of history as any event recorded in Sharon 
 'I'urui'r. 
 
 The hatred of nioiiasticisni lasted as long as there were 
 any monks to hate, and descriptions of their vices fill our 
 literature. Skelton indulges his vigorous satire on the 
 subject, and his rattling verses are as bitter against the 
 mal-practices of churchmen as tlie alliterative lines of the 
 Plowman. For the Englishman loves to think fur himself 
 III. F
 
 66 Tlif Euglish. [lect. 
 
 on ;ill matters, wlictlior i)olilic!il or leli^'iou.s ; he is 
 unwilling' to lu' iliclated to, tliou^h he is ready to be 
 tau<;ht ; and as the coercive measures of the Normans led 
 his mind to Hy back, like a strong spring released, to his 
 more ancient manners and customs, so the attempt to 
 coerce his religious belief sent him at a leap l^ack to tlie 
 tenth century for support of his own opinion. He was as 
 much an Englishman in tlie sixteenth century as he had 
 been in the sixth. 
 
 But, unhappily, the vices of the Normans were not so 
 easily got rid of, and they certainly have done us harm, 
 tliouLjh they liave not made Normans of us. It is not 
 so bad as that. And as for the remark tliat the number 
 of Latin and Frencli words in English prove that the 
 language is mixed, IMax Miiller has shown that the mere 
 addition in any given form of speech, of some words to its 
 vocabulary, does not change either tlie structure or tlie 
 genius of the language at all. The greater number of 
 Latin words which we use have crept in since the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century, when it was a fad 
 among the learned to write in Latin, a custom still 
 perceptible in our medical prescriptions. As we know 
 more we shall get wiser, and throw these technical terms 
 away; for people are finding out that 'the English 
 language is something to be proud of, and something to 
 know, and suits but ill with the borrowed trumpery of the 
 south, which has hidden us as it were in a fog, without 
 actually destroying us. 
 
 " In lo40 boys ceased to learn their Latin through the 
 metlium of French, and in 1362 (the 3(3th year of Edward 
 III) it was directed by Act of Parliament that all plead-
 
 n.] The English. Gy 
 
 iiigs in the law courts should hencefurtli l)e conducted in 
 English, because, it is stated in the preamble to the Act, 
 French was become much unknown in the realm."* A 
 colleague of mine at Moscow pointed out to me a passage 
 in Chaucer, who, writing a little later on, expresses his 
 regret at being unable to write in French, " because he 
 was an Englishman". The same delightful poet tells us, 
 when speaking of the Prioress, 
 
 " And Frenche she spake f ul fayer and fetisly, 
 After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe. 
 For French of Paris was to her unknowe." 
 
 I do not think that the best London boarding-school 
 of the nineteenth century could have done better than 
 that 1 His knight is a perfect Englishman, and all his 
 characters in that most refreshing pilgrimage are as 
 English as though they had been sketched by Alfred 
 himself or Thackeray. 
 
 So the boasted Norman inliuence dwindles down to 
 the effect produced on the minds of a certain corrupt 
 clique that supported a foreign court, whose progi-ess 
 towards decay was no part of the history of England. So 
 early as the fourteenth century we find it passed awa}". 
 Although the models and sources of the tales, both of 
 Chaucer and Cower, are of the liomance stock, the treat- 
 ment and the sentiment are perfectly English. 
 
 The fifteenth century cleared away whatever might 
 have lingered as un-English in the social atmosphere ; the 
 French wars nuide us more anti-Gallican than ever ; while 
 the Wars of the Ifoses, though forming a sharp remedy to a 
 
 * Morris's JJisiuiic Outlines oj' English Accaleno.,, p. 31. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 The English. [lect. 
 
 j^reat evil, brought iiit'ii's minds to the consideration of 
 their own national wants, and led to tiie downfall of the 
 incongruous system of the great baronial houses. 
 
 After this storm we find the English mind as strong as 
 ever. We get a Skelton, a More, a Wyatt, and a Surrey, 
 all sterling English writers ; and when the Reformation 
 comes, the English authorities of the church in the ninth 
 century are made to support the new Church of England 
 in the sixteenth. 
 
 English throughout, from the far back home in Angeln 
 to the pleasant homes of England of to-day, we read the 
 nation's history in its love of simple, trusting faith, quiet 
 strong sense, a solemn honour for the holy name of 
 woman, and a deference to the abstract power of the law. 
 
 Our mythology has been suppressed by the learned 
 Latinists, and the impure systems of Greece and Eome 
 substituted for it. liut have they crushed it ? The 
 names of our week days, of most of our festivals — Yule, 
 Eostra, Ash Wednesday, the Ember week. Lent, the cock- 
 worship on Shrove Tuesday — are answers to this question. 
 Even the very paganism of our English sires lives on in 
 half-Christian dress. 
 
 Our jury is Scandinavian English, and neither lioman 
 nor Erench. Our so-called Saxon laws live on in many 
 legal practices ; our representative assembly of the estates 
 of the realm is almost without change, the same thing 
 that it was even before the advent of Christianity, 
 consisting now, as it did then, of king, lords, and freemen. 
 We, of all the nations of Europe, retain the Scandinanan 
 Yarl in our Earl ; and finally, we alone have maintained 
 the old Scandinavian riglit for each man to speak his
 
 II.] The Englisli. 69 
 
 mind openly and freely, whether the assembly be called 
 parliament or tincj. 
 
 We may see by the very faint sketch thus crudely 
 given, that the history of England, like all history, like 
 individual life, is, as the Swedish poet Tegndr says, " from 
 the very first a conflict — the fiercest battle is its youth." 
 V Our battle has been that of the most pure of the 
 Teutonic stock against the vicious tendencies of the 
 Eomance school. We have never been conquered, but we 
 have swallowed up and thoroughly got rid of the supposed 
 conquerors of the race ; and now that we are at last 
 beginning to learn English, we shall discover by its means 
 thaf we are as uncompromisingly English now as we were 
 in A.D. 450. i/ 
 
 \
 
 Lecture III. 
 THE MONK.
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE MONK. 
 
 Few -works on the history of our race devote sufficient 
 space to the consideration of the influence for good or ill 
 that has been exercised by the clergy, including under 
 that term both the actual priesthood and the less 
 prominent, though not less active, recluses known to us as 
 monks. But, notwithstanding the neglect with which 
 they have been treated by historians, they have been 
 important agents in producing most of the chief events of 
 history, especially in what are called the dark ages, when 
 the power of the Church of Rome was paramount in 
 Europe. 
 
 The influence of the Church, however, was gradual, 
 althougli mighty. There was no sudden rupture, no 
 breaking down of firmly established barriers in the life 
 and heart of the people. The course of the Church was 
 far more sure anil certain. In England her doctrines 
 were received with extreme caution, and after mature 
 deliberation. The early fathers were at first scared from 
 their mission. St. Augustine actually turned back, and 
 demanded of Pope Gregory " that they should not ho 
 compelled to undertake so dangerous, toilsome, and un- 
 certain a journey. The Pope, in reply, sent them a 
 hortatory epistle, persuading them to proceed in the work
 
 74 The Monk. [lkct. 
 
 of the T^iviiic word, uiid rely on the assistance of the 
 Aliiii-lity."* 
 
 Anioiif];st the superstitions of the Scandinavian and, 
 more broadly speakinf^, Teutonic paganism, was the belief 
 that the spells of witchcraft were dissolved by water; 
 hence the practice of fighting duels on islands, so that 
 should either coniliatant be supernaturally protected by 
 amulet or spell, the charm should be broken by the 
 surrounding water. This belief was prevalent in the 
 North of England even in our own day. Burns, in Tarn 
 d Shanter, apostrophising " Meg", the spirited mare 
 bestrode by the hero, says : — 
 
 " Now do thy speedy utmost, Meg, 
 And gain the key-stane o' the brigg ! 
 There at them thou thy tail may toss, 
 A running stream they dare-na cross !" 
 
 They being the witches from whom Tam is flying. 
 
 This feeling is genuinely pagan, and was the cause for 
 which the pagan king of Kent, Ethelbert, received the 
 fathers in the island of Thanet, where they were com- 
 manded to remain until he should have decided what to 
 do with them. It has been supposed, on excellent 
 grounds, that Bertha, the wife of this king of Kent, had 
 already softened his heart and prepared him to receive 
 this mission kindly, for she was a Frank and a Christian. 
 The fathers were treated with great humanity, and Bede 
 says : " When he (Augustine") had sat down, pursuant to 
 the king's commands, and preached to him and his 
 attendants tliere present the word of life, the king answered 
 thus: 'Your words and promises are very fair, but as 
 * Bede's Ecclesiastical Hisionj. chap, xxiii.
 
 III.] The Monk. 75 
 
 they are new to us, and of uncertain import, I cannot 
 approve of them so far as to forsake that which I have 
 followed with the whole English nation. But because 
 you are come from far into my kingdom, and, as I con- 
 ceive, are desirous to impart to us those things which ye 
 believe to be true, and most beneficial, we will not molest 
 you, but give you favourable entertainment, and take care 
 to supply you with your necessary sustenance ; nor do we 
 forbid you to preach and gain as many as ye can to your 
 religion.' Accordingly, he permitted them to reside in his 
 city of Canterbury, which was the metropolis of all his 
 dominions, and, pursuant to his promise, besides allowing 
 them sustenance, did not refuse them liberty to preach." 
 
 Canterbury thus became the centre of Christian learn- 
 ing, as it was ofticially the centre of English government, 
 for the pagan king Ethelbert was Bretwalder, or supreme 
 king of the English. Augustine was not consecrated as 
 Archbishop of London or of Canterbury, but by the general 
 title of the Bishop of the English {Anglorum Episcoipiis), 
 that he might be at liberty to fix his seat in whatever 
 part of the country he pleased. Bede informs us, that 
 " there was, on the east side of the city, a church 
 dedicated to the honour of St. Martin, built whilst the 
 Romans were still in tlic island, wlierein the Queen 
 Bertha who, as has been said before, was a Christian, used 
 to pray. In this they first began to meet, to sing, to pray, 
 to say mass, to preach, and to baptise, till the king, being 
 converted to tlie faith, allowed tliem to preach openly, and 
 build or repair churches in all places."* 
 
 * Ecclesiastirol H'n'tnr}/. Pook I, chap. xxvi.
 
 "J^ The Monk. [lkct. 
 
 Ill cliaptcr xxxiii of the first book of Bede's Ecclesias- 
 tical Jhsfori/, the venerable historian speaks as follows : — 
 
 " Augustine, having his episcopal see granted him in 
 the royal city, as has been said, and being supported by 
 the king, recovered therein a church, which he was 
 informed had been built by the ancient Roman Christians, 
 and consecrated it in the name of our holy Saviour, God 
 and Lord, Jesus Christ, and there established a residence 
 for himself and his successors. He also built a monaster)' 
 not far from the city to the eastward, in which, by his 
 advice, Ethelbei-t erected from the foundation the church 
 of the blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, and enriched it 
 with several donations ; wherein the bodies of the same 
 Augustine and of all the Bisliops of Canterbury, and of the 
 Kings of Kent, might be buried. However, Augustine 
 himself did not consecrate that church, but Laurentius, 
 his successor. 
 
 " The first abbot of that monastery was the priest 
 Peter, who, being sent ambassador to France, was drowned 
 in a bay of the sea which is called Amfleat, and privately 
 buried by the inhabitants of the place ; but Almighty 
 God, to show how deserving a man he was, caused a light 
 to be seen over his grave every night, till the neighbours 
 who saw it, perceiving that he had been a holy man 
 that was buried there, inquiring who and from whence 
 he was, carried away the body and interred it in the 
 church in the city of Boulogne, with the honour due to 
 so great a pei*son." 
 
 The church built by Augustine is now the Cathedral 
 Cliuroh at ("anterburv; hut the present structure, altliougli 
 ancient, is of a date long subsequent to the age of St.
 
 III.] TJie Monk. yy 
 
 Augustiue. The monastery, not far from tlie city, was 
 subsequently called St. Augustine's Abbey. 
 
 Such is the first account which I am able to give you of 
 the erection of monasteries in England. As such, I quote 
 it, because it notices that the first abbot was a priest, from 
 which doubtless the custom descended that the abbots 
 were priests, the monks being regarded as laymen, although 
 under vows of holy life. 
 
 For as soon as the love of Christianity spread, men 
 were found who, for the sake of tlie faith, were willing to 
 renounce their worldly position and retire to some spot 
 where they could devote themselves entirely to the con- 
 templation of spiritual matters. Of these many collected 
 into societies cut off from the world, to pass their lives in 
 devotion ; others lived alone, serving God, as they tliought, 
 by holding no communion with His creatures. 
 
 These persons, not having the regular education fitting 
 them for the priestly office, and merely retiring from this 
 world's worry to gain some idea of the peace of the next, 
 were called monks, from the Low Latin hionachus, derived 
 from the Greek monacJios, from monos, alone. 
 
 Of these there were three special classes, whicli may be 
 ranged in the following order: — Ccnohitcs, those wlio lived 
 in common in a monastery under a single ruler ; secondly, 
 Anchorets, or Eremites, or such as lived in solitude ; and 
 thirdly, Sardbaitce, or monks living under a relaxed rule, 
 and wandering about in different places, supporting them- 
 selves on alms bestowed on them for their sanctity. 
 
 The state of society in pagan England at the tinu' of the 
 advent of the good fatlier Augustine was such as \.o make 
 it very difficult for men not endowed with great woakh to
 
 78 The Monk. [m/t. 
 
 sliuly ill all. 'I'lic knnwlcdL;!', of Lin- Ijiiiifs and tlifir 
 teiicliin^ had Ix'coinc alreudy, since the older time, less and 
 less spread, and was indeed confined to the priesthood, the 
 military chiefs, and the kings. For them it wa.s necessary 
 to decipher the messages conveyed by heralds on the 
 rune-staff, to carve runes on the breast at the approach of 
 death in peace, and to be able to read the inscriptions on 
 the Hauta-stones or monuments erected to the dead chiefs 
 of their race. The country was rich in cause of discord ; 
 for although the octarchy was merging more and more 
 into monarchy, there were yet remains of the old clan feel- 
 inji in each of the kingdoms. There was a Bretwalder who 
 was a sort of emperor, but there were still kings below 
 him. There was no king of England in our modern sense 
 of the term, and the only occupation for a gentleman was 
 war. 
 
 Under such circumstances it was a wholesome institu- 
 tion that enabled a man, endowed with the capability of 
 using his brain more than his fist, to think rather than 
 to act. And to the institution of such orders of jNIonks we 
 owe in fact all that we possess of the mighty Hterature of 
 the past, and of the history of our own forefathers. 
 
 Strange stories are told us of the experiences of the 
 early recluses, who were for the most part of the order of 
 St. Benedict. They claimed to have been tempted by the 
 arch-fiend himself, to have wrestled with him, and over- 
 come the most terrible temptations. And these brave 
 solitaries, who, alone and single-handed, dared contests, in 
 the reality of which they in many eases certainly believed 
 themselves, became the worthy successoi's, in a new cause, 
 of the champions of Odin, who fought with and subdued
 
 III.] The Monk. 79 
 
 the weird monsters that in the nhl time threatened 
 supernatural dangers from flood and tiekl and fell. 
 
 As a very fair example of this class of literature, and 
 one highly illustrative of the thought of the early Chris- 
 tian period with us, and the ideas inspiring a hermit, I 
 shall give you a very brief account (jf the doings of the 
 hermit of Crowland, St. Guthlac. The account of this 
 man's life was originally written in Latin, but there are 
 two Anglo-Saxon versions of the story. The Latin text is 
 by a man named Felix, and this is all we know of him. 
 Of the English or Anglo-Saxon versions, one, the elder, is 
 in prose, and the other, probably founded upon it, is in 
 verse. The Latin text could not have been written later 
 than 749, because in that year the king to whom it was 
 dedicated died. Felix was never acquainted with (nithlac 
 personally ; he drew his materials for the biography from 
 others who had known him ; and this tlirows the age of 
 the actual hermit himself still farther back. The coming 
 of St. Augustine was in r)97, so that between the advent 
 of Christianity and the latest possible date for the work 
 of Felix there would be an interval of 152 years; and as 
 it was some time after the first appearance of Augustine, 
 and some time before 749, we may not be far wrong in 
 ascribing the events of the story to the end of the se\'enth 
 century. 
 
 The poetic narrative is very vigorous, and reminds one 
 of the old Beowulf style of spirited verse. It is to be 
 found in the Codcf Eroninms, of which the late eminent 
 Saxonist, Benjamin Thorpe, has I'unii.shed us with nn ex- 
 cellent edition, at the expense of the Society of Anliiiuaries. 
 The prose text which I quote forms part of the Cottonian
 
 8o The Monk. \\Ari. 
 
 I^ilii-iii V iHiw ill lliu I'.iilish Musciuii. It will be Imiiul in 
 tin; voluuie iiiiivkcd " Vespasian \). xxi." It was probably 
 written abont the time of the Conquest. 
 
 The narrative commences with an extraordinary account 
 of the birth of the hero, and then notices that the name 
 (hithlac, coming to him iVom the family to which he be- 
 longed, seems no less miraculous than the almost Oriental 
 wonders attending his birth, signifying one who acts as a 
 sacrihce in (or for) war. The writer insists specially on 
 this, giving the Latin translation of the name {belli munus), 
 as if to make it more evident. When arrived at man's 
 estate he suddenly burned to distinguish himself after the 
 manner of the heroes of old, collecting a numerous fol- 
 lowing, and commencing a regular raid on such as were 
 his enemies — burning, slaying, destroying, and so forth, with 
 I'xtreme vigour. " Then was he on a sudden inwardly 
 admonished of Ciod, and taught that he should thus give 
 command : Of all things which he had so taken he bade 
 give back the third part to those from whom he had taken 
 it. It was about nine years that he was thus engaged in 
 hostile raids, the bles.sed Guthlac, and he thus wandered 
 amidst the tumult of this present world. It happened one 
 night, when he had come from an expedition, and he rested 
 his weary limbs, and thought over many things in his 
 mind, that he was suddenly inspired with divine awe, and 
 his heart within was filled with spiritual love ; and when 
 he awoke he thought on the old kings who were of yore, 
 who, thinking on miserable ileath and the wretched end of 
 sinful life, forsook this world and the gi'eat wealth which 
 they once possessed, he saw all of a sudden vanish ; and 
 he saw his own lite daily hasten and hurry to an end,
 
 III.] The Monk. 8i 
 
 Tlieii was he suddenly so excited inwardly with godly fear 
 that he vowed to God, if He would spare him till the mor- 
 row, that he would be his servant. When the darkness of 
 the night was gone, and it was day, he arose and signed 
 himself with the mark of Christ's rood. Then bade he his 
 companions that they should find them another captain 
 and leader of their company, and he confessed to them and 
 said that he would be Christ's servant. When his com- 
 panions heard these words, they were greatly astonished, 
 and much alarmed for the words which they had heard/' 
 They tried in vain to persuade him to alter his determi- 
 nation. He received the mystical tonsure, and lived two 
 years in preparation for the holy warfare, devoting himself 
 to letters and to the acquirement of the habit of singing 
 the Canticles, etc. Hearing of the lives of the learned 
 anchorites of yore, his heart was inwardly inspired with 
 the love of God to long for the M'ilderness, and he begged 
 leave to depart thither. 
 
 " Now there is in Britain a fen of immense size which 
 begins from the river Granta, not far from the city Gran- 
 chester. There are immense marshes, now a black pool of 
 water, now foul running streams, and also many islands, 
 and reeds, and hillocks, and thickets, and with manifold 
 windings, wide and long, it continues up to the North 
 Sea." 
 
 Guthlac, hearing that this place was the abode of devils, 
 and was so full of every kind of supernatural horror that 
 no man could endure it, resolved to go thither. He em- 
 barked with a guide in a vessel, and went througli the fens 
 till they came to a spot which is called Crowlaud, situated 
 in the waste of the aforesaid fen, very obscure, and very 
 111. a,
 
 82 The Monk. [lect. 
 
 few iiKMi knew of it except the one wlio showed it him ; 
 as no man could inhabit it before the holy man Guthlac 
 came thither, on account of the dwelling of the accursed 
 spirits there. 
 
 Then the mode of life adopted by this hermit is very 
 minutely dwelt upon. It is said that in this island there 
 was a great mound raised upon the earth . " On the other 
 side of this mound a place was dug, as it were a great 
 water-cistern. Over this cistern the blessed man Guthlac 
 built himself a house at the beginning, as soon as he settled 
 in tlie hermit station." He decided on wearing neither 
 woollen nor linen garments, but to use a clothing of skins. 
 The first manifestation that he appeared to have had was 
 a visit from the arch-fiend himself, who infused certain 
 horrid doubts into the hermit's mind. But here he was 
 relieved by the personal intervention of St. Bartholomew, 
 who removed the doubts and the tormentor at the same 
 time. " Then two devils came to see him, sliding down 
 from the air, and they spoke plainly to him," the aim of 
 their talk being to show that man has no right to fast 
 longer than seven days. Of course, the saint knew better, 
 and sent these spirits about their business very soon. 
 "But some days after this he was assailed by great hosts of 
 the accursed spirits, and they filled all the house with their 
 coming ; and they poured in on every side, from above and 
 from beneath, and everywhere. They were in countenance 
 horrible, and they had great heads, and long necks, and 
 lean visages ; they were filthy and squalid in their beards ; 
 and they had rough ears, and distorted faces, and fierce 
 eyes and foul mouths ; and their teeth were like horses' 
 tusks ; and their throats were filled with fiame, and they
 
 III.] The Monk. 83 
 
 were grating in their voice : tliey had crooked shanks, and 
 knees big and great behind, and distorted toes, and shrieked 
 hoarsely with their voices ; and tliey came with such im- 
 moderate noises and immense horror, that it seemed to 
 him that all between heaven and earth resounded with 
 their dreadful cries. Without delay, when they were come 
 into the house, they soon bound the holy man in all his 
 limbs, and they pulled and led him out of the cottage, and 
 brought him to the black fen, and threw and sunk him in 
 the muddy waters. After this they brought him into tlie 
 wild places of the wilderness, among the dense thickets of 
 brambles, that all his body was torn. After that, the cursed 
 spirits took him and beat him with iron whips, and after 
 that they brought him on their creaking wings amidst the 
 cold regions of the air. AVheii he was at tliis height in the 
 air he saw all tlie north part of heaven as it were sur- 
 rounded by the blackest clouds of intense darkness. Then 
 he saw suddenly an immense host of cursed spirits come 
 towards him ; and they soon gathered together, and forth- 
 with all led the holy man to the black places of torment 
 and brought him t(,) hell's door. When he saw tlie foul- 
 ness of the smoke and the burning liames, and the horror 
 of the black abyss, he quickly forgot all the torments and 
 the punishments which he had before suffered and endured 
 from tlie accursed spirits. Then the accursed spirits 
 rushed in and tumbled among tlie horrible flames, and 
 there they tormented with manifold punishments the souls 
 of unrighteous men. When the blessed CJuthlac saw the 
 greatness of the punishments, he was much terriiied for 
 dread of them. Then cried the accursed .spirits witli a 
 great voice, and thus spake: Power is given unto us to 
 
 g2
 
 84 The Monk. [lecT. 
 
 tlirust thee into the torments of this abyss, and here is the 
 fire which thou thyself didst kindle within thee, and for 
 thy sins and crimes liell's door openeth before thee." They 
 then motioned as though they would thrust him in, when 
 again St. Bartholomew descends as a dcus ex machind, and 
 gets him out of the hobble. He is then led back to his 
 liovel again. Here he observes two devils weeping and 
 wailing because their power is all broken through the saint. 
 
 But certainly the queerest part in this narrative is the 
 sixth chapter. The others, of which I have given an 
 abstract, tell us something of the ways, manners, and 
 customs of the inhabitants, of the dwellers in the region 
 of evil spirits, but in the sixth chapter we learn what 
 their language is. The heading of the chapter is "How the 
 Devils spoke British." We are informed that the saint was 
 awakened from his sleep at cock-crow by a great host of 
 the accursed spirits talking together, and as he had been 
 a prisoner among that people, he knew the British 
 language in which the devils conversed. They entered 
 his house, hung him up on the points of their spears, 
 and so forth. But he overcame them by singing a psalm 
 in Latin, which seemed too much for them, for they 
 departed like smoke at the first verse. After this he is 
 attacked by demons, in the form of herds of wild beasts 
 of all kinds. Of course he puts them to flight, and 
 becomes celebrated for having driven away the devils 
 from Crowland, — at all events, I am told, in confirmation of 
 this part of the story, that none have been seen there since. 
 
 The death of the saint in the odour of sanctity, the 
 visits paid to him by English kings, abbots, bishops, and 
 other important people, together with his wonderful
 
 III.] The Monk. 85 
 
 prescience and insight into other people's affairs, fill up 
 the rest of the little volume. 
 
 There is a series of remarkable medallions in the British 
 Museum illustrating the legend, Thorpe's edition of the 
 prose text is still occasionally to be met with. It is fur- 
 nished with a translation into modern English on the 
 opposite page. 
 
 This may be taken as a fair example of a hermit's 
 life, or, rather, of what was believed concerning these 
 " holy men". 
 
 The lives of the saints form an interesting portion of 
 the literature of the middle ages, and it does not require 
 any very great amount of research to show the student 
 that the hermit-monk of the Christian times was nothing 
 more than the pagan hero, with surroundings very slightly 
 differing from those of his prototype. His combats with 
 supernatural enemies are the same in both cases ; and as 
 the pagan element may be traced back from jNIilton 
 through Csedmon to tlie remote Scandinavian past, so do 
 we find the spirit of Beowulf in many a monkish legend 
 that would fain be Christian if it could ; and in the 
 mystic symbolisation so loved by the mediaeval fathers, 
 we have the same spirit that prompted the Scandina-sdan 
 Vala to unfold the hidden mysteries conveyed, and at 
 the same time concealed, in tlie weird stories of the 
 Edda. 
 
 As long as the hermit kept to his cell, and amused 
 the country people with the stories of his fights, no great 
 luirm was done. It was indeed far better that the 
 unlettered classes should have an irrational belief in tlie 
 existence of anotlier world, than that tliev shouM
 
 86 The Monk. [lect. 
 
 absolutely deny the existence of anything beyond this 
 world of mud and stone. Better the blind belief in 
 something superior to self, than the overweening rejection 
 of everything which we cannot understand. Better the 
 blind confidence in such a monk as our friend of 
 Crowland, than in the agnosticism of the present day. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, this was not the order of 
 history. Monasteries were founded, and the superior 
 rulers of these institutions were priests of high rank. 
 The abbot was a man of distinction, ex officio holding 
 military rank in many cases, and actually bound, 
 notwithstanding his priestly office, to serve in his king's 
 wars. Thus, in the struggles of the English against the 
 Conqueror, we read of certain abbots who lent their aid, 
 coming in person, armed, to assist Hereward at Ely. 
 Later on tliis becomes still more remarkable. 
 
 But the beneficent influence of abbot, priest, or monk 
 has always been that which has been exercised in the 
 sphere of life to which they more particularly belong. To 
 afford men of quiet and studious habits an opportunity 
 of pursuing their studies and of cultivating religious 
 thoughts, in times when the sword was better understood 
 than the pen, was decidedly a good thing, and we are 
 indebted to such institutions for the records of what are 
 called the Dark Ages. 
 
 In everything which the early English took up they 
 were thoroughly in earnest, and they " went in" for 
 Christianity with immense force of will, although tlie 
 strong spirit of conservatism led them still to preserve 
 the festivals of the older time, which indeed are observed 
 by us at the present day. They built monasteries, and
 
 III.] The Monk. 87 
 
 there was a large proportion of the population at the time 
 of the Norman usurpation rendered non-combatant by 
 monastic vows. 
 
 Among those to whom we owe a vast debt of gratitude 
 for good work quietly and well done, the name of the 
 venerable Bede stands proudly foremost ; and as he was 
 an Englishman, you will very likely know very little 
 about him. Bede was born in the year of our Lord 673, 
 at Wearmouth, in the very year when the most famous 
 of all our Church councils was held at Hertford, for the 
 purpose of enforcing certain general regulations of the 
 Church. At Wearmouth were two monasteries, and 
 another near them at the village of Jarrow. In liis own 
 short autobiography he tells us that he was placed, at the 
 age of seven years, under the care of Abbot Benedict, in 
 the abbey of Wearmouth, that of Jarrow not being then 
 built ; but, when this second establishment was founded, 
 Bede appears to have gone thitlier under Ceolfrid, its 
 first abbot, and to have resided there for the remainder of 
 his life. 
 
 The founder of this abbey, a certain Benedict Biscop, 
 was a man of extraordinary piety and singular learning. 
 He was a nol)leman by birtli, and yet he was unwearied 
 in the pursuit of knowledge, and in ameliorating the con- 
 dition of his country. It was he who first brouglit masons 
 and glaziers with liim to serve in the noble buildings 
 which he caused to be erected. He went to Rome, and 
 became iuliinatc with Bope Agatl k 1 : and hearing tlici-e llie 
 Boniau iiiL'tliod of dianting, introduced the Koman liturgy, 
 for l)efore liis time the Ciallican liturgy had bt'cn used in 
 this island. He brought with him also the most valuable
 
 88 The Monk. [llct. 
 
 collection of l)ooks, relics, and works of art that could be 
 procured for money. Thus, Bede was extremely fortunate 
 in having the means of gratifying his taste and thirst for 
 learning. He was well looked after, and was evidently 
 popular with the monks; and although the rule of the order 
 gave little time for any special or separate study out of the 
 ordinary course, he seems to have found time to get through 
 an immense amount of work. His own words on this 
 interesting subject are : " All my life I spent in that same 
 monastery, giving my whole attention to the study of the 
 Holy Scriptures, and in the intervals between the hours 
 of regular discipline and the duties of singing in the 
 church, I always took pleasure in learning, or teaching, 
 or writing something." 
 
 He was admitted to Holy Orders at the early age of 
 nineteen, which was perfectly exceptional at that time, 
 when the earliest age for admission was twenty-five. In 
 his thirtieth year he was made a priest, and then his duties, 
 of course, prevented him from engaging as mucli as he 
 would desire in his literary work. He died on Ascension 
 Day, the 26th May 735. His works are very numerous. 
 They were first printed in a collected form at Paris, in 
 1544 and 1545, and reprinted in 1554 in six volumes folio. 
 These editions are now extremely rare. The first three 
 volumes of the former, containing the theological writings, 
 are in the British Museum. Another edition was printed 
 at Basle in 1563, in eight volumes. This is much more 
 common. 
 
 Xo writer has been so much beloved and appreciated. 
 His works were, for the most part, written in Latin ; but 
 the £cchsias(ical History was translated into English by
 
 III.] The Afonk. 89 
 
 Alfred, and his treatise, Dc Natural Bemm, also exists in 
 an English form. 
 
 Writers at the present day are largely indeljted to the 
 Ecclesiastical History, wliich, indeed, is the chief text-book 
 for the events of the period through which Bede lived. 
 As a specimen of the clearness of his grasp of the subject, 
 I select at haphazard a passage from the eighth chapter 
 of the third book of this interesting work. 
 
 " In the year of our Lord 640, King Eadbald, King of 
 Kent, departed this life, and left his kingdom to his son 
 Earconbert, which he most nobly governed twenty-four 
 years and some months. He was the first of the English 
 kings that of his supreme authority commanded the idols 
 throughout his whole kingdom to be forsaken and destroyed, 
 and the fast of forty days before Easter to be observed ; 
 and that the same might not be neglected, he appointed 
 proper and condign punishments for the offenders. His 
 daughter, Earcongota, as became the offspring of such a 
 parent, was a most virtuous virgin, always serving God in 
 a monastery in France, built by a most noble abbess called 
 Fara, at a place called Brie ; for at that time but few 
 monasteries being built in the country of the Angles, 
 many were wont, for the sake of monastic conversation, to 
 repair to the monasteries of the Franks or the Gauls, and 
 they also sent their daughters there to be instructed and 
 delivered to their heavenly bridegroom, especially in the 
 monasteries of Brie, of Chelles, and Audelys ; among 
 whom were also Sethfrid, daughter of tlie wife of Anna, 
 king of the East Angles, and Ethelberga, natural tUiugliter 
 of the same king, both of whom, though strangers, were 
 for their virtue made abbesses of the monastery of Brie."
 
 90 The Monk. [lfxt. 
 
 This is a valuable little piece of information ; nor is it 
 possible to open the Ecclesiastical History without coming 
 upon interesting matter, whether actually valuable as 
 descriptive of facts, or as picturing forth the mode 
 of thought of the time. The belief that a monastic 
 life, if properly followed up, was the very gate and 
 entrance into heaven, was held by most people of that 
 time ; and the extraordinary tales recounted of the 
 translation of saints, their miracles, and the wonderful 
 efficacy of their bones and dust, were gravely accepted as 
 facts by the innocent and pure-minded Bede. And even 
 t hese are instructive in their way. 
 
 I will now give you an account of tlie responsible 
 functions belonging to the priest's office. 
 
 " Priests ! You ought to be well provided with books 
 and apparel as suits your condition. The mass-priest 
 should at least have his missal, his singing-book, his read- 
 ing-book, his psalter, his handbook, his penitential and 
 his numeral one. He ought to have his officiating gar- 
 ments, and to sing from sunrise, with the nine intervals 
 and nine readings. His sacramental cup should be of gold 
 or silver, glass or tin, and not of earth, at least not of 
 wood. The altar should be always clean, well clothed, and 
 not defiled with dirt. There should be no mass without 
 wine. 
 
 " Take care that ye be better and wiser in your spiritual 
 craft than worldly men are in theirs, that you may be fit 
 teacliers of true wisdom. The priest should preach rightly 
 the true belief ; read fit discourses ; visit the sick ; and 
 baptise infants, and give the unction when desired. Xo 
 one should be a covetous trader, nor a plunderer, nor be
 
 III.] The Monk. 91 
 
 drunk often in wine-houses, nor be proud or boastful, nor 
 wear ostentatious girdles, nor be adorned with gold, but to 
 do honour to himself by his good morals. 
 
 " They should not be litigious nor quarrelsome, nor 
 seditious, but should pacify the contending; nor carry arms, 
 nor go to any fight, though some say that priests should 
 carry weapons when necessity requires ; yet the servant of 
 God ought not to go to any war or military exercise. 
 Neither a wife nor a battle becomes them, if they will 
 rightly obey God and keep His laws as becomes their 
 state." 
 
 Their duties are also described by the canons of Edgar 
 in the following terms : — 
 
 " They are forbidden to carry controversy among 
 themselves to a lay tribunal. Their own companions 
 were to settle it, or the bishop was to determine it. 
 
 " No priest was to forsake the church to which he was 
 consecrated, nor to intermeddle with the rights of others, 
 nor to take the scholar of another. He was to learn 
 sedulously his own handicraft, and not put another to 
 shame for his ignorance, but to teach him better. The 
 high-born were not to despise the less born, nor any to be 
 unrighteous or covetous dealers. He was to baptise 
 whenever required, and to abolish all heathenism and 
 witchcraft. They were to take care of their churches, 
 and apply exclusively to their sacred duties, and not 
 to indulge in idle speech, or idle deeds, or excessive 
 drinking ; nor to let dogs come witliin their church- 
 inclosure, nor more swine than a man might govern. 
 
 " Tliey were to celebrate mass only in churches, and 
 on the altar, unless in cases ul' extreme .sickness. Tliey
 
 92 The Monk. [lect. 
 
 were to have at mass tlieir corporalis garments, and the 
 subucula under their alba ; and all their officiating 
 garments were to l)e woven. Each was to have a good 
 and right book. No one was to celebrate mass unless 
 fasting, and unless he had one to make responses ; nor 
 more than three times a day ; nor unless he had for the 
 Eucharist, pure bread, wine and water. The cup was to 
 be of something molten, not of wood. No woman was to 
 come near the altar during mass. The bell was to be 
 rung at the proper time. 
 
 "They were to preach every Sunday to the people, 
 and always to give good examples. They were ordered 
 to teach youth with care, and to draw them to some craft. 
 They were to distribute alms, and urge the people to give 
 them, and to sing the psalms during the distribution, 
 and to exhort the poor to intercede for the donors. They 
 were forbidden to swear, and were to avoid ordeals. They 
 were to recommend confession, penitence, and compensa- 
 tion ; to administer the sacrament to the sick, and to 
 anoint him if he desired it, and the priest was always to 
 keep oil ready for the purpose of baptism. He was 
 neither to hunt, hawk, nor dice ; but to play with his book 
 as became his condition."* 
 
 " In the tenth century" , says the historian of tlie 
 Anglo-Saxons, Sharon Turner, " a new religious discipline 
 was spreading in Europe, which occasioned the misfortunes 
 in the reign of Edwin (usually called Edwy). Tliis was 
 the Benedictine Order of Monks, an order which, in 
 
 * Preface to Bede's Ecclesiastical History, by Dr. Giles. 
 London, 1880,
 
 III.] The Monk. 93 
 
 the course of time, l)ecaine celebrated in Europe beyond 
 every other." 
 
 The founder of this order was an Italian named 
 Benedict, who sought to mortify the fiesli by living quite 
 alone in a cave in a desert place into which he was 
 lowered by a friend. His mortification consisted in 
 rolling his unj)rotected ])ody among thorns, so as to 
 produce very copious bleeding. He was considered one 
 of the most genuine aspirants to saintly fame that ever 
 laid claim to saintship. His admirers were so numerous 
 that he was enabled to found many monasteries. He 
 afterwards went to Naples, destroyed some heathen 
 temples, started a monastery there, and laid down a new 
 set of rules for its governance. Of these rules there 
 are Anglo-Saxon translations in the British Museum, 
 and I must direct your attention to the MS. Eeg. 10a, 13, 
 Mdiich contains an exposition of it by Dunstan, witli liis 
 picture. 
 
 The order was introduced at Fleury, to which place 
 the body of Benedict was transferred from Mount Cassin, 
 where he had died. Fleury was plundered by the 
 Normans, and the monks had become irregular, when Odo, 
 a staunch suj^porter of the order, succeeded in reducing 
 them to rule, and the inlluence of the monastery spread 
 westward. 
 
 Odo was a Dano-Englishman, a descendant of one of 
 those Scandinavians who, under Hingvar and Hubba, came 
 to England to revenge the fate of liagnar Lodbrok. He 
 had been a soldier before he assumed the ecclesiastical 
 career, and was with Athelstan in tlie battle of Brunnan- 
 burg. He became Archbishop of Canterbury, and to liis
 
 94 
 
 The Monk. [LECT. 
 
 teaching much of Dunstan's lioliness has been attributed. 
 He was the man wlio introduced the rule into England, 
 and his strict observance of it may have had much to do 
 with Dunstan's career, and thus he influenced a part of 
 the poHtical history of the country. 
 
 Dunstan was born in 925. His parents were Heorstan 
 and Cynethryth, who seem to have lived near Glastonbury. 
 He frequently visited the old British church there. It is 
 said that he had there a vision of his future greatness, 
 and that a venerable phantom pointed out the place where 
 he was to build a superb monastery. His parents 
 encouraged him to study, and he soon excelled his 
 companions and ran rapidly through the course of study 
 marked out for him. Being attacked by fever, he, in a 
 sudden access of delirium, jumped out of bed, upset his 
 nurse, and seizing a stick which was near him, was off 
 over the hills and neighbouring plains, under the delusion 
 that a whole pack of wild dogs was after him. His 
 wanderings led him towards night to a church. This 
 church had been undergoing repair. Workmen had been 
 busy mending the roof. The scaftblding was left, of 
 course, and Dunstan, rushing wildly up a ladder, gained 
 the roof, and somehow or other, thanks to the wonderful 
 provision of the Creator, by which sleep-walkers and 
 delirious persons seem preserved from frightful accidents, 
 he reached the floorinc; of the interior uuliurt. As the 
 church doors had not been opened, the attendants who 
 came to perform their usual duties in the morning were 
 very much astonished at finding him there. Nor was his 
 surprise less than theirs, for, of course, he knew nothing 
 about his mode of getting there, and returned to his
 
 III.] The Monk. 95 
 
 ordinary sane condition of mind to wonder at his strange 
 position. 
 
 Admission was obtained for him to the monastery at 
 Glastonbury. He worked hard, lived soberly and morally, 
 and made himself master of everything that the monks 
 could teach. What mathematics were then taught he 
 learnt ; he acquired an excellent knowledge of music, and 
 the arts of painting and engraving. He became skilful in 
 working gold and silver. 
 
 His ambition at first was to be a courtier, and a 
 relative introduced him to the king, who was delighted 
 with his powers as a musician. His other accomplish- 
 ments won him great distinction, and of course many 
 enemies, who, to ruin him, ascribed his proficiency in 
 these various arts to magic. They were successful, and 
 Dunstan was driven from court. History repeated 
 herself in "Wolsey. 
 
 After his banishment from court, he formed an 
 attachment to a maiden whom he wished to marry, but 
 his relation. Bishop ^Ifheag, opposed the match, and 
 conjured Dunstan to become a monk. But Dunstan liad 
 no inclination for the cloister, and resisted the impor- 
 tunities of the bishop. The conflict between ambition and 
 the emotions called forth by the eloquence of ^Elflieag 
 unhinged poor Dunstan's mind, and a long and dangerous 
 illness was the result of the mental turmoil. On his 
 recovery he decided for the cowl, and became a monk. 
 But he did not lay aside either his ambition or his energy 
 when assuming the monastic garb. Determined on 
 pre-eminence, under whatever circumstances he might 
 be placed, Dunstan now souglit to reiidcr himself the
 
 g6 The Monk. [LECT. 
 
 most famous of monks. Accordingly, he made with his 
 own hands a cave or cell so singularly constructed, tliat 
 his biographer Osborne,* who had seen it, did not know 
 what to call it. It was more like a grave than a human 
 habitation. Cells were usually excavated in a rising 
 ground or raised upon such, but this was dug into the 
 earth. It was five feet long, and two and a half wide. 
 Its height was the stature of a man standing in the 
 excavation. Tlie whole was covered by a door, in which 
 was a small aperture to admit light and air. It was in 
 this retreat that the well-known temptation took place. 
 The recluse had with him all the tools necessary for his 
 work as a smith, and one night, while he was supposed to 
 be engaged in such occupation, the whole neighbourhood 
 was startled by the most terrific bowlings that could be 
 imagined. So fearful was the din, that a neighbouring hill 
 was rent into three pieces by the mere sound. In the 
 morning the people flocked round the window of the saint 
 to inquire into the cause of the unearthly clamour. He 
 informed them that Satan, having thrust his head through 
 the window, or rather aperture in the door, to tempt him 
 while he was at work, Dunstan made his tongs red-hot and 
 therewith seized the arch-fiend by the nose. After this, 
 the respect and veneration of the country people became 
 immense, but was still further increased by a certain 
 wealthy noble lady, Etheltieda, of royal descent, leaving 
 him all her property, which he distributed to the poor. 
 
 This lady, some time before her death, had spoken in 
 Dunstan's favour to the king, and again he was recalled to 
 court, whither he gladly hastened, for ambition was his 
 ♦ Clfojmt. B. 13.
 
 III.] The Monk. 97 
 
 ruling passion. Still he had to contemplate court-life 
 from a very different standpoint. His disappointment in 
 the love affair just referred to seems greatly to have em- 
 bittered his life, without extinguishing the burning desire 
 of shining above others. Naturally he met with many 
 enemies, but he defied them all, supported as he was by 
 the chancellor Thurketul and the primate Odo. The first 
 step to his future greatness was his appointment as abbot 
 to the Abbey of Glastonbury. 
 
 The Benedictine order being now, from its real merits, 
 so popular in Europe, Dunstan introduced it into his mon- 
 astery, and made himself its most active patron. There is 
 a MS, in the British Museum containing Dunstan's ex- 
 position of the rule of St. Benedict, with his portrait.* 
 
 The power of this extraordinary man increased with 
 extreme rapidity. He was chosen by the king for his 
 confidential friend and counsellor. To him the king sent 
 all his choicest treasures, and those amassed by the 
 preceding sovereigns, to be kept in the monastery under 
 his inspection. 
 
 The see of Winchester was now offered to him, but he 
 was too clever to accept it, having higher aims in view. 
 The king urged, and entreated; his mother invited him to 
 dinner and added her persuasions ; but Dunstan still re- 
 fused, declaring that he could not leave the king un- 
 attended, and in fact he would not leave him even to accept 
 the metropolitan see. 
 
 He went home. In the morning he returned to the king 
 and told him that he had seen a vision, in which St. Peter 
 struck him, and said, '" This is tliy punishment for thy re- 
 * MSS. R. 10, A. 13. 
 III. H
 
 98 The Monk. [lect. 
 
 fusal, 1111(1 a token to tliee not to decline hereafter the 
 Primacy of En^dand." The king couhl not have been a 
 very briglit specimen of a royal personage, as he never 
 saw through the trick, but intei'preted the vision to mean 
 that Dunstan was to be Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 Odo, who governed the see, was very old, and Dunstan 
 was nominated as his successor as soon as Odo should 
 die. 
 
 The king liad been ailing all his reign, and feeling his 
 end approaching, sent Dunstan to fetch the royal treasures 
 which were in his charge, but before the monk could re- 
 turn the king had breathed his last. Of course this was 
 too good a chance for Dunstan to neglect, and he at once 
 asserted that he had been fully prepared for the sad event 
 by a supernatural communication. The Anglo-Saxons 
 were kind enough to accept tliis on the strength of 
 Dunstan's assertion, and his fame was duly increased. 
 
 Edwin was a very young man indeed, and in ascending 
 the throne had everything against him. Dunstan sought 
 to make of him a mere tool to carry out his own schemes 
 of ambition, and his meddling produced such catastrophes 
 as the undue interference of the clergy in mundane matters 
 always brings about. 
 
 The disappointment in Dunstan's matrimonial plans 
 has been referred to, and I am inclined to attribute his 
 behaviour to the young king more directly to this source. 
 The story of his conduct is not generally known, and as 
 it is very instructive as a lesson on the manners of the 
 time, I will tell it. 
 
 On the very day of the coronation, a feast was spread 
 in the great hall (which was the same thing to all intents
 
 III.] TJic Monk. 99 
 
 as that described by me in a former lecture, when speaking 
 of the Saxon hall in the pagan times*), and the king was 
 on the high bank, or dais of later times, while around the 
 hall his lords and ohicers of state were seated, just in the 
 same manner as had been usual with tlicir forefathers five 
 hundred years before Edwin's time. The rude mirth, 
 coarse jests, and furious drinking which set in after the 
 withdrawal of the ladies to the Bower (the <yvvaiKelov of 
 the Greeks, our wiY7i-drawing room) seemed to disgust 
 the young monarch, who rose from his seat and "joined 
 the ladies" before the proper time, very naturally pre- 
 ferring the society of the lovely Ethelgiva to that of the 
 haughty Dunstan and his friends, thereby showing his 
 taste. But the assembled guests resented this defection 
 of the young king, and at last Dunstan, and his relation 
 Cynesius, a bishop, were sent to bring back Edwin whether 
 he would or not. 
 
 The two priests rushed to the Bower, and finding the 
 king in company with his wife Ethelgiva and her mother, 
 actually dragged him by main force back to the hall. 
 They forced the diadem on to his head, and so brought 
 him before the riotous throng. 
 
 Here is an instance of the abuse of power by a monk, 
 with a vengeance. But the cruelty, injustice, and tyranny 
 of the churchman were not sufficiently gratified by this 
 display of Itrutality. Means were taken to discover that 
 the lady was too near of kin to Kdwin to be his bnvful 
 wife, and all the monkish writers speak of her in the most 
 disrespectful and abusive terms. William of Malmesbury 
 perhaps the most so. But Ethelgiva had reproached the 
 * Oliler Eiiylaml, Lecture I, "The Sword," p. 21. 
 
 u 2
 
 loo The Monk. [lect. 
 
 monk tor intrudin;,' on tliu king's privacy in so shameless 
 a manner, ami Diinstan never forgave her for the words 
 she used. 
 
 Now began one of the grinnnest battles between Church 
 and State that ever have been fought. Edwin was not the 
 quiet tool that Dunstan had expected to find in liim. 
 " ^Voun^led in every feeling of pride, dignity, and kingly 
 honour, he," as Sharon Turner says, " was alive only to his 
 resentment. He deprived Dunstan of his honours and 
 wealtli, and condemned him to banishment." 
 
 This was too stormy to be wise. Dunstan was no every- 
 day monk. A man who had taken the arch-fiend by tlie 
 nose, w^lio had been favoured with various kinds of visions, 
 and wliose fame for sanctity had been supported in every 
 possible way, was sure to be popular, and the people of 
 that day adored him as their idol. He was backed by the 
 favour of Thurketul, whose friend he was. He had been 
 named as the successor of Odo, who was greatly attached to 
 him. Thus the course taken by the king was precisely best 
 adapted to set the whole of the powerful machinery of the 
 Church in motion against him. Odo considered himself in- 
 sulted in his friend, and in revenge divorced the king from 
 his wife, on the plea of kinship existing between them. And 
 we have a lively picture of the state of society in the tenth 
 century when we read that the Archbishop sent soldiers to 
 the palace to tear the unfortunate Ethelgiva away. She was 
 can-ied ofi" by force, and her face branded with a hot iron, 
 to destroy the beauty which had been so attractive to the 
 king and so dangerous to Dunstan. She was then ban- 
 ished to Ireland. Nature, however, proving too strong for 
 the monks, healed the scars on her lovely face, and brought
 
 III.] The Monk. loi 
 
 hor back to Gloucester in all her former charms. Again 
 was she taken by the wretched fanatics, who repeated the 
 operation of destroying her beauty with the branding-iron, 
 but added the further revolting cruelty of cutting the 
 nerves and muscles of her legs^ so that she should not 
 escape the vengeance of her foes. Again Nature stepped 
 in, and, by a timely death, saved her from further 
 indignities and further torture. 
 
 Edwin was deprived of the greater part of his posses- 
 sions. The Mercians and Northumbrians revolted against 
 him, drove him beyond the Thames, and appointed his 
 brother Edgar, a boy of thirteen years of age, to succeed 
 him. Dunstan was immediately recalled with honour. 
 
 The popularity of the Benedictine reformation, of which 
 Dunstan was the exponent, was the great engine by which 
 Edwin was oppressed. Though there is considerable ob- 
 scurity as to the place and manner of his death, there can 
 be but little doubt that it was a violent one. In a MS. in 
 the British Museum we are expressly told that he was 
 killed in Gloucestershire ; the monks, either directly or 
 indirectly, were the cause, and this is confirmed by the 
 violent outcry they raised against him. 
 
 His f;dl was a misfortune, not only to England, 
 l)ut to Europe in general, in that it made the fear of 
 ecclesiastical power the greatest terror of men's minds. It 
 established a precedent for the absolute disregard of any 
 other motive in a country than the caprice of a monk ! 
 Eome was the tyrant once more that she had boon before 
 her destruction by the Northern heroes from \\\\<^\\\ we are 
 descended, and she began her work of vengeance in terrible 
 earnest. Law, justice, the royal function, everything gave
 
 I02 The Monk. / [lect. 
 
 way before the crusliiiif,' force of the monkish power. 
 Dunstan reigned in England. The death of Odo happened 
 before tliat of P'dvvin, and the man appointed by the king 
 died on his journey to Rome, and his successor Brythelm 
 was forced to abdicate in favour of Dunstan. 
 
 Edgar was emphatically the grand supporter of the 
 Benedictines. He is therefore loudly lauded in the monk- 
 ish chronicles, notwithstanding the profligacy of his private 
 character. Dunstan used his power to plant the land with 
 the new monks, to the exclusion of the ancient clergy; and 
 so important did he become, that, at the death of Edgar, 
 the ecclesiastical friends of Dunstan succeeded in crowning 
 Edward, to the exclusion of Ethelred. Revolutions took 
 place ; a civil war raged between the new monks and the 
 old clergy ; monasteries were pulled down, and all kinds 
 of troubles arose. A synod was convened at Winchester 
 to adjust these disputes, and the crucifix in the wall uttered 
 a miraculous decree forbidding any change. This was pro- 
 nounced by Dunstan to be the will of God expressed in 
 human language from the holy sign. A similar sleight-of- 
 hand performance was exhibited during the assembly of a 
 special council of nobles convened at Calne, but on this 
 occasion the catastrophe was far more serious, being, indeed, 
 as foul and wholesale a murder as any in history. I give 
 it on the authority of Osborne. 
 
 The king was absent, and the senators were debating 
 with considerable warmth, and violently reproaching 
 Dunstan. He replied to them in these remarkable 
 words : — " I confess that I am unwilling you should con- 
 quer. I commit the cause of the Church to Christ." 
 He had scarcely uttered them, when the floor-beams
 
 III.] The Monk. 103 
 
 and rafters gave way, and precipitated the company, with 
 the ruins, to the earth below. The seat of Dunstan only 
 remained unmoved and unshaken. 
 
 The most remarkable part of this narrative is the cir- 
 cumstance of the meeting taking place in an upper floor ; 
 for the Anglo-Saxons, as a rule, loved the ground-floor only, 
 and their buildings partook of the features of the old Scan- 
 dinavian hall described in Bcoividf. That this was a 
 special matter and a specially arranged assembly-room or 
 man-trap, there can be no doubt. 
 
 Other biographers than Osborne dwell at length on the 
 power possessed by Dunstan of seeing and overcoming in- 
 fernal spirits, so that the account here given of him is not 
 to be attributed to any unusual amount of credulity on the 
 part of this author. 
 
 During the Danish usurpation, the power of the monks 
 had little chance of being manifested. Dunstan had passed 
 away, and there was in fact little time in the short inter- 
 vals of peace for the monks to come strongly forward. 
 They withdrew into their monasteries, and occupied 
 themselves with writing and illuminating manuscripts, and 
 they produced immense numbers of most interesting speci- 
 mens of early English art, many of which are still preserved 
 in the National collection. Again, it became a boon to the 
 quiet recluse to have a spot to which he could retire, se- 
 cure from the troubles of the fighting world ; and in this 
 reference monasteries seem to have been productive of 
 some good. But the de-humanising tendencies of monastic 
 rule was, apart from this possibility of their having 
 any beneficial results, demoralising in the extreme. No 
 pride is so arrogant as religious pride, and no men have
 
 I04 TItc Monk. [LECT. 
 
 ever showed themselves so completely the sport of tlie 
 passion of exercising sway over otliers as Dunstan, Becket, 
 and Wolsey. 
 
 Altlionn'h Englishmen, tlie lives of the two latter men 
 arc douhtless familiar to all my readers. They are only repe- 
 titions, nnder other circumstances, of that of Dunstan. 
 
 The Normans had adopted Christianity somewhat 
 oddly. With tliem it was originally either assumed, in a 
 spirit of dissimulation or in perfect indifference to the 
 means, their end being the occupation of Neustria. By 
 degrees, however, the influence of their clergy and of their 
 monks became paramount. The self-assertion and love of 
 dominion which we have seen manifested in Dunstan 
 suited the Norman character exactly, and it is not too 
 / much to say that every Norman was as arrogant as that 
 old Saxon monk. I>ut the Normans were soldiers, and 
 knew the value of discipline, which became introduced 
 into their monasteries as sternly as into their camps. 
 , ^ Licentious, haughty, cold, unprincipled, the Norman monk 
 resembled the Norman baron in his grand capacity for 
 hatred, and in the readiness with which he submitted 
 to any discipline which should ensure strength ; while 
 the English monk, under the Danish rule, had subsided 
 into either a studious recluse, amusing himself with drawing 
 pictures or writing books, or (much more frequently) 
 a good-for-nothing, ale-swilling, idle loon, accepting the 
 tonsure as a safeguard against work. 
 
 Durnig his exile among the Normans, Edward, sur- 
 named the Confessor, conceived an exalted opinion of their 
 merits, when contrasted with the relaxed rule of the Eng- 
 lish monks. The nobles who had shared his exile formed
 
 III.] The Monk. 105 
 
 their opinions upon his, and an ahnost monastic court was 
 the result. Imbued with the feeling that Norman boast- 
 fulness was chivalry, Norman pride refinement, and Nor- 
 man asceticism religion, it is no wonder that Edward was 
 disconcerted at the state of things which he found in 
 England. Still, there is no excuse for his desiring to see 
 his country rather Normandy than England, which all his 
 measures tended to make it. 
 
 These measures prepared the way for the so-called 
 Conquest, and we owe that national disgrace to the fact of 
 the king having been more than half a monk. 
 
 As soon as William sat upon the throne he sought to 
 bring the monasteries under Norman abbots, thinking 
 that by their influence he could appeal to all classes of 
 the people ; and while he crushed their bodies with the 
 mailed hand of his robber baron, he could drive them to 
 utter despair by placing the awful powers of the Church 
 in the hands of his monks. The number, however, of 
 these Norman abbots is very much loss than we should 
 have expected to find, especially as the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church, during the whole of this century, had been more 
 or less obnoxious to the Papal court, and the Pope consi- 
 dered the conquest as a victory of what may be specifically 
 termed Eomanism. Few as these abbots were in number, 
 their influence was immense, and I may more especially 
 instance the work done by Lanfranc, who was consecrated 
 Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070, after William had de- 
 posed Stigand and several Anglo-Saxon prelates. At first, 
 Lanfranc, wlio had refused tlie Archbishopric of Rouen, 
 declined the honours offered him in England, but linally 
 accepted them. One of his first acts was to eject the secular
 
 io6 The Monk. [LIXT. 
 
 clerks, who had recovered their position in the Church 
 since the time of Dunstan, and to supply their place with 
 monks. He even treated with contempt the memory of 
 the old Englisli saints, and abolished every part of the 
 English service wliicli differed from that of Rome. It is 
 true that his reforms were mostly judicious, but they were 
 much resented by the Anj:,do-Saxon monks, who culti- 
 vated their own beloved English all the more for its 
 suppression. Tlius, while the people, separated from the 
 government by race and language, lived a separate exist- 
 ence independent of their Norman rulers, and spoke the 
 colloquial English without any taint of foreign infusion, 
 the only learned men amongst them, the monks, found the 
 tendency to drift into Latinity checked by the very acts 
 /which were intended to urge them further into it. 
 
 The grievous fad of celibacy was not confined to the 
 sterner sex. There were monasteries for women, who were 
 called Ancren, or nuns. A curious work of the end of the 
 twelfth century, thus quite in the Norman times, and 
 entitled the Ancren Riwl, gives us a series of maxims for 
 the conduct of these female recluses ; but although rich in 
 very quaint and curious advice, it is rather a disappointing 
 book on the whole. AVe should have expected to find 
 more actual points of observance laid down and insisted 
 on than we do. The MSS. in the British Museum, marked 
 respectively Nero, A. xiv, Cleopatra, C. vi, Titus, D. xviii, 
 will repay attention. I will present a small fragment 
 to your notice, taken from Morton's edition of this work, 
 published by the Camden Society, page 210. 
 
 " Summe iuglurs beoth thet ne kunnen serven of non 
 other gleo, buteu makieu cheres and wrenchen mis hore
 
 III.] The Monk. 107 
 
 ninth and schulen mid hore eien. Of this mestere servetli 
 theo imiselie ontfule ithe deofles kurt, to bringen leihtre 
 hore outfule loverd. Vor gif ei seith wel other deth wel 
 nonesweis ne muwen heo loken thiderward mid riht eie 
 of 2fode heorte auh wincketh othere half and biholdeth 
 luft and asquint." 
 
 The whole course of advice given is equally grotesque. 
 
 Among the great helps to modern research into ancient 
 documents, I must call your attention to a work by my 
 friend, Mr. Walter de Gray Birch, of the MS. Depart- 
 ment. It is a thin book in 8vo., giving a chronological 
 list of all the religious houses in England and Wales prior 
 to the Norman disgrace. According to his statement, 
 there were nearly three hundred religious houses esta- 
 blished in England and Wales before the year 1066. The 
 list of establishments is in chronological order, and is fol- 
 lowed by an alphabetical list of the names of the Saxon 
 abbots and abbesses, with the date and authority affixed. 
 
 I gave you a picture of the robber Baron in his castle, 
 leading rather a dismal life there, having nobody to fight 
 with but his brother Normans, who frequently gratified his 
 pugnacious propensities by commencing a deadly feud; 
 still, that was a rare gratification, too wasteful on the 
 whole of Norman life to be frequent, although in Stephen's 
 time we have seen that there was rather too much fiditinff. 
 To combine their love of bloodshed with the Christian creed 
 seems to have been a happy thought, and this resulted 
 in the institution of military orders of monks, who, instead 
 of cowl and gown, wore arms and armour. Fortunately 
 there was a demand for as well as a supply of these gentry, 
 and the Holy Wars (Heaven save the mark !) turning up
 
 I08 The Monk. 
 
 before it was quite too late, tlic most turbulent and objec- 
 tioiialile of these military tyrants marched olf on crusading 
 expeditions, to the great relief of the country in one 
 respect, although the contributions levied on the towns 
 pressed rather rouglily on the mercantile class. Still, to 
 get rid of them was cheap at almost any price ; and if the 
 Crusades did that amount of service to us, and diminished 
 the number of non-English dwellers in England, we are 
 bound as true English people to be thankful for this means 
 of their removal. Norman-French was forgotten, though 
 some traces of Norman rule remain. We must be just, 
 and in admitting our debt to the Crusades, own that they 
 were the invention of a monk.
 
 Lecture IV, 
 A R M O U R.
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 ARMOUR. 
 
 The study of the history of defensive armour divides the 
 subject naturally into three classes, which may he desig- 
 nated respectively chain mail, mixed armour, and plate. 
 Of course, this nomenclature has reference to metallic 
 armour alone, for there must be a further classification of 
 our subject into metallic and non-metallic armour. 
 
 As the consideration of the specimens in the British 
 Museum must chiefly engage our attention at present, and 
 as they are, as we should be led to expect, of the metallic 
 order, our inquiry will be directed to the study of that 
 order in the first instance, leaving the consideration of 
 non-metallic armour for future occasions. 
 
 Philology, mythology, history, and legendary lore, all 
 unite in furnishing evidence that man, like the sun, rose in 
 the East and then began a glorious march \vestM\ird. This 
 seems to have been the order of human progression from 
 times long anterior to all historic periods. Wave after 
 wave of population has surged westwards, each over- 
 whelming and eflacing the traces of its predecessors. 
 Strange discoveries have been made in far-off Peru, con- 
 nectmg the almost mythical "Children of the Sun" with 
 certain Aryan people in India. And tlie Aryans them- 
 selves have actually overwhelmed and destroyed in their
 
 112 Armour. [lect. 
 
 westerly Hood of population portions of their own race. 
 The Kelts autl Kyniri have Ijceu, as it were, run over by 
 the rush of the Teutonic whirlwind even in historic times, 
 just as those Kelts and Kymri, in their progress to the West, 
 Hooded and swamped the aborigines of Western Europe. 
 
 It sounds vague to talk of " the East". To most 
 people it means India, China — anywhere in Asia. In 
 Eussia, it means more specially Turkestan, Afghanistan, 
 and the Punjaub. In Kensington it means White- 
 chapel ; so that when I use the term I must beg you to 
 understand me to confine the idea to some district in the 
 North-Western part of India, more central than Afghan- 
 istan. 
 
 The dwellers in Afghanistan and the Punjaub are 
 highly conservative, like most Asiatics. The dress that 
 would be historically correct for Eunjeet Singh would be 
 equally so for Badjazet. So the language of the learned 
 Brahmins of Central and iSouthern India, albeit only a 
 written language now, and employed in teaching the 
 sacred myths of the faith, is the Sanskrit of six thousand 
 years ago ! 
 
 With this tenacity, it is not wonderful that the Aryans 
 should have brought their language, dress, and arms with 
 them ; and on carefully investigating the remains of our 
 own race, as discovered in England, in Scandinavia, and 
 in parts of Germany, we find swords, shields, and arms 
 reminding us of Oriental types. 
 
 A great and distinguishing feature of Indian armour is 
 that which has obtained the name of "chain mail". This 
 seems to have existed from time immemorial, and to have 
 teen copied by the Semitic races from the Aryans ; and in
 
 IV.] Arviofir. 113 
 
 the earliest Teutonic account of armour with which I am 
 acquainted — in fact, the earliest and best Teutonic epos, 
 our glorious English poem of Beoiuulf, we are introduced to 
 this kind of armour. We read of the " war-net", the war 
 sark or shirt, the garment woven of linked rings, hard 
 hand-locked, woven by the smith, but not as women 
 weave. We are told how this good armour served the hero 
 in his combats againt the Nickars and monsters of the 
 deep, who could not pierce the woven rings. The dagger 
 of the female fiend, the mother of the grizzly Grendel, 
 whom he seeks in a weird cavern at the bottom of a lake, 
 cannot penetrate the breast rings of the iron shirt. There 
 are specimens of such chain mail in the British Museum 
 that will at once show how useful it must have been as a 
 defence. 
 
 The artists of the Middle Ages represented external 
 objects rather according to their own conception of them 
 than the actual appearance to the eye, while some drew 
 from the ordinary appearance, and others adopted a con- 
 ventional type as a useful form. These methods of drawing 
 have produced in the minds of archaeologists three or 
 four different kinds of mail, whereas only one was intended 
 by all three. Matilda, wife of William the Norman, in re- 
 presenting the armour of the warriors of her time, covered 
 them all over with little rings, and, with the conscientious 
 truthfulness of a w^oman, she gives the rings entire. 
 Others, especially those who drew the illuminations in our 
 MSS,, have drawn rings overlapping each other, because 
 one ring covering part of another produced such an 
 effect to the eye. Others adopted dots, little marks and lines, 
 according to a conventional standard. These various modes 
 III. I
 
 I 14 Ar»wur. [lfXT. 
 
 of representing chain mail have been supposed to indicate 
 respectively a kind of armour in which the rings were 
 sewn on cloth or elk-skin, in such a manner as to lie flat 
 on the cloth-surface, just touching each other and no 
 more. The next form gives us armour where one ring 
 is sewn on the cloth or elk- skin in such a manner as to 
 protect the threads of the one next it, thus only allowing 
 edges of rings to be seen. Another kind, supposed to be 
 represented by the crossed lines, has been called mascled 
 armour. The names for these three kinds of armour are 
 due to the theory of the late learned antiquary, Sir 
 Samuel Eush Meyrick. 
 
 The armour of the Scandinavian Teutons, including the 
 Angles and the Saxons, consisted of a shirt of mail, called 
 by the Swedes, Danes, and Germans ^awsar, and by the Eng- 
 lish hyrnic. This was nothing but a sort of frock made of 
 . interlaced rings like those of the modern steel purse, only 
 instead of having split rings, as w'e do in making the purse, 
 each ring was closed by a little rivet. The labour of pro- 
 ducing such a garment must have been immense ; and we 
 can understand w^hy the smith should have been so 
 honoured an artificer in that old time when Hengest and 
 Horsa walked about in the Isle of Thanet, where they 
 planted the first seeds of English colonisation. The very 
 name for this artificer is the most usual amongst us to this 
 very day. The poet was often called the verse-smith, and 
 connected with that idea is Milton's " ZwiA;^c?-sweetness, 
 long drawn out". Even among the gods of Valhalla there 
 was a smith named Yolund, who made the swords, shields, 
 and mail of the ^sir, as "Vulcan forged the bolts of Jove"; 
 but our man was a much more estimable deity.
 
 IV.] Armour. 115 
 
 That no remains of early English chain mail have come 
 down to us is not to be wondered at. The time consumed 
 in weaving such shirts was considerable, therefore they 
 were expensive, and the representations in our earlier 
 MSS., etc., show only kings and very distinguished warriors 
 so protected. Besides which, the activity of the Teuton led 
 him rather to despise all kinds of defence save his shield. 
 
 The shield was of the wood of the linden tree, and 
 made convex to the foe, so as to look something like a 
 rather shallow umbrella. It was covered on the outside 
 with the skin of some animal. It was white in the case of 
 the young, untried warrior ; but the champion who had 
 distinguished himself by the slaughter of a bear or wild 
 bull, was entitled to wear the skin of such creature as 
 covering to his shield. The centre was a boss, covering 
 the aperture for the hand, across which aperture a grip or 
 handle of iron was securely fixed, by which the shield was 
 held. The boss was of bronze, silver-gilt, and even of gold. 
 The circumference, or rand, or rim of the shield was of 
 the same metal as the boss, which differed according to the 
 rank of the wearer. 
 
 The helmet was a leathern cap, encircled at the base by 
 a broad metal ring, which again was covered with a thinner 
 plating of gold, differing in breadth according to the rank 
 of the warrior. This lower ring was made to support two 
 half-hoops, which crossed each other at the crown of the 
 head ; and in later times one of these was elongated so as 
 to protect the nose, and thus formed the Norman nasal 
 helmet of the tapestry, and of so many illustrations of that 
 which I have designated as the King Period in history,* 
 * Older England, First Series, p. 132. 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 Ahnour. [lect. 
 
 exteiulin*; from the second century before the Christian 
 era to the beginning of tlie fifteenth century a.d. 
 
 The arms of the early Ii)nglish were the broadsword 
 with the delicate Oriental-looking hilt, and its powerful 
 blade for cutting, a weapon which would well justify 
 the honour paid to it by Scandinavian-English warriors. 
 Besides the sword, the terrible seax,or short, curved dagger, 
 formed an important part of tlie outfit. Then came the 
 spear and the javelin, a short bow, and rather formidable 
 arrows. The battle-axe was, however, perhaps the most 
 distinctive part of the warrior's fighting outfit, and, wielded 
 by skilful hands, it proved to be a most useful one. 
 Although there is little trace of the war-hammer in English 
 poetry of the early period before the Norman usurpation, 
 there is abundant evidence of its use by the Scandinavians ; 
 and " Thor's Hammer" is as fixed in our mythology as the 
 club of Hercules is in that of Greece and Rome. 
 
 The English were not fond of lighting on horseback. 
 They preferred hand-to-hand combats on foot, in the good 
 old style. They were celebrated for their splendid "wedge" 
 formation, a much better form in attack and in defence 
 than the square of modern times, which has taken its place 
 as a specially English feature in warfare. 
 
 The structure of the ring helmet was eminently adapted 
 to guard the head from the downright blow of the axe or 
 sword. The hoops, or rather half-hoops, crossing each other 
 at the crown, could be made of metal quite stout enough to 
 resist the cut, while a complete helmet of such thickness 
 would have been far too heavy to wear. But it was not 
 proof against the descending arrow shot up in the air, as 
 the Indians in Peru shoot, and which was a mode of shoot-
 
 IV.] A rmonr. 1 1 7 
 
 ing resorted to by William at Hastings with such signal 
 success, — the story of Harold's looking up to receive the 
 arrow in his eye, having been invented long after, to 
 account for the accident, at a time wlien the original form 
 and structure of the Northern helmet had been forgotten. 
 The pictures of the helmet in the Bayeux Tapestry will at 
 once confirm my statement. The form of this helmet lives 
 in the closed crown still worn as a badge of rank at the 
 present day in England. 
 
 As the English were distinguished for their skill as 
 infantry troops, it is natural that their equipment should 
 have been as light as possible. Hence the byrnie, when 
 worn, seldom came below the knee, while the legs were 
 only defended by a stout trellis-work of leather, a sort of 
 cross-gartering that still lives in the pattern of the High- 
 lander's stocking, and is seen in the bandages w^orn by the 
 Norwegian and Eussian peasantry. The knees were either 
 bare, or the coloured linen trousers were drawn over them, 
 and were kept in their place by the leathern cross-garter- 
 ing alluded to. On foot, the first requisite is agility, 
 therefore the English rather disdained the use of armour, 
 as impeding the motions of the limbs ; and we find a king 
 armed in chain, wielding a sword in his hand, defended by 
 an armour-bearer whose lower limbs are quite bare, and 
 whose covering for the body is only a leathern tunic 
 called the rock, or coat. Besides which, the majority 
 of warriors given in the illuminations show the pre- 
 ference for lightness in dress over greater security pur- 
 chased at the price of too great weight. The warriors are 
 rarely in mail, and seldom provided with any other 
 defence for the head than the combed leathern cap, to
 
 Ii8 Ar)nimr. [LliCT. 
 
 which the name " Champion" is due, being derived from 
 kcemh, or kamh, a comb. 
 
 The Normans, on the other hand, after their settle- 
 ment in Neustria, were referred to their horses in their 
 attack ; consequently, all their equipment partook more 
 and more of a cavalry character. Their knight was 
 called chevalier ; their swords were long and more pointed 
 than those of the English, to enable the wearer to use 
 them on horseback, when the lance, in which he put the 
 greatest faith, should have been broken or lost. The inferior 
 people only fought on foot, and were armed with axes and 
 bows. 
 
 These circumstances also induced a great amount of 
 elongation in the dress, which was made to fall over the legs 
 on horseback. The lower part of the leg became clothed 
 in leggings of chain mail called chausses. The byrnie was 
 furnished with chain-mail sleeves, terminating in mufflers 
 for the hand, and armour in general was called by the 
 French word mail. The nasal of the helmet was so much 
 prolonged as to be connected with the mail, now constructed 
 to protect the neck, and called the hauberk, being a 
 corruption of the German hals-herger — neck protector. 
 Finally, the whole head was protected by a chain-mail 
 hood called the capuchin. 
 
 Such inventions being the work of Normans, it is no 
 matter of surprise that they were known by Norman - 
 French names. The customs of the Normans were always 
 opposed to those of the English, and it would be very 
 strange if we were to find any other than Norman names 
 for anything invented by them. But still, English inven- 
 tions, or such things as the English brought with them from
 
 IV.] Armour. 119 
 
 Scandinavia, retained their English names, in spite of any 
 Norman modifications to which they might be subject. 
 Thus helm, helmet, shield, sword, rock (for coat), bow, 
 arrow, axe, hammer, ring, and many other words remained 
 in the language, and could not be beaten off the field by 
 Norman-French ; while the subsequent innovations in 
 military dress introduced by the Eoraance race retained 
 their French or Italian names, until they themselves died 
 out and were forgotten. 
 
 Philology comes in very often to the assistance of 
 history, and explains apparent differences in names, 
 accounting for them by the laws that regulate the repre- 
 sentation of a sound in one language as a different sound in 
 another. It is not generally known why the lu in old 
 English and old High German words should be replaced 
 by giL in French. The reason is that many such words 
 beginning in modern English with iv commence wilh an 
 aspirate in Anglo-Saxon. In many of these we write the 
 aspirate nowadays after the lo, as ivlio, when, lohcrc. The 
 French form of Latin, like the parent, has no aspirate, and 
 when h occurs it is reproduced by g ; hence the name 
 " German", from Heer-man, i.e., man of the Heer or army. 
 Some words in w being preceded by h, gave rise to the 
 custom of writing all such as if the aspirate were used 
 with them. Hence loarian, to guard, defend oneself, be- 
 came fjiicrrian ; war became giccrrc, and warrior, gucrrier. 
 The lower part of the body is called u-amh in German ; a 
 waistcoat in some parts of Germany is called thence a 
 warns; and in tlie twelfth century there was a garment 
 worn under the chain mail called the wamhcis, or body- 
 piece, being nearer the body than the mail. This became
 
 I20 Annoiir. [lect. 
 
 tortured by tlie Normans into (jaiiibein, by the process 
 which I have just indicated, and was further Norraanised 
 into gamheson. It was worn under the armour, to keep 
 tlic rings from rubbinp; against the body, and also to pre- 
 vent their being pushed in with the lance-head thrust 
 against tliem with all the force borrowed from the rush 
 of the horse : for in Norman w^arfare all the momentum 
 of the attack was obtained from the animals which the 
 warriors bestrode. This circumstance, too, rendered the 
 mail of less value than it would have been for mere foot- 
 fighting, because, although the wambeis or gamheson 
 (sometimes also called acton, hacqueton, or alcoton, from 
 being stuffed with cotton) would prevent the chain from 
 bemg carried into the body, the head could not well be 
 padded all round, so as to resist the terrible charge and 
 the penetrating lance-head. The small ring-bound leather 
 helm was insufficient, and the lance-head coming in under 
 the crossed hoops would do much more harm to the warrior 
 than if he had had no helmet at all. The idea of beating 
 sheet iron or steel into a skull-cap does not seem to have 
 struck the Normans, although a small concave plate does 
 appear occasionally to have been affixed to the upper 
 portion of the chain-mail hood. This little shallow cap is 
 sometimes rather poiuted, forming a very obtuse cone, and 
 this Meyrick calls a "chapelle de fcr". Such strengthen- 
 ing of the head-guard seems to have been common, but 
 nothing like what we should call a regular helmet appears. 
 The lower ring of the leathern cap became incorporated 
 with the nasal, and then added to a chapeUe defer. Then 
 this seems to have been enlarged, so as to form something 
 more like a helmet ; though it is difficult to say, in the
 
 iV.] A rmour. 1 2 1 
 
 first Norman periods, whether this improved form were 
 really all of metal or of cuir houilli, made into a form 
 somewhat similar to the helmet of our Life Guards, only 
 with a nasal instead of a projecting peak. Much is only 
 conjecture : the probability is that this kind of helmet 
 was not produced until the appearance of tlie bascinet 
 early in the fourteenth century. 
 
 The earliest helmets were somewhat of the shape of a 
 tin saucepan, cylindrical in general form, but cut out in 
 that part where the face was situated. On the seal of 
 Eichard the First we find him with such saucepan-like 
 helmet, with a face-guard attached, which Meyrick calls 
 the " aventaijle". This is also part of a cylinder, and is cut 
 so as to have two openings in it, leaving the rest of the 
 metal to form, as it were, horizontal bars. The two upper 
 corners of this aventayle are furnished with rivets, to per- 
 mit of the visor being raised while the helmet is put on. 
 Such protection for the face appears occasionally to have 
 been added to the chain of the capuchin, or hood of 
 mail. The next step seems to have been to make such 
 a helmet as the cylindrical one just referred to, only 
 large enough to slip on over the head, without involving 
 the necessity of raising any part of the helmet itself. 
 The top then became conical, or at all events convex, in- 
 stead of being flat ; and the sides, and especially that to 
 which the face was addressed, lost something of the 
 rigidly cylindrical form, tapering and curving towards the 
 summit, following, though very slightly, the curve of the 
 head. In the front part of this helmet holes were pierced 
 for the admission of the air, and to permit the cliampion 
 to see his adversary.
 
 122 Arnionr. [LIXT. 
 
 This kind of helmet continued in use till the end of 
 the fifteenth century. A beautiful example of this, 
 once the property of the Black I'rince, is to be seen at 
 Canterbury. It was extremely heavy, being made of 
 wrought steel, large enough to descend to tlie shoulders, 
 where it rested, so that they should bear the greater part 
 of the weight. But besides its own weight, there were 
 superimposed upon it the cap of maintenance, the mant- 
 lings, and the crest, often itself an object in metal of some 
 kind, gilt. 
 
 Even before the time of the Black Prince, as early as 
 the end of the thirteenth century, these helmets were 
 made to taper ; and there are examples in many of the 
 MSS. of their approaching the form of a curved cone, 
 with the sides descending to the shoulders. 
 
 The shields, after the advent of the Normans, became 
 kite-shaped, or had rather the form of the section of a long 
 pear. This extravagant Normanism was very shortly re- 
 duced, and a flat shield, almost in the shape of the smooth 
 part of a flat-iron, succeeded. This was afterwards bent 
 longitudinally, so as to curve round the body slightly, a 
 form which was greatly affected by Eichard the First. It 
 became longer for a short time under John, but soon grew 
 smaller and more convenient again. 
 
 Eichard the First wore chain mail in which the lower 
 limbs were encased. The upper part of the body was 
 protected by a short frock of chain mail, with sleeves and 
 hood, over which tlie cylindrical helmet was placed. On 
 the top of this helmet was the broom plant from which 
 the Plantagenets took their name, and on the shield were 
 the three leopards of England.
 
 IV.] Ari)io2ir. 123 
 
 The arms in the mail period were chiefly the sword, 
 spear, lance, javelin, arrow, battle-axe, bill or axe on a 
 pole, glaive or long-bladed axe — nearly a cutlass on a pole ; 
 the gisarme, a weapon with a cutting edge on one side and 
 a long, bayonet-like arrangement on the other, also 
 mounted on a pole. The Saxon seax gave place to the 
 dagger, which, however, performed the same office equally 
 well. 
 
 The great changes in history have never been 
 effected by sudden jumps. There has generally been a 
 succession of slight stages of transition before marked 
 differences between any two eras, however distinguished 
 from each other, have stood forth as specifically marking a 
 period. Thus, calling early English Anglo-Saxon, it is 
 quite impossible to say wlicn that Anglo-Saxon became 
 what some denominate semi-Saxon, and when this became 
 modern English. It is quite impossible to draw a line, 
 and say, " In this year men agreed to drop the en of the 
 infinitives of verbs and plurals of nouns, and to form all 
 plurals by the addition of s." We can trace the gradual 
 process, but we can never say when the change really took 
 place, because it was gradual : so in the history of armour. 
 Chain-mail never became plate, nor was it ever suddenly 
 dropped and plate substituted for it. Small bits of steel 
 were added here and there ; while some parts of the body 
 were protected by cuir houilli, and the breast and back 
 were covered with chain. 
 
 During the thirteenth century we find small plates 
 added to the armour and worn on the shoulders. These 
 were often distinguished by heraldic devices. They were 
 oblong plates about six or seven inches long by three and
 
 124 Annour. [lECT. 
 
 a lialf or four inches wide. These were called aikttes. 
 Caps for the knees were made of boiled leather, pressed 
 into a convex form and covered witli gaily-coloured cloth, 
 or more frequently gilt. These were called f/cnonill^res. 
 At tlie same time with them we find the elbows covered 
 with elbow-pieces or coucles, made of the same material ; 
 but these were directly copied in steel in the thirteenth 
 century, and may be said to have been the commencement 
 of plate armour. 
 
 Next we find little plates, called rondels or roulettes, 
 fastened to protect the armpits, the outside of the knee- 
 joint, and the elbows. About the middle of the fourteenth 
 century the thighs were protected by pieces of armour, 
 originally of stout leather, called cuisscs ; these were 
 covered with pourpoint or silk, prettily quilted with gold 
 threads, but they very soon gave way to steel plate. 
 
 The lower leg was, quite early in tlie fourteenth century, 
 encased in armour of cuir bouilli, moulded, while soft, to the 
 shape of the leg, and then allowed to harden. This part 
 of armour was called the jamhe, and was very quickly copied 
 in steel ; then the sollerets, or jointed armour for the feet, 
 furnished with overlapping plates like those in a lobster's 
 shell, were added. 
 
 In the early part of the fourteenth century one of the 
 difficulties about the helmet and its shape appears to have 
 been overcome. A light covering for the head, called a 
 hascinct, from its resemblance to a basin, was invented. It 
 had no covering for the face, and the chain-mail armour 
 for the neck was attached to it by a cord which passed all 
 rounil, traversing the brows, and which was pushed through 
 rings made to project through holes in the steel. This
 
 IV.] Armour. 125 
 
 chain-mail neck-giiard was called the camail. The great 
 helmet, witli the crest and other appendages, was put on 
 over the bascinet, so that the weight was something 
 enormous. 
 
 The arms were encased in steel armour, called rere-hrace 
 on the upper arm and vam-brace on the fore arm ; while the 
 shoulders were covered by overlapping plates very similar 
 in construction to the laminse of a lobster's tail, and these 
 were called ^paulUres. They were fastened over the hau- 
 berk on to the shoulders by laces, called points. 
 
 During the fantastic reign of Edward the Second, the 
 length of garments worn by civilians was copied by the 
 military, and we find flowing robes projecting from under 
 the armour and sumptuous dresses over it. For some time 
 the custom of emblazoning the arms of a man's family on 
 his surcoat, or garment worn over his armour, originally to 
 protect it from the w^et and from the sun, had been grow- 
 ing to an excessive extent. The custom of adopting some 
 favourite animal, or other object in the outer world, whether 
 animate or not, as a distinctive mark emblematical of a 
 man's name, or commemorative of some anecdote connected 
 with his family, had been familiar to our Scandinavian 
 forefathers. Personal peculiarities had procured them 
 nicknames, and these nicknames became recognised as 
 family designations. Thus Harold lUue Tooth, Harold 
 Harfagra, and similar appellations, became the usual 
 mode of speaking of such men. When it became difficult 
 to recognise leaders in battle on account of the face being 
 hidden by the nasal helmet and the chin by the lower part 
 of the chain-mail hood, confusion often arose from the 
 ignorance of a chieftain's followers as to whether he were
 
 126 Armour. [lect. 
 
 still living or not. William the First, at Hastings, was 
 thought hy the Norman army, at one period of the battle, 
 to be slain, and a sort of panic was the result, which 
 nearly gave its the day. If he had worn some dis- 
 tinguishing badge inseparably connected with him, as 
 the broom plant or plantagenista was with Henry the 
 Second and his descendants, this danger would have been 
 avoided. 
 
 As soon as the system of heraldic distinctions was fairly 
 started, a fresh impetus to the noljle art of war seemed 
 given. There was something captivating in the idea of 
 knowing the arms and insignia of all the families bearing 
 them, as well as in possessing the means of making such 
 brilliant and elegant display, and not only was the crest 
 worn on the helmet and the cognizance on tlie shield, but 
 the surcoat became covered with the devices forming the 
 arms, fairly embroidered on silk or fine woollen cloth, 
 with gold and silver threads, and in all the colours of the 
 rainbow. 
 
 This circumstance causes the actual armour for tlie 
 body to be invisible, being covered by the emblazoned sur- 
 coats, thus converted into " coats of arms". 
 
 Meyrick is of opinion that a breastplate was worn 
 under the hauberk, which piece of armour he calls a 
 plastron de fcr. But there seem grounds for believing that 
 this piece of armour was also called hauberk as well as 
 the frock made of little rings to which we have already 
 seen the word applied. Chaucer, in enumerating the pieces 
 of armour worn by Sir Thopas uses these expressions 
 in such a way as to justify this assumption. The verses 
 are the following : —
 
 IV.] Armour. 127 
 
 " He dede next his white lere 
 Of cloth of lake, white and clere, 
 
 A brech and eek a schert ; 
 And next his schert an aketoun, 
 And over that a haberjaun, 
 
 For persyng of his hert ; 
 And over that a fine hauberk 
 Was all i- wrought of Jewes werk, 
 
 Ful strong it was of plate ; 
 And over that his cote armour, 
 As white as is a lily flour, 
 
 In which he wold debate. 
 His sheld was all of gold no red, 
 And thereinne was a bores bed, 
 
 A chanbocle by his side. 
 And ther he swor on ale and bred 
 How that the geaunt schall be deed, 
 
 Betyde what betyde. 
 His jambeux were of quirboily, 
 His swerdes schethe of yvory. 
 
 His helm of latoun bright ; 
 His sadel was of rowel boon, 
 His bridel as the sonne schon, 
 
 Or as the moone light ; 
 His spere was of fine cipres, 
 That bodeth werre and no thing pees, 
 
 The heed ful scharp i-ground." 
 
 The habergeon is, according to all authorities, a diminu- 
 tive of hauberk, having no sleeves, and coming to the waist. 
 The hauberk, on the other hand, was the larger garment, 
 capable of protecting even the neck, breast, and thighs, 
 descending below the knee. All tliese various kinds of 
 armour were composed of little rings. 
 
 Chaucer describes the dressing of the hero all clearly 
 and intelligibly enough. The aketon is the under-garment 
 Worn to keep the rings from fraying the linen or irritating
 
 128 Armour. [li:ct. 
 
 the: l)i)(ly. He speaks of the " habcrjaiin" as guarding 
 against llie |)iercing of his heart, — "And over that a fine 
 hauberk . . . i-wrought of Jewes work, Ful strong it was 
 of plate", which would lead us to suppose that in 
 Chaucer's time the words had changed their signification 
 from their original meaning, and that habergeon is meant 
 by him to ap])ly to a hauberk of rings worn under a 
 breastplate of plate-armour called hauberk, " full strong 
 of plate". I think it very likely that, as armour meant 
 heraldic emblazonment in Chaucer's day, hauberk meant 
 what we call armour in general and the breastplate in 
 particular. 
 
 The cote armour, or surcoat tabard, conceals this from 
 the view, so that we have nothing to guide us but conjec- 
 ture on consulting the MSS. And here, again, philology 
 helps us, by showing how very improbable it would be for 
 the expression " coat armour" to be applied to the blazoned 
 surcoat and to the steel beneath it. I am therefore in- 
 clined to think that the hauberk was really that piece 
 of plate -arm our called by Meyrick the plastron clc fer. 
 
 This view of the question is further warranted by the 
 appearance of the knights in the time of Edward III, 
 when the extravagant garments and flowing robes of the 
 last reign give place to short, well-fitting tabards or sur- 
 coats, emblazoned with the arms of the warrior. The 
 round, accurate fit of the portion guarding the breast gives 
 token of the rigidity of plate-armour, while from under 
 this shortened surcoat, reaching now but little below the 
 hips, the skirt of chain mail is visible. 
 
 During this period, especially before the shortening of 
 the exuberant garments worn during the reign of Edward
 
 r\'.] Aniwiir. • (20 
 
 II, the weight of the full war-panoply must have been 
 something frightful. The acton, or hacqueton, was in 
 itself no mean load to carry, and very often was used 
 without the additional chain-mail, being considered in 
 many cases quite defence enough ; but generally over this 
 came the habergeon or breastplate, then the heavy shirt 
 of iron rings, upon which were fixed the various pieces of 
 heavy steel referred to ; in the reign of Edward II, a 
 strange, dressing-gown-looking sort of garment, called a 
 cydas, was added ; and finally the surcoat covered the 
 whole. The head was defended with the visorless bascinet, 
 over which the heavy helmet was dropped like an extin- 
 guisher ; and the man was armed. No wonder that 
 knights fainted away on all sides in warm weather ! No 
 wonder that when the horses stumbled and fell at Ban- 
 nockburn by reason of the pit-falls, caltraps, and other 
 comforts prepared for them by the canny Scots, their 
 riders became an easy prey to the active, light-armed 
 enemy, who could dissect his fallen foe as easily as an 
 Engli-sh sailor can dispose of a turtle wjien once turned 
 over on its heavily armed back. 
 
 So the appearance of a warrior in 1315 was very 
 different from that of one in 1340, although the actual 
 armour worn might have been the very same. Edward 
 III was a soldier, and soon rejected every portion of 
 the military dress that might encumber the warrior or 
 impede his free motions in fight. The thickly-quilted 
 hacqueton gave way to a simple leathern jerkin, still called 
 the acton ; and in the beginning of the next century, the 
 advantage of a light helmet having been recognised, a visor 
 was added to the l)ascinet. This visor has made its mark 
 III. K
 
 130 • Ariiionr. [M-XT. 
 
 on history fVdin the grotesqueness of its form. It Imd the 
 slm])e of a swine's snout, and the bascinet to which it was 
 aflixcd was known as the pij,'-faced basfinet. There is a 
 MS. representing two women figliting, and wearing this 
 strange head-dress ; and it hns l)een sugge.sted tliat the 
 queer legend of the "pig-faced lady" may liave arisen out 
 of such a representation. 
 
 The arms in the fourteenth century were the lance, 
 the battle-axe, the mace, the sword, and dagger for knights ; 
 and ])ows, arrows, spears, bills, glaives, gisarmes, 
 military flails, and slings, for the inferior soldiers. The 
 " morning star " was revived at this time. There were 
 two forms of this pretty toy, one consisting of a stout 
 staff, to which, by means of a long socket, a ball of iron 
 three or four inches in diameter was fixed ; this ball, 
 being furnished with sharp spikes, projecting, like the 
 "quills upon the fretful porcupine", in all directions, was 
 admirably adapted to defeat the uses of plate armour. The 
 second form shows us the same staff, with the same socket ; 
 the latter, however, was connected with the spiked ball 
 by a chain, thus forming as tremendous a whip as could 
 well be conceived. The spikes of the ball suggested the 
 poetic name of the " morning star". It was a grim old 
 German weapon of the seventh century, revived in the 
 classic age when Chaucer and Gower were morning stars 
 in our literature, and so German as to have been known in 
 England by its German name, as the margenstern, quite as 
 well as by its English equivalent. 
 
 The sword of a knight was carried in a sword-belt 
 partly hidden by the splendid baldric which marked the 
 knightly rank as much as the gilt spurs. The plain
 
 IV.] Armour. 131 
 
 leathern belt l)eing concealed from sight, the appearance 
 was as though the baldric supported the sword. The dag- 
 ger worn on the right side seemed to balance the sword ; 
 and from the compact and neat appearance of the man 
 in his armour, the hilts of the two weapons looked 
 almost like the handles on each side of a symmetrical 
 vase. 
 
 The fanciful folly of the reign of Eichard II — of which 
 he, poor fellow, was ratlier the exponent than the creator 
 — produced nothing new in the way of defensive armour, 
 although we might have expected some change on account 
 of the introduction of gunpowder and the use of firearms ; 
 the only innovation being the conical visor added to the 
 bascinet, to which allusion has just been made as the 
 " pig-faced bascinet". 
 
 The convenience of wearing chain mail was too apparent, 
 and it seems to have held its own against further innova- 
 tions, until in the beginning of the fifteenth century we find 
 an addition to the armour of overlapping plates descending 
 nearly to the hips. These, like the breast and back 
 plates, were now worn over the chain. The knight in 
 armour appears to have worn complete plate quite early in 
 the century, the skirt of mail being covered with these 
 overlapping plates, for which Meyrick informs us the name 
 was tace. The taccs did not come down quite so low as 
 the chain-mail skirt, which is shown projecting beneath. 
 The cuisses were made of steel, while the jambc and the 
 soUeret, or armour for the foot, as well as the gauntlets, 
 were all of ])late. The collar formed by the back and 
 breast plates was made high, to protect the throat ; and 
 the back of tho liasciuct was iiiado longer, so as to protect 
 
 K -J.
 
 132 Armour. [lKCT- 
 
 the hiirk f)f tlio neck in rasn tlio knight should feel inclined 
 to fight without the heavy helmet, — which, however, was 
 rarely done. 
 
 The camail was discarded, and there is every reason 
 to believe that, the hreastplate being worn outside, the 
 chain-mail hauberk was discarded too; a skirt of chain 
 being appended to the breast and backplates. The incon- 
 venience and weight of the faces induced warriors to dis- 
 continue the lower plates altogether, and a curious 
 contrivance succeeded. Smaller pieces of armour, shaped 
 somewhat like pointed tiles, and hence called tuilettes, 
 being attached by straps and buckles, depended from the 
 lower tacc, and, by means of the straps, permitted the 
 knight to sit on horseback or stand erect, without having 
 any portion of his person undefended. The aperture in 
 the breastplate, made to admit of the play of the arm in 
 action, was defended by a small, lozenge-shaped piece of 
 chain-mail called a gussd, attached to the inside edge of the 
 plate. This was further protected by the palettes, or 
 roulettes, of the thirteenth century. 
 
 The demand for these gussets of chain-mail was con- 
 siderable during the wars of Henry V, and to this circum- 
 stance we must ascribe the great dearth of chain-mail 
 remains. All the old hauberks were cut up for these little 
 " stop-gaps", and no new suits of chain were made. The 
 very few that escaped this fate were those used by our 
 own kings together with the plate-armour, as being more 
 secure in the whole piece than in such gusset form. There 
 is a striking example of this in the Tower. 
 
 The fifteenth century may be described emphatically 
 as the era of plate-armour. Chain-mail was not done away
 
 IV.] Aniiuitr. 133 
 
 with suddenly, nor was plate adopted at once. The growth 
 of the one defence was the cause of the decline of the 
 other ; and in the latter part of the fifteenth century, in 
 the reigns of Henry VI, Richard III, and Henry VII, 
 plate-armour reached its culminating point. 
 
 When the inconvenience of the caiaail, or chain-mail 
 gorget, became palpable, and a desire was shown to arm 
 the man completely in ]3late, it was a natural step, in the 
 history of our subject, for a gorget of plate to appear ; and 
 we find it occurring in the Hrst half of the century, worn 
 together with an extraordinar} kiml of helmet called a 
 sallet, derived by Aleyrick from salad-bowl. He was most 
 likely led to this derivation from the punning allusion 
 made by Shakespeare to sallet as salad. It is far more 
 probable that the name came through the Italian celata, 
 from the Latin cuelata, " carved or cut out", in allusion to 
 the many curves and cuts presented by this new form of 
 head-guard. It was remarkable for the projecting back and 
 abruptly sharp descent in front, where the aperture for the 
 face was protected by a visor provided with a horizontal slit 
 for the admission of light and air. If you take a modern 
 felt-hat or wide-awake, turn down the brim, cut it quite off 
 at the face and shape it into a peak behind, you will have 
 some idea of a salld. This very curious helmet was fastened 
 on by means or attachments inside, which connected it with 
 the gorget, and the union of tliese separate pieces of armour 
 gave the first hint for the manufacture of the helmet of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sometimes the 
 visor was not used, and the sallet descended somewhat 
 lower, and was furnished with the slit lor light and aii- 
 made in the piece itself.
 
 1^4 Annoiir. [LliCT. 
 
 The t'xtruviigances of the ci\il tliess were copied in the 
 armour witliout the actual garments of every-day life being 
 added to the military dress, as was the case in Edward the 
 Second's reign. In the early part of the fifteenth century 
 the follies done in leather and cloth were perpetuated in 
 steel. The long toes of the civil shoes were reproduced in 
 long-toed soUcrds, — so long, indeed, that walking in them 
 was out of the t^uestion. About this time, too, the 
 dpauliercs were supplemented with a piece of steel 
 coming over the breastplate and rendering the ^;«/f^ies 
 or roulettes useless by shielding the weak part in the 
 armour, formerly protected by the gussets. Tlie new 
 shoulder-pieces were called pauldrons (from the French 
 epaul). They continued to be worn to the end of the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 The wars of the Eoses taking place on English ground, 
 .among English people and betw^een English leaders, very 
 naturally brought the armourer's trade to high perfection 
 in England ; and the sumptuous extravagance of Edward 
 tlie Fourth was soon seen in the grand restoration of 
 military games called " tournaments", which had been so 
 much in vogue in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 
 
 At this period a curious addition was made to the 
 armour for the fiice^ in the form of a chin-guard called the 
 me ntoimih-c,w\\\Q\\, with the salletwQW depressed, etlectually 
 shielded the knight from blows aimed directly at his face. 
 This was chiefly used at tournaments, for which the armour 
 was much stronger than for w ar. Justs, or jousts, were 
 greatly liked at this time. They were fought between two 
 combatants, whereas the tournament was fought by many 
 on each side. The gradual ap[)roach to perfection in the
 
 IV.] Annoiir. 135 
 
 helmet now culminated in the- beautiful pi'uducLious of 
 whicli specimens are preserved in the Mediicval lioom at 
 the British Museum, and in still greater number at the 
 Tower. The armourer's art had advanced, and his skill in 
 beating plates of steel into globular forms enabled him to 
 produce a helmet uniting the gorget, bascinet, visor, and 
 mentonniere in one. The curve at the back of the head, 
 commenced in the sallet, was continued with greater skill 
 in the new piece of armour, whicli was contrived so as to 
 open below upon two pivots, one on each side. The neck 
 part being thus opened, the helmet was lowered by the 
 attendant squire, or lady, and then iirmly secured by small 
 cabin-hooks, as we should call them. The lower part of 
 the face was protected by the beaver and tlie upper part 
 by the visor. 
 
 Instead of the little tiiUcttes, two large ^^ieces of 
 armour, formed by horizontal plates and called tassets, were 
 hung from the taces just below the breastplate, and each 
 of these was thus made to protect part of the abdomen and 
 the thigh, which was further protected by a cuisse of steel. 
 
 The physical deformities attributed to Eichard III 
 have been referred to as being the cause of the inordinate 
 puffing, padding, and fantastic trimmings of the civil 
 dress in his time ; this was copied in the armour of the 
 fashionable warrior, as usual, and we find the panldrons 
 especially scalloped and elaborated into enonnous fan- 
 shaped appendages, very strange to behold. The armour 
 of Sir Thomas Beauchamp is a remarkable instance of this. 
 The best representation of it is given in Meyrick's Critical 
 Inquiry into Ancient Anns and Annour. The ijciwuiUhrcs 
 and elbow-pieces are oriianK'utcd witli similar additions to
 
 \ ](') /\ rino/ir. [LKCT. 
 
 their strciigLli and weight. Thuy were not infrequently 
 wruui'ht into the form of j^rillin's win^s. 
 
 The si)lenduur of the plate-armour of tiiis period is 
 .something lor a painter to dwell on ; and although for fight- 
 ing on foot there was little use for such a suit, yet, on a 
 well-equipped war-horse, the figure of such a warrior must 
 have been, next to the Anglo-.Saxou warrior in his gold 
 helm and eagle's wings, the most imposing that can be 
 imagined. 1 give the preference to the early English or 
 Saxon warrior, because he vxis English, and disdained the 
 use of much armour, just as he despised walls as a 
 means of defence. The armour of the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth centuries, enclosing the warrior in a tow' er of steel, 
 was more or less an Italian in\entiou ; and, true to his text, 
 the Teuton attacked and destroyed the Eoman wall by the 
 invention of gunpow^der, which, as it became more and more 
 used in war, rendered armour useless ; for as at the pre- 
 sent day there is a constant struggle going on between the 
 inventors of armour and the contrivers of big guns, so even 
 then we find it true that no armour could be invented with- 
 out some big gun being nuinufactured to smash it. 
 
 Among the queer fancies indulged in by the dandies of 
 the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth 
 centuries, we find a very droll one of pleating the jerkin 
 or tunic down the back in such a manner as to make the 
 back of a gentleman resemble an open fan, with the handle 
 at the small of the said back, the pleats becoming less 
 thickly folded towards the shoulders, where the garment 
 was smooth and fiat. At the waist the skirt opened 
 out in a similar fan-like manner, only downwards. This 
 fashion was actually copied in the rigid steel. Xor was
 
 l\'. Arino/ir 
 
 3/ 
 
 this all : the cuisses, or armour for the thighs, the 
 tassets, or armour connecting the taccs below the 
 breastplate with the legs — all these, nay sometimes 
 even the rere-brace and vam-brace of the arms, were 
 fluted so as to represent the puckering of the cloth 
 in the civil dress. This is a peculiarity of the reign of 
 Henry VII. 
 
 When armour had thus reached its zenith of perfection 
 nothing was to be done to improve it save adding to the 
 ornamentation, and here begins a very curious part of our 
 subject, namely, the engraving and gilding of plate-armour. 
 As might have been expected, this was an Italian custom, 
 for the Italians showed themselves very ready to adopt the 
 idea of armour and very able in decorating it. "VVe find 
 ext|uisite engravings representing scenes from classical 
 history, or from the mythology of Greece and Home. We 
 find these scenes over-running the armour like the pattern 
 in a lady's dress, or the decorations of our walls and fire- 
 places. Sometimes beautiful lines are traced from which 
 other lines branch off, and at the junction of two or more 
 of these, little medallions arc introduced, representing 
 various scenes in a story or myth which the whole suit is 
 made to tell. Often the lines made by the graving-tool 
 are filled in with gold, which wlien polished with the steel 
 has a very curious effect. A wonderful s[»ecinien of en- 
 graved armour is preserved in the Tower armoury, which 
 was presented by Maximilian of Clermany to Henry VIII 
 on his nuirriage with Catherine of Aragon. The rose and 
 the pomegranate entwine througli the whole of the suit, 
 which is perhaps the most beautiful specimen of plate- 
 armour extant, while little couip;iituients for the pictures
 
 138 Arij/uiir. [LIXT. 
 
 arc iiiiirkcd oil' all over the iiKdal, and well repay the 
 student an hour's study. 
 
 I have told you that the armour for the tournament 
 was stronger than that for actual war, by the addition 
 of certain extra pieces. These pieces, at the end of the 
 fifteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, 
 were : — 
 
 («) The fjrandc fjarde, which was a thicker breastplate, 
 screwed by three stout screws and nuts to the breastplate 
 itself. Through this came the rest, a piece of iron on a 
 hinge, fixed firmly to the breastplate, though frequently 
 attached to the grande garde. This fitted into a hole at 
 the bottom of the lance, which, by means of the hinge, 
 could be raised or depressed, but remained in its place on 
 the knight's breast all the same. 
 
 {h) The mentonniere, or chin defence, was sometimes 
 united to the grande garde, and the complex piece was 
 called the grande garde ct la mentonniere. 
 
 (r) The garde de hras. The lance was supplied with a 
 guard just above the grip, and this guard was considered 
 sufficient to protect the right side of the champion. But 
 as the combatants rushed at each other the left side was 
 without such a protection. To meet this want a piece of 
 ai-mour was screwed on to the left arm, called the garde de 
 hras. 
 
 {d) As the object of each warrior was either to throw 
 his opponent off his horse or to strike his helmet so as to 
 disable him by stunning him, an extra piece was screwed 
 on to the breastplate to protect the chin and beaver of the 
 helmet. This was called the volante piece. 
 
 {c) Occasionally large pieces of armour called "sockets"
 
 IV.] Annoiir. 1 39 
 
 were fixed to the saddle on each side, as extra protection 
 for the thighs at a tournament, but their use does not seem 
 to have been general. 
 
 At this time also, the horse began to be provided with 
 defensive armour, but this became more and more the 
 fashion in the time of Henry VIII, whose armour presented 
 to him by Maximilian was accompanied by similar panoply, 
 engraved to match his own, for the horse. To see this suit 
 of armour alone is quite enough to repay anybody for a 
 visit to the Tower. 
 
 The warlike, extravagant, pleasure-loving Henry VIII 
 was a OTeat encoura^er of the armourer. He was himself 
 fond of tilting, was a good swordsman, and a good soldier 
 all round. He invented breech-loaders and a kind of re- 
 volver. Many of the guns of his time are preserved in 
 the Tower. The "hafrbut", or "un fired from a rest, became 
 known at this period. It came from Germany, and the 
 name is a corruption of hahen-biichse, from hakcn, a hook, 
 the stand or rest from which it was fired, and hilchse, a 
 gun. The word is also found as harquebuse, and people 
 not acquainted with the history of the weapon have sought 
 to trace it in some way or other from the French ere, a 
 bow, inasmuch as it superseded the true English weapon. 
 
 Henry amused himself by inventing complicated 
 weapons, as, for example, a battle-axe, tlie handle of wdiich 
 was a gun ; a linstock for discharging cannon, but which was 
 at the same time a spear. Being a great lover of state, he 
 copied the halberds of the Pope's guards, which are also of 
 (Jernum origin, and bear a German name meaning "the axe 
 for the hall" — hai'd being an axe, hallc, a hall. The " parti- 
 san", a form of spear with two small [)rojections, one on each
 
 140 A rill our. [LKCT. 
 
 side of the chief point or blade, was introduced at this time, 
 and also a somewhat similar weapon, called a " spetum". 
 
 The putting and slashing of the civil dress, a custom 
 of CJerman origin, was, as usual, transferred from cloth to 
 metal, and the taces with the tassets were succeeded by a 
 gorgeous imitation of the pleated skirt, descending like a 
 kilt from the waist to the knee. The weight of such an iron 
 skirt was enormous, and it could only be worn on horse- 
 back. This portion of armour was called the " lamboys". 
 The suit presented by Maximilian to Henry is furnished 
 with this curious addition, which I do not think ever be- 
 came common in England. 
 
 At this period there was an addition made to the armour 
 in the form of two perpendicular ridges, fixed on the 
 puuldruns so as to assist in the protection of the neck, 
 which was liable to injury from a sword-blow gliding ofi' 
 from the smooth surface of the pauldron and cutting in at 
 the part where the helmet joined the gorget, or where it 
 reached the shoulders. These pieces stood up on each side 
 from the pauldrons, and formed a sort of outwork to the 
 fortification of the neck. They were called " pass-guards". 
 They continued all through the reigu of Henry YlII, and 
 were not finally disused until the time of Charles 1. 
 
 The names of the pieces of armour for the horse were : 
 
 1. The chamfron, for the face. 
 
 2. The mancfaire, for the neck. 
 
 3. The tcsterc, two small plates connecting the 
 
 chamfron with the manefaire. 
 
 4. The croiipihw 
 
 Besides these, Meyrick refers to ediva/s for the horse's 
 legs, and Jlaiichtres for the sides.
 
 IV.] Armour. I41 
 
 In the time of Elizabeth we find soldiers armed with 
 breastplate, backplate, and very wide tassets just coming 
 half-way down the thigh, or not even so low as that. The 
 head is protected by a morion, a new style of helmet some- 
 thing like those now made of pith or cork for Indian use, 
 but of very heavy iron, and surmounted by a ridge or comb, 
 higher in the centre than at the back and front. The pike 
 begins to play an important part, and the pikemen, armed 
 as I have described, were made to stand a very severe drill. 
 This kind of half-armour was much affected by all classes, 
 though whole suits were worn ; but in that case long tassets 
 were used, coming from the breastplate to the knee. 
 
 The breastplate was made with a tapul, that is, a sort 
 of edge in front, as our Life Guards wear them, whereas in 
 the times of Henry VII and Eichard they had been 
 globular. 
 
 The gradual increase in the use of the matchlock, 
 wheel-lock, and other kinds of fire-arms, especially of the 
 dag and the petronel, both something between a carbine 
 and a pistol, and yet like neither, threatened destruc- 
 tion to the armourer's trade. But at the accession of 
 James I, armour seemed to be looking up again. He 
 affected the tournament, and, to look big, had a hollow 
 tilting lance made, called a hurclen, which was a very light 
 one after all. The long tassets coming to the knee re- 
 mained all through this period. They were worn by 
 Charles I and Charles II. There is in the Tower of Lou- 
 don a beautiful suit of armour presented by the Gold- 
 smiths' Company to Charles I. It is very richly engraved 
 and highly gilt. In the r-i\il wars the pot helmet, of which 
 there are innumerable specimens in the Tower, superseded
 
 142 /Iffnour. [lFXT, 
 
 the inori(jn ; the i»ikcman still wore the breastplate, back- 
 plate, and wide tasscts that had been in vogue when 
 Elizabeth was ([iieen, tliou;,di tlun' were somewhat niodi- 
 ticd. AiiiKiur tni- the lower leg gave way to the heavy 
 boot, which developed into the jack-boot of James the 
 Second's time, when, save the cuirass, as the breast and 
 back-plates together were now called, armour was dead. 
 
 In the civil wars the Cavaliers affected a new kind of 
 helmet called tlie casque, having a movable set of plates 
 at the nape of the neck ; ear-guards, called oreillcttes ; and 
 from a peak in front there descended a guard for the face, 
 consisting of a thin bar of iron about the size of the face, 
 having two other bars parallel to each other fixed within, 
 gridiron fashion. The Cavaliers indulged in plumes affixed 
 to these casques, which being of various colours, gave 
 in-eat offence to the Eoundheads. Thev also wore the long 
 tassets to which I have referred when speaking of the 
 time of James I, but the jaiiibc gave way entirely to the 
 cavalry boot. 
 
 In the narrow space of one Lecture it is impossible to do 
 more than attempt a very crude sketch of my subject. The 
 lessons it teaches are : — Firstly, that the war between the 
 Romance and Teutonic races is exemplified in arms and 
 armour, the former, fr(~tm the big sword down to gunpowder, 
 being mostly of Germanic origin, while, save the hauberk, 
 helm, and shield, all parts of defensive armour were, 
 broadly speaking, Romance ; secondly, that England 
 has hitherto not been behind the world in her means 
 of defence, whether active or passive. The passive 
 phase, that of armour, is dead as far as men are con- 
 cerned; but active defence is another thing, and I trust
 
 IV.] Armour. 143 
 
 we shall find that undying within us. In the good 
 old plate-armour days of Queen Elizabeth she rode 
 down to Tilbury to give us courage to resist the Spaniard 
 on our coasts, and we now have a queen ten times more 
 deeply set in our hearts than any that ever breathed. T 
 do not think she would need say much to arm us in the 
 defence of the far greater Britain over which she rules. 
 But if she should utter the words tliat must set all hearts 
 bounding with zeal in her cause, she would see her subjects 
 themselves forming an impenetrable panoply through 
 which no enemy should ever be able to wound her or 
 mar the glorious empire of which she is the fitting 
 exponent.
 
 Lecture V. 
 THE CIVIL DRESS OF THE ENGLISH. 
 
 III.
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE CIVIL DRESS OF THE ENGLISH. 
 
 In the grand marcli of tlie Aryans westward from 
 their distant aborij^inal home in the reahns of the rising 
 sun, they brought with them the hmguage, arts, and 
 thoughts of the Land of their birth. As they spread, or, 
 rather, as one wave of Aryan life surged on after another, 
 the original orientalism became modified more and more, 
 partly by the influence of climate, partly by the circum- 
 stance of removal from the fountain-head of all such life, 
 and consequent subjection of the norm to decay and 
 destruction from various causes, external as well as 
 internal. 
 
 Whoever has been in Bombay will remember the long, 
 flowing robes of certain castes of Brahmins ; the curious 
 custom of never exposing the hair to public view, strictly 
 adhered to by the Parsee women at the present day. He 
 will remember the short tunic of the warrior, reaching to 
 the knee, and worn together with his flowing robes and 
 other dandifications, but not employed in every-day life. 
 In these apparently trifling matters he \vill see the pro- 
 totype of our own Eock and ^lantle, and of the Eomance 
 Tunic and Robe. 
 
 The tunic of the classical schools was originally an 
 under-garment of line linen worn by both sexes under 
 
 l2
 
 1 48 The Civil Dress of the English. [LECT. 
 
 tliL' niovo distinguishing toga and palla ; and because the 
 word is of Latin origin we adopt it instead of using our 
 own indigenous terms. 
 
 The tunic, or rather rock, of the Scandinavian English 
 was a garment descending to the knee, and generally 
 supplied with sleeves coming down to the w-rists. It was 
 made of the finest linen, and the name is probably derived 
 from the term applied to the spinning-wheel in general, 
 though properly meaning only the distaff for the reception 
 of the tiax. Thus, instead of saying a " flax", the garment 
 was called a rock, or distaff", quasi the production of distaff 
 labour. The verb " to rock" is from the same root, the 
 backward and forward motion it describes being connected 
 with the action of using the rock. In Scotland, a party 
 of young women met to spin together is called a ''rochin". 
 Another garment worn under the rock, and in some cases 
 over it, was called the " pad", hence the expression, salo- 
 pdd, dark-coated. From this word our own " padding" is 
 derived, on account of the pad being worn under the 
 byrnie, as the acton was under the hauberk in later times. 
 Certainly it was not of such general use as the rock, 
 which lives to-day in the name for a man's coat and a 
 woman's gown all over Germany and Scandinavia, as it 
 formerly lived in England when we spoke English without 
 any base alloy of the Latin element. 
 
 We wore the rock or tunic when we came to Britain, 
 and we continued to call it by that name for seven hundred 
 years, while the Scandinavians and Germans, more 
 national than we, retain the word to the present day. 
 
 The garments of the ladies were, in the early English 
 or Anglo-jSaxon times, more simple than those of the men.
 
 v.] Tlie Civil Dress of the English. 149 
 
 They wore extremely fine underclothing of linen, shoes 
 and stockings ; then we have records of the gunna or gown, 
 the rock, and the over-slop. The general term for clothing 
 was hrierjl, which lived on into the last century in the 
 word " night-rail". 
 
 As a curious monument of the tenth century, having 
 special reference to ladies' dress, I give you an extract 
 from the Will of an English lady named Wynflsed. This 
 document is remarkable as showing the various articles of 
 highest estimation in the eyes of the ladies of England a 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 " And slie bequeaths to ^thelfia^d her daughter her 
 graven neck-ring and her mantle, preon (brooch), and the 
 land at Ebbesborne. ... To Eadwold she bequeaths two 
 boxes, and therein one bed furniture, all that belongs to 
 a bed. And she bequeaths to /Ethelfla'd, Etlihelm's 
 daughter, ^Iphere's younger daughter (as a slave), and her 
 double lamb's-wool kirtle, and another of linen or linen- 
 web. And to Eadgifa two boxes, and therein her best bed 
 wall-hanging, and a linen rug, and all the bedclothes which 
 thereto belong, and her best dun tunic, and her better 
 mantle, and her two wooden spotted cups, and her old 
 v/ire brooch, and one wall-hanging and another short one, 
 and three seat coverings. And she gives to Ceoldryth 
 whichever she likes best of her black tunics, and her best 
 holy veil and her best binder. And to ^EthelHied her 
 open walking kirtle and cuffs and binders ; and let 
 -^theltlaed afterwards find one of her nun's habits, the 
 best she can, for Wulltleed." 
 
 I cull only those parts of this long and exhaustive 
 Will which have reference to the subject of dress, omitting
 
 ISO The Civil Dress of the English. [iJ:cT. 
 
 the mention of the various individuals, cooks and others, 
 whom she bequeaths, and of others to whom she gives 
 their freedom. These items, although highly interesting 
 and instructive to the student of the manners and customs 
 of our forefathers and our foremothers, not bearing directly 
 on dress, do not fall within the scope of this Lecture ; but 
 I would strongly recommend to such as desire to know 
 more of these subjects, to obtain the excellent collection 
 of such documents now publishing by my friend, Mr. 
 Walter de Gray Birch, of the British Museum, in the form 
 of a book entitled Oartularium Saxonicum. 
 
 The dyes made use of by the Anglo-Saxons seem to 
 have been of the brightest. Certainly, to judge from the 
 MSS., they must have been gay and varied in the 
 extreme. Purple, blue, red, brown, yellow, green, and 
 violet vied with each other in forming the living parterre. 
 Nor do we find much change resulting from the intro- 
 duction of Christianity. The pagan cross as a brooch 
 was, of course, discontinued, and some forms of necklace 
 were abandoned as savouring too much of pagan taste. 
 To the pagan preon succeeded the s])diiyc, of which 
 there are magnificent specimens, richly adorned with 
 precious gems, in the British Museum. 
 
 In our pagan days the ladies wore very beautiful 
 necklaces made of brilliantly coloured beads, among 
 which amber beads were introduced as special remedies 
 against the attacks of the black elves and other supernatural 
 foes. It is a curious circumstance that a necklace of 
 beads, also supplied with amber, should have been used 
 by nuns in the early Christian phase of English life, as a 
 .safL'guard against the attacks of the demons bv whdm the
 
 v.] The Civil Dress of the English.. i 3 1 
 
 " Swart Alvar" were succeeded. Beads of baked clay, 
 gorgeously coloured, are to be seen in the Anglo-Saxon 
 room of the British Museum ; and, what is very curious, 
 the chatelaine of some thirty years back was worn by our 
 foremothers before the Norman usurpation. Finger- rings 
 were more affected by the ladies than the men, but the 
 bracelets of the women were nothing like so massive or so 
 magnificent as those of the men. Gold fringe of exquisite 
 workmanship, as well made as it is possible for it to be 
 now by any military accoutrement maker, has been found 
 in Saxon graves, looking as fresh as if made yesterday. 
 Sometimes, instead of fringe, broad borders of strongly gilt 
 leather were added to the edges of the garment, giving a 
 splendid finish to a magnificent dress. 
 
 As I have mentioned in other places, a distinguishing 
 mark of the dress of early Englishwomen w.as the unaffected 
 modesty of the whole costume. The entire figure is 
 scrupulously draped, and even the hair concealed by the 
 envious wimple. Where we find representations of English 
 women without this national head-dress, the hair is shown 
 carefully plaited in two tails, something like those worn by 
 the Germans now. 
 
 The wimple was a kind of shawl, made of cloth or silk, ^y^ 
 and worn over the head or shoulders, covering the throat 
 and very often the chin. It was worn out of doors by 
 ladies, and, in fact, by women of all classes of the commu- 
 nity. It is a purely Teutonic word, living in Swedisli, 
 Danish, Icelandic, Dutch, English, and German. It denoted 
 originally a Hag or pennon, still called, in modern German 
 a wivvpel. To arrange it properly was evidently a great 
 art, for we find it folded in all ])nssilile fa«]iir>n<5 and
 
 152 The Civil Dress of the Jiiijr/ish. [lect. 
 
 ways. Christianity could not keep it out of the convent, 
 any more than it could the necklace, nor could there be 
 any plea against its admission, for it served in fact as a 
 nun's veil. 
 
 An early English lady in her gown and super-tunic (as 
 the over-slop was called later on), both of rich but different 
 colours, and with a tastefully folded wimple, the edges of 
 both gown and tunic richly gilt, the wimple of yet another 
 colour, white or yellow, edged with brilliant gold fringe, 
 as glittering as the epaulettes of our day, would present to 
 her daughters of the Victorian age a model of neatness 
 with splendour, modesty and taste, forming perfection in 
 female dress. Before the Norman usurpation there had 
 been no scrunching the ribs to torture a poor girl into that 
 invention of the devil — a waist. And here I speak ad- 
 visedly and by the book, for the only pictiu-e in any MS. 
 earlier than the twelfth century bearing witness to the 
 constriction barbarously produced by stays, is in an iQumi- 
 nation of the eleventh century, representing the devil in 
 this machine, or at all events in a female dress with a low, 
 pointed body laced up the front. I think, if our ladies 
 were to know to whom they were indebted for this fashion, 
 they would return to the more elegant style of their own 
 foremothers. 
 
 Much has been said, and more has been written, about 
 the wonderful changes introduced by the Normans, our 
 historians seeming rather proud of the humiliation which 
 the Norman usurpation of the English crown undoubtedly 
 was. But as Sir Frederick Madden, Max Mliller, Dr. 
 Morriss, and other eminent philologists have shown with 
 respect to the language, so it may be shown in a similar way
 
 v.] The Civil Dress of the English. 1 5 3 
 
 that there v/ere no important changes in English dress 
 produced by these invaders. It is true they called 
 English things by Norman names, and those whose interest 
 it was to flatter the rulers adopted such words ; but the 
 articles remained the same. The wimple was not rudely 
 torn from the heads of the ladies. On the contrary, 
 Norman women adopted it under the new name of the 
 couvre-clief, chef being Norman slang for the head. Couvre- 
 clief exists in a maltreated form (as if the English had 
 taken it between their teeth and worried it) in our " ker- 
 chief", and still more wonderful word, having no sense 
 whatever, of "hand-ker-chief," something intended to cover 
 the head used for the band. The further elaboration of 
 "pocket-hand-ker-chief " is something quite unique in the 
 history of hybrids. 
 
 The Normans called the wimple a couvre-chef; the over- 
 slop, a super-tunic; the gunna, a robe, and so forth ; but a 
 mere change in nomenclature surely gives no claim to in- 
 vention. They adopted the wimple from the Anglo-Saxons, 
 but they effected no change in that article of dress by 
 gi\^ng it another name ; while the slight modifications 
 which took place in its form and mode of arrangement gave 
 the innovators no claim as inventors. The coif, also, was 
 a head-covering ascribed to the Normans, but this was 
 a German invention, called in German a luffc. It must 
 therefore not be confounded with the Norman form 
 of the wimple, although the word became Gallicised into 
 coiffure, coiffcttc, and other expressions similarlv com- 
 pounded. 
 
 Now, all this tends to establish what I have already, 
 on perfectly different grounds, asserted to be true, namely.
 
 154 f'lii-' Civil Pirss of the lini^lisli. [l,i;cT. 
 
 tliiit the actual iiiaiuicrs, cii.sL<jiiis, dress, and habits of our 
 foretiithuis were not so much affected by the Norman 
 usurpation as historians woukl have us believe. Certainly, 
 English women, after the so-called Conquest, were less con- 
 quereil by tiie Normans than they had been before ; and 
 though the court language, and that of the parasites who 
 fawned on Duke William, affected to describe things by 
 barliarous French names, the things themselves remained 
 Englisli to the last. For although the "robe" was made 
 to ht the figure, it was the same thing as the gunna, 
 slightly modified. And I nnist admit, while accusing the 
 Normans of tlie villainy of stays, that the figure to which I 
 allude, after all, wears only a laced dress. These did not 
 beconie common, and we find even royal ladies iu their 
 tombs represented in natural, undeformed gowns and 
 girdles, in a natural position. The women of England 
 were, all through the Norman period, English, and could 
 hardly be expected to become their own enemies in adopt- 
 ing Norman customs. The only evidence we have at all 
 in favour of such a supj)Osition lies in the fact of the 
 Norman poets using Norman- French to describe English 
 matters ; and at this we are not entitled to be surprised. 
 
 The strange custom affected by the Normans of shaving 
 the back of the head as well as the whole of the face, led 
 the English spies sent out just before the battle of 
 Hastings to conclude that the Norman army was a horde 
 of priests. This custom was never adopted by the English ; 
 and we find the Normans in England during the short 
 reign of William Paifus abused by their own writers for 
 going to the opposite extreme, and wearing the hair too 
 Inng. The king'.^ own love of extravagance set the example
 
 v.] The Civil Dress of the English. 155 
 
 and superinduced a love of out-of-the-way fashions. The 
 rock, now called the tunic, became lengthened and worn 
 fuller, with wide and ungainly sleeves ; while the long 
 garment of state, with the inner linen robe, trailed on the 
 ground like a lady's train of the present day. Sleeves were 
 made to cover the whole hind, though gloves were worn, 
 as they had been l)y the Anglo-Saxons on high and state 
 occasions. 
 
 The mantles of the nobles were lined with rich fur, and 
 we find two kinds of mantles noticed, the sliorter of which 
 was called the rheno. But tliis custom was a purely Scan- 
 dinavian one, and the English in (what I am obliged to 
 call, for the sake of distinction) the Anglo-Saxon times, are 
 known to have worn the lonij: mantle comimi down to mid- 
 leg on state occasions, and the short cloak, covering the 
 shoulders and hardly reaching to the waist, for war and 
 the chase. 
 
 A Norman innovation was the ridiculous custom of 
 wearing pointed shoes, with such absurd length of toes 
 as to cnll down bitter invectives from the monkish clergy, 
 to whom they were forbidden. The invention of these 
 monstrosities accords well with the strange propensity, 
 to which I have elsewhere alluded, which the Normans 
 showed to lengthen everything. They lengthened the 
 tunic, the shield, the nasal of the helmet, the sword, the 
 surcoat, and, in fact, every portion of the dress of tlie tinu'. 
 To them, as being emphatically cavalry men, tlie length of 
 their dress and accoutrements was a matter of indifference 
 so long as their horses could carry them. 
 
 A story is told of Henry I, when in Normandy, setting 
 fnrtli how a certiiiu bis]io]( proiiclied sd stoutly agninst llie
 
 156 The Civil Dress of the litiglish. [LKCT. 
 
 fasliioji of M-caiiiiLi, loii^ liair, that the king was moved to 
 tears. The bishop, seeing tlie point he had made, produced 
 a pair of scissors from some portion of his dress and 
 " cropped tlie whole congregation".* This was followed 
 by a l)rief period of short hair ; but in Stephen's time the 
 flowing locks of the nobility again brought down the 
 censure of the priests, — this time, however, without 
 success ; for we learn that courtiers permitted their hair to 
 grow until they resembled women rather than men ; and 
 those to whom nature had denied luxuriant growth of hair, 
 were fain to have recourse to art to produce the effect re- 
 quired by fashion. Whether the dandies of those days 
 added to their hair as the Chinese do, by fixing the supple- 
 mentary locks in the direction of their length to those 
 already groM'ing, or whether they wore downright wigs in 
 the time of Stephen, as Planche seems to think, I cannot 
 take upon me to decide. It is a curious subject for inquiry. 
 The Norman rage for lengthening everything at last 
 seems to have affected the female dress, inasmuch as we 
 find illustrations representing ladies with sleeves elongated 
 to such an extent as to render it necessary for the wearers 
 to tie them up in knots, to avoid treading upon them. In 
 some of the MSS. we find the sleeves curiously treated. 
 Occasionally they are made to look like little boats ; other 
 MSS. show us what Strutt calls pocket-sleeves, because 
 they are so tied up as to be made receptacles for various 
 light articles. The wimple is occasionally discarded, and 
 then we find the hair dressed in absurdly long plaits, not 
 infrequently bound round with silk Avrappings. 
 
 Thus far we have been guided by the MSS. in the 
 * Planche, H'lslonj of British Costume, p. 73.
 
 v.] The Civil Dress of the English. 157 
 
 British Museum, but now we are enabled to gain a more 
 accurate idea of the costume of the more important mem- 
 bers of society, whose rank entitled them to have their 
 effigies sculptured on their tombs in the dress worn during 
 life. Monumental effigies commence at the end of the 
 twelfth century. The earliest English monument of the kind 
 is that of Henry II at Fontrevaud, in Normandy, and from 
 this we gather that the coronation robes of the first three 
 Plantagenets — Henry II, Eichard I, and John — were com- 
 posed of two tunics (the upper w^th loose sleeves, called a 
 dalmatica) of nearly equal lengths, and girded round the 
 waist by a rich belt, over which was worn the mantle, 
 splendidly embroidered ; the crown, the sword, the jewelled 
 gloves, boots, and spurs without rowels. The same dress 
 was worn also on state occasions. 
 
 Great magnificence prevailed in the state habits of the 
 nobility, and mantles with dagged, or jagged edges or 
 borders, became prevalent to such a degree that a law was 
 enacted prohibiting people under a certain rank from 
 wearing them. 
 
 The Plantagenets, or rather the first three Plantagenets, 
 were, of course, Normans ; they used Norman-French in 
 conversation. They designated the coverings for the lower 
 leg chcmsses, as before, but the word " hose" occurs in a 
 wardrobe roll of the time of John, and this is employed in 
 the same document with the French word and the Latin 
 caligce : thus showing that even at so early a time as the 
 end of the twelfth century English was not only holding 
 its own, and encroaching on the Latin of the court and 
 clergy, but actually superseding Norman words in Norman 
 documents.
 
 iS.'s The Civil Dirss of t/if Rni^Iis//. \\a:ct. 
 
 The cross-garterings or trellis-work of the Scandinavian 
 English appear at this period on a magnificent scale, those 
 of King .Tohn being formed of narrow strips of richly gilt 
 leather, or of cloth of gold. These strips are very much 
 narrower than those of the early English, and form a much 
 more minute lozenge-shaped pattern by their intersection ; 
 while in the centre of the lozenge so formed a stud of gold 
 is introduced, forming a kind of golden vestment which 
 must have been dazzling to behold. This kind of stocking 
 extended from the extreme point of the toe all the way up 
 the leg. Gloves were worn of a fabulously gorgeous kind 
 by kings and other persons of exalted position. They were 
 edged with gold, and at the back of the hand an enormous 
 jewel was inserted. 
 
 In the dress of the ladies we find the wimple mentioned 
 by the old English name again. The long gown seems 
 generally and distinguishingly to be of green cloth ; and 
 the Norman capa, or mantle with a hood, is said to have 
 been of the same colour. 
 
 During the thirteenth century great magnificence 
 prevailed in the dress of the nobility and of the ladies. 
 There are some new expressions employed relating to the 
 cut and to the material of dress, which require special 
 notice. First there is a garment called a quintis, or coin- 
 Use, of which, however, I can give you no idea save that the 
 name is borrowed from the I'rench quinte, meaning a queer 
 fancy, or a capiice ; so that the garment, whatever it was — 
 tunic, or gown, or surcoat — may be translated by the name 
 " whimsey". Planche thinks it applied to the short cloaks 
 with jagged edges which were forbidden to the common 
 sort as early as 1188, and continued to crop up every now 
 and again at various times. This, of course, is only conjee-
 
 v.] TJie Civil Dress of tJie En^^lisfi. i 59 
 
 ture. Matthew Paris speaks of " vestments of silk, com- 
 monly called cointises", as existing in 1251. Velvet is 
 called villosa and vilhisc ; and a rich stuff called " cyclas", 
 with which we are familiar in classic studies, reappears in 
 a new form, giving its name to a garment like a dalmatica, 
 or super-tunic, worn by both sexes. The use of furs as 
 linings for ceremonial garments became very common in 
 this century, and doubled or lined vestments are men- 
 tioned by ]\IattheAv Paris. During the wliole of the 
 century the features are the same. The cyclas and other 
 garments of the surcoat order are very common. But 
 amongst all these dandifications for the male, the lady 
 of the house presents us with an almost unchanged Anglo- 
 Saxon kind of wimple, connected with a sort of veil which 
 flows down the back, while the tunic approaches nearer 
 to the gunna than it had done during the preceding cen- 
 tury. Charming little caps are worn rather wider at the 
 top than at the base, very daintily Huted and pleated. 
 These are called chcqjels or chapemix, and sometimes in 
 their stead is worn a rich golden chaplet, placed over the 
 wimple. The hair is frequently shown gathered into a 
 net or caul of gold thread. The long plaited tails dis- 
 appear entirely, the hair lieing turned up into the caul, 
 and over this the wimple comes. 
 
 The fourteenth century affords the novelty of buttons, 
 but the first mention of tliem refers to their position on 
 the sleeve from the elbow to the wrist. We also find the 
 cyclas, the hliaus — the prototype of the modern French 
 blouse, which it resembled in form and use. 
 
 The caul of golden network, concealing or containing tiie 
 hair, continues to be worn, especially by married ladies and 
 those of the nobility. Over this the veil is thrown, and a
 
 i6o The Civil Dress of the EnglisJi. [lect. 
 
 curious species of neckcloth called a gorget. This may 
 be regarded as the phase of decay of the wimple, for it 
 served one purpose of that garment in liiding the throat 
 and cliin, being fastened with pins or skewers to the mass 
 of hair below the veil. Besides the caul, there are other 
 modes of fixing the mass of hair in its place. The most 
 natural of these is a system of bands, one passing over the 
 top of the forehead and going to the back of the head, 
 under the hair, while the other, passing under the chin, is led 
 upwards on each side of the face, so as to cross the chaplet 
 (under it), and is thence carried over the top of the head to 
 the back. The hair being massed in a globidar form all 
 round the head and ears, had a peculiar but not unpleasing 
 effect, and doubtless in many cases nature was fain to be 
 aided by art. Over this curious hair ball the veil was 
 thrown, and held fast by pins. Many fantastic forms were 
 now produced by the modes adopted of fixing and wearing 
 the gorget. Sometimes the head and neck are tightly 
 swathed up in bandages, and these are twisted into strange 
 shapes. Occasionally the veil is supported on a skewer 
 passing through the hair and projecting on each side above 
 the level of the ears at the back of the head, so that the 
 cloth seems hung on horns. Again we meet with it screwed 
 up, as it were, into knots, like horns at the side, and to 
 these excrescences the gorget is pinned. So extravagant 
 did this mode become, that some antiquaries have taken 
 the fantastic knots, ties, and skewers to be an early form of 
 the horned head-dress of the fifteenth century. But this 
 is only an error in j udgment. The net, or caul, was named 
 the crestine, creton, crespiue, or crespinette, and formed an 
 elegant addition to the female costume of the period.* 
 '- Planclii', 127.
 
 v.] TJic Civil Dress of tJic Euf^lish. i6l 
 
 The use of long trains was decidedly objectionable, when 
 we consider that the ladies wearing them had no carriages, 
 that the pavement was of the most rugged and barbarous 
 description, and the roads of the dirtiest. 
 
 The gorget is sometimes called the towel. 
 
 Although a dress laced down the middle is shown in a 
 MS. of the eleventh century as adorning the person of his 
 Satanic Majesty, I am aware of no direct allusion to the 
 practice of tight-lacing in poetry before the year 1300, 
 when, in the "Lay of Syr Launful" two damsels are de- 
 scribed thus : 
 
 " Their kirtles were of Inde sendel. 
 Y-laced small, jolyf and well." 
 
 But this line is much stronger in the French original, which 
 reads, " Lacies moult estreitemen", — very tightly, or rather 
 straightly, laced. The kirtle is here evidently an exterior 
 garment, probably the robe or gown. 
 
 The inferior classes seem to have remained quite tlio 
 same as to dress that they were before the Conquest, having 
 the addition of the bliaus, which is, after all, only an addition 
 in name, for the object in question is the old smock-frock, 
 so called from the Anglo-Saxon smcorjan, to creep, because 
 the wearer had to creep into it from the lower part. Cowls 
 or hoods with tails are much worn ; the blacksmith has his 
 leathern apron with the bib, just as is worn at the present 
 day ; and in the reign of Edward the Second we find a 
 bibbed apron forming part of the female attire. 
 
 Long leggings or stockings, richly worked with gold 
 threads, seem to have been M^orn by the men ; but the 
 extravagant length of the outer garments worn by 
 the gentry hide them from sight. The leggings of tlie 
 
 III. M
 
 1 62 The Civil Dress of the linqlish. [LKCT. 
 
 working classes resemble in great measure those of the 
 Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 The rigid simplicity of taste manifested by tlie warrior 
 king, Edward the Third, was to some extent copied by the 
 nobles of his court. A military monarch is the best teacher 
 of simplicity ; and the evidence of Edward's martial skill 
 might be seen in the rejection of the absurd and effeminate 
 garments of his predecessor. The short garment, fitting as 
 closely to the figure as a jersey frock, came no lower than 
 the middle of the thigh. All the draperies and petticoats 
 and long skirts vanished from the male wardrobe, to be 
 succeeded by this neat vestment, called a cote-hardie. It 
 was buttoned down the middle, and was frequently sump- 
 tuously ornamented. The baldrick, or knightly belt worn 
 over it, rested on the hips, and proclaimed the rank of the 
 wearer, while not infrequently the arms of his family were 
 embroidered upon it. The sleeves reached only to the 
 elbow, where they disclosed the sleeves of the under tunic 
 or doublet, buttoned from thence to the wrist. From the 
 half-sleeve of the cotc-hardic hmig long slips of cloth, 
 called tapettes, or tippets, and over the cotc-hardic was 
 worn a large, long mantle, fastened by buttons to the right 
 shoulder. The end of this mantle was occasionally flung 
 across the left shoulder, in the manner of the melodramatic 
 bandit's cloak, and the edges of the garment show the 
 same fantastic dags or leaf-lilve cuttings as were worn in 
 the time of Henry the Second. 
 
 In this reign English began to be spoken at Court. 
 Boys at school had to translate their exercises into English, 
 and not into French, "because French had become so little 
 understood in the land", as I have already had occasion to
 
 v.] Tlic Civil Dress of tJie English. 163 
 
 point out. And the dress, too, as if partaking of the general 
 character of the time, threw off its Norman trammels, re- 
 jected the absurd devices for obstructing men's progress, and 
 returned to something like the old, simple form of garment ; 
 though the cotc-hardie is not by any means to be confounded 
 with the rock of the Anglo-Saxon — their points of resem- 
 blance being their freedom from superfluous encumbrance, 
 and their perfect adaptation to the end in view. 
 
 The Normans had ceased to be. The glorious language 
 of England was relieved from the oppression of an 
 alien form of speech. English thought was free, and the 
 exponent of this internal freedom was very naturally a 
 perfect freedom in dress. That the military mind, with all 
 its love of practical simplicity ad rem, is not blind to the 
 benefits to be derived from external splendour in modo, is 
 a truth which no one will dispute ; hence the dress of the 
 knights of Edward the Third's time, although so simple in 
 form, were profusely magnificent in the matter of adorn- 
 ment. And the result of these changes was as disastrous 
 in one direction as it had been beneficial in another. This 
 went so far, that sumptuary laws had to be enacted, of 
 which I give a specimen, on tlie authority of Planche. 
 
 " Furs of ermine and lettice, and embellishments of 
 pearls, excepting for a head-dress, were strictly forbidden 
 to any but the royal family and nobles possessing upwards 
 of one thousand pounds a year. 
 
 " Cloths of gold and silver, and habits embroidered witli 
 jewellery, lined with pure miniver and other expensive 
 furs, were permitted only to knights and ladies whose in- 
 comes exceeded four hundred marks yearly. 
 
 " Knights whose income exceeded two hundred marks, 
 
 M 2
 
 164 The Civil Dress of the Eni!;lish. [lfxT. 
 
 orscjuircs possessing Lwoluuulied pomids in lands or tene- 
 ments, were permitted to wear cloth of silver with riljands, 
 girdles, etc., reasonably enil)ellislied with silver, and woollen 
 cloth of the value of six marks the whole piece ; but all 
 persons under the rank of knighthood, or of less property 
 than the last mentioned, were confined to the use of cloth 
 not exceeding four marks the whole piece, and were prohi- 
 bited wearing silks and embroidered garments of any sort, or 
 embellishing their apparel with any kind of ornaments of 
 gold, silk, or jewellery. Kings, buckles, ouches, girdles, and 
 ribands were all forbidden decorations to them, and the 
 penalty annexed to the infringement of this statute was the 
 forfeiture of the dress or ornament so made or so worn." 
 
 One feather worn in the cap, appears in this reign ; and 
 beaver liats, probably made in Flanders, are referred to. 
 They were often worn over the capuchon. 
 
 The female dress, although imitating that of the men, is 
 not so illustrative of my position of the return to EngHsh 
 tliought at this period. The women wore the cote-hardie 
 as the men did ; it was buttoned down the middle in just 
 the same way. There was, however, a gown with tight 
 sleeves, sometimes reaching to the elbows and sometimes 
 to the wrists, very closely resembling the polonaise 
 of the present day. When the sleeves were w"orn to 
 the elbow they were furnished with such tappets or long- 
 cloth streamers as M'ere worn by the men. Like those of 
 the Anglo-Saxon ladies, the dresses of their descendants in 
 Edward the Third's reign were very long ; so long, indeed, 
 as to render it necessary for the wearers to hold them up 
 in walking. Trains were much in vogue. But the worst 
 feature about the female dress seems to be a decided
 
 v.] TJic Civil Dress of the English. 165 
 
 advance in tlie vice of tight-lacing. Long waists even were 
 affected and considered a beauty. Still it does not seem 
 that actual stays were used. The approach is there, the 
 fine end of the wedge which has wrought such dire disaster 
 since. 
 
 But the most telling and emphatic piece of female cos- 
 tume of this period is a very curious garment having much 
 the appearance of a close-fitting jacket, occasionally with 
 sleeves to the wrist, but more often without any sleeves 
 whatever. It descends to the hips, and the front is cut in 
 curves almost like a man's jacket or single-breasted coat 
 of the present day. The two edges of this garment are 
 richly bordered with fur, and this is continued round the 
 })ottom. Occasionally no sleeves are worn, and the sides of 
 this curious garment are cut out in exaggerated arm-holes. 
 The gown below is then furnished with tight-fitting sleeves, 
 and is generally of another colour than this somewhat 
 anomalous piece of dress. But its graceful curves contri- 
 bute not a little to the elegance of the whole costume, and 
 impart a neatness to the figure which may be seen at 
 once on inspecting the MSS. of this period. Tlic back is 
 straight and flat. The hair is shown very plainly parted 
 on the brows and tucked up at the back, where it is confined 
 by a net or caul. The kirtle is cut lower in front, and the 
 wimple disappears. The women, like the men, wore hoods 
 when riding out, and the curious tail or liripipes attached 
 to the hoods they wrapped round their heads like cords. 
 
 The end of the fourteenth century saw a peace-loving 
 king on the throne, and the same plieuomena that marked 
 the commencement of the century also marked its wane. 
 The weak, idle fop who succeeded his grandsire was a slave
 
 1 66 The Civil Dress of the Eiii^lis/i. [Li:CT. 
 
 to vanity and absurdity in dress. As in the time of Edward 
 the Second, so in that of Eichard the Second, the garments 
 of the men became absurdly long, and though the female 
 dress remained practically what it had been, that of the 
 sterner sex was more ridiculous than ever. A peaceful 
 government means war all round, whereas the only assur- 
 ance that can be had of peace is in a strong military 
 government that other powers fear to attack. The peaceful 
 idiosyncrasies of Eichard the Second plunged England into 
 civil war, which was indeed a sharp remedy, though a sure 
 one, for the effeminacy that preceded it. 
 
 To make a garment as costly as possible seems to have 
 been the end-all and be-all of this mighty king of England. 
 Nor is this, perhaps, quite such an easy task as may at first 
 sight appear. For when the resources of the mercers have 
 been exhausted, it is not every mind that would hit on the 
 sublime idea of having one's garments covered with precious 
 stones, worked into mottoes and letters intertwined, after 
 the fashion of modern monograms ! Eichard the Second 
 possesses the glorious fame of having achieved this. On 
 the authority of a portrait of his majesty, preserved in the 
 Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey, Eichard wore 
 a mantle embroidered all over with roses, and the initial 
 letter of his name worked in gems and precious stones. 
 
 I have noticed the fashion of cutting the edije of cloak 
 and mantle into leaves or dags, or jags, and this queer 
 custom seemed to run mad in its revival under the auspices 
 of Eichard of Bordeaux. But for the feather in a man's 
 hat, there is nothing in his M'ide and long dress to prevent 
 our taking him for an old woman. Chaucer, in the Pcrsones 
 Tale, written at the end of this reign, says : — "As to the
 
 v.] The Civil Dress of the English. \6y 
 
 first synne in superfluite of clothing which that niaked is 
 so dere, to harm of the people, not oonly the cost of em- 
 browdyng, the disguising, endentyng or harrying, oiinding, 
 palyng or bendyng, and semblable wast of cloth in vauite ; 
 and there is also costlewe furring in here gowns, so niochil 
 j)ounsyng of chiseles to make holes, so much daggyng of 
 scheris (shears), for with the superfluite in length of the 
 forsaide gownes traylynge in the donge and in the niyre, 
 on hors and eek on foote, as well of man as of woman." 
 Then he goes on to upbraid the men of his time with in- 
 delicacy on the side of too little clothing, so tliat the good 
 parson seems hard to please. Bell's Chaucer with Skeat's 
 preface is attainable by all the world in Bohn's edition, and 
 there the dress of the period is described more minutely 
 than the space of a single Lecture will allow. One tiling 
 is clear, namely, that the two extremes in dress, absurd 
 exuberance or equally absurd exiguity, met in the short 
 reign of Eichard the Second. 
 
 The warlike neatness of Edward the Third was carica- 
 tured into an offensive mode on the one hand, while the 
 lengthening process in the dress of the pacific Edward was 
 ruinously extravagant on the other. Besides tlie odd 
 appearance of the cape-like cloak (somewhat resembling 
 the "Havelock" of a few years back, made extravagantly 
 full and with jags or little leaves cut all round), there was 
 the additional grotesquerie of making garments of two 
 colours. The robe was divided down the middle, one side 
 being blue and the other white (the colours of the Houses 
 of York and Lancaster), or any other good and strikingly 
 contrasted tints. When the short dress with the long 
 leggings was worn, the two legs were encased in hose of
 
 1 68 The Civil Dress of the English. [Li:(JT. 
 
 diHevcnt colours. Planche says, speaking of this period, 
 and (|Uotin,L,f an anonymous author cited l)y Camden, " Some 
 in wide surcuats reaching to their heels, close before, and 
 strutting out on the sides, so that at the back they 
 make men seem like women, and this they call by the 
 ridiculous name gowne. Their hoods are little, tied under 
 the chin and buttoned like the women's, but set with gold, 
 silver, and precious stones. Their liripipes or tippets pass 
 round the neck, and hanging down before, reach to the 
 heels all jagged. They have another weed of silk, which 
 they call a paltock ; their hose are of two colours, or pied 
 with more, which they tie to their paltocks with white 
 lachets, called herlots. Theii- girdles are of gold and silver, 
 and some of them are worth twenty marks. Their shoes 
 and pattens are snouted and picked, more than a finger 
 long, crooking upwards, which they call crackowes, resem- 
 bling devils' claws, and fastened to the knees wdth chains 
 of gold and silver." 
 
 " Paletoque" is explained to be a word] of Spanish 
 origin, compounded oipalla, a cloak, and toque, a covering 
 for the head ; probably a monk's frock with the hood 
 attached. It seems to be connected with the Spanish 
 word paldo, meaning a country bumpkin. However this 
 may be, it is certainly the parent of our paletot, which, 
 although borrowed from the other side of the water, bids 
 fair to become naturalised amongst the many queer ex- 
 pressions which have found refuge under the ii'gis of the 
 English dictionary. 
 
 To this era the large, wide sleeves called "pokes" are 
 to be refeiTcd, which being worn by domestics, were a 
 fruitful source of discontent to the masters ; for, as the
 
 v.] Tlie Civil Dress of the English. 169 
 
 Monk of Evesham writes, they were the devil's receptacles, 
 for whatever could be stolen was popped into them, and 
 on account of their length were always having " the first 
 taste of the soups and sauces" which the servants had to 
 bring up. 
 
 The ladies followed the fashion of the men, and there 
 is no doubt that the elegant sideless spencer, to which 
 allusion has been made, was only a feminine version of the 
 jupon worn by men over their armour and emblazoned 
 with their arms. So completely was this garment adopted 
 by the ladies, that the "almighty petticoat" is called a 
 jupon in many parts of Europe at the present day, where 
 the name has lost all reference to the virile dress. ]\Iany 
 of these body pieces are evidently adaptations of the male 
 tabard. In this reign they are found with trains. 
 
 The apron was a distinguishing feature in the female 
 dress, especially of the lower orders; it was called the 
 "barm-cloth" from harm, the bosom, which is a fine Teutonic 
 word existing all over the North of Europe. 
 
 In reading the description of the dress of the wife of 
 Bath, in Chaucer, we meet the wimple again ; and as tlie 
 passage is in many respects very iastructive, it is given in 
 full :— 
 
 " A good Wif was there of byside Bathe, 
 But sche was somdel deef and that was skathe 
 Of cloth making, she had such an haunt, 
 Sche passed hem of Ypris and of Gaunt. 
 In all the parishe wif ne was ther noon 
 That to the offryng byforn hire schulde goon, 
 And if ther dide, certeyn so wroth was sche 
 That sche was than out of all charitt'. 
 Hii-c keverchefs weren ful fyne of groundc, 
 I durste swere they weyghede ten pouude,
 
 I/O The Civil Dress of the English. [m-/t. 
 
 That on the Sonday were upon hire heed. 
 
 Ilir hosen woren of fine scarlett reed, 
 
 Ful streyte y-teyed, and schoosful moysteand newc. 
 
 Bold was hir face, and fair, and reed of hewe. 
 
 Sche was a worthy womman al hire lyfe, 
 
 Housbondes atte chirche dore hadde sche fyfe. 
 
 * # * * 
 
 Upon an arablere esely sche sat, 
 Wymplid ful wel, and on hire heed an hat 
 As brood as is a bocler or a targe ; 
 A foot-mantel aboute hire hupes large, 
 And on hir feet a paire of spores scharpe 
 In felawschipe wel cowde lawghe and carpe." 
 
 Bearing in mind the fact that the ordinary dress of 
 
 those devoted to religion did not differ from the attire of 
 
 ordinary snfferiug humanity, and the custom of decorating 
 
 the dress with all kinds of dainty devices, especially with 
 
 mottoes and phrases in gems, we shall understand liow, 
 
 speaking of the ornament worn by the prioress, we find the 
 
 words — 
 
 " On which was first i written a crowned A, 
 And after that, Amor riiicif omnia." 
 
 The sumptuary laws of Henry IV were perhaps more 
 severe than those previously issued, but were perhaps even 
 less regarded. They are chiefly dii'ected against the wear- 
 ing of gold and silver ornaments and furs by non-qualified 
 persons. Ladies seem to have been less given to change 
 than men at this period, for no special alteration seems to 
 have taken place in their costume, save in the appearance 
 of the monstrous horned head-dress, which does not attain 
 its full development until the reign of Henry Y. It was 
 a curious construction, designed, doubtless, to carry and 
 exhibit the veil or head cloth to greater advantage, for it 
 is generally worn under that important adornment.
 
 v.] TJic Civil Dress of the English. 171 
 
 We have seen how the hair could be massed and 
 banded into a kind of ball, to which pins or skewers could 
 be fastened so as to hold the gorget or neckcloth. In the 
 same way a couple of padded, horn-shaped excrescences 
 were added to the toilette, upon wliich the finer veil could 
 be spread out, and from Avhicli it could depend. In the 
 centre, between these monstrosities, was a sort of cushion, 
 on which, in the case of the lady being a person of high 
 rank, the coronet in the sculptured monumental effigy is 
 placed. 
 
 This fashion became a rage, in spite of sumptuary laws, 
 sermons, homilies, and every kind of opposition. Later on 
 it became modified into various forms, and we find it resem- 
 bling a split turban, a mitre, a pair of wings, an indented 
 cushion, and so forth. 
 
 The garments of the men present no striking novelties 
 whatever. Both Henry IV and Henry V were soldiers, 
 who cared little for the long dressing-gown atrocities 
 of Pilchard II ; and we find men represented with long hose, 
 short breeches or drawers, and the cote-hardic. But these 
 were very gorgeously adorned and embroidered. The wide 
 sleeves or pokes already mentioned were added to the short 
 jupon, and descended in all the pride of dags, and jags, and 
 gold, and gems, almost to the ground. 
 
 The fifteenth century opens with the reign of a weak- 
 minded king — Henry VI — and, as usual, we find the 
 strangest jumble of costume, the wildest extravagance that 
 can very well be conceived. Queer hats, flat caps, shoes 
 with points of ridiculous length, make their appearance 
 with all the grotesqueness of a scene in a modern panto- 
 mime. The chaperon develops into a respectable hat, to
 
 172 The Civil Dress of the Ilui^lish. [Li:cT. 
 
 which is iiddcd a tliick mil of cloth called the roundlet, 
 from which a tippet descends so low as to trail on the 
 ground. "The gown, doublet, or jacket, instead of being 
 made close and high up in ilu^ neck, as in the last century, 
 is now cut round even with the shoulders, frequently show- 
 ing the small, stand-up collar hollowed out in front, belong- 
 ing to some under vestment, with tight sleeves that protrude 
 through holes made in the loose ones of the gown or 
 jacket, wliich latter hang down, richly trimmed with fur, 
 and seemingly more for ornament than service.* 
 
 Doublets of silk, satin, and velvet were worn even by 
 the boys ; all kinds of foppery prevailed m the dresses of 
 the men, whose jackets, pourpoints, and doublets were cut 
 shorter than ever. The hair was worn long, sometimes in 
 curls, sometimes parted on the forehead and descending to 
 the shoulders, and sometimes with the " fringe" occasion- 
 ally seen among ladies of the present day, although it was 
 then confined to men. 
 
 The martial Edward the Fourth endeavoured to check 
 these abuses, liut witli the usual result. Fashion is too 
 strong even for a conqueror, and the list of stuffs and furs 
 permitted to the various ranks in society would only be 
 tedious to enumerate. For us the circumstances of chief 
 interest are the use of high-crowned hats, very short 
 jerkins, pleated or gathered in at the back so as to resemble 
 two fans united by the handles, long hose, and long-toed 
 boots. 
 
 Among the ladies a new monstrosity appears in the 
 shape of the so-called steeple head-dress, referred to by 
 some as the " butterfly" head-dress. It consisted of a coni- 
 ^Planchi', U'lstorij of Brlthh Costume, p. 208.
 
 v.] The Civil Dress of the Englisli. 173 
 
 cal cap of cloth, from half an ell to three-quarters in height, 
 and from the apex of this descended the veil, for the display 
 of which it was intended, as the horns were which preceded 
 it. The hanging veil was sometimes taken up and worn 
 over the arm, to prevent its trailing on the ground. The 
 butterfly was a variety of this machine, so called on account 
 of the two wing-like ornaments worn at the side. 
 
 This head-dress gave great offence to the clergy. A 
 monk, Thomas Conecte by name, preached against it 
 with such effect, that the women who heard him threw 
 off their towers and made a bonfire of them before his eyes. 
 But the head-dress lived on notwithstanding, and when 
 the good monk's back was turned it grew taller than ever. 
 As late as the close of the seventeenth century the fashion 
 was revived in Sweden by a German lady, a certain 
 Friiulein von Tann, whose name became Gallicised into 
 " Fontange", and after her the article of dress was subse- 
 quently so named. The father of the celebrated theologian, 
 Swedenborg, was Bishop of Skara, and he preached a 
 sermon against it. I remember the book containing this 
 sermon, and some other works of the Bishop, in my father's 
 library, and especially the curious woodcut of the fontange. 
 The head-dress in question is still alive, and may be seen 
 on the head of a Normandy peasant girl, with the buttcrlly's 
 wings all complete. 
 
 At the close of the fifteenth century the dress of the 
 English was exceedingly fantastical and absurd, inasmuch 
 as it was even difficult to distinguish one sex from another, 
 and this complaint is again bitterly set forth by the clergy. 
 Long gowns, long curling locks, and fantastic little caps, 
 called honets, were worn. These were directly taken from
 
 1/4 The Civil Dress of the Eii_<;/ish. [LI-XT. 
 
 the French, who had tlieni from the inhabitants of Brittany, 
 where the article in question was called by the Celtic word 
 hanniard. Besides the long gowns, short jackets were 
 worn, })leated and otherwise dandified. Linen began to be 
 bordered with lace. 
 
 In tlie time of Henry VII enormously large and broad- 
 brimmed hats, with immense plumes, appear. The ladies 
 wore their hair flowing down the back, and on the head the 
 golden net was placed like a cap, or a quilted cap was worn, 
 covered with the caul to fill it out. 
 
 The slashes in the hose and doublet of the time of 
 Henry VII are prototypes of the more emphatic fashion 
 known to you all as marking the reigns of Henry VIII, 
 Elizabeth, and James. The long stockings, or rather hose 
 were tied to the breeches by points, and gold chains were 
 favourite adornments of the men. The women seem to 
 have been less fantastic than the men, as usual. Nor do I 
 find, with the exceptions of the horned head-dress and tlie 
 steeple, that up to the present point of history we have 
 anything to charge them with. The crying sin of stays 
 was not committed until the time of Elizabeth, when whale- 
 bone and busks were first used, the laced dresses hinted 
 at in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries not amountiu" 
 
 O 
 
 to what we call stays. 
 
 The dress of the English from the time of Henry VIII 
 down to the present day is well known to you all. Excellent 
 engravings, pictures, and pieces of sculpture, exLst in profu- 
 sion, so that any allusion to them woidd be out of place in 
 a lecture confined to the treasures of the British Museum 
 for its illustration. I may be allowed to add, in conclusion, 
 that the expression Anglo-Norman, as applied to any article
 
 v.] The Civil Dress of the English. 1 75 
 
 or style of dress, is a inisnoiner. The dress used by the 
 Normans was what may be called early English, which, 
 with the wimple of the ladies, may be said to mark the 
 period from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries : the 
 occasional lengthening or shortening of robes being a matter 
 of little real consequence. 
 
 The excess in luxurious dresses is certainly due to Nor- 
 man influence, and against this, woman, to her honour be 
 it said, held out more than man. So that the early English 
 period includes Saxon and Norman dress as one thing with 
 very slight modification. 
 
 Then we come to the periods of long hose and short 
 jerkins, varied occasionally by ridiculous affectation of the 
 female attire by the man, and with the ladies the horned 
 and steeple head-dresses, and tlic close-fitting sleeveless 
 tabard. All this ground, down to tlie Reformation, may be 
 called middle English as to dress. 
 
 The period inaugurated by Elizabeth may be called, for 
 ladies' dress, emphatically the stay period. For men, the 
 modern English time. 
 
 These three grand divisions will help the antiquary and 
 the artist more than any attempted refinement as to what 
 was Saxon and what was Norman in a people wlio were 
 neither one nor the other, but English.
 
 Lecture VI. 
 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 in.
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 Any subject, however trivial in itself, acquires some 
 amount of interest when treated historically, and any- 
 historical subject may be made to tell the tale of the past 
 if only looked at through a medium lending to it the 
 required colouring. Even the sports and pastimes of a 
 nation may be taken as exponents of a national character, 
 and very often they throw a light on history which the 
 dry old chronicles of the monks, written under the cloud 
 of a foreign idiom, fail signally to show. 
 
 Tlie manuscripts in the British Museum are very 
 rich in illustrations of our sports, although some of them 
 would be the last from which we should expect sports 
 and pastimes to be illustrated, — the Psalters, for example, 
 would not strike us as being the books in which to lind 
 the subject of this Lecture illustrated, — yet the so- 
 called " Queen Mary's Psalter" is one of the richest 
 sources of our information on this head. 
 
 The accurate student of the past who desires special 
 instruction in this direction will find many hints and 
 an immense amount of curious information in Strutt's 
 exhaustive Sports and Pastimes of the Feojile of England ; 
 bu^ my object in the present Lecture is rather to show 
 how the national character has found, so to speak, au 
 *^xponent in its sports, than to give a history of them. 
 
 n2
 
 i8o Sports and J \i stunts. [li:cT. 
 
 AVe have nothing to do with Konie or the Romans. 
 Their sports and pastimes live in other lands, in bull- 
 fights, corsos, and other displays of Koman^taste. But 
 there is a Koman who has something to do with us, 
 and that is Tacitus, who, in writing about the Germans, 
 includes the Scandinavian English. 0^ the Germans, he 
 says that Jihey are passionately fond of gambling, and will 
 play away all their spoils in war, and often lose their 
 arms and armour in a game of dice ; when all is gone, 
 they will stake their personal freedom on the throw. And 
 then the Eoman has a wonderful sneer at " Northern 
 honour", for he observes that when everything else has 
 gone in this way, and nothing left but their persons to play 
 for, and they have set their liberties and persons on the last 
 throw, " the loser goes into voluntary servitude ; and, 
 though the youngest and strongest, patiently suffers him- 
 self to be bound and sold. Such is their obstinacy in a 
 bad practice — they themselves call it honour. The slaves 
 thus acquired are exchanged away in commerce, that the 
 winner may get rid of the scandal of his victory."* 
 
 The idea of a debt of honour going before all other 
 obligations is thus deeply implanted in the Teutonic blood, 
 and lives with us at the present day as strongly as in the 
 days of Tacitus, for we were among those very Germans of 
 whom he speaks. 
 
 The only public amusement practised Ijy the Germans 
 to which the learned Eoman alludes is the sword- 
 dance, performed by young warriors before assembled 
 crowds, for no fee or reward beyond the applause of the 
 spectators. 
 
 ° Tiicilus Germ., c. li4.
 
 VI.] sports mid Pastimes. i8l 
 
 These two features noticed by Tacitus are and have 
 been the main types of our sports and pastimes ever 
 since, affording the headings to two great branches of the 
 subject, — athletic sports, represented by the sword-dance, 
 and games of chance or skill, represented by the dicing ; 
 from these two ideas, in fact, all our sports in their various 
 modifications have, more or less, descended. 
 
 When we came to Britain we brought war with us, to 
 ensure our peaceful possession of the island in the time to 
 come ; and as that invasion took place some five hundred 
 years after the time of Tacitus, we may well be prepared 
 to find our sports and pastimes, though greatly enlarged 
 upon and augmented, still included under these two simple 
 headings. 
 
 We have these two headings, as I have called them, to 
 our national sports and pastimes from the Roman point of 
 view. Let us glance for a moment at our own resources 
 and authorities, and see what is to be found in the ancient 
 books of our own race on this interesting subject. 
 
 The Edcla tells us that the gods, when Baldur had been 
 rendered invulnerable by the promise of all nature, 
 animate or inanimate, not to harm the favourite of 
 Valhalla, instituted a game which consisted in throwing 
 their spears, javelins, and arrows at the " white god", 
 as Baldur was called, partly from the spotless purity of 
 his life, and partly from his being emphatically the sun- 
 god, the deity whose brow supplied all mankind with 
 light and lustre. This beaming deity was placed with his 
 back against the holy-tree (now called, coiTuptly, the 
 holly), and the rest of the yEsir, or royal race of the gods, 
 shot at him, the; missiles either passing through him
 
 1 82 Sf>oris and Pastimes. [lect. 
 
 witliout (loinrj any damage, or falling harmlessly down 
 from his beloved form, leaving it quite unscatlicd. 
 
 Now there was, amongst the twelv^e gods of Valhalla, 
 one wlio was a traitor. This was the Utgard Loki, the 
 enemy of Goodness and Truth, and lie knew tliat when 
 Nanna, tlie Inide of Baldnr, had obtained this universal 
 promise, the mistletoe had been overlooked, because he 
 himself had sat upon the branch of the oak on which it 
 grew, in the shape of a white crow (afterwards black for 
 punishment), and hid the parasite from view. So he 
 contrived to get an arrow made of the wood of the 
 mistletoe put into the hand of Hoder, the blind brother 
 of the sun-god. Standing behind him, Loki directs the 
 shaft, which flies on to the breast of the beaming one. 
 
 The cock, since then sacred to Baldur, flies up to inter- 
 cept the arrow, wliich first pierces his breast, and finally 
 sinks into the heart of Baldur. 
 
 The death of Baldur and his subsequent re-admission 
 to Valhalla for half the year, while during the other half 
 he remains w^ith the pale goddess of the lower regions ; the 
 opening of the rosy portals by Eostra, goddess of the Dawn, 
 to receive him ; as well as the other circumstances of this 
 beautiful myth, have been dwelt upon in another place,* and 
 I only refer to it now to show you where to look for the 
 origin of the early English or Anglo-Saxon archery games, 
 their casting the bar and ja^■elin at a figure armed as a 
 warrior, and the custom of shooting at the cock at 
 Easter. 
 
 The attack on the armed warrior was afterwards con- 
 sidered a variety of the quintain, though in all probability 
 * Older EiHflinuh First Series, p. 73 et seq.
 
 VI.] sports and Pastimes. 183 
 
 the quintain was itself derived from an older game, fore- 
 shadowed by the attack of the gods on Baldur ; and many 
 other customs of far later times are due to the teachings of 
 this charming piece of mythology. 
 
 To shoot at an armed warrior, protected only by his 
 shield, is here seen to be a game instituted by the gods 
 themselves, so that we need not be surprised at finding 
 it among the observances of those who claimed descent 
 from them. The word " quentain", or " quemtain", has a 
 very suspicious look about it, and I suspect it was derived 
 from some such exjDression as haoen tan, keen-tooth — a 
 capital name for a warrior. However, I must observe 
 tliat this is mere hypothesis. 
 
 The English branch of the Scandinavian tree allowed 
 the practice of archery to fall into abeyance until, 
 after the sharp lesson at Hastings, they began to pay greater 
 attention than ever to the bow, and we find all sorts of xy 
 precautions taken to make Englishmen good bowmen. 
 Yew trees were grown in churchyards ; laws were passed 
 enforcing the use of the weapon ; and the archery games 
 thus instituted became national. In Finsbury there were 
 butts set up for practice with the bow and arrow : these 
 were mounds of earth artificially thrown up, having targets 
 fixed upon them wliereat the archers shot. The existence 
 of this practice is preserved in the name of Newington 
 Butts; while the ground belonging to the Artillery Com- 
 pany, near Finsbury Square, was originally devoted to the 
 archers of the City of London, formerly celebrated as 
 marksmen. The bow has yielded to the ritle, but the 
 ground is still devoted to the same purpose in the new 
 phase. Nobler sport cannot be desired than that wliich
 
 184 Sports and Pastimes. [lfxt. 
 
 the iiiarksnmn enjoys ; while the true eye, elastic tread, 
 and shoulder-to-shoulder feeling engendered 1)y the game 
 have done much to render the English riflemen of Tel-el- 
 Kehir worthy descendants of the archers of Cressy and 
 Poictiers. 
 
 The early P'nglish in their pagan state were accustomed 
 to a khid of sword-dance round the altar of Odin, which 
 continued for a whole week previous to one of the great 
 festivals in his honour. This was called the ymhirrnen, or 
 ymhirren, the round running ; and this is preserved in our 
 Christian culte under the name of the Ember week, which 
 name has nothing Avhatever to do with embers, being 
 only a corruption of ynib irrnen. Military games at the 
 time when the days begin to lengthen (hence Lent, from 
 lencten) were the forerunners of the volunteer manoeuvres 
 of the Victorian age ; and it is a good sign when so large a 
 proportion of the population of the island shows that not- 
 withstanding the disadvantages of these times, the old mar- 
 tial spirit has not been quite stamped out among us. 
 
 There is hardly an English man, or woman either, who 
 has never heard of Eobin Hood and his merry archers in 
 Sherwood Forest, but there may be many to whom the 
 equally exciting and equally English adventures of Adam 
 Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley are 
 unknown. And yet there is much in the spirited old 
 histories of these M-orthies, preserved by Bishop Percy, in 
 his Beliques of Ancient Enr/lish Poetry, that would delight 
 the youth and maidens of the present day, as much as 
 they did their ancestors. 
 
 The grand military dance performed by the Saxon youth 
 in the time of Tacitus would prepare us to expect military
 
 VI.] sports and Pastimes. 185 
 
 amusements as the chief relaxation of their immediate 
 successors, and accordingly we find the word "play" — a 
 pure, ancient Teutonic word — applied to all sorts of war- 
 like exercises. Thus we have such expressions as 'pUijo 
 gdres, play of the javelins ; sssc-plega, play of spears ; lirulen 
 plega, play of the shields ; siveardu plega, sword play ; hand 
 plcga, the play of hands, and many others of a similar 
 kind, all English ; ancient in form, but quite intelligible to 
 modern students without translation. When the Anglo- 
 Saxon (as I am compelled to call the early English- 
 man) had to translate Latin themes for school, we 
 find the Roman gladiator called pJcgcrc, a player ; or plegc 
 man, a play man ; while the theatre and amphitheatre 
 are called a p)lcga hus and j^^cga stow, a play house or 
 place, respectivel3\ A picture in the Harleian MS. No. 603 
 exhibits a jjJega stoio according to early English ideas. A 
 number of spectators are gathered together to witness the 
 performances of a trained bear. The animal is lying down, 
 pretending to be dead. A minstrel, or glcc-man, a man who 
 produces mirth or glee, is playing upon a kind of double 
 pipe, the recorders of later times, and a dancer is perform- 
 ing to the music. One of the audience is clapping his 
 hands in delight, while others are engaged in earnest con- 
 versation upon the merits of the performance. 
 
 P2ach village had its green or play-ground, and outside 
 each town similar spaces were reserved for play and 
 gamen, i.e., amusement, pleasure, or delight. There was, 
 as is still found in the north of Germany, Scandinavia, and 
 Russia, to this day — as in the old time before we were 
 Christians — a running brook and a well near to the village 
 green or play-ground. Bearing in mind that the games
 
 1 86 Sports and Pastimes. [lect. 
 
 W('i(i instituted in honour of one of the gods of the Odinic 
 series, we shall at once l)e led to connect this custom with 
 the locll-iDortha, or well-worship, so firmly adhered to hy 
 our forefathers and foremothers, that, long after Alfred's 
 time, nay, after the Norman u.surpati(jn, laws were 
 enacted against it. " To wake the well" was to appeal to 
 the divinity invoked through the inferior spirit of the well, 
 who was supposed to be more come-at-able than the deity 
 himself. These religious festivals were the origin of our 
 village toal'cs. The gleeman, the hoppestere, or dancing 
 girl, the bear-leader, were welcome at such gatherings ; 
 and in them we see the origin of our fairs, with their 
 subsequent declensions into mere resorts of riotous 
 amusement. 
 
 That these half-religious, half-warlike, and wholly 
 Teutonic gatherings should have attracted the wandering 
 merchants of those times is very natural, and the process 
 is very clearly put in one of the ]\ISS. of the Harleian 
 collection (No. 3601, fol. 12, v), wliich speaks of the 
 celebrated fair at Barnwell, near Cambridge. " It was a 
 large open place between the town and the banks of the 
 river, well suited for such festivities as those of which we 
 are speaking. A spring in the middle of this plain, we 
 are told in the early chartulary of Barnwell Abbey, was 
 called Beornawyl (the well of the youths), because every 
 year on the eve of the nativity of St. John the Baptist 
 the boys and youths of the neighbourhood assembled 
 there, and, after the manner of the English, practised 
 wrestling and other boyish games, and mutually applauded 
 one anotlier with songs and musical instruments ; whence, 
 on account of the multitude of bovs and ^irls who
 
 VI.] sports and Pastimes. 187 
 
 gathered there, it grew a custom for a crowd of sellers and 
 buyers to assemble there on tlie same day for the purpose 
 of commerce."* 
 
 The day of the nativity of St. John was, in our pre- 
 Christian period, the anniversary of Baldur's descent to 
 the lower regions. The sun-god mounts his funeral-pyre, 
 which on that occasion blazes through the night ; in other 
 words, the sun does not set on that night, but remains 
 tlu'ough midnight glowing in the blue vault, which is tlie 
 floor of Vallialla. The funeral-pyre is called Baldur's Bal 
 (or Bal) in the North; and in England we called tlie fires 
 lighted on St. John's eve Bale fires, long after the myth liad 
 died. Who would liave thought of connecting John tlie 
 Baptist with Baldur ? Nobody ever did so; but, like other 
 pagan feasts and solemn occasions, it was not swept away 
 by the innovating hand of tlie Christian priest ; like 
 Christmas, it was christened, and not destroyed. The good 
 fathers cared little about the minor details if they only 
 got their proselytes to believe in St. John and forget 
 Baldur, to adore Christ and forget Odin. The Bale fire has 
 as little to do with St. John as the holly, mistletoe, ivy, 
 and plum-pudding have to with our Blessed Lord. But 
 they remain, and prove that the old priests were right : 
 they do not now remind us of Baldur and of Odin, but 
 of a much higher order of teaching. 
 
 Of course the early English could not bring the sun 
 with them (however much we may regret their inability 
 to do so) ; consequently artificial fires had to take the 
 place of "the sky's shi])" on the anniversary of Baldur's 
 
 * Wright's Jlinlory of the J)oiiii'slic Munnfrs and Sfntii)U^nfs in 
 Euijlaml during the Middle Agex, p. G7. Loiieloii. ISlc'.
 
 1 88 Sports and Pastimes. [l?:ct. 
 
 fate. Hence the " Bale fires", as they used to be called, or 
 St. John's fires, as they were termed until very recently in 
 Cornwall. 
 ^ These festivals, with their dances and games, are all 
 
 Teutonic. We find nothing Roman amongst them save 
 the names bestowed on them by the Christian fathers in 
 converting them, so to say, to Christianity ; but there is 
 one sport, or rather a collection of sports, which remains 
 as pagan as ever, and has become more barbarous than in 
 the pagan times of old. I meau hunting. 
 
 To the early immigrants from Scandinavia the hunt 
 was the only means of obtaining certain kinds of food. 
 The wild boar, the still more terrible orochs, the elk, the 
 bear, were all hunted for food ; and as the pursuit of these 
 animals was always attended with considerable personal 
 risk, it would naturally be popular with such danger- 
 loving adventurers as our remote ancestors were. Next to 
 war, the chase was the occupation nearest their hearts, 
 and the most natural to indulge in, as being " mimicry of 
 glorious war". Besides, there was a very warlike side to 
 hunting, for the bear was not always attacked only to 
 obtain hams. He was as often slain in self-defence ; 
 while the wolf and the fox were only followed for the sake 
 of destroying dangerous foes, without any ultimate thought 
 connected with the larder. 
 
 In both these phases hunting was a noble and laudable 
 occupation ; the only slur that a poet could cast upon it 
 being its necessity, a slur which to most minds would be 
 the highest praise. But when the condition of society has 
 changed so much, that to indulge a passion for the chase a 
 party of men send over to France to buy a fox. that they
 
 / 
 
 VI.] sports and Pastimes. 189 
 
 may run the poor wretch down and torture him for fun, 
 the noble side of our civilised notions of Cliristian hunting 
 does not seem brilliant. 
 
 When our forests swarmed with dangerous wild boars, 
 when wolves devoured our children, and foxes were every- 
 where, to disappoint our dearest Michaelmas expectations, 
 then hunting was, indeed, a necessary and laudable occu- 
 pation. 
 
 So when we find our ancestors getting up very early, 
 armed with boar-spear and seax, subsequently with the 
 hunting-knife, riding out to meet formidable game, and 
 "bagging" bears, elks, wolves, and foxes for fun, or boars 
 and wild oxen for food, we feel that it was a right noble 
 thing to do; and the same feeling descending from those 
 noble sires — (who also hunted the Picts and Scots and 
 Lritons away from their broad fields) — now sends our 
 youngsters off to India to shoot "Stripes" in the jungle 
 (as they call hunting the tiger), and to oppose Teuton steel 
 to the bear's claws farther north ! Yes, those are sports 
 and pastimes indeed that those brave sires would appreciate, 
 and we may almost fancy we hear the ring of their battle 
 blades beaten against their bucklers, sending a hearty burst 
 of applause to us from the tomb ! 
 
 The bow and arrows seem, with the boar-spear, to have 
 constituted the chief weapons used in the chase from the 
 earliest times until long after the employment of gun- 
 powder ; but there is one curious and most interesting mode v 
 of pursuing birds which has long been lost to us, and that 
 is the noble art of falconry. That gentle bird, the falcon, is 
 only known to the naturalist as one of the liaptorcs : that is 
 all. There is nothing left us of the ]iO('try of the
 
 190 sports ami Pastimes. [li;ct, 
 
 bells, the hood, the lure, and all the pretty things that 
 surruuiul him as with a halo of mediseval romance. The 
 falcon, or falk, is dead to us, despite the assurance of the 
 naturalist, and we shall never more see the English noble- 
 man or woman ride out with the Ijrave bird on his or her 
 wrist. From the earliest MSS., from the Bayeux Tapestry 
 itself, down to the more recent days of Good Queen Bess, 
 we have been taught to connect the falcon with gentle blood. 
 Who does not know the charming poem by Skelton, in 
 which he apostrophises Dame Margaret as 
 
 " Of ladies the flower, 
 Gentle as falcon, 
 Or hawk of the tower '? 
 
 " Stephen, King of England, is represented as bearing 
 the hawk on his hand as a proof of being of noble, if not of 
 royal blood ; and in Germany, Sebastian Brandt, in his 
 Narcnscliiff, or Ship of Fools, published towards the end of 
 the fifteenth century, accuses his countrymen of the dis- 
 graceful custom of carrying their hawks to church with 
 them. Ladies not only accompanied the sterner sex in 
 ^ pursuit of this pleasure, but they very often practised it 
 alone. A writer of the thirteenth century endeavoured to 
 bring discredit on the practice because ladies often excel 
 gentlemen in it, proving the pastime to be effeminate 
 and frivolous." I take this from Strutt's Sports arid Fas- 
 times, but purposely refrain from mentioning the author's 
 name, lea^^ng him to the oblivion which his want of gal- 
 lantry merits. 
 
 Hawking was prohibited to the clergy, but, Like many 
 other prohibitions, this does not seem to have been of any 
 use, for the higher dignitaries in the Church carried their
 
 VI.] Sporfs and Pastimes. 191 
 
 falcons as bravely as the lay nobility. On tliis account 
 they were severely lashed by the poets and ruoralists, who 
 inveighed against them bitterly for hawking and hunting 
 too — one practice seems generally connected with the 
 other. 
 
 The perfection of the musket caused the decline of 
 hawking ; for the method of bringing down a bird with a 
 shot from a fowling-piece is so much more sure and cer- 
 tain than that of sending another bird after him, whose 
 expensive keep and numerous wants rendered game a very 
 costly luxury. Hentzner, in his Itinerary, written in 1598, 
 assures us that " hawking was the general sport of the v/ 
 English nobility ; at the same time, most of the best trea- 
 tises upon this subject were written. At the commencement 
 of the seventeenth century, it seems to have been in the 
 zenith of its glory. At the close of the same century the 
 sport was rarely practised, and a few years afterwards 
 hardly known.''* 
 
 "When the hawk was not flying at her game, she was 
 usually hood-winked, with a cap or hood provided for that 
 purpose and fitted to her head ; and this hood was worn 
 abroad as well as at home. All hawks taken upon ' the 
 list' (the term used for carrying them upon the hand) liad 
 straps of leather, called 'Jessies', put about their legs. The 
 Jessies were made sufficiently long for the knots to appear 
 between the middle and the little fingers of the liand that 
 held them, so that the lunes, or small thongs of leather, 
 might be fastened to them with two tyrrits, or rings ; and 
 the lunes were loosely wound round the little finger. It 
 appears that sometimes the Jessies were of silk. Lastly, 
 * Strutt's S2)orts and PastiineK, Book I, chap. ii.
 
 192 sports and Pastimes. [lixt. 
 
 llicir legs were adonicd with Ijells, fastened with rings of 
 leather, each leg having one ; and tlie leathers to which 
 the bells were attached were denominated ' bewits* ; and to 
 the bewit was added the creance, or long thread by which 
 the bird, in tutoring, was drawn back, after she had been 
 permitted to tly, and this was called tlie reclaiming of the 
 hawk." 
 
 " Under the Norman government no persons but such 
 as were of the highest rank were permitted to keep hawks, 
 as appears from a clause inserted in the Forest Charter ; 
 this charter King John was compelled to sign ; and by it 
 the privilege was given to every free man to have aeries of 
 hawks, sparrow-hawks, falcons, eagles, and herons in his 
 own woods. In the thirty-fourth year of the reign of 
 Edward III, a statute was made by which a person finding 
 a falcon, tercelet, laner, laneret, or any other species of 
 hawk, that had been lost by its owner, was commanded to 
 carry the same to the sheriff of the county wherein it was 
 found ; the duty of the sheriff was to cause a proclamation 
 to be made in all the principal towns of the county, that 
 he had such a hawk in his custody, and that the nobleman 
 to whom it belonged, or his falconer, might ascertain the 
 same to be his property and have it restored to him, he 
 first paying the costs that had been incurred by the sheriff ; 
 and if in the space of four months no claimant appeared, 
 it became the property of the finder, if he was a person of 
 rank, upon his paying the costs to the sheriff; on the con- 
 trary, if he was an unqualified man, the hawk belonged to 
 the sherifi": but the person who found it was to be re- 
 warded for his trouble.'^* 
 
 * Strutt's S/Jorts (oid Padiiues, Book I, chap. ii.
 
 VI.] sports and Pastimes. 193 
 
 The laws against injuring these valuable birds or de- 
 stroying their eggs were, down to the time of Henry the 
 Seventh, most severe, — a year's imprisonment being con- 
 sidered as a fair set-off against these offences. The value 
 of the bird is dwelt upon by Strutt as something very w 
 extraordinary. " At the commencement of the seven- 
 teenth century, we find (he says) that a gos-hawk 
 and a tassel-hawk were sold for one hundred marks, 
 which was a large sum in those days, and the price is by 
 no means mentioned as singular or extravagant ; for, on 
 the contrary, an author, Edmund Best, who published a 
 treatise upon hawks and hawking, printed at London in 
 1619, and who himself trained and sold them, insinuates 
 that the parting from the birds was considered as a favour : 
 and no doubt it was so, if the hawks in training required 
 such incredible pains and watchfulness, both by day and 
 night, as he declares are absolutely necessary. And upon 
 this account such as were properly trained and exercised 
 were esteemed presents worthy the acceptance of a king, 
 or an emperor. In the eighth year of the reign of Edward 
 III, the King of Scotland sent him a falcon-gentle as a 
 present, which he not only most graciously received, but 
 rewarded the falconer who brought it with the donation of 
 forty shillings, — a proof how highly the bird was valued. 
 It is further said, that, in the reign of James I, Sir Thomas 
 Monson gave one thousand pounds for a cast of hawks. 
 'A cast of hawks ofj toure,' says an old book on hawking, 
 ' signifies two, and a lese three.' " 
 
 The books of hawking assign to the different ranks of 
 persons the sort of hawks proper to be used by them, and ^ 
 they are placed in the following order : — 
 
 III. o
 
 194 Sports and Pastimes. [lecT. 
 
 "The eagle, the vuhuru, uuu the iac'iiuun,tur uu emperor; 
 the, ^er-faulcou and the tercel of the ger-faulcon, for a king ; 
 tlie faulcou gentle and the tercel gentle, for a prince ; the 
 faulcon of the rock, for a duke ; the faulcon peregrine, for 
 an earl ; the bastard, for a baron ; the sacre and the sacret, 
 for a knight ; the lanere and tlie laneret, for an esquire; 
 the marly on, for a lady ; the hobby, for a young man. 
 These ben hawkes of toure, and ben both illured and re- 
 claymed. The gos-hawk, for a yeoman ; the tercel, for a 
 poor man ; the sparrow-hawk for a priest ; the musket, for 
 a holy water clerk ; the kestrel^ for a knave or servant." 
 
 The tercel, or tiercel, is the male of the hawk. The 
 hawk was kept in the mew during the time of moulting, 
 whence at Charing Cross we have the Mews, where the 
 king's hawks were kept as early as the time of Pdchard II ; 
 but in 1537 this place was converted into stables for the 
 horses of Henry VIII, and since that time this hawking 
 term has changed its meaning to stables. 
 
 Horse-racing, amongst our earliest ancestors, was con- 
 lined entirely, or almost entirely, to persons of high rank. 
 It was necessary for them to understand the points of a 
 horse, and their racing was generally to find out the qualities 
 of the animal, rather than to win stakes. It was also 
 practised for mere amusement. 
 
 Fitz Stephen, who lived in the reign of Henry II, teUs 
 us that horses were usually exposed for sale in West 
 Smithtield ; and in order to test the excellence of the most 
 valuable hackneys and charging steeds, they were matched 
 against each other. His words are to this effect : " AVhen 
 a race is to be run by this sort of horses, and perhaps by 
 others, which also in their kind are strong and fleet, a shout
 
 VI.] sports and PastintfS. 195 
 
 is immediately raised, and the common horses are ordered 
 to witlidraw out of the way. Three jockeys, or sometimes 
 only two, as the match is made, prepare themselves for the 
 contest ; such as, being used to ride, know how to manage 
 their horses with judgment : the grand point is to prevent 
 a competitor from getting before them. The horses on 
 their part are not without enmlation ; they tremble and 
 are impatient, and are constantly in motion. At last, the 
 signal once given, they strike, devour the course, hurrying 
 along with unremitting velocity. The jockeys, inspired 
 with the thoughts of applause and the hopes of victory, 
 clap spurs to their willing horses, brandish their whips, and 
 cheer them with their cries.'' 
 
 The Easter and Whitsuntide holidays were the 
 principal times when the nobility indulged themselves 
 in running their horses, and there is plenty of evidence 
 to show that the so-called running horses of P]dward the 
 Third and other of our sovereigns were extremely 
 valuable ; but there is no ground for supposing that 
 anything like betting on the turf was practised until what 
 may be called comparatively modern times. Horse - 
 racing was advantageously contrasted with card-playing, 
 dicing, and stage-plays by an old puritanical writer 
 of Elizabeth's time. But towards the end of the 
 seventeenth century there are indications of the evil 
 practice of betting. Burton says: "Horse-races are 
 desports of great men, and good in themselves, though 
 many gentlemen by such means gallop quite out of their 
 fortunes." We may consider, therefore, the vicious part of 
 horse-racing to be about two centuries old, while the health- 
 ful emulation between accomplished riders is ancient. 
 
 2
 
 196 sports and Pastimes. [lecT. 
 
 A Chester antiquary says that it had been customary, 
 time out of mind, lor tlie Company of the Sadlers to 
 present to the Drapers a wooden ball, embellished with 
 flowers, on Shrove Tuesday. In the thirty-first year of 
 the reign of Henry VIII this was exchanged for a hell of 
 silver, of the value of three shillings and sixpence or more 
 — " to be given to him who shall run the best and the 
 farthest on horseback, before them upon the same day." 
 Herein we trace the origin of the saying, " to bear away 
 the bell." 
 
 " In the reign of James I public races were esta- 
 blished in many parts of the kingdom, and the prize was 
 a silver bell. 
 
 " At the latter end of the reign of Charles I races were 
 held in Hyde Park and at New Market. After the 
 Eestoration, horse-racing was revived by Charles II, who 
 frequently honoured the pastime with his presence, and for 
 his own amusement, when he resided at Windsor, appointed 
 races to be made in Datchet-mead. At New Market, where 
 it is said he entered horses and ran them in his name, he 
 established a house for his better accommodation. 
 
 " At this time the beUs seem to have been converted into 
 cups or bowls, or some other pieces of plate, which were 
 usually valued at one hundred guineas each ; and upon 
 these trophies of ^'ictory the pedigrees of the successful 
 horses were engraved. William III was a patroniser of 
 this pastime. George I, instead of a piece of plate, gave a 
 hundred guineas, to be paid in money."* 
 
 Of the athletic sports of the Middle Ages the most 
 gorgeous, the most popular, and the best known to us are 
 ° Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, Book I, chap. iii.
 
 VI.] sports and Pastimes. 197 
 
 the jousts and tournaments, established for the purpose of 
 giving military men opportunities of exercising their skill 
 in arms and improving it by practice. The tournament 
 was a military game, in which many " players" took part ; 
 while the jousts were arranged for two, in a sort of friendly 
 duel. Tournaments have been so often described, and are 
 so familiar to all readers of history, that any lengthy 
 account of them here would be out of place. The weapons, 
 chiefly lances specially made for these encounters, were 
 made without the barbed, or spear-head ; sometimes, how- 
 ever, they were provided with what is called the " coronal", 
 which consisted of three points of iron, not sharp, but each 
 provided with a sort of Ijutton or rebate, to prevent its 
 doing any serious damage. But the general practice was 
 to have no head at all to the tilting-lance, the object being 
 on the one side to push the adversary out of tlie saddle, 
 and on the other to sit firmly and to cause the lance to 
 shiver to pieces in the shock. Hence the lances were not 
 so deadly as those used in war, and the armour was much 
 stronger. 
 
 In the far-back pagan'times,when appeal was constantly 
 made to the trial by battle, there was a not unnatural be- 
 lief that the gods of Valhalla actually presided over trials 
 of the kind. To insure their presence sacrifices were made, 
 and to keep off the influence of evil spirits an island was 
 resorted to, on account of the idea that running water, or 
 indeed water of any kind, would dissolve spells and pre- 
 vent the entrance of black elves or witches. "NVhon an 
 island was not to be had, the same effect was produced by 
 surrounding a portion of ground with white cords stretched 
 between hazel-wands, and these were called, in High-
 
 ]gR S/>or/s nnd Pasfii>ii:<;. [r.KCT. 
 
 ( I (Minn n, .sr/irftn/cc/i, or enclosed places. A schrank means 
 MOW a box. In the poem of Sj/r Trijstrrm the expression 
 " a Tournament tliey chest", twice repeated, bearing the 
 sense (from the context) of enclosing, not choosing, first led 
 me to recognise in our Chester the same idea of something 
 enclosed, and hence applied to walled towns without refer- 
 ence whatever to the Latin castrum. These temporary en- 
 clo-sures were, however, called " the lists" in England. The 
 brutal boxing-match of the so-called " fancy", with its 
 " ring" for tlie lists, is the degraded, degenerated, and dis- 
 graceful progeny of the brilliant joust, at which the very 
 flower of beauty and female delicacy did not (in the good 
 old days gone by) disdain to preside. 
 
 But military display was not the only end and design 
 of the sports of our forefathers. There were many games 
 instituted, with the view of rendering the frame robust, 
 which were in themselves unconnected with serious 
 danger. There was throwing the bar, slinging stones of 
 different weight with extreme precision to great distances ; 
 and farther back we meet with the practice of rolling 
 immense blocks of granite, resorted to by the Scandinavian 
 youth of the third and fourth centuries. Nicety of judg- 
 ment was cultivated in the custom of throwing quoits and 
 running at the ring, while swimming, foot-racing, climbing, 
 and similar exercises tended to impart vigour and freshness 
 to the body and confidence to the mind. 
 
 (^f the games tlnis arising few have exercised such 
 intluence over the mind of English people, at least, as 
 those with balls. The ball seems to have had a special 
 fascination for us. The word is ancient and Scandinavian 
 in its cliaracter. "We find it in two forms, holl); or hallar,
 
 VI.] Sports and Pastimes. 199 
 
 meaning a globe. It does not appear in German save as 
 a borrowed expression of comparatively recent date. Xor 
 liave I met with it in any of the early English vocabularies 
 in the sense of a modern ball, for playing at certain 
 games. The earliest notice which I find of the word 
 approximately thus spelled is in the Brut of Layamon 
 where one MS. reads thus : 
 
 "■^ cleoped he Vthaer 
 Vther com swi^e 
 and alle Hne enihtes mid )>e 
 and winne'S J^as stanes alle. 
 ne scullen ze Igeven naenne 
 for nu ze mazen heom habben 
 swulche ve'Serne balles." 
 
 The other MS. reads as follows : 
 
 " >o cleopede he Vther 
 Vther com to me 
 and all t>ine enihtes mid J>e 
 and nimej> \>&o% stones alle 
 ne solle ze bi-leave nanne 
 for non ze mawe heom hebbe 
 ase fe^erbeddes." 
 
 There the sense is rather hales than balls, as is evident 
 from the context ; but as it is the earliest use of au}thing 
 like this expression that I have found, I give it. The 
 word which we pronounce bale, as bale of cotton or cloth, 
 is the same which in Germany appears as ball ; and com- 
 paring the heavy masses of granite to bales of feathers 
 would be apt enough, especially as the latter text has beds 
 of feathers. 
 
 <• The earliest mention of ball-play in England that I 
 have been able to meet with is by Fitz Stephen, who wrote 
 in tlie thirteenth century, and he says that " annually upon
 
 200 Sports and Pastimes. [lect. 
 
 Slirove Tuesday the London school-boys go into the fields 
 immediately after dinner and play at the celebrated game 
 of ball : every party of boys carrying their own ball." 
 Stowe, because goff was played in his time, thinks that 
 the game here meant must have been gofif ; and as Strutt 
 says, " without the least sanction from the Latin, he 
 (Stowe) has added the word bastion, meaning a bat 
 cudgel." I quite agree with Strutt's view, namely, that 
 ^ the game played was " hand-ball", as there is no authority 
 
 to show that a bat was used, or that the ball was driven 
 by the foot. Certainly hand-ball preceded games with 
 sticks and bats, and was much practised on the Continent. 
 The first authority for games with a bat, or stick, and balls, 
 refers us to the thirteenth century, of which date there is 
 an illumination in the Eoyal Library representing a man in 
 a hood holding a large ball in his left hand and a bat in 
 his right. Another individual is anxiously on the look- 
 out, either having just thrown the ball, which has been 
 caught by the batsman, or waiting until it shall be 
 despatched in his direction by a blow from the bat. The 
 scene is of the early part of the reign of Henry III. 
 Strutt gives a group from a MS. in the Bodleian, in which 
 a man is represented with a bat, and a woman is about to 
 deliver the ball to him. 
 
 My friend Mr. Compton read a paper on the antiquity 
 of goff or bandy ball before the Congress of the British 
 Archa-^ological Association, at Great Malvern, in August 
 1881, in which he suggests that the curved bat used in golf 
 was very probably the origin of the term handy, as applied 
 to the game. Golf, with the dropping of the / before /, 
 becomes goff, and the older word explains its origin as
 
 VI,] sports and Pastimes. 201 
 
 purely Teutonic. We have it in the German kolbc, the 
 butt-end of a musket, and it is doubtless the same word as 
 hetde, a club. 
 
 I have been able to trace tlie word up into the oldest 
 form of Scandinavian speech, Icelandic, and there we find 
 liolfr used for a javelin or arrow, and subsequently for the 
 clapper of a liell, and cognate with the expression liylfo, a 
 club, or the butt-end of a weapon. In Danish we get 
 Icolv, for an arrow or the bolt of a cross-bow. The later 
 ideas are all connected with a rounded end or butt-end of 
 some weapon, and this is remarkably applicable to the 
 bandy used in golf. The term is ancient, is sturdily 
 Teutonic, without the faintest taint of Rome to sully its 
 pure English (Scandinavian) nature, and accordingly we 
 find golf, or what was very like it, the most ancient game 
 of all those played with ball, excepting hand-ball, which 
 seems to have preceded it. 
 
 Balloon balls of leather filled with air were known in 
 the fourteenth century, and must have been rather good 
 fun, to judge from the illuminations. 
 
 Trap, bat, and ball is another ancient game, or at least 
 comparatively so. A manuscript formerly in the possession 
 of Mr. Douce, and undoubtedly of the fourteenth century, 
 represents this game with a very queer trap certainly, but 
 the principle is the same as in that of our day. 
 
 Cricket is quite a modern invention, dating no further 
 back than the last century, but it has become a greater 
 favourite than any game, excepting the tournament, 
 ever invented, although it remains understood and practised 
 by English people only (including, of course, the English 
 in America, Australia, and everywhere). Foreigners, even
 
 202 Sports and Pastimes. [lect. 
 
 iiuludiiif,' ilic kindred Germans and Scandinavians, are at 
 a loss to understand the enthusiasm which Englishmen 
 manifest regarding this, to them, childish way of spending 
 time. Doubtless, the custom of playing games with bats 
 and balls is new among adults, or at least comparatively 
 so, and the representations in the MSS. may be generally 
 taken to be those of children rather than of men at play. 
 To this cause I am inclined to attribute the silence of the 
 chronicles on the subject of such games, while military 
 sports, and even dicing and horse-racing, are constantly 
 referred to. There is no word precisely equivalent to our 
 " ball" in the older English or Anglo-Saxon, and the 
 Icelandic hollr, to which I have referred, means rather a 
 globe, as a technical word in physics, than in sport. 
 
 We have seen the term ;play applied rather to the mili- 
 tary exercises of the early English than to their mere amuse- 
 ments, but the expression games {gamen), and glee (gliew, 
 (jlierj), also living words among us to-day, have different 
 significations from that of play, and point more to amuse- 
 ments than to the stern necessities of life. The sleeman 
 was the harper, the glee- wood or glee-beom, the harp, while 
 the female vocalists and dancers who accompanied the glee- 
 man on his rounds, were called the glee-maidens. The word 
 has come down to us without its compounds as an equivalent 
 for mirth ; while "game" is as living a word as ever it was, 
 denoting quieter and more mental enjoyment than either 
 " play" or "sport". The gleeman enlivened the hall during 
 meals, and in the time of winter he was indispensable. But 
 the gleeman at first was not merely a minstrel, as he 
 afterwards came to be called, who dehghted the family of 
 his patron with his .>^kill as a harper, but he also performed
 
 VI.] sports and Pastivics. 203 
 
 feats of dexterity' as a juggler, wlio is erroneously believed 
 to have been a Norman invention. The term gleeman 
 covered all the ground which was covered by minstrel 
 and jonrjleur of later times, just as the term minstrel 
 originally did. The minstrel Taillefer is said to have 
 chanted the " Song of Eoland" at the commencement of 
 the battle of Hastings, and at the same time to have 
 flung his lance up into the air, catching it again with such 
 dexterity, and so repeatedly, that both sides thought 
 it must have been the work of magic. He tossed his 
 sword also into the air in the same kind of way, and was 
 regarded with awe by the English as a sorcerer. 
 
 The earlier Norman word, however, seems originally to 
 have had the same fulness of meaning as gleeman, 
 jongleur being a more modern refinement or sub-division 
 of the chief thought : for, as the duties of tlie minstrel 
 became more varied, they were confided to different 
 individuals bearing different titles, as rimours, clianteurs, 
 contcic-rs, jongleours, or jongleurs, jcstours, and trouba- 
 dours or trouvh-cs. These names are specific appellations 
 of indivi(hiiil branches of the grand profession of which 
 minstrel was the generic title. Of these, the trouvh'cs 
 and contcours themselves composed the songs wliicli tliey 
 sang, while the jongleurs and the chantcnrs used the 
 compositions of otliers. An old French author says that 
 the trouvlres embellished their productions with rhyme, 
 while the conteurs related their histories in ]irose; the ji(g<- 
 /owrs, who in the Middle Ages were famous for playing on 
 the viellc (our viol), accompanied the songs of tlie trouvercs. 
 The vielle was a stringed instrument sounded by the turn- 
 ing of a wheel, resembling, in fact, the modern hurdy-gurd>-.
 
 204 sports and Pastimes. [lect. 
 
 Til tlio British Museum there is a MS. in which King 
 David is represented playing the Anglo-Saxon harp, while 
 four figures are grouped about him so as to frame the pic- 
 ture of the king, as it were. These four persons are named 
 as those selected by the monarch to make psalms — Asaph, 
 /Eman, yEthan, and Idithun. Of these, Idithun is playing 
 upon an instrument almost identical with our modern 
 violin, while iEthan is tossing up three Anglo-Saxon 
 knives and three balls, at the same time, showing how the 
 gleeman or minstrel performed his part ; and further, which 
 is of greater interest to us, as it shows that the somewhat 
 silly trick of tossing balls and knives, now confined to 
 itinerant practitioners in the liOndon streets, was then 
 not considered unworthy the attention of such exalted 
 poets as those who could aid the Eoyal Psalmist in the 
 most sublime poetry ever yet breathed in mortal language. 
 This MS. shows us what one part of the gleeman's duty 
 was, and how the Norman appellation of jonglcours has 
 become debased in our day, together with the art they 
 practised, the professors becoming jugglers and their 
 art juggling, a term also used to denote any mean, under- 
 hand trickery. 
 
 The conteurs seem to have been called by various 
 names, as seggcrs, or saycrs, dissours, jestours, and, in the 
 barbarous Latin of the time, also fabulatorcs. All these 
 terms seem to have vanished, save jcstour, from the neo- 
 Latinism of ^csfc5, in which ther/, softening into y, has pro- 
 duced our jester. The descent from the somewhat im- 
 portant function of an official whose duty was to instruct 
 and amuse by tales of the deeds of heroes of ancient 
 days, to that of the crack-brained fool whose highest
 
 VI.] Sports and Pastimes. 205 
 
 ambition is to raise a laugh, was sudden but natural ; for, 
 being summoned to amuse his patrons on occasions of con- 
 viviality and festivity, this official found it pay better to 
 raise a laugh than to awaken serious thoughts. To turn 
 everything said by others into a "jest" (in the modern 
 sense of the word) is an occupation eminently adapted to 
 persons of mean understanding, and the relaters of the 
 grave gestes of old became the frivolous jester of the later 
 ages, called also the court fool. The parti-coloured dress, 
 the motley of Shakespeare, was not originally a token of 
 servitude and a label of half-wittedness. In earlier times 
 we find important functionaries — as the sheriff — dressed 
 in parti-coloured garments as an honourable distinction ; 
 and because the man who told instructive stories held an 
 important position in a household, it was natural that he 
 should be distinguished above the rest. When he descended 
 to the low level of a maker of jokes, he still retained his 
 parti-coloured dress; but as others had discontinued it, the 
 distinction became one of folly rather than of wisdom. 
 
 Still the jesters always remained familiar persons, and 
 we can see by the glimpses we get at them through Shake- 
 speare, how important they were in being able to give ex 
 officio opinions on matters which less privileged persons 
 dared not approach. Our own word " fool" simply means 
 a stupid, ignorant person, whose actions and words are not 
 under the control of sound reason, but it has not the fearful 
 meaning of tlie racca of tlie Hebrews, and yet it is used in 
 very nearly the same sense in our translation of the Bible. 
 In a Psalter in the British Museum, formerly the property 
 of Henry VIII, there is a portrait of that king playing on 
 a harp to bis jester, Will Somers, who is looking uneasy as
 
 2o6 sports and Pastiince. [lkcT. 
 
 till! .strains niecl his ear. He is struck with remorse and 
 sliaiiie. This wonderful picture illustrates the passaf,'e, 
 " the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." Here 
 we see that fool had acquired the less grave signification, 
 allowing of its application to the jester without losing the 
 more terrible sense which is, in this instance, employed 
 almost punningly. 
 
 An inferior class of jesters was called the "japers", 
 whose office was still meaner and more productive of harm. 
 They produced mirth by performing all kinds of antics and 
 saying all kinds of things, setting decorum entirely at defi- 
 ance. Some of these were so well rewarded that all kinds 
 of people assumed to be minstrels of this order, in the hope 
 of excessive pay. This increased so much that, in the reign 
 of Edward II, laws were enacted providing that no person 
 not duly qualified should pass himself off as a minstrel, 
 and prohibiting a professed minstrel from going to the house 
 of a person below the dignity of a baron, imless invited by 
 the master, and then he was to be contented with what the 
 housekeeper willingly offered him, without presuming to 
 demand anything. For the first offence he was punished 
 by losing the reward of his minstrelsy, and for the second 
 he w^as compelled to forswear minstrelsy altogether. 
 
 Minstrels fell lower and low^r, until in the reign of 
 Elizabeth they were included among the rogues, vagabonds, 
 and sturdy beggars, and subject to a like punishment ; and 
 in 1589 we find, in Putenham's Arte of English Poesie, 
 " tavern minstrels" spoken of with other itinerant vaga- 
 bonds. 
 
 Thus we may sum in a very brief way a curious history 
 of a most important functionary. First he appeal's as the
 
 VI.] sports and Pastimes. 207 
 
 skald of Northern history, full of the religious poems, 
 mythological stories, and heroic adventures of his race ; 
 singing also the praises of his master and of his master's 
 ancestors, away back to the very gods themselves. Christi- 
 anity modifies, without absolutely destroying, these stories, 
 and the pagan skalci becomes the Christian liarper and 
 gleeman. Then come the Normans, translating him into 
 a minstrel, with the various branches of the minstrel art, 
 until he dies out as a disgraced vagabond ' 
 
 The presence of so many persons, all in the category of 
 household servants, whose special duty it was to amuse, 
 would naturally give rise to the custom of mumming or 
 masking, where these people disguised themselves originally 
 in the skins of animals, and subsequently with pasteboard 
 visors and heads of grotesque form. These more ancient 
 disguisements seem to have led to the wildest disorders 
 and most extraordinary malpractices. From their being 
 performed by domestics, it became the fashion to call 
 actors " servants", because originally they were such. 
 
 The improprieties and revolting coarseness of these 
 extemporary diversions soon called down the wrath of the 
 Church. Monks and priests took up arms against these 
 plays, but as early as the twelfth century began to repre- 
 sent scenes from Scripture, to attract people to religious 
 matters by appealing to their taste for scenic representation. 
 According to Warton, tlie historian of English poetry, 
 the first of these religious performances was composed 
 early in the twelfth century. It was founded on the life 
 of St. Catherine, and was performed at Dunstable by the 
 scholars of the Norman school there. "William Fitz 
 Stephen, a writer of the twelfth century, in his description
 
 2o8 sports and Pastimes. [lkct. 
 
 of London, relates that " London, for its theatrical exhibi- 
 tions, had holy plays, on the representation of miracles 
 wrought by confessors, and of the sufferings of martyrs." 
 These pieces must have been in high vogue, for Matthew 
 Paris, who wrote about 1240, says that they were such 
 as were commonly called miracles.* 
 
 We know that this name continued to be given to these 
 performances until they at last died out. Curious plays 
 they must have been for our forefathers and foremothers to 
 delight in. There would be difficulties in the way of some 
 of the scenes that might stagger our modern ballet managers. 
 But courage and determination were prominent features in 
 those early days, and the story of the creation and fall of 
 man was given with a faithfulness to the letter truly aston- 
 ishing. After the appropriation of the forbidden fruit the 
 serpent is directed to " exit Jiissing". 
 
 The profession of an actor, as opposed to the clerical 
 exhibitor of scenes from sacred history, seems to have 
 been regarded with very great contempt even so early as 
 the middle of the twelfth century, for John of Salisbury, 
 who wrote about 1160. says, "Actors and maskers cannot 
 receive the holy communion." 
 
 This is almost enough to convince us that their art 
 must have been very popular, and it cost the monks and 
 other good members of the Church a hard fight to render 
 their pieces more attractive to the general public. This 
 opened a door to the wildest profanity. Sacred subjects 
 were treated not only familiarly, but the coarsest 
 buflbonery was mixed up with the representations of sub- 
 jects which should only be handled with reverence and 
 
 *W;u-ton, Ilht. EnrjUsh Poetry, vol. ii, p. IP. IS-iO.
 
 VI.] sports and Pastimes. 209 
 
 awe. The custom of performing these plays in churches 
 was perhaps, under the circumstances of the times, and in 
 view of the movement being a clerical one, nothing more 
 than we might have expected ; but it paved the way to the 
 use of the church as a mere play-house, and at last this 
 practice grew to such an enormity that, as late as the reign 
 of Henry VIII, we find Bishop Bonner issuing a proclama- 
 tion to the clergy of his diocese, dated 1542, prohibiting 
 "all manner of common plays, games, or interludes to be 
 played, set forth, or declared, within their churches, chapels, 
 etc." From this ecclesiastical source of the modern drama, 
 plays continued to be acted on Sundays so late as the reign 
 of Elizabeth, and even till that of Charles the First, by the 
 singing boys of S. Paul's Cathedral and of the royal chapel. 
 "It is certain that miracle-plays were the first of 
 our dramatic exhibitions. But as these pieces required 
 the introduction of allegorical characters, such as Charity, 
 Sin, Death, Hope, Faith, or the like, and the common 
 poetry of the times, especially among the French, began 
 to deal much in allegory, at length plays were formed 
 entirely consisting of such personifications. These were 
 called Moralities. The miracle-plays, or Mysteries, were 
 totally destitute of invention or plan ; they tamely 
 represented stories according to the letter of Scripture, 
 or the respective legend. lUit the Moralities indicate 
 dawnings of the dramatic art : they contain some rudi- 
 ments of a plot, and even attempt to delineate characters 
 and to paint manners. From hence, the transition to real 
 historical characters was natural and obvious, wliile the 
 intruduction of the buffoon, or Viee, was a feature that 
 added greatly to the popularity of the exhibitions."* 
 
 * VVarton, IlUt. Eikj. Poetry., vol. ii, pp. 23, 24. 
 III. P
 
 210 Sports and Pastimes. [lect. VI. 
 
 Amongst the games descending from the tmfd, or dice of 
 the early Scandinavians, is our own backgammon itself, an 
 Anglo-Saxon game, as its name denotes, being the ho'j- 
 <jamcn,ov horn play, from the pieces used being made of honi. 
 The word tfvfd means a die all through Scandinavia, and 
 att Lvfla is to throw the dice. A similar game on a board 
 was current from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, 
 and being played with dice, was also originally called 
 tsefic-game; but when the craze for false Latinity set in, this 
 word was confounded with the word tabula, and became 
 applied to the board, not the dice. The process, however, 
 was curious, for although only one board was used, men 
 spoke of playing at " tables", the primary idea of plural 
 being the number of the dice employed, generally three. 
 
 To go into the history of every game played by 
 yoimg men and maidens of our day would not answer 
 the purpose of this Lecture, which is chiefly to establish 
 that even in our sports and pastimes we nii^y trace our 
 Scandinavian origin. As long as we have continued 
 English, there has been something at least manly, warlike, 
 and national amongst us, evidenced in the most trivial 
 as well as in the gravest matters. But when we pretend 
 to be what we never can be — Romans or Frenchmen, or 
 any other than English people — we, like the dog in the 
 fable, lose the substance in grasping after the shadow, 
 and have not the consolation of possessing even that.
 
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